Peopling the Yunnan-Bengal corridor

Abstract

This chapter provides some depth to the ethnographic history of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo (or the Zo) people. It pulls together available epigraphic, linguistic, and literary data that exist in fragmentary ‘study areas’ of Highland Asia of Yunnan, Upper Burma, and Northeast India. In recent literature, this ethnic group is known by the generic name ‘Zo people’. Since the late 18th century, this hill group has attracted the attention of British administrators and Christian missionaries who observed them becoming colonial subjects. In the post-imperial era, members of this ethnolinguistic group have become citizens of at least three different nation-states (India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh). Similarly, the Zo ethnographic literature mirrors irredentist politics as well as wider integration with the market and the state. In political struggle, the Mizo and the Chin have been more cohesive than the chiefdom-based Kuki polity in the modern world.