Across monsoon Asia, salt is of such vital necessity that controlling its production or supply has historically been connected to the establishment and expression of political authority. On the one hand, rulers maintained the allegiance of their subjects by ensuring their access to salt of suitable price and sufficient quantity. On the other hand, denying rebels their salt was a strategy of conquest and pacification, while the necessity of salt meant it could reliably be taxed to raise state finances. This article first sets out this connection of salt and sovereignty, then examining it in the context of colonial Burma, a province of British India from its annexation until its ‘divorce’ in 1935 (effected in 1937), and thus subject to the Government of India's salt monopoly. Focusing on salt brings into view two aspects of the state (while also permitting analysis of ‘Upper Burma’, which remains rather marginal in the scholarly literature). First, the everyday state and quotidian practices constitutive of its sovereignty, which was negotiated and contested where indigenes were able to exploit the chinks in the state's administrative capacity and its knowledge deficits. Second, in turn, the lumpy topography of state power. The state not only failed to restrict salt production to the extent it desired (with the intention that indigenes would rely on imported salt, whose supply was easier to control and thus tax), but conceded to a highly complex fiscal administration, the variegations in which reflected the uneven distribution in state power – thicker in the delta and thinnest in the uplands.

在整个亚洲季风中，食盐极为重要，以至于控制食盐的生产或供应在历史上一直与政治权威的建立和表达有关。一方面，统治者通过确保获得适当价格和足够数量的食盐来保持对臣民的忠诚。另一方面，拒绝叛乱分子撒盐是征服和安抚的策略，而盐的必要性意味着可以可靠地征税以筹集国家资金。本文首先阐述了盐与主权之间的联系，然后在殖民地缅甸的背景下对其进行了考察，该省是英属印度从被吞并到1935年“离婚”（1937年生效），因此必须服从于缅甸政府的管辖。印度食盐专卖。着眼于盐会考虑到国家的两个方面（同时也允许对“上缅甸”进行分析，而在学术文献中，这仍然是微不足道的）。首先，日常的国家和日常习俗构成了其主权，这是在印第安人能够利用国家行政管理能力和知识赤字的地方进行谈判和争辩的地方。第二，反过来，国家权力的块状地形。国家不仅未能将盐的生产限制在所需的范围内（意图是靛蓝基因将依赖进口的盐，而盐的供应更易于控制，因此可征税），但也承认了高度复杂的财政管理，其中包括反映了国家权力的分配不均-三角洲的地区更浓，高地地区的地区最薄。