6.2. The Numerical Strength of the Captive
Population
How many war captives were deported to Lan
Na during the era of kep phak sai sa kep kha sai
miiang? How large was this population in
absolute and relative numbers by the mid 19th
century? The Northern Thai chronicles report
in detail the numerical strength of various armies,
but do not generally provide any figures on the
people deported and resettled by these armies.
Siamese sources are more precise here. The
overall figures I collected for the various
campaigns of forced resettlement (1782-1838/
39) indicate that 50,000-70,000 war captives
were deported during the late 18th and early
19th centuries to present-day Northern Thailand
(appendix table 2). Furthermore, at least some
3,000 ethnic Mon fled after the last great Mon
uprising in Burma (1814/15) to Chiang Mai,
where they were settled in the eastern outskirts
of the city and in Saraphi. 138 Since the forced
resettlements were often followed by the more
or less voluntary immigration of those who were
left behind, and if a natural annual increasel39
of 0.5% for the "Pre-Bowring Period" is a
reasonable supposition, the captive population
would have doubled by 1840, eventually
reaching a total between 100,000 and 150,000
persons. Taking the census results of 1919/20140
and assuming an annual increase of 1.5%
between 1840 and 1919/20 (including migration),
I calculated the total population of
Northern Thailand at roughly 0.4 million people.
That means that by 1840, roughly 25-40% of
the population in the five Yuan principalities of
Chiang Mai, Lamphun, Lampang, Phrae and
Nan were war captives or their descendants.
Contemporary British sources, however,
indicate a far higher percentage of war captives
than that derived from my own calculations.
After his three journeys in 1829-35 to Chiang
Mai, Lamphun and Lampang, David Richardson
estimated that "of the original inhabitants of
this country but a very small portion now obtains,
perhaps not above one third of the whole."i41 In
his diary of a journey five years later he wrote
about the "captives of whom 3/4 of the people
are composed."142 Richardson explained the low
numbers of native Yuan by the frequent
deportations of the local population to Burma
during the 16th to 18th centuries. W.C. McLeod,
who visited Chiang Mai and Lamphun on his
journey to Chiang Tung in 1837, agrees with
Richardson that the large majority of the
population were war captives from the "different
states tributary to Ava." McLeod estimates:
"More than two-thirds of Zimme [Chiang Mai],
Labong [Lamphun] and Lagon [Lam pang] are
Talien [Mon] refugees, or persons from the
Burman provinces to the northward, who had
either voluntarily settled under the Siamese
Shans [Yuan], having been inveigled to do so
by specious promises, which were never kept,
or seized and brought away during their former
constant incursions into these provinces, chiefly
Kiang Tung [Chiang Tung] and Muang Niong
[Yong]."l43
Should these figures, obtained by foreigners,
be taken at face value? One has to be careful for
the following reasons:
Firstly, judging from the routes Richardson and
McLeod were travelling in the 1830s, it seems
that they really did pass through areas with a
high proportion of war captives: Lamphun
(nearly completely populated by Lii-Yong) as
well as the eastern and southwestern parts of
Chiang Mai (large concentrations of Khiin). It
is from observations in these regions that their
conclusions were drawn. As for Lampang,
visited by Richardson (in 1835) but not by
McLeod, neither explicitly mentions any captive
group. Lampang apparently suffered from the
wars with Burma less than Chiang Mai and
Lamphun, and was, therefore, not so seriously
depopulated. Compared to Chiang Mai, the
capital, Lampang was of minor strategic
importance vis-a-vis the Burmese. Lastly, the
Wang river basin was a traditional rice-deficit
zone. Therefore, I tentatively conclude that
Lampang received a considerably smaller
number of war captives than the Chiang MaiLamphun
region.
Secondly, Richardson and McLeod do not give
any information about Phrae and Nan, regions
Journal of the Siam Society 87.1 & 2 ( 1999)
Forced Resettlement Campaigns in Northern Thailand During the Early Bangkok Period 67
they obviously never visited. There were large
numbers of people resettled in Nan province
during the first decades of the 19th century,
either as war captives or voluntary immigrants.
But neighbouring Phrae is virtually left out by
the chronicles and other contemporary sources.
Perhaps this principality was too small to be
worth mentioning. Or, perhaps Phrae had been
far less destroyed during the 18th century than
Nan or Chiang Mai and, was therefore not so
eager to be engaged in the resettlement
campaigns of the latter.
Finally, the British diplomats were probably
excessively aware of the non-Yuan population,
because they did not expect so many alien
elements in Chiang Mai. Certainly, the increase
of population in LanNa during the late 18th and
early 19th centuries was only partly due to the
influx of war captives. The return of former
residents from jungle and mountainous areas
was important, too. An inscription of Wat
PhrabOrommathat Si Com ThOng (Chiang Mai)
mentions 21 families who had served the
monastery as phrai wat (lv.J'i'1(ij) then fled from
the Burmese armies into the jungle and finally
returned in 1779 to the monastery.I44 Various
smaller valleys situated far off the major invasion
routes were not abandoned by their inhabitants,
but, on the contrary, provided shelter for refugees
from areas ravaged by war. The district of Li in
the far south ofLamphun, for instance, remained
relatively untouched by the events of the 1760s
and 1770s. Many Yuan people from Mae Hong
Son sought refuge in Li during that time.I45
There is, however, little doubt that the war
captives and their descendants formed a major
part of the mid-19th century population of Lan
Na. The results of a detailed analysis of the
"List of Monasteries" (appendix, table 1) show:
At the end of the 19th century the descendants
of war captives comprised roughly 20% of the
total population of Chiang Mai, 30-35% in the
city and 15-20% in the countryside.I46 But these
figures represent only the minimum margin,
when the figures for half a century earlier are
taken into consideration. There had certainly
been more interaction among various ethnic
groups during the 19th century than most
Western observers tended to believe,I47 for the
"List of Monasteries" mentions at least a dozen
villages with "Nikai Chiang Mai" affiliation