Escape crops in Southeast Asia

Escape crops are a category of crops integral to escape agriculture, a form of agricultural practice whose socio-geographic characteristics and social impacts facilitate the efforts of certain populations to live independently of centralized state control. The term is often used specifically to describe the crops used by populations living in the mountainous regions of mainland Southeast Asia, the most notable example being the Zomian people, although they are also used in communities outside of Southeast Asia.

Crops that fall into this category include, but are not limited to: oats, barley, quick-growing millets, buckwheat, cabbage, turnips, roots and tubers, taro, yams, and the sago palm. They are typically characterized by being adaptive to harsh climates, high in nutrition and caloric value, able to grow at high altitudes, able to blend in with surrounding vegetation, and flexible in terms of planting and harvesting time frames.

Socio-geographic placement

The populations who most commonly make use of escape crops are the semi-autonomous regions of Southeast Asia which typically possess various ethnic groups, of which the most notable example is the Southeast Asian Massif, which crosses the countries of Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, mainland Malaysia, and Taiwan.

The term Zomia, popularized by James Scott’s book The Art of Not Being Governed, refers to the Southeast Asian Massif and the populations that reside within this region. The zomian region is characterized by its highly mountainous terrain, and its prohibitively high geographic friction. These traits have prevented states from gaining significant access to, influence within, or control over this region or its inhabitants.

It is widely understood that the populations residing in these regions intentionally migrated there in an effort to remove themselves from the influence and governance of a centralized state system. It is this effort that is made possible largely through the initial and continued use of escape crops and escape agriculture.

Escape crops function opposite to the padi rice system, another significant agricultural trend in Southeast Asia, which encourages population sedentism. This system facilitates state access and exploitation of human and agricultural resources by increasing the level of visibility and accessibility found in these resources and communities.

Escape crops as a political choice

Context

There are two main categories under which these crops can be sorted: those that are native to the Southeast Asian region, and those that were brought to Southeast Asia from the ‘new world.’ Those that are considered to be from the ‘new world’ were imported to Southeast Asia over multiple periods of colonialism and imperial expansion.

Escape crops native to Southeast Asia include high-altitude grains, cabbage, turnips, tubers, taro, yams and sago palm plants. Escape crops that originated in the ‘new world,’ and were then brought to Southeast Asia include maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, and yams. The ‘new-world’ escape crops greatly increased the viability and effectiveness of escape agriculture.

The use of escape crops is noted to have developed simultaneously alongside the development of states as they are understood today. Their use, however, greatly increased during the various periods of imperial expansion and colonization that occurred within Southeast Asia. Key examples include the expansion of imperial China, Southeast Asian nations, as well as European colonization from the Dutch, French, British, and others.

When looking at the larger picture, escape crops grew in popularity during periods of state expansion when the level of state appropriation, exploitation, and state-perpetrated violence and conflict increased.

During these periods in Southeast Asia, states strove to create a crisis of dependence -a situation in which individuals become dependent on institutions and functions provided by the state- that facilitates the exploitative principles of dependence theory. A key aspect of this effort was the push to avoid precedential obligations set by previous patron-client ties between communities and the state. These efforts largely focused themselves in creating and controlling regions with padi-rice agriculture, which were characterized by sedentary populations with highly visible and appropriable resources: rice.

Reaction

In response to this exploitation, populations sought to escape the increasingly exploitative tendencies of states by moving to regions where levels of state control and governance are low to nonexistent.

These escape-focused population shifts consisted of a few key principles; moving to regions with high geographic friction, population fragmentation, population mobility, and population invisibility, which were designed to avoid state detection and appropriation of various peoples and resources. Because many escape crops grow underground, are highly durable, and are capable of growing at high altitudes, they prevent resource visibility and consequently, state appropriation of crops and populations. Escape crops are typically used alongside other state avoidant agricultural techniques that facilitate high levels of population mobility, fragmentation, and concealment, such as swidden agriculture and nomadic pastoralism.

Introduction and assimilation of escape crops

The introduction and assimilation of escape crops occurred, for the most part, as a three step process: first, initial introduction, second, partial assimilation, and third, complete acceptance. As populations progressed from one stage to the next, population mobility, subsistence practices, social organization, and settlement patterns became increasingly connected to escape crops. Social mobility and fragmentation gradually increased, facilitated by the flexibility of escape crops as tools for subsistence, as populations and communities distanced themselves from state centralization and appropriation. These communities were typically composed of peasants and ethnic groups being exploited or persecuted by states, state elites, and state structures, a characteristic that can be noted in the Zomian regions of Southeast Asia.

Initial introduction

The first stage, initial introduction, was characterized by the introduction and consequent acceptance of using escape crops to supplement pre-existing subsistence methods. The crops were introduced through both global and regional trade networks that had been created and proliferated through colonialism and imperial expansion. They were quickly picked up and spread by a number of communities due to their nutritious value, high caloric yield, and diverse applicability. Their use for both immediate subsistence requirements as well as longer term investments such as animal husbandry guaranteed their use in communities accustomed to unreliable subsistence supply.

Partial assimilation

The second stage, partial assimilation, occurred through the adaptation of using escape crops to supplement pre existing subsistence methods. As state-based networks increased access to escape crops, they also created higher demand for their use. Using escape crops became increasingly required as populations were faced with increasingly egregious levels of state appropriation and exploitation of local resources. This typically occurred in regions dependent on the rice padi system or other sedentary and highly visible resource systems. Gradually, pre-existing subsistence methods failed to meet basic subsistence demands and communities turned to escape crops to meet these needs.

Acceptance

Progressing to the third stage, complete acceptance of escape crops, signaled the final shift from sedentary subsistence agricultural practices to escape agriculture. At this point, populations had fully embraced the lifestyle facilitated by these crops and had physically relocated to regions with high levels of geographic friction such as mountainous regions, densely forested regions, and regions with notable climate variability.

Complete assimilation

It is at the third stage that the full implications of escape crops as a method of state avoidance are exhibited. A majority of escape crops develop under ground or are easily concealed among native vegetation, making them significantly less visible and appropriable. Many of them are capable of being left unharvested for significant periods of time, thus preventing the necessity of structures such as granaries, which would make them visible and appropriable alongside necessitating a certain level of population permanence. Escape crops also tend to be highly adaptable to regions with high geographic friction in ways that typical crops are not, which permits the populations growing them to sustain their diets in regions where the state cannot physically extend its presence and control.

Resistance to escape crops

Key actors and justifications

The main opponents to the presence and use of escape crops by Southeast Asian communities were states. More specifically, the main opponents were state structures and members of the states’ elite.

States had a vested interest in preventing the use of escape crops stemming from the fact that state centralization and internal state profit, phenomena exemplified by colonial efforts and imperial expansion, depended heavily on the appropriation of communities, agriculture, and labor. These resources were exploited by states to both grow and centralize their power at a state level and at an international level in terms of economy, geography, and politically.

This effort, however, was dependent on the state’s ability to appropriate the human bodies and resources required to sustain it as well as incorporate them into state structures and institutions through population entrapment and the crisis of dependence. As a result, state avoidant behavior prevented states from fully realizing their goals, making it an enemy of state construction and expansion. This meant that states had a vested interest in preventing the proliferation and dissemination of state avoidant methods and practices.

Methods of resistance

Most commonly, states attempted to prevent state-evasive behaviors by condemning the lifestyles and morality of those who engage in them. The goal is to minimize the desirability of living beyond state control by demonizing the populations, behaviors, and lifestyles of groups engaging in state-evasive behavior. Due to the informality of this response, there is not concrete space in which these efforts were concentrated, however they were generally aimed at communities in state peripheries and zones of dual-sovereignty, where opposing states’ claims on a space created caused a lack of any concrete sovereign claim or control over the space.

The attempts to use propaganda to limit state avoidant behavior had limited success in no small part due to the lack of any significant policy implementation that restricted the dissemination or practice of escape agriculture. State provided narratives on the demerits of state avoidant behavior held exceedingly little sway over communities that grew tired of the exploitation they faced in state structures. They held even less sway over populations already living in non-state spaces.

Escape crops in the modern context

Modern uses

As state expansion efforts continue, non-state spaces have progressively grown smaller as closed frontiers dominate previously open non-state spaces. Despite this, escape crops continue to remain critical to both non-state populations as well as state controlled communities.

In non-state regions, escape crops continue to provide necessary sustenance for communities disconnected from outside resource networks due to geographic and political barriers that exist between them and their surrounding populations.

In state dominated regions, escape crops remain critical to sustain communities in regions of high geographic friction that, although they may fall under state purview, remain largely inaccessible to outside resource networks.

Current geographic presence

While regions may be falling increasingly under state purview, the regions remain environmentally hostile to a great number of traditional crops used by the state, and, as such, escape crops remain vital to supporting communities in these regions. They continue to exist and support both newly state-controlled regions as well as support the state avoidant communities found in regions of sufficiently extensive geographic friction where states remain unable to expand their borders of influence and control.

The use of escape crops has not been limited to Southeast Asia, either, despite Southeast Asia being the focus of this аrticle. There are multiple communities internationally that have taken on similar agricultural practices to avoid state control. Across history and the globe, multiple communities have been formed by escaped African slaves, as well as other populations seeking independence from centralized state control. Key examples include the Palmares in Brazil, Suriname, Jamaica, Cuba, Mexico, Saint-Domingue, as well as in Florida and the Virginia–North Carolina border in the United States.

Modern understandings and perceptions

Presently, escape crops can be viewed as both a historical and modern tool of social sustenance and organization. When viewed historically, escape crops are understood as having played an important role in the development of various state avoidant communities across the globe. This is both in terms of the agricultural methods of resistance that escape crops naturally facilitated where other forms of crops had failed, as well as in terms of agricultural influences on social organization and mobilization that escape crops had.

When viewing escape crops as a modern phenomenon, escape crops are largely viewed separate from the social context in which they were originally perceived. Divorced from ideas of state-community relations and political spheres of understanding, escape crops are perceived under various other titles, with significantly varying implications (ex. “escaped plant”), in discourses surrounding geographic and environmental variations in crop choice.

Further reading

• Maat, H., Nicholaas Pinas, & Tinde van Andel. (2023). The role of crop diversity in escape agriculture; rice cultivation among Maroon communities in Suriname. Plants, People, Planet, 1(8).
• Michaud, Jean; Meenaxi B. Ruscheweyh; Margaret B. Swain, 2016. Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif. Second Edition. Lanham • Boulder • New York • London, Rowman & Littlefield, 594p.
• Schmidt, S. (2019). Latin American Dependency Theory | Global South Studies, U.Va. Virginia.edu.
• Scott, J. C. (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed. Yale University Press.