Sir James George Scott visited the Wa States around the turn of the 20th century and wrote about the place, taking pictures of the people and the houses of the area as well.

[1] Considered a distant and inaccessible border area by former empires, the British census of 1901 did not include the Wa States, so statistics regarding a population over 50,000 in 1911 are estimates.

[2] The oral tradition of the Wa people claims that their territory had been much larger in the distant past,[3] an assertion that is confirmed both by Shan and Yunnan Chinese sources.

[7] This view is supported by remains of fortified towns on the hills now covered by jungle,[1] as well as by the traditions of the Shan, according to which the territory of Kengtung State further to the south had formerly belonged to the Wa people who were displaced around 1229 and were later defeated by King Mangrai.

[8] By the 18th century, during Qing dynasty rule in China, the Wa area became separated from the tribal military control of the Dai people.

[1] In the late 19th century the Wa ruler of Son Mu welcomed the Panthay, a community of persecuted Hui Muslims that had fled across the Nam Ting to settle in his territory.

Initially the relations between the Muslim settlers and the Wa were good, for the Panthays had gained at Pan Long a safe base for their commercial operations out of reach from their Chinese persecutors.

They carried out their commerce on mule caravans across the mountains, becoming skilled muleteers and seeing their trade in the Burma-Yunnan frontier region flourish.

According to Sir George Scott most of the Panthays were Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school of thought that traced their roots to Dali, Menghua, Baishan, Fengqing and Yuxian, and were all merchants, mule-owners and "Men of substance".

By the early 20th century the Panthays had increased their economic and military control in the area to such an extent that the relations between the Muslim settlers and their Wa hosts turned sour.

Barely a decade after the Wa-Panthay War the construction of the Burma Road between Lashio and Kunming in 1937–38 further set back the traditional mule caravan trade in which the Hui Muslim settlers had specialized.

In the wake of these developments many Panthays left the Wa territories and chose to migrate to Northern Thailand, where they became part of the community known as Chin Haw.

William Young, from Nebraska, studied in depth the Wa language and was instrumental in putting it into writing using a script based on the Latin alphabet.

Some troops remained in the area east of the Salween river, where in later years Wa insurgent groups controlled the region with the support of the Communist Party of Burma.

However, for the first time in history an administrative system that collected revenue and maintained a significant armed force, as well as a rudimentary infrastructure, ushered the Wa region into the modern era.

[2] Occasionally these small states formed confederations, but since the vision of the Wa was restricted to their immediate surroundings, these alliances were neither far-reaching nor long-lasting.