The Dilemmas of Post-War Reconstruction in the Sino-Burmese Borderlands - Dr Andres Rodriguez

The early post-war years (1945-1948) in Asia witnessed the dismantling of empire leading to a massive territorial reorganisation of the region under the framework of ‘reconstruction’. Contested borders dating from the age of empire were soon to be settled, as new national borders were drawn along ethnic or religious lines in the region. Yet the settlement of borders posed important challenges for those communities who had long resided in the interstices of state power. In this respect, the borderland areas between Yunnan, Western Sichuan and Burma during this period were a good example of the above. After years of relative autonomy in relation to different centers of power, its communities now became categorised as ‘ethnic minorities’ to be incorporated into the emerging independent nation-states of either China or Burma. In this podcast, Dr Andres Rodriguez talks to Dr Natali Pearson about the ways in which both China and Burma sought to ‘decolonise’ this ethnically diverse border area, and how its inhabitants presented their own interpretation of emancipation, equality and modernity for the region. About Dr Andres Rodriguez: Dr Andres Rodriguez is a lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney. His research has focused on the construction of ethnic identities and state building in China’s southwest borderlands through the lens of fieldwork during China's Republican period. He is finishing a manuscript tentatively titled 'Meeting the Nation in the Field: Frontier Work and the Making of Modern China’s Southwest'. Andres is currently examining early post-war political movements of ethnic minorities across China, Burma, and India as part of a larger framework of ‘frontier reconstruction’ and decolonisation across the region. View the transcript: https://bit.ly/2FDmAgv Photo credit: Franc Pallares Lopez