The “Ant Army” is a general term which the Thai authorities use to refer to an individual person or a group of people involved in the smuggling business. These are people employed to carry goods cross the border along the river and hill paths in the same manner as ants that always carry food back to their habitats. The term also refers to porters employed to carry goods back and forth without the customs declaration process in order to avoid tariffs and taxes.
In 1988, the military regime that ruled Myanmar since 1962 stepped down after the nationwide protest known as the “8888 uprising.” However, another group of soldiers, the so-called State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), came into power. It was also in 1988 that Thailand under Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan implemented its new policy to promote regional trade between Myanmar and Thailand and other neighboring countries instead of supporting the country’s ethnic minorities. Therefore, Thailand-Myanmar border trade reached a crucial turning point.
This paper studies the causes of illegal trade and the processes of smuggling along the Thai-Myanmar border. The methodology employed is qualitative. Field research was mainly conducted in Mae Sot, the border town where the smuggling trade takes place.

This paper attempts to explore the connection of the Tay Son’s uprising in Vietnam with the closure of trade activities at China’s border, particularly in the Guangxi-Vietnam province. This discussion will look into how effective the closure of the border trades was in the context of China’s political continuity. China’s motives in exploiting the situation brought about by the Tay Son uprising by implementing the ban will also be discussed in detail in this paper. This study will add to the literature of Sino-Vietnamese relations in the early modern period. An examination of cross-border relations from a historical point of view is especially relevant in the context of the evolving geo-political developments in the region today. It helps to explain how their territorial and maritime delineation was shaped by their historical experience. Even in the past, such as during this period of study, the competing interests of the two countries were evident.

On the Salween borderlands, people’s lives and experiences have shown state violence in the form of terrorism has contradictory outcomes. On the one hand, the Burmese and Thai states have maintained their sovereign power since the political conflicts between the Burmese military government and ethnic minorities, producing war zones and militarization. On the other hand, states have responded to economic regionalization by investing in Salween dam projects at Thai-Burmese border. This paper is an ethnographic study focused on specific events involving militarized threats in the Thai-Burmese border villages. It shows the suffering of the border people in relation to state sovereign power, which affects their lives and leaves them feeling hopeless and without protection. Suffering threats and silent violence they are unable to strive for survival. However, the border dwellers are not submissive. They have attempted to seek out a way to deal with threats and silent violence, redefining their border livelihoods and citizenship.

Maria Serena I. Diokno is Professor of History at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Professor Diokno is a co-founder of the SEASREP Foundation. Her interests span the colonial period of Southeast Asia, about which she has published. Among her publications are "Corruption and the Moral Imperative, through the Lens of Rizal" (2011), "Expeditions of Knowledge: Supporting Southeast Asian Studies in the Region" (2010), and "Southeast Asia: Imperial Possession and Dispossession in the Long Twentieth Century" (2006).

Ma. Mercedes G. Planta is Associate Professor of History at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Her research and publications are in the fields of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) and Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies in colonial Southeast Asia, particularly Spanish and American Philippines. Her current research examines the development of modern medicine in Dutch Indonesia, British Malaya, and American Philippines. She is the author of Traditional Medicine in the Colonial Philippines, 16th to the 19th Century (University of the Philippines Press 2017).

Maitrii Aung-Thwin is an area-studies specialist of Southeast Asia, with particular expertise in Myanmar history, politics, and society. His research engages conversations from the fields of postcolonial studies, socio-legal studies, intellectual history, public history, and transnational studies. His publications include: A History of Myanmar since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations (2013), The Return of the Galon King: History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma (2011), and A New History of Southeast Asia (2010). He is currently Associate Professor of Myanmar/Southeast Asian history and Convenor of the Comparative Asian Studies PhD Program at the National University of Singapore.

Joseph M. Fernando is Associate Professor of History at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He obtained his PhD in History from Royal Holloway College, University of London. His areas of specialization are Malaysian political and constitutional history, British imperialism in Southeast Asia, and modern history of Southeast Asia. Dr. Fernando was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University in 2004-2005. His publications include The Making of the Malayan Constitution (2002); The Alliance Road to Independence (2009); and "British and Commonwealth Legacies in the Framing of the Malayan Constitution, 1956-1957", Britain and the World, Vol. 8, No. 2, September 2015.

Rieyen D. Clemente is a graduate student of the Department of History, University of the Philippines Diliman. He is a member of the Pi Gamma Mu International Honor Society for Social Sciences and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.

Patricia Anne Y. Asuncion is a BA Comparative Literature graduate from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She is currently pursuing her second degree (BA Linguistics) in the same university.

Jeanne Therese L. Maling is a graduate student at the University of the Philippines, Diliman (UPD).

Dr. Charnvit Kasetsiri, former Rector of Thammasat University, is secretary of the Foundation for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities Textbooks Project in Thailand. He holds an MA in Diplomacy from Occidental College, Los Angeles, California, and a PhD in Southeast Asian History from Cornell University. He specializes in Thai history (Ayutthaya, Thai political history, and contemporary Thai politics) and history of Southeast Asia.

Dr. Taufik Abdullah is a retired Professor of History at the Gadjah Mada University. He was Chair of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). He also chaired the Indonesian Historical Society and was a Director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. He received his Doctorandus from Gadjah Mada University, and MA and PhD degrees from Cornell University. Dr. Taufik has worked on the political history of Indonesia and Islam.

Dr. Ruth McVey, Emeritus Reader in Southeast Asian Politics at the University of London, received her PhD in Government at Cornell University in 1961 and subsequently held research and teaching positions at Yale University, the Center for International Studies at MIT, Cornell University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her early work concentrated on the history of the Indonesian Communist movement and the general relationship between ideology and social change in Indonesia. Later, she studied social and ideological transformation in rural southern Thailand, and the rise of the Southeast Asian business-political elite.