James A. Anderson is an American historian in premodern China and Vietnam, and an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA.
With a B.A. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard College, a M.A. and a Ph.D. in History obtained at University of Washington (Seattle, USA), James Anderson has taught courses in Civilizations of Asia from earliest times to the 18th century, Early Chinese Civilization, and selecte topics in East Asian History (“Silks and Spices”, “History, institutions, and culture of India, China, and Japan”, “Viet Nam War”…).
His research has focused on the roles trade and religious patronage played in state formation among the upland communities between southwestern China and northern Southeast Asia during the 9th ‑13th centuries, hill people realities in relation to border spaces, and global studies in Zomia. This has led him to coauthor several studies in pre-modern Vietnam and Yunnan with John K. Whitmore.
chs 洞 dong, "cave" | 峒 tong, "dong"
Dong is an ancient Chinese term for a mountain valley community, especially in the southern and soutwestern regions abutting to 'historic' mainland China.
In Korea, dong 동 has come to refer to a neighborhood or an administrative sub-district.
from zomi, "highlander" in Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Burma, India, and Bangladesh.
Zomia is a geographical term coined in 2002 by Dutch social scientist Willem van Schendel of University of Amsterdam to refer to the highlands of Asia in a global, macroscopic, transnational perspective.
Developing the proposition by Clifford Geerz that research fields in history and anthropology should be more thoroughly combined, the term ‘Zomia’ was applied to the geographical space known as Southeast Asian Massif by research James C. Scott in his 2009 reference study (The Art of Not Being Governed) on an area including parts of Northeastern Cambodia and characterized by low population density, historical isolation, political domination by surrounding states and no state formation process whatsoever.
While Zomia's limits have varied amongst authors - encompassing highlands overlapping parts of spme 10 countries (southwest China, Northeast India, eastern Bangladesh, all the highlands of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Peninsular Malaysia, and Taiwan), with a total population of around 100 million, the Tibetan world was not included in this area, due to its specific political logics.
