The Traditional Caravan Trade between Yunnan and North Thailand

Part of Trade Routes

When travelling through Muang Lampang in northern Siam during 1890 James McCarthy, a British surveyor in the employ of the Siamese government, noted that it was ‘no unusual thing’ to see ‘Haw traders from Yiwnan’ in the busy local market places. A few days later, in Muang Phrae, McCarthy was able to engage a number of these Yunnanese merchant in conversation. His notes make interesting and informative reading:

At Pre I met a very interesting Haw trader, named Suliman Narindini (Chinese name, Ma Yiwe Tcheng). He had been a trader over the Lao country for fifteen years, had been to Mecca, Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, and several times to Maulmein. On this occasion he was accompanied by Suliman Maliki, whose Chinese name is Ma Chaw, and who never travelled before. He was now meaning to go to Bangkok, and thence to Mecca, returning by Maulmein. A third of their companions was named Yusuf (Chinese name, Naling Fang)… They had about one hundred and eighty mule carrying chiefly opium and some wax. As each mule had 133 1/3 lbs. Of load [60.5 kg] there must have been at least 13000 lbs. [5896.5 kg] of opium… There were about fifty men… (among whom) were about twenty ‘Kaffirs’ (Ar. Kafirun – non-believers, not ‘People of the Book’ – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – therefore probably Buddhists or Animists) … They wander about disposing of their products from China – opium, wax, iron dishes, iron in the rough, felts and walnuts. They eventually find their way to Maulmein, where they secure Manchester calicoes and prints, which are exchanged locally for raw cotton and raw silk. This is what their mules are laden with when leaving Chieng Tung [Kyaingtong, in the Burmese Shan States], on their return journey to Yunnan.

The walled city of Pu'er, Yunnan, c. 1868

Yunnan. Pu'er cotton caravan, late 19th century. Note Qing flag.

The Chinese merchants interviewed by McCarthy at Phrae – close to the riverine port of Uttaradit, the northernmost navigable point on the Maenam-Chaophraya river system, and aformerly an important terminus for the waterborne trade to Bangkok – were clearly Yunnanese Muslims – in Chinese Hui – known locally in Thailand and Laos as ‘Haw’, and in neighbouring Burma as ‘Panthay’. In pre-colonial times these Chinese speaking Muslims had emerged as the long-distance caravaneers par excellence of southwest China and northern Southeast Asia, causing one contributor to the Royal Geographical Society to remark in 1888, shortly after the British conquest of Upper Burma: ‘They are perhaps the greatest travellers on the face of the earth, if we may distinguish between those who are carried by trains or steamers and those who travel on their own feet. Every year numbers of these men come from Yunnan to Rangoon and Maulmein, doing thousands of miles on foot, with caravans of ponies, mules or cattle, to exchange the productions of the country for the imported wares of Rangoon’.

Yet, despite the mercantile prowess of these Muslim traders of the Islamic periphery, the Yunnanese Hui, are today chiefly remembered for their part in the great ‘Panthay Rebellion’ of Du Wenxiu (1856-1873). By contrast, little is known of their role in the once flourishing overland trade between China and Southeast Asia, although many of their descendants continue to live and flourish in northern Thailand and north-eastern Burma, and to participate actively in the (often illicit) trans-frontier trade of the region.

Historical background

From the time of its inception in the 7th Century AD, Islam has flourished as a ‘Religion of Trade’, born astride the traditional caravan routes between Southern Arabia and the Mediterranean World, which – after an initial period of dramatic military expansion –spread more by trade than by conquest, following the Silk Road and other trade routes of Central Asia, or the long-distance trading dhows of the Indian Ocean. It was not by chance that eastern termini of both land and sea routes lay in the prosperous and sophisticated lands of the Chinese Empire, and the arrival of Muslim Arabs, Persians and Turks in the caravanserai of Gansu and Shaanxi, or of Muslim Arabs, Indians and Malays at the wharves of Guangzhou, soon led to intermarriage and conversion , and to the establishment of a flourishing Muslim community within China itself.

But if trade provided the main conduit for the penetration of Islam to China, it should also be noted that the military calling – long despised by traditional Chinese literati – played an important, albeit secondary role.

'Mixed population of South Yunnan' c. 1868

Shan and Northern Thai near Kengtung circa 1868

It is generally supposed that Muslim settlement in Yunnan dated from the time of the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD); certainly the Xin Tang Shu records the surrender of many ‘black-robed Ta-shih’ (probably Arabs, certainly Muslims) who were eventually settled in western Yunnan. Subsequent notices date from the Yuan Dynasty, and indicate further Muslim settlement, especially in south-western Yunnan. Marco Polo, who travelled through Yunnan [‘Carajan’] at the beginning of the Yuan Period, noted the presence of ‘Saracens’ amongst the population. Similarly the Persian historian Rashid al-din (died 1318 AD) recorded in his Jami' ut-Tawarikh that ‘the great city of Yachi’ – probably Old Dali – was exclusively inhabited by Muslims.

Within Yunnan, the Muslim population excelled as merchants and soldiers. Taken collectively, these two specialised areas of enterprise combined to make the Yunnanese Muslims ideally suited to face the rigours – and reap the rewards – of the overland caravan trade with Tibet, Assam and northern Southeast Asia. Hui involvement in this sphere is exemplified by the history of Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din Umar, a native of Bukhara and Muslim general in Yuan (Mongol) employ who was Governor of Yunnan between 1274 and 1279 AD, and who is generally credited by the Hui of Yunnan with having first introduced Islam to the province. Sayyid Ajall was succeeded by his son, Nasir al-Din, the ‘Nescradin’ of Marco Polo, who was previously in charge of the road systems of Yunnan, and who commanded the first Mongol invasion of Burma in 1277-78. To complete the pattern of close association between Islam, soldiering and involvement in trade and communications among this Muslim first family of Yunnan, Nasir al-Din’s younger brother, Hu-shih (Husayn) was, in 1284, appointed Transport Commissioner of Yunnan and, later, Senior Governor.

It thus seems probable that Muslims first moved into and began to extend their control over the traditional Yunnanese caravan network as early as Yuan Dynasty; moreover it is likely that the religious requirement to perform Hajj pilgrimage incumbent on those of sufficient means played a role in this development, for as early as the first half of the 14th Century AD the chronicler Wang Dayuan noted the existence of an ‘overland road’ between Yunnan and Arabia. Subsequently Muslim domination over the long distance caravan trade continued to develop, and by the mid 19th Century – when the first adventurous forerunners of French and British imperialism were penetrating the fringes of Yunnan – they found the caravan network of the region dominated by Hui Muslim muleteers.

The Situation in the 19th Century

Tai Khoen prince of Kengtung or Chiang Tung, 1900

By the mid 19th century the caravans of Yunnanese traders ranged over an area extending from the eastern frontiers of Tibet, through Assam, Burma, Thailand, Laos and North Vietnam, to the southern Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi. Between Yunnan and Thailand, two main routes ran from Pu’er [formerly Simao] in southern Yunnan to the Chiang Mai region of north Thailand. Briefly, one of these routes passed across Laos, whilst the other crossed the Burmese Shan States. The most important entrepot in the Yunnan-Thailand trade was Kengtung [Kyaingtong], on the more westerly of these routes. Transport was almost exclusively by mule caravan, mules and ponies being able to carry more – kilo for kilo – than elephants or oxen, and also being far more sure-footed pack animals. Most caravans consisted of between fifty and one hundred mules, employing perhaps ten to fifteen drivers. Goods carried south included tea, silk, metal utensils, finished articles of clothing, fresh vegetables, salt and Yunnan ham on the journey from Pu’er to Chiang Mai, whilst north-bound caravans on the return journey carried dye woods, stick lac, muslins, specialised foodstuffs (sea slugs, edible birds’ nests), tobacco, opium and above all raw cotton.

According to W.J. Archer of the British Consular Service in Chiang Mai (1890-91): ‘The muleteers are generally Mahommedan Yunnanese, or Haws, but some are Chinese from the borders of Sichuan and Guizhou. The local people distinguish them from the Mahommedans as the ‘Ho Luang’, or men of Greater China, and pork eaters. Similarly, according to A.R. Coquhoun (Across Chryse, 1883): ‘Many of the muleteers are Mussulmans, fine, strongly built, with the air of defiance which the Mahomedan race wears, more or less. None of our horsemen ate pork’.

Laos. Luang Prabang market circa 1868

Yunnan. Suspension Bridge across the Salween (Nu) River west of Dali. Morrison, 1895

Despite a decline in the caravan trade between Yunnan and north Thailand following the British conquest of Upper Burma and the establishment in 1917 of a rail link between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, this Hui domination of the Yunnan caravan network seems to have continued well into the 20th Century. Thus, according to A.C. Hanna, a missionary who spent many years in Yunnan at the beginning of this century: ‘Caravaneers on the Yunnan trade routes are very likely to be Panthays. The men who guide the long trains of mules and ponies through the wild mountain passes of Yunnan and the Burmese frontier, must be rugged in constitution and resolute in spirit to endure this rough life, filled with hardships and dangers. The scanty and ill-cooked food, the long marches, the exposures to all kinds of weather. . . would indeed daunt any but men of iron mould’.

Haw Caravan in the hills of the Golden Triangle c. 1895

A Haw caravan camp near Chiang Khong, North Thailand, 1902

Numbers of Yunnanese Muslims began to settle in Chiang Mai and the main towns of north Thailand in the mid-19th century, especially following the collapse of the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion in 1873. By the mid-1920s a small but wealthy and influential Yunnanese Muslim community was established at Chiang Mai, dealing in cross-frontier caravan traffic as well as supplying various goods from Yunnanese-owned shops within the City.

Haw Muleteers from Dali at Chiang Rai, early 20th century. Erik Seidenfaden

Today little or no legal caravan traffic takes place between Yunnan and Thailand, but the Yunnanese Muslim community of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai continues to survive and flourish, representing perhaps the most distant of all Muslim settlements established as a result of the spread of Islam by the overland Silk Road.

Sign at Chiang Mai's Ban Haw Mosque. Note Buddhist and Chinese Republican - but no Islamic Era - dates

Text copyright © Andrew Forbes / CPA 2008.

A version of this article, together with footnotes and bibliography, first appeared in: Lombard, D., and Aubin, J.(eds), Marchands et hommes d’affaires asiatiques dans l’Océan Indien et la Mer de Chine 13-20 siècles (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1988).

Part of Trade Routes