ABSTRACT
To understand how and why the Karen people have come to occupy a vulnerable position in relation to the modern Thai state, it is first necessary to trace the events leading to the historical conjuncture when peripheral peoples became subsumed under the new category, ‘hill tribe’. This chapter states that the discourse about hill tribes is recently invented and reflects the changing relations between the Thai state and peripheral populations. Ethnic classification is a type of technology of power employed by the modern Thai state. Historically, Karen-speaking people have settled in the border areas between the old Yuan (northern Thai) and Siamese states since the establishment of these states in the thirteenth century. The modern borders of Siam were formed largely as a result of Siam’s involuntary role as a ‘buffer state’ during the Franco-British encounters in Burma, Indochina, and Malaya in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
