For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have field the projects of the organised state societies that surround them— slavery, conscription, taxes, corvee labour, epidemics and warfare. Significantly, writes James C. Scott in this iconoclastic study, these people are not innocent who have yet to benefit from all that civilization has to ...
