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The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. By ANDREW WALKER. Richmond, U.K.: Curzon, 1999. xviii, 232 pp.
This fascinating book skillfully interweaves anthropological, geographical, and other social science concepts to provide an original "insider" insight into an increasingly important cross-international boundary phenomenon in Asia-that is, rather than imposing state peripheral "inward control" measures typical of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many states are engaged in a new post-Cold War approach which emphasizes the connectivity among peripheries via a geometrical lexicon of economic development. This process involves, for example, the creation of growth triangles, circles, and quadrangles (p. 88). By thus economically strengthening the periphery (or so the theory goes), the state will be rendered more secure since resources are consequentially shifted away from peripheral political incorporation towards peripheral economic regulation in collaboration (rather than conflict) with neighboring states. However, as Walker demonstrates, local and regional conflicts invariably remain. In this study region, the geometrical motif-the "economic quadrangle"-and associated developmental ideology is bolstered by a legend, that of the golden boat. Thousands of years ago, on a small hill above the Mekong, a short distance downstream from the Lao port...