The Family of William Young among the Lahu: Baptist Mission on the Border between Yunnan and Burma

This research focuses on the history of an American Baptist missionary family, that of William Young, and the establishment of missionary stations among the Lahu on the borderlands between Southwest Yunnan in China and Kengtung district in Burma, to analysis the historical and geographic conditions of an American Baptist missionary expedition. Specifically, the missionary strategies adopted by the family include the translation of the Bible, the militarization of missionary power, and the flexible waysin which frontier agents performed. For three generations, the Young family performed a role of frontier agent to cooperate with local Shan/Dai chieftains in Menglian and Kengtung, the local gentries in Lancang county, and Chinese officials in Yunnan, to extend their networks, thus they were able to establish powerful, militarized bases in Lancang county in Yunnan and in Kengtung in Burma from 1890s to the 1950s. During the early period of their expedition, the failure of the Buddha King political movement and the decline of the Five Buddha districts system from the 1880s to the 1920s was pushing rebellious Lahu leaders to search for new sources of political power to fight against the Qing and Republican officials in the mountain communities in the area of the west of Mekong river, at the same time the opium economy was flourishing. The William Young family was welcomed as the returning reincarnated Buddha-King, and their mission was also understood, in a local context of a new time cycle, by the Lahu people. In this research, the multiple faces of the William Young family as frontier agency will be reviewed, based on anthropological data and historical archives from diverse sources, to study the reconstruction of frontier society since the colonization of Burma in 1886.