The 'ethnification' of power and status is a process initiated by a colonial power and included the response from the ethnic groups. It is important to emphasize that the various groups and their agency must be part of the investigation in order not to reduce everything to the results of colonial practice there is no hegemony without counteractions. The colonial practice used ethnic (racial) classification emphasizing cultural differences, boundaries and places on a map (Dean, Chapter 5 and Sadan, Chapter 2 in this volume) more than the existing relations across ethnic boundaries. Ethnic differences became territorialized in an absolute sense when the British began mapping Burma in 1826. Criteria of civilized/primitive' entered ethnic classification and the British excluded the primitive tribal groups from the Burmese kingdom arguing,