Friday, December 30, 2005

Trade routes through Yunnan, the Shan states, and Upper Burma

Here's a map of trade routes through Yunnan,the Shan states, and Upper Burma taken from Bin Yang's "Horses, Silver, and Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective"(Journal of World History,vol. 15, no. 3, September 2004). Includes interesting historical detail on silver mining in Yunnan during the Ming dynasty and some unexplored avenues for research on the Yunnan-Tai frontier:

"As revealed, Yunnan silver in the Yuan and early Ming constituted a major amount of the national production, and can be compared with the New World silver import in terms of scale as James Lee states...the case of Yunnan silver obviously sheds light on the interaction and impact of the Chinese incorporation of local societies. Local resources were utilized to serve the national interest. To put it another way, it is fair to conclude that the inland prosperity was built at the price of exhausting the local resources of frontier/peripheral areas, though this article will not examine this issue."

I used his summary of trade routes through Burma in my paper.