2000 CulasChristian "Hmong Migration Laos-Siam 19th century"

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Christian CULAS
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“Migrants, Runaways and Opium Growers. Origins of the Hmong in Laos and Siam in the
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”
2000
in Jean Michaud (ed.),
Turbulent Times and Enduring Peoples. Mountain Minorities in the South-East Asian
Massif. London, Curzon Press, 29-48 p. (one map)
This paper is a contribution to more extensive research on the history of the Hmong
migrations in South-East Asia
2
, and deals with the Hmong migrations from China to
Laos and Thailand, particularly between Luang Phrabang (Laos) and Muang Nan
(Siam) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
First, I will give some relevant information on the historical and political background in
this area. Then, I will discuss the first recorded evidence of Hmong settlements in Laos
Kingdom and in Nan Principality. I will conclude with what is the most likely
motivation for these migrations.
The purpose of this paper is not to deal with “micro-migrations” such as local searches
for new fields, regular new settlements of the village or hunting places in the
neighbourhood (i.e. under the same administrative and political ruler); rather it deals
with the study of Hmong “macro-migrations” towards the South and South-West, with a
local level focus. I would like to underline the various reasons which led the Hmong to
move between Laos and Thailand (formerly Siam), and go on to discuss the motivations
for this move from Luang Phrabang to the Nan province; while other Hmong and
Montagnards got used to new ways of life and new patterns of agricultural production in
the country during a period of economical and cultural change. This research is directed
toward the economical, political and social conditions, for it is through a study of the
unity and the divisions among the highlander minorities that we will be able to
understand the history of their relationships with Thai and Lao principalities and
governments.
The Hmong are a Miao-Yao ethnic group scattered through south-west China
3
,
Vietnam, Laos and Thailand with a very small number in Myanmar (Burma), especially
in former Shan States. Today about 124,000 Hmong live in the highlands of northern
Thailand, in some 230 villages
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which sometimes are interspersed with Yao people. In
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Christian CULAS took a Ph.D. of Anthropology at the University of Provence (Aix). He is currently a research
associate at the Institut de Recherche sur le Sud-Est Asiatique (IRSEA), specializing in cultural anthropology and
ethnohistory of the Montagnards of continental South-East Asia massif. He is also the author of “Introduction à
l‟histoire de l‟opium et de ses usages chez les Hmong d‟Asie du Sud-Est”, Journal Asiatique, (Paris), (forthcoming
2000, N°1). Dr Christian CULAS may be contacted at the Maison Asie-Pacifique, IRSEA-CNRS, Université de
Provence, Campus St Charles, 13003 MArseille, France (Fax: + 33 4 91 10 61 15, E-mail: [email protected]).
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For a general view see my paper in collaboration with Jean Michaud: “A Contribution to the Study of Hmong
(Miao) Migrations and History” in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, 1997, 153 (II): 211-243.
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More than 80% live in three provinces: Guizhou, Hunan and Yunnan.
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Tribal Reserach Institute 1995: 59.

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1993-4, between 231,000
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and 260,000
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Hmong lived in North Laos, in an unknown
number of villages. The Hmong are generally described as mountain dwellers and as
swidden or slash-and-burn agriculturists, especially in South-East Asia.
Where do the Northern Indochinese Hmong come from?
It was in the first half of the nineteenth century that Hmong settlers migrating from the
North (Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan) penetrated the peninsula and rapidly reached as
far South as the seventeenth parallel near Tak in Thailand, following roughly a North-
East/South-West route from Tonkin. Father François-Marie Savina, one of the first
scholars of the Hmong, mentioned that in the early twentieth century, at the time when
he was writing on the Hmong:
“All the Hmong/Miao inhabitants in Tonkin came from Yunnan, and those in Laos came from
Tonkin. And the latter have kept moving Southwards, reaching nowadays as far as the
twentieth parallel in the Annamitic range.” Savina 1924a: VIII.
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These migrations took the form of small waves of pioneering households grouping
together to clear the forest in order to grow dry rice, maize and, often opium. When
social, economical, political and sometimes ritual problems appeared, or when the soil
was no longer capable of sustaining good crops, (usually after only a few years), the
local groups split, and the lineages went further on joining together with others in order
to clear new patches of empty forests.
If we consider the actual density of the Miao/Hmong population in Asia, we notice that
a minority of these people chose to move towards the South. Only ten or fifteen per cent
left China to find new conditions of life and security in North Indochina (Mottin
1980: 37). Supporting this observation is the decreasing density of Miao/Hmong as one
leaves Guizhou province and moves down to central Thailand through Northern
Vietnam and Laos (see below Table of the Miao/Hmong Population in Asia).
At this point, it is necessary to show the diversity of motivations to move and their more
or less direct relationship with historical, economical and political pressures.
Hmong, uprisings and “Troops of Flags”
On the mainland including China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, the most important
factor influencing the Hmong/Miao migrations was flight from uprisings and wars and
associated massacres, lootings and famine. One of the first documented upheavals of the
nineteenth century occurred in 1818 when Muslims violently opposed the Peking armies
in the South. However, it was not until 1850 and the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1872),
supported by a messianic ideology partly borrowed from Christian religion, that the
imperial troops were actually defeated, with most of the large cities in the South being
captured by the rebels. In 1854, during that same period of intense social and political
5
Kossikov & Ergorounin 1993: 5.
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Chazee 1995: 143-4.
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“Les Miao [Hmong] du Tonkin sont tous originaires du Yun-Nan, et ceux du Laos sont originaires du Tonkin. Ces
derniers poursuivent toujours leur marche vers le Sud, et ils ont atteint aujourd‟hui le 20e parallèle, sur la chaîne
annamitique.” Savina 1924a: VIII.

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turmoil, another important rebellion flared up, wrongly named after the Miao and
centred in south-east Guizhou (Lombard-Salmon 1972; Jenks 1994). Rebels, entrenched
in “their” mountains, attacked Manchu garrisons and mandarins as well as Chinese
merchants and landlords, and allied themselves with local Secret Societies, in particular
that of the White Lotus.
“The Muslim Rebellion (1855-1873) began as a dispute over mining concessions between
Chinese Muslims and Han Chinese in Yunnan. It was roughly coincident with other rebellions
which broke out as the central authority of the Manchus declined, e.g., the Taiping, and Miao
rebellions.” Maxwell Hill 1983: 125.
The Muslim
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insurrection in the South-West grew to such an extent that it led the rebels
to proclaim an independent Sultanate in Dali (Yunnan) within a few years
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. Rebels
were provided with arms by the British through Burma, while the imperial
representative in Yunnan and Guizhou obtained his from the French, through Tonkin.
For their part, the colonial powers were hoping to take advantage of the ongoing turmoil
and create an opening to gain access to the south of the Chinese Empire, without having
to deal with the complicated political situation on the China Sea front.
This turmoil affected the whole of southern China, resulting in a number of famines and
epidemics in the region during most of the second half of the nineteenth century. This
turmoil contributed significantly to pushing a number of Montagnards of various origins
to look for better opportunities further south, as far as into the north of the Indochina
Peninsula. Among these communities, there was a substantial element of the Hmong
subgroup of the Miao minority.
In 1874 Black Flags were called by the king of Annam in order to suppress the revolt of
the Lé dynasty partisans. After these operations one of the Black Flag troops settled in
Tran-Ninh
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. Some time after fleeing from the repression of Yunnan insurrection,
Muslim Chinese came to this area.
In the kingdom of Luang Phrabang, the first Hmong arrival coincided with the flight
from Yunnan of different irregular Chinese troops arranged under several “Flags”
(White, Red, Black, Yellow and Stripped). But the most relevant question about these
connections is: What kind of relationship was struck up between White Flag troops and
Hmong in Yunnan and later on in Indochina ? The White Tai leader in Tonkin, Deo Van
Tri, was an eyewitness to the passage of Hmong/Miao belonging to the White Flags in
1848. Near Luang Phrabang, Laotian people said that the Hmong emigrating around
1850 were called White Flags. In 1734, on the Lao-Chinese border, the escort of king of
Luang Phrabang, sending his tribute to the Chinese governor at Yunnan-Sen, was
intercepted by White Flags. A few years before (1726-7), the “Mousseux Montagnards”
were newcomers near Luang Phrabang and their ethnic identities still remain doubtful.
Could some of them be Hmong?
According to the French “Chancelier de Résidence”, Delineau, who travelled and
surveyed in Tran-Ninh in 1894, Laotians and Khamu said that the first Hmong arrivals
dated from the invasion by the Chinese troops. Since the beginning of the nineteenth
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.Called Hui in Chinese.
9
On the relationship between the Miao and the Taiping and Muslim rebels, one can refer to Teng (1971: 366-371),
Jenks (1985, 1994) and Radley (1986: 45-56); details of the association of the Miao and Yao with the Taiping
upheaval can be found in Schurmann and Orville (1972: 172 sq.).
10
. Vietnamese name of the plateau on Xieng Khouang province (Laos).

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century Hmong, as opium producers, formed commercial transactions and sometimes
payed a sum as an advance on the opium harvest to Chinese Haw
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caravaneers. Many
Haw traders married Hmong or Yao women.
“Here [in Luang Phrabang] as in other towns in the North Laos there is a division of labor
among the Chinese community; those from Swatow, Hainan, Canton and of Hakka origin run
shops or engage in the import business, most Yunnanese travel in the highlands and trade with
the Meo [Hmong] and Yao
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. This is facilitated by the fact that many of the people in both
tribal groups, but particularly the Yao, speak Yunnanese.” Halpern 1961: 31-2.
I can confirm that today (1993) in the Lao-Thai border, old Hmong who sold opium to
the Chinese Haw caravaneers speak Yunnanese, a dialect of Mandarin Chinese.
Thirty years ago, old Hmong living in Laos and Vietnam still remembered their travels
with the Haw caravaneers in the late nineteenth century. They quite often served as
grooms for the horses
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and mules loaded with cloth, silk, salt or opium. Some of them
say that they explored new and unpopulated fertile regions, such as the Tran Ninh
plateau in Laos and the mountains north of Nan in Thailand. There were thus
possibilities offered to those who wanted to move. The Hmong migration towards the
south-west was not made blindly. The long relationship between the Hmong and the
Chinese Haw was a significant factor in the decision to migrate and in the choice of a
new territory. A blend of fertile and available forest land with proximity to a Haw
caravan route was perfectly suited both to escaping the Han wrath, and to trying their
luck further away.
The First Hmong settlements in North Indochina
French anthropologist Jacques Lemoine collected from Vietnamese ethnologists this
version of the first arrival of Hmong in Vietnam:
“Near Dong Van and Méo Vac, North of Ha Giang province, some Hmong say they arrived at
this place first with 80 families, and have been living here for fifteen generations, i.e. at the end
of the Ming dynasty or in the beginning of the Manchu conquest (ca. 1660).” Lemoine
1995: 28.
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Émile Lunet de Lajonquière (1904: 223), a French officer and ethnographer, put forward
another relevant hypothesis dealing with the construction of an important village called
“Muong Tuong
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” in the far north Tonkin by Hmong migrants around 1750-1800, i.e.
during the Chinese Qing dynasty.
11
Called Chin Ho or Chin Haw in Thai and Lao.
12
“It is presumed that a considerable portion of this trade involves opium, but, of course, such facts are hard to chek
precisely.” Halpern 1961: 32 n. 12.
13
. Called Ma fou in Chinese.
14
“Selon les ethnologues vietnamiens, les clans Lau et Yang de Dong Van et Meo Vac dans la province de Ha Giang
préservent la tradition d‟être venus en premier du Guizhou à 80 familles il y a une quinzaine de générations, c‟est-à-
dire à la fin des Ming ou au début de la conquète mandchoue (ca. 1660).” Lemoine 1995: 28.
15
Region of Tu-Long, at the border the Thanh-Thuy and Hoang-Su-Phi areas, between Lao Cai and Ha Giang, in the
3rd Military Territory.