And third, the larger state in each case is constructed
partly on a form of programmatic nationalism which has offered a powerful
alternative to ethnic nationalism at crucial historical moments.8 In each case,
though to very differing degrees, this programmatic nationalism has played
a crucial role in detaching the fraternal community from its external homeland.
Together, these factors have meant that the fraternal communities have
become political orphans, ignored or even repudiated by the external homeland.
strategic politics
The borders which divide the Mongols, the Lao, and the Malays between pairs
of very different states are the product of imperial confrontations in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. All three peoples lived on the fringes of
larger and more powerful empires—Manchu/Chinese, Siamese, Dutch and
British. Their lands had been politically important in the past, but in this era the
border peoples were politically fragmented and economically weak, and the importance
of their lands was mainly strategic. Except for the Chinese Ming dynasty
and the British, each of the empires had a long-standing claim to hegemony
over the whole of the frontier region and all the people living there,though the extent to which the imperial authorities actually exercised any control
varied greatly depending on local resistance to and accommodation with
imperial rule. In each case, too, the partition was brought about by the appearance
of a rival imperial power in the frontier region.