Mule caravans established a network across physical, political, and ethnic boundaries that integrated Southwest China, Southeast Asia, and Tibet. This article is a first exploration of this little-known mobile network. Based mainly on oral history, it focuses on the mule caravans based in Zhaozhou in western Yunnan from the late Qing to the 1940s, when the first motor roads were constructed. The investigation assembles horse and mule technologies and trade organization in detail in order to reconstruct the role and standing of transporters and their networks in local society, in the regional setting, in a volatile political environment, and in the face of challenging natural conditions.
Search Results
The Mule Caravans of Western Yunnan
An Oral History of the Muleteers of Zhaozhou
Ma Jianxiong and Ma Cunzhao
“We Owe a Historical Debt to No One”
The Reappropriation of Photographic Images from a Museum Collection
Helen Mears
2006 ), they are a transnational community, with kin living in southwest China, where they are known as Jingpo, and in northeast India, where they take the name Singpho. Within Burma, the term “Kachin” has come to serve, not unproblematically, as an
