ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historical dynamics of ‘basin societies’, which colluded with the state to maintain transportation systems between Yunnan and Burma. Some social networks overlapped with transportation routes as these routes had guaranteed the successful delivery of tribute from exterior chieftains to the capital since the early Ming – and thereby confirmed the ‘All Under Heaven’ state cosmology. The Zhaozhou Bazi basin has been regarded as sustaining a geopolitical network of states. Pushed by the local elite, communities reorganized their common property to address changes in state policies and extended their networks to search for alternative routes. Thus, dynamic local agency actively reconstructed basin societies and affected centre-periphery relationships in southwest China.
