Histories of Asia's Gendered Armed Frontiers, 1780 - 2021

HAGAF will pioneer research in the comparative and transnational, colonial, and post-colonial history of protracted conflicts in the borderlands of Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh through a gendered lens. Referred to in HAGAF as the Indo-Burma borderlands, this historically marginalized, mountainous region was once central to the North East Frontier of British India and part of a global strategic defence system. Bringing together extensive but administratively separate colonial archives with field-based historical research in local communities for the first time, HAGAF will transform understanding of the Frontier and its legacies through inquiry focused on gender, kinship, and social change. Its lessons for how geo-politically marginalized regions arising from colonial legacies are imagined, created, and understood as gendered spaces will also be transformative in traditional Area Studies of Asia and beyond. Protracted conflicts must be understood through the everyday experiences of individuals and communities, and gender reveals conflict’s social reproduction from the home-household to the nation-state. HAGAF’s gendered analysis of traditional kinship systems is also unique. Distinctive kinship systems of Asian highlands communities distinguish them from their ‘lowland’ neighbours, but they must be studied as constructed, negotiated, and gendered systems. HAGAF will for the first time bridge the gap between academic understanding and local concepts of relationships, experiences, and collective imaginaries at different scales. Working with community-based research institutions, a valuable dataset of materials and resources will be part of its legacy. By transforming understanding of the legacy of imperial Frontiers in the world’s most protracted internal conflicts and through supporting inclusive histories, HAGAF addresses critical social and historical challenges, improving understanding of marginalized communities in some of Asia’s poorest regions.