About The Book
Moken, Sea Gypsies of the Andaman Sea, presents accounts of the nomads who live in the Mergui Archipelago of southern Burma and adjacent Thai territories. This minority group of the northern branch of the Austronesian peo-ples have a very distinctive and peculiar culture: Most of the year they live on their boats but do not fish. During the rainy season they live on land, grow some plants, but are not avid cultivators and make little use of their agricultural produce. They have developed a strong cul-tural identity, but are nevertheless adapting to a changing environment. For outsiders, the functioning of their society is difficult to under-stand and still has its mysteries. The closing of Burma after 1948 pre-vented much research. These post-war chronicles, supplemented by a host of rare photographs, shed some light on this unique group which deserves a special place in the pantheon of ethnic minorities.
Introduction
It was while compiling an annoted bibliography of the Moken of the Mergui Archi-pelago in Burma, and having lost patience with all those investigators who never took the trouble to look any further than the references recorded by the missionaries at the beginning of this century, that I re-read the letters of F. N. Cholmeley to my father, the ethnographer Pierre Ivanoff, in response to the article he published in 1970 in the Geographical Magazine. If one were to believe those other investiga-tors', after the war nothing worth while or of any interest was available. Nonethe-less, to give only one example, two generations of Ivanoffs have worked on three generations of Moken! It is true that after the end of the Second World War nothing of any anthropological value came out of Burma. This makes the writings of F. N. Cholmeley, a British mining engineer who worked with the Moken in 1946-1947, even more valuable. When I read the letters of F. N. Cholmeley while I was writing my thesis, I considered them to be of little importance and not very scientific. To-day, I have the impression that the moral pressure of research in "my" field did not permit me to value these writings for what they are: a testimony to an epoch which was rapidly disappearing. Several months of daily living on the islands inhabited by the Moken in the aftermath of the social and ethnic reorganization which took place after the war! How could I have doubted the ethnological value of this document? This text reveals who the Moken are and what one feels at making contact with them. It is clear, sincere, as detailed as possible and without any sort of judgement. One can observe an evolution and a geographic "sliding" beginning to take place at this time in investigations of the Moken. The British, with the disintegration of their colonial empire, lost their exclusive rights to the study of the minorities who dwelt there. The Germans and the Austrians, from before the Second World War and in the post-war period, had other worries than the Moken. In 1957 came the investigations of P. Ivanoff. First of all, he made a film and wrote articles for the general public after living for a month and a half among the Moken. In 1972, within the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, under the direction of Prof. Lucien Bernot, he wrote his dissertation. This was followed by field-work in 1973-74. After his death in 1974, his family continued his work, thereby contributing somewhat more towards a scientific knowledge of the Moken who, left to themselves, would have allowed their secrets to become lost to history. And of course investigations go on and are no longer the privilege of the British, Austrians or French-in short, West-erners-but also of those who come from the countries where the Moken are to be found. The emergence of this new research is not easy because the traditional rela-tionships of the ruling class and those dominated by it prevent objectivity and seri-ous study undertaken over a long period of time. Yet some sort of continuity is as-sured. This volume brings together studies of the Moken, based on experiences with these enigmatic sea-gypsies over a period of nearly 50 years. Two articles by Pierre Ivanoff, one of which was published in 1970, based on his research among the Moken, which began in 1957, are presented here. The correspondence between Pierre Ivanoff and F. N. Cholmeley, which was of value to P. Ivanoff, is published here for the first time, along with some of Cholmeley's photographs. The friendly tone of F. N. Cholmeley's correspondence and his in-formative description, with his evident wish to present as many details as possible concerning the daily life of the Moken, make for very enjoyable reading, full of life and an exact reflection of reality. Thanks to P. Ivanoff the different facets of the traditional Moken world are fully brought to light. Even though his expedition lasted only a month and a half his investigations offer an abundance of information which is still valuable today, on topics such as the construction of boats, the exchange system, the vegetable and animal environment and the use the Moken make of them. The two articles by P. Ivanoff are similar, and there is some overlap in content. The differences are partly due to the fact that they were first written in French. One has been adapted for publication in the Geographical Magazine and was undoubtedly rewritten. I have chosen to include both because of subtle differences between them but I have omitted the material in the Geographical Magazine article that is also given in the other article. One expresses the author's feelings and provides a sum-mary of a legend; the other puts more emphasis on technical matters, for example the bartering system. One describes daily life and the other attempts to make a synthesis of the different forms of exchange used by the Moken. Only one article mentions the way they use the natural products collected from the forest for boats and for food during the rainy season.
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