ABSTRACT
Different forms of missionary Christianity have had a prolonged and extensive impact on the upland shifting cultivators whose social organization follows a patrilineal clan or tribal pattern, and has resulted in a wide variety of diverse cultural effects. Certainly there is no sense in which it could be said that the adoption of Christianity by a marginalized ethnic minority people tends to encourage their assimilation or integration into a 'host' population which has not so adopted the Christian faith. In order to present some idea of the kind of conflicts and choices which may confront the members of an ethnic minority with regard to the adoption of Christianity, the chapter considers one case among the White Hmong of Northern Thailand. The earliest and best recorded of the uprisings was that known as the Paj Cai revolt or La Guerre du Fou of the Hmong against the ruling authorities in French colonial Laos in 1918–1921.
