History of Who, Exactly?

Professor James C. Scott has published a book recently that is making some waves. As I've said before, I'm all for revisionist views of history, so long as they are well-grounded in the evidence. Sometimes, it's good to have someone force us to see things a little differently.

Such is the case with Professor Scott's book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. The title makes his thesis sound pretty radical but the idea is actually interesting. Professor Scott rejects the usual approach of state- or country-based histories, and tells the story of the peoples living in the deep jungles and mountains of inland Southeast Asia, far away from the cities and administrations of the governments clinging effectively to the coasts. These peoples, long persecuted as annoying and slippery minorities by the various governments which have passed in the region, have tried their best to stay as remote from the countries, their taxes and their prying police forces for centuries, living a sort of outlaw existence in the interior regions -- which Scott calls Zomia -- while rejecting any of the benefits of civilization and refusing to identify themselves with any of the established countries in Southeast Asia.

Some historians and regional specialists have taken issue with Professor Scott's approach and it may be indeed that he is guilty of some ideological over-reach -- theorists sometimes see things a little too black-and-white, ignoring many of the gray areas inbetween -- but still, I like Professor Scott's approach because it highlights our own propensity today to (lazily) simply assume that our lifestyle is the end-all and be-all of human existence. For instance, historians and archaeologists were puzzled in the 1980s and 90s when evidence surfaced in Eastern Europe and Central Asia that several groups seemed to have lapsed back into more primitive "hunter-gatherer" lifestyles after having "achieved" agricultural societies. Why would anyone reject the obvious fruits of civilization? -- or so ask we. Our popular assumption that human societies followed some form of linear development, that we were all on some sort of path towards ultimate civilizational utopia, has been challenged a lot in recent decades, but we still cling to it. The simple fact is, civlization doesn't quite work for everyone, and there have always been those who have carved their living on the outskirts of civilizations.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for civilization. If you want this keyboard, you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers! Still, it is impossible to completely dismiss Professor Scott's approach, and indeed there is even an echo of Zomia in Eastern Europe. The Carpathian Mountains arch to form a massive stone cradle in the heart of Eastern Europe, and despite all the fits of nationalism that have convulsed the region, there is a historic tradition of mountain peoples all throughout the Carpathians who share many traditions of music, folklore, fashion styles, lifestyles, and a romantic sense of anti-authority, anti-state banditry which has perennially frustrated the governments on the plains below.