Talk:Shan Hills
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Discussion
Why the region is on the map
- The Government of India's resolution of 21 March 1895 on the Hemp Drugs Commission's report (para. 12): "in the Kachin and Shan Hills there is cultivation for home consumption, and some quantity is smuggled into the settled country".
- The Commission's report (vol. I, paras. 138 and 211): homestead cultivation for the drug by Shans and Danu, fibre plots of Kachins, Palaungs and "Lawas"; it took the account of the former chief of Nyaungywe to be "probably typical of the practice of the Shans over a much larger area".
- The evidence on which those paragraphs rest (vol. VII): Saw Maung, former Sawbwa of Nyaungywe (witness 50), and J. E. Bridges, Commissioner of the Eastern Division (witness 3). Bridges also sent in statements by officials of Upper Burma, two of whom (Maung Gyi of Wundwin and Maung Lu Maung of Yindaw) spoke of ganja grown in the Shan States in Burmese times.
- Kungyi, for Hsipaw (witness 51), knew of no cultivation for the drug in his state. His evidence is given in the article; it is not evidence that the plant was not grown there.
- The Real Seed Company's Burmese lots (2021, 2023, 2025) are said by the company to come from Shan State; no place below the state is named. A seller's statement alone would not put a region on the map; the lots are listed here because the region is the lowest tier their stated origin reaches.
Nyaungywe
The Commission named Saw Maung and Bridges as the only Burma witnesses who gave details of cultivation, and Saw Maung spoke of his own state at first hand. His account of Nyaungywe is still one man's: Bridges's written statement repeats what Saw Maung told him, and the Commission's report draws on the two of them. No second, independent source read for this page places hemp or cannabis in the state; the Imperial Gazetteer (1908) and the Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States (1901) list its crops without it. The state is therefore described here rather than given a page of its own as a growing area.
The list of witnesses in vol. VII and the heading of his evidence both print "Saw Maung", described as "ex-Sawbwa of Nyaungywe State". The Imperial Gazetteer names the Sawbwa of 1908 as Sao Mawng; whether the two are the same man is not settled by the sources read.
Before the Commission, Saw Maung said that about two Shan men in a hundred smoked the drug. Bridges wrote that Saw Maung had told him 20 per cent of the Shans (and 30 per cent of the Danu) smoked ganja. The article gives both, each with its source.
Growing status
The status is Historical. The evidence runs from recollections of "Burmese times" to 1895. No report of cannabis grown in Shan State since 2000, from a source other than a seed seller, was read for this page. The English Wikipedia article on cannabis in Myanmar says that cannabis is reported to be grown in Shan State, citing U Min Naing's National Ethnic Groups of Myanmar (2000) and a 2023 article in Frontier Myanmar; neither could be read, so the claim is not used and the status is not changed on it.
The last year grown is 1894, from Saw Maung's evidence, given in the present tense. The Commission took its Burma evidence at Mandalay on 30 and 31 January 1894 and at Rangoon from 6 to 9 February 1894 (vol. I, para. 13). The first year is left blank: the earlier accounts speak of the time of the Burmese kings and give no year.
The name
The title follows the Government of India's resolution of 1895, which speaks of "the Kachin and Shan Hills". The Commission and its witnesses speak of the Shan States and the Shan country. The present-day state is Shan State.
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy drawn on present-day Shan State (OpenStreetMap relation 5996485), about 155,600 km².
- The places that the witnesses of 1894 describe in detail, Nyaungywe and the Myelat, lie in the south-west of the state. The rest of the state is included on the strength of the general statements above: the resolution's "Kachin and Shan Hills", the Commission's "much larger area" and Maung Gyi's "almost every Shan village". No source read names cultivation in the trans-Salween states, Kengtung, the Wa country or Kokang; they lie inside the border only because they lie inside the state.
- The border is not drawn from accession or news points.
The regional complex
The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment of 2019 (Table 1.1, p. 4) counts the Chin, Shan, Rakhine and Kachin states as the Myanmar part of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, so the whole of the proxy lies inside it.
"Lawas"
Saw Maung and the Commission name the Lawas among the peoples who grew hemp for fibre. Neither says which present-day people the name means, so the article keeps the word in quotation marks and links it to no page.
Sources
Read for this page: the Commission's report, vol. I (ch. I para. 13; ch. IV paras. 136–138; ch. V para. 211; ch. VII para. 327) and the Burma evidence in vol. VII (witnesses 3, 20, 50 and 51), in the Wellcome and Internet Archive text copies, with page images checked for vol. I pp. 10 and 80–81; the Government of India's resolution of 1895 (National Library of Scotland copy); the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908) entries "Shan States, Southern", "Myelat Division", "Kyawkku" and "Yawnghwe", read on the page images at the Digital South Asia Library, for the geography; and J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman's Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States (1900–01), all five volumes, in the Internet Archive text copies, searched for hemp, ganja and cannabis. Neither gazetteer mentions hemp or ganja in its Shan entries.
Not read, because no copy could be opened: the Burma Gazetteer volumes for the Northern and Southern Shan States; Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (vol. II); the sources cited by Wikipedia (above); and Myanmar state press reports of crop destruction. A herbarium sheet collected at Kalaw on 2 January 1959 (Nordal 4090, Oslo) records no habitat and is not used.