Essays on Tribes and States

Abstract

This dissertation comprises three chapters that study the interactions of institutions, culture, and economic outcomes. In Chapter 1, I ask what happens when a state absorbs a historically stateless, tribal society, and what the consequences and mechanisms are of such a process. At the turn of the 19th century the British Empire in the northeastern front of India drew an imperial border that divided a tribal people into administered versus un-administered regions. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design (RDD) to study the long-run effects of state exposure in the region, I find that the areas falling within the former British administrative border have higher years of schooling, higher rates of literacy, and more wealth today. Villages in the formerly administered regions also have better public goods/services and a smaller agricultural share in the labor force. Using census data I am also able to study time varying effects of this historical state exposure—gaps in literacy rates are very persistent with little signs of convergence even 70 years after independence in 1947. In uncovering deeper channels that are potentially driving these results, I find evidence of the emergence of pro-social traits: those formerly under the British state identify more strongly with non-kin members, reflecting an expansion of the in-group. This chapter thus contributes to our understanding of the immediate changes that occur in a society transitioning from tribe to state. Chapter 2 examines the impacts of a forced urbanization program implemented by the Indian government on the citizens of Mizoram, a mountainous, tribal state in the country's northeast. In response to an insurgent uprising in the 1960s, the government enacted a policy that forcibly relocated residents from over 500 villages into 103 designated “Grouping Centers” (GCs) to facilitate surveillance and control, while approximately 110 villages remained ungrouped. Official reports suggest that this policy was also intended to promote economic development within the largely rural population. Using a historical difference-in-differences approach between grouped and ungrouped villages, this study finds that the policy resulted in significant population divergence lasting into the long run. The analysis further reveals a modest reduction in agricultural employment share in the GCs, suggesting the possibility of structural transformation even in a highly agrarian, low-state capacity setting. Upon further investigation, I also find evidence that the institutional capacity of the GCs predict their ability to absorb the refugees, highlighting the importance of pull factors in achieving successful urbanization. In Chapter 3, I show how customary laws around land inheritance can shape spatial growth and polity size. Looking at two sets of tribes in India's Manipur state, I find that among the group practicing a chief-based custom of land inheritance, there is a tendency for villages to fragment into smaller ones. Sons of chiefs who are not in line to inherit land split up to establish villages of their own. The consequences of having to build villages from scratch are smaller village size and fewer public good amenities for the chief-based villages. This chapter therefore highlights the effect culture has on agglomeration and space. Lastly, Chapter 4 asks if geography in historical contexts can be treated as an endogenous left-hand-side variable. This paper provides evidence that groups can and do selectively migrate based on certain pre-existing practices. It examines the historical migration of two language families from Southern China, the Kra-Dai and Hmong-Mien. Due primarily to Han Chinese expansion, these groups moved into the Zomia Highlands of Southeast Asia. Despite facing the same pressure, however, their migration patterns differed: the Kra-Dai, traditionally practicing wet-rice cultivation along river valleys, resettled in flatter areas, while the Hmong-Mien, practicing slash-and-burn agriculture on hilly slopes, moved to rugged mountains. Furthermore they carried with them other institutions to the new lands. This chapter thus highlights the possibility of geography being endogenous in the sense that pre-determined factors at the group-level shape subsequent movements across time and space.