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Through a comparative historical analysis of two sites on Myanmar’s borders with China and Thailand, this article explores how natural resources affected border-making in Zomia. Firstly, the article argues that demand for natural resources drove lowland states’ territorialisation of the highlands in the late nineteenth century, including their desire to demarcate borders. Secondly, local actors chose different political strategies in response to lowland state penetration. Some chose to attempt to repel lowland states, others to avoid them. The type of natural resources available (‘lootable’ versus ‘unlootable’ resources) enhanced or diminished the effectiveness of the political tactics chosen by local actors. Thirdly, the article explores whether local politics or the ‘knowability’ of natural resources determined the differential success of border-making in the region. This attention to natural resources can deepen histories of ‘state-escaping’ highland peoples. This also has implications for the question of human agency and environmental determinism in Zomia, a question which is often implicit but unaddressed when scholars use the concept of the ‘friction of terrain’. In the context of accelerating climate change and the global spread of pathogens, understanding the potential for agency of non-human objects is more important than ever. Drawing on archival materials from the Myanmar National Archives, India Office Records, and the British Library, this study gives insights into both the politics of this region today, and how natural resources affected border-making at the margins of states.

Teak & Lead: Making Borders, Resources, and Territory in Colonial Burma