Lowland-Highland Divide (Asase Lewa)
In the geography and social and cultural anthropology of Asase Lewa, the Lowland-Highland Divide refers to the historical, geographic, and social divide between the Asalewan Lowlands and Asalewan Highlands. In a geographic and environmental sense, the Asalewan Lowlands is characterized by lower elevation, closer proximity to the Transvehems Sea, and is traditionally covered by subtropical and tropical woodland and savannah cover, whereas the Asalewan Highlands is characterized by higher elevation, greater distance from the Transvehems Sea, and, as a result of largely being on the windward side of the Northern Bahian Mountains, enjoys high levels of precipitation that result in most of the Highlands being covered by thick broadleaf forest}}, including dense rainforest and cloud forest in some areas. Socially and politically, the term refers to social divides between the Lowlands, traditionally characterized by significantly higher levels of state capacity, social stratification, urbanization, sedentary agriculture, and high levels of agricultural fertilty relative to the Highlands, which prior to the modern period was largely characterized by stateless societies or decentralization, greater social equality, and, in many though not all parts of the Highlands, quasi-nomadic migratory patterns, either thanks to the greater practice of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, silvopastoralism, or swidden agriculture. Though the majority of modern-day Asase Lewa's land area is considered to be a part of the Highlands, population was traditionally relatively evenly divided between the Highland and Lowland regions owing to far greaater population density and agricultural fertility in the latter; in the modern-day, however, substantial human migration and urbanization has resulted in the vast majority of Asalewans living in the Lowlands.
The term Lowland-Highland divide was coined by the late nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century Estmerish anthropologist Percival Brian Enright, primarily in reference to the inability of governments based in the Lowlands—either pre-colonial empires and Houregic states, or the colonizers of Asase Lewa themselves, whether Paretian or Estmerish—to exert substantial political or social control over the Highlands. Whereas the Asalewan Lowlands became politically dominated by a succession of centralized empires and Houregic states as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, throughout the pre-colonial period and into the early colonial period, the Asalewan Highlands remained dominated by non-state forms of social organization, most prominently an egalitarian, communal form of village organization similar to the medieval, pre-Irfanic system of Sâre, as well as secret societies, tribal bands, age sets, and the ojeṣẹbun system. Although the term refers to a geographic divide, Enright considered the sociopolitical divide the most salient feature of the division between Highlanders and Lowlanders, classifying as part of the Highlanders many areas that are geographically low-lying but have been, for reasons such as low agricultural fertility or dense forest cover, historically resistant to state control—most notably the lands of the Asuntifi people, a subset of the Ashana.
Though Enright mostly restricted his observations to pre-colonial societies, this trend of greater state control in Lowland areas continued into the colonial periods; the colonial Estmerish state, benefitting from greater state control and substantially greater agricultural fertility, successfully reoriented the Lowland economy towards the production of cash crops under a plantation economy in which White colonists became the primary property-owning class, but, despite substantial sedentarization and villagization campaigns, failed to uproot traditional social structures or establish a plantation economy in the Highlands.
Similarly, although both Lowlanders and Highlanders largely supported the Asalewan Revolution by the time of its victory in the 1950s, albeit for different reasons—Lowlanders generally supported it out of resentment at intense economic inequality and racialized labor exploitation, and Highlanders out of fears that colonial villagization and enclosure would uproot traditional social structures—Lowlander and Highlander reactions to the post-colonial socialist state have been very different, with Lowlanders generally being much more supportive of efforts at centralization and modernization whereas Highlanders were generally much more skeptical of such efforts. With the post-colonial socialist state establishing stable state control over the Highlands, rates of nomadism or semi-nomadism substantially declining, and widespread migration from the Highlands to the Lowlands, some have argued that the divide is not as significant as it once was.
Nevertheless, social outcomes between the Lowlands and Highlands remain very distinct from one another, with traditional hallmarks of economic development such as GDP per capita and urbanization being roughly twice as high in those areas traditionally considered part of the Lowlands as those considered part of the Highlands and the Lokpaland insurgency, arguably the most extreme manifestation of Highlander resistance to post-revolutionary centralization, remaining a low-intensity conflict in one part of the Highlands. Consequently, the term remains widespread in Asalewan anthropology and has become commonly-used in Asalewan politics and society as a whole, which features frequent discourse about uneven development between the Highlands and Lowlands and has seen many political organizations having explicitly formed to defend Highlander interests since the end of single-party rule during the Protective-Corrective Revolution. Since the late twentieth century, the Lowland-Highland divide has also become a popular case study amongst anthropologists interested in challenging traditional narratives that most peoples are attracted to state control, settled agriculture, or modernity. This is due both to extensive Highlander resistance to the socialist state and Section's modernist projects in the late twentieth century, and especially, because of substantial migration by many peoples from the Lowlands to Highlands during the pre-colonial period—such as the Awari branch of the Gundaya, Asuntifi branch of the Ashana, and the Ajaizo branch of the Anlo—to escape features of Lowlander life such as the Transvehemens slave trade, excessive taxation, or forced labor.