An 'ethnic' reading of 'Thai' history in the twilight of the century-old official 'Thai' national...

South East Asia Research, 20, 3, pp 419–000 doi: 10.5367/sear.2012.0115

An ‘ethnic’ reading of ‘Thai’ history in thetwilight of the century-old official ‘Thai’

national model

David Streckfuss

Abstract: Recent political events in Thailand have shed light on a long neglectedand dangerous corner of ‘Thai’ history. An oceanic shift in Thai politics, onlybeginning to be tracked, now threatens the ‘Thai race nationalist model’, thefoundations of which date back to the early twentieth century. Made near com-plete under military dictatorship after 1958, and perfected after the bloodycrackdown of 1976, this model has enjoyed apparent rejuvenation since the2006 coup, now with the monarchy at its centre. This paper focuses on thequestion of Lao ethnicity and the North East of Thailand, or Isan. It showshow a combination of linguistics, a pseudo-science of race and ethnicity andhistorical revisionism have created the appearance of an ethnically and cul-turally homogenized ‘Thailand’. The paper argues that an ethnic history fromthe periphery has run parallel to the history of the Thai centre, and its broadcontours become ever sharper. ‘Thailand’, as a nationalist construct, now facescompeting ‘ethnic’ narratives.

Keywords: race; ethnicity; historiography; nationalism; Tai; Thailand

Author details: Dr David Streckfuss is an Honorary Fellow at the University ofWisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA. He may be contacted at CIEE, PO Box91, Khon Kaen University, Amphur Muang, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand. E-mail:[email protected].

As early as the 1600s, the ‘Thai’ elite of the Siamese capital Ayutthaya distin-guished themselves from the Lao,1 although European observers saw the Lao ‘asalmost the same Nation with the Siamese’.2 A century-and-a-half later, a long-time resident of Siam, Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix, wondered why the Laowere not called Thai, as ‘The Lao have the same origins as the Thai. Theirlanguage…has many similarities with the Thai language to the point that thesetwo nations can understand each other.’3 King Mongkut (r 1851–1868) saw theThai as distinct from the Lao, attributing the presence of Lao as the cause of adrought in the lower Chao Phraya River basin. He claimed that it was not suitablefor Thais to play the khaen (a Lao instrument) because ‘the Lao are the slave tothe Thai’. Those caught doing so were to be fined.4

In 1900, Siam was thought of as having many different peoples living within itsborders. The Bangkok elite and their colonial-like Western advisers referred to

1 See Keyes (1987), p 15.2 De La Loubere (1986), p 10.3 Pallegoix (2000), p 16.4 Quoted in Thaveesil (1988), pp 7–8.

420 South East Asia Research

the inhabitants of what are now the North and North East of Thailand as ‘Lao’, asdistinct from the Siamese, or Thai of the Central Plains.5 In fact, these ‘Lao’ werea sizeable portion, if not the majority of the kingdom’s population. A few yearslater, a miraculous event occurred: the millions of Lao people suddenly disap-peared from within the borders of Siam.

It was no miracle, though, but a conjuring trick, mediated by nineteenth-cen-tury anthropological concepts of race. Most of the Tai-language-speaking peoples(Siamese, Lao, Shan, Phuthai, etc) became Thai nationals and members of theThai race. Now Thais formed the majority. By the 1980s, most of the rest of Thai-land’s inhabitants had ‘become’ ethnically Thai.6

In the following discussion, I examine the processes through which this conjur-ing trick occurred, focusing mainly on the question of the Lao and the North Eastof Thailand. The tasks at hand are threefold. First, I shall trace the journey frommulti-ethnicity to Thai mono-ethnicity and thus, Thai mono-culturalism. Next, Ishall describe how this transformation affected the type of nationalist model thatemerged, and what kind of historiography it created. Finally, we shall make atentative foray into an ethnic reading of ‘Thai’ history and its political implications.

The journey from Siamese multi-ethnicity to Thai mono-ethnicity andmono-culture

When Western (and mainly American) scholars became involved in Thailand inthe 1950s and early 1960s, the conceptual foundations of Thai mono-ethnicityhad already been laid. Drawing from a few Thai scholars and many Europeanquasi-colonial, quasi-scholarly studies from earlier in the century, these scholars,with few exceptions, continued the work of homogenizing Thailand both cultur-ally and ethnically.7 What was the conceptual framework in which they worked?My argument is that the basis of this framework was the idea of race (or rather, ina Western context, ethnicity) that helped to classify people within the borders ofSiam/Thailand. Race drove a new view of Thai history and formed the centre-piece, explicitly or implicitly, of Thai nationalism.

In 1860, Siam was an empire with a vast array of polities under its suzerainty.King Mongkut’s title boasted that the Bangkok kings lorded it over a vast andethnically diverse realm: ‘…King of the Kingdom of Siam and of Various Adjoin-ing Lands: the Lands of the Lao Chieng [roughly corresponding to Northern Thailandtoday], of the Lao Kaew [roughly Thailand’s North East], of Kampocha [present-day Cambodia], and the Lands of the Malayu [present-day southernmost Thailand/northern Malaysia]…’8 Like all pre-modern kingdoms, Siamese kings celebratedtheir sovereignty over wide lands and ethnically heterogeneous populations.9

Pallegoix estimated the population of ‘the various nations’ in 1850s Siam as:10

• Siamese or Thai – 1,900,000• Chinese – 1,500,000

5 For more on ‘Thai’ and ‘Lao,’ see Keyes (2002), p. 1173, and Evans (1999).6 Except for ethnic groups that constituted threats to national security (Vietnamese, for example).7 A few exceptions: Pridi (2504 [1961]); Jit (2624 [1981]); and Keyes (1967).8 Quoted in Thaveesil (1988), pp 7–8.9 Streckfuss (1993), p 132.10 Pallegoix (2000), p 2.

An ‘ethnic’ reading of ‘Thai’ huistory 421

• Malay – 1,000,000• Lao – 1,000,000• Cambodians – 500,000• Peguins – 50,000• Karieng, Xong, Lawa – 50,000• Total – 6,000,000But, as the colonial powers put more pressure on the Bangkok elite, the ethnicdiversity of subject peoples became a liability. Promoting what I call a ‘logic ofrace’, the Europeans, and particularly the French, noted with increasing rancourthe Thai minority wielding power over non-Thai populations.11

In a 1903 publication, for instance, French colonialist Charles Lemire found itintolerable that ‘this Lilliputian oligarchy of 2 million Siamese which refuses toexecute these so moderate treaties concluded with the Republic of France andwhich affect the interests of four million other non-Siamese inhabitants’.12 In fact,these estimates of ‘Lao’ populations were probably low. Keyes estimates that afifth of Siam’s population spoke ‘languages not belonging to the Tai languagefamily’ and more than half the population was Lao.13

This demographic problem formed the core of an emerging ‘Lao Question’.14 Itwas, after all, under Siamese tutelage that Europeans classified Siamese and/orthe Thai as a people separate from the Lao. In its dealings with Westerners, theThai elite made no effort to hide the fact that Siam was an empire, and that Siamproper did not extend much beyond the Chao Phraya River basin.15 But as early as1883, there are signs of a growing consciousness about the problem of race/eth-nicity among the Bangkok elite. For instance, when the first royal commissionerwas sent to Chiangmai in 1883, the king warned,

‘you must remember that if you are speaking with a Westerner on the one handand a Lao on the other, you must maintain that the Westerner is “them” and theLao is Thai. If, however, you are speaking with a Lao on the one hand and aThai on the other, you must maintain that the Lao is “them” and the Thai is“us”…. [doing otherwise] would be returning to the old ways.’16

Within seven years, King Chulalongkorn had come to a different way of catego-rizing Thai and Lao. He advised his commissioners in the ‘Lao Provinces’ toimpress on the local lords that ‘the Thai and Lao are of the same chat [nation,lineage] and speak the same language within a single kingdom’.17 They were tocounter any French claims by arguing that the ‘Phuthai, Chinese, Lao, Lao Phuan’were under Siamese jurisdiction because of their chua sai [lineage]…’. ForeignMinister Prince Devawongse came to a similar conclusion, reasoning that people

11 There were various opinions amongst Europeans about these ethnic differences. See Streckfuss(1987), pp 50–54.

12 Lemire (1903), p 12. The same observation was made by Pavie (1919), p 39.13 Keyes (2002), p 1177.14 For the race logic adopted by the Bangkok elite on the ‘Khmer Question’, see Streckfuss (1993),

pp 137–138.15 Chatchai (2534 [1991]), p 303.16 Quoted in Thaveesil (1988), pp 7–8.17 Lao is considered by linguists to be part of the Tai language family. But did the Lao accept

themselves as ‘Thai’ or ‘Tai’ as such? (see Jit, 2624 [1981], p 602). See also Sarassawadee (2005),pp 22–23, 177, 205, 210.


of ‘the same chat as the Thai but of different languages’ populated the ‘Lao muangkhun’ [colonies].18

The idea that the Lao were actually Thai became policy under Prince DamrongRajanubhab, Head of the newly created Ministry of the Interior, who announcedhis intention to ‘dissolve all dependencies and half dependencies’ and ‘to makeall the people Thais, not Lao, nor Malay at all’.19 As if describing a great misun-derstanding, Damrong said that the Lao ‘speak Thai in a strange way, so strangethat the people of Bangkok held that they were Lao. But now, it is well known thatthey are Thai, not Lao.’20 And it was race that made sense of it all for Damrong:

‘The chon chat thai [Thai nationals or those of the Thai race] are a large chat ineastern Asia … beyond Siam, there are many chon chat thai inhabiting othercountries… If all these people call themselves by various names …such as ChaoSayam [a Siamese person], Lao … Shan, Lue … Haw, in fact all of these groupsof different names are chon chat thai [Thai nationality/race]. They speak Thaiand every one of them holds that they themselves are Thai.’21

With this ‘newly discovered’ racial unity, Bangkok’s elite began expunging theLao – historically and demographically – from Siam during the kingdom’s firstcensus in 1904. Item 7 of the ‘Explanations’ to the census, using a newly devel-oped ‘racialist’ logic, described the reason the Lao are really Thai and not ‘realLao’:

‘But there is another section of the population which does not admit of beingseparately distinguished from the Thai, or Siamese, race, namely the peoplecommonly called Laos. It is generally admitted that there does not exist anyproof to show that the Laos is ethnically distinct from the Thai or Siamese race.…Moreover, it has been definitely ascertained by learned men that the peoplewho are called Laos at the present day are really of the Thai race, and they alsoconsider themselves to be such.

…For the reason above stated, it would serve no useful purpose in the censusto divide the population of the Thai race into two sections as Laos and Siamese,and therefore both Siamese and Laos are made to figure under the commonhead of the Thai, or Siamese race.’22

Grabowsky notes that ‘Lao ethnicity was henceforth negated’, sacrificed, so tospeak, so the colonial powers could not use it as a tool against Siam.23 Whateverthe case, 85% of Siam’s population suddenly appeared to be Siamese (or Thai) in1904.24 In the 1912 census, the percentage of Siamese had increased to 89.3%,with a Lao population that can be roughly estimated at around 43.5%, a little lessthan half of the Siamese.25

18 Jiraphorn (2523 [1980]), pp 410–411, 418–419, 425–426.19 Quoted in Brailey (1969), p 363.20 Quoted in Thaveesil (1988), p 5.21 Chatchai (2534 [1991]), pp 15, 303–304, 319–320.22 This translation comes from the Bangkok Times Press (1914) and is somewhat different from the

version in Grabowsky (1996), pp 57, 62.23 Ibid, p 57.24 These percentages are derived from Grabowsky (1996), pp 52, 56–57 and 78.25 Bangkok Times Press (1914).


Although the language of the census seemed to adopt something of a scienceframework, the criteria were really quite loose. The census administrators admitthat determining ‘different races’ was ‘a most difficult matter’. With ‘the Chineseelement’, for instance, ‘the plan adopted has been to go by the fashion of wearingthe hair and the dress of the individual and to categorize all males who wear the“queue”, whether they be full blooded Chinamen or only mestizos of whateverdegree, as “Chinese”, and all females who dress in the Siamese fashion as“Siamese”’.26

Administratively, the government edited out and replaced ethnic terms in thenames of administrative units (muang lao khao, muang lao phuan) with compasspoint designations (North East, North West). Thai officials sent from Bangkok intothese areas were warned not to call the people there Lao.27 Educational policy for theprovinces shifted from a vocational focus to ideology-infused subjects such as geog-raphy, history and civics. In the ‘Ethics’ section of a 1912 curriculum guide, teachersare told that students must learn how to ‘behave appropriately for a Thai’. In history,students must learn a brief history of the Thai or Thai nation, ‘enough to know howthe Thai came into being and how to preserve the present security of the nation’.28 Alllanguages in the classroom except Central Thai were outlawed.29

The Bangkok elite was quick to adopt the racial classifications from nineteenth-century scholars. For a time, it was the Bangkok elite-cum-military pacifiers whobegan the work of studying the other. Largely organized under the colonial-like‘Siam Society’, anthropological studies proliferated.30

Keyes has written extensively on the issue of ethnicity in South East Asia, andhis 2002 article was one of the first to trace the genealogy of the strange conver-gence of Western anthropology and the dynamics of internal politics in Thailand(and elsewhere in Asia). What has emerged since the late nineteenth century andcontinues today in Thailand has been a view that race/ethnic qualities ‘can bedetermined scientifically’. This view, he feels, ‘resulted in the creation or reificationof ethnic distinctions that have become significant in social relationships’ in coun-tries such as Thailand, ‘while also obscuring other processes of ethnic change thatare occurring within and between countries’.31

The American anthropology of the 1950s that was dominant in many parts ofSouth East Asia moved beyond the older ‘tribes and races’, and instead developed‘theories of ethnicity that emphasize the interactions between peoples rather thantheir essential difference’.32 In Siam/Thailand, however, part of the ‘Siamese eth-nographic project’ was discovering ‘the Other Within’: a way of ‘advancing ahegemonic agenda over dominated subjects’ by indigenous elite.33 The flip side ofthe project was to define Thainess through a racially infused programme of ‘na-tional integration’.34

26 Ibid, ‘No 5’.27 Wyatt (1984), p 328; Vella (1978), p 199.28 Anonymous (rs 130 [1912]), pp 1, 4.29 Streckfuss (1987), pp 88–93; McCargo and Krisadawan (2003).30 There was a developing sense of a ‘race’, but the idea of race thus far was anthropological, not

historical. See Dodd (1996).31 Keyes (2002), p 1164.32 Ibid, pp 1169–1170.33 Thongchai (2000), p 59; Keyes (2002), p 1177.34 Keyes (2002), p 1179.


It was this essentialist view of the Thai race that pushed forward the extremenationalist policies of the late 1930s and early 1940s. In answering the question of‘Who are the Thai or Tai?’ Luang Wichitwathakan (Luang Wichit), the greatestproponent of the Thai race, turned to Webster’s New Dictionary to discover:

‘Tai – Designating, or pertaining to, the chief linguistic stock of Indochina,including the peoples of Siamese and Shan speech.’

‘Tai – A member of one of the tribes of the Tai stock…’

‘Shan – A member of a group of Mongoloid tribes of Tai stock, found through-out Indochina especially in the Shan States. The Shans vary in civilization frommere savagery to a Buddhistic culture equal to that of the Siamese to whomthey are both physically and linguistically allied.’

‘Siamese – One of the people of Siam; a member of the dominant race of Siam,the most progressive representative of the Tai stock. They are almost all Bud-dhists. The higher families have some knowledge of European culture.’35

Luang Wichit, of course, does not bother with what Webster’s had to say about theLao, because he had earlier worked out, following Damrong, that ‘Lao’ was reallya case of mistaken identity. The term ‘Lao’ was a corruption of the word ‘Lawa’.The Bangkok Thai had called them ‘Laos’, but in fact the Lawa/Lao as a people‘have been nearly lost, except those who are now living in the forest villages ofNorthern Thailand’. With that cleared up, Luang Wichit announced, ‘Those whomwe call Lao nowadays are in fact Thai, who have been genetically mixed withLawa; that is why they are called Lao’.36

Based on this pseudo-science, hyper-nationalists like Luang Wichit were con-vinced that ‘by tracing the genetic connections among different Tai languages itwas possible to find a common origin to all the Tai-speaking peoples’. This allowedthe intellectual basis for a pan-Thai movement during the Second World War thatresulted in Thailand’s ‘taking back’ ‘Thai’ areas stolen by colonial powers.37

The question comes down to how the Lao are linguistically and ethnically placedin relation to Siam/Siamese and Thailand/Thai. To avoid confusion, most schol-ars speak of the Tai or T’ai language family, in which there are the Siamese/Thailanguage, the Lao language, the Shan language, and so on (see Figure 1, Schema1). Within Siam, there were Lao people, Shan people, Chinese people, etc. Thisscheme only works when ‘the Siamese’ refers exactly and only to ‘the Thais’ orwhen Siamese refers to all the citizens of Siam. This distinction is difficult tomaintain after the name of the country is changed to Thailand in 1939. As part ofa larger policy forbidding government officials from using old ethnic terms suchas ‘Lao’, the preamble stated that it ‘was advisable to call the name of the countryto be in accordance with the name of the race…’.38 Through the law changing thecountry’s name, race was legally recognized.39

35 Luang wichit (1941), pp 121–122.36 As quoted in Evans (1999). p 2.37 Keyes (2002), p 1180.38 Thailand, Council of State (2482 [1939]).39 See Article 38 of the 1947 interim constitution, which stated that candidates for public office had

to ‘at least…be of the Thai race [mi chuachat pen thai] and no younger than 35 years of age’.Thailand, Council of State (2490 [1947]).


Figure 1. Three language schema of ‘Thai’.

Table 1. Thai Race Nationality Model.

‘Thai’

• All T’ai speakers are unequivocally ‘Thai]• Others qualified “Thai” (that is, Thai Muslims, Thai Surin)• Thai nationality/race/citizenship largely undifferentiated• Most ethnicities absorbed by mid-20th century (Lao, Khmer, Phuthai, Mon)• Chinese Thai absorbed more slowly• Official expression allowed only in Central Thai• Ethnic tags unacknowledged; only regional identity allowed• United under Thai throne (1960s to present)

Table 2. Siamese Nationality Model.

‘Siamese’

• All citizens are ethnically equal: Thai Siamese, Lao Siamese, Malay Siamese, KhmerSiamese, Chinese Siamese, etc

• Siamese nationality/citizenship and race/ethnicity differentiated• Official recognition of ethnolinguistic diversity• United under ethnic equality, as expressed democratically (maybe)

When Siam became Thailand, all Siamese became Thai – legally correct, but itis also the adjectival descriptor for an ethno-linguistic group.40 At least on paper,everyone became Thai (see Table 1). In contrast is what we might call the SiameseNationality Model (See Table 2) in which all ethnicities are equally Siamese.

Erik Seidenfaden’s 1967 work, The Thai Peoples, is an exemplary study of thisconflation of Thai/Tai languages and race (see Figure 1, Schema 3).41 As the titlesuggests, his book is about the Thai, with no mention of the T’ai or Tai languagefamily. In this work, ‘Thai’ functions as a racial and linguistic ‘yardstick’ againstwhich all other ethnicities are judged to be more or less similar.42 For example, hepoints out that the ‘Thai Yuan’ speak ‘a Thai dialect which is somewhat different

40 Chula, for instance, eschews the word ‘Siamese’. Chula (1960).41 Seidenfaden (1967).42 Ibid, pp 34, 45.

Shan Siamese Lao

T’ai (or Tai)

Thai

Thai Shan Lao

LANGUAGE FAMILY

AND/OR RACE

(Central/Standard) Thai

Thai Yai/ Shan

Thai Isaan/ North Eastern

(formerly Lao)

Thai Nua/Northern Thai (Kammuang)

Thai Paktay/

Southern Thai

Etc REGIONAL

DIALECTS

LANGUAGE SCHEMA 1

LANGUAGE SCHEMA 2

LANGUAGE SCHEMA 3

LANGUAGE FAMILY

LANGUAGES WITHIN

THE FAMILY


from that spoken in the North East and also from “the King’s Siamese”, con-taining fewer Khmer and Pali loan words’. The North Easterners speak ‘dialects’that ‘differ less from the High Thai … than the Yuan dialect’. While other Thaigroups have different names – Lao, Yuan, Thai Khorat – the Thai of the centralplains are simply ‘the Thai’ or ‘the Siamese’. It is the Thai, says Seidenfaden,who are ‘considered the core of the nation, and they speak the Standard Thai orKing’s Siamese’.43

The purpose of Seidenfaden’s book appears to be to show how similar the Thaiare, whether they live in China, Laos, Burma, Vietnam or Thailand. A secondpurpose seems to be to show how little different the ethnic Thai people are inThailand – but within a linguistic hierarchy where speakers of Central or Stand-ard Thai are speaking the Thai language, while all the rest speak related ‘dialects’.A third purpose might be to show the primacy of Thailand within the Thai world.44

Seidenfaden’s work shows that by the time foreign researchers arrived in Thai-land in the 1950s, Thai identity and Thai history had already become very Thai.Given this racial framework (especially in comparison with its regional neigh-bours), Thailand seemed mono-ethnic and mono-cultural.

This entire process of racially Thai-ifying Thailand seemed to work. By the1980s, the Thai census was recording an even higher percentage of ‘Thai’ thanin 1912: 98.7% of the Thai population were Thai nationals, 97% spoke Thai,and 95% were Buddhists. Keyes remarks that census results give ‘the impres-sion that the population of Thailand is largely culturally homogeneous’.45

But the census figures are deceptive, as the Thai state has withheld informa-tion revealing the ethnic make-up of different Thai groups (such as the Lao) by‘not encouraging the active collection of data’. The Thai state’s ‘policy of pro-moting assimilation’ has in some ways failed, if the intent was slowly to replace‘local dialects’ such as Lao with Standard Thai.46 Research has indicated thatamongst ‘Tai’ speakers in Thailand in the 1980s, only 33.2% spoke Central Thaias their first language/dialect (and 45.6% if including Southern Thai), while overhalf of the people in ‘Thailand’ spoke a Lao language/dialect.47

Yet at the same time, the Thai state succeeded in marrying nationality and citi-zenship with race and ethnicity. To be a Thai citizen [sanchat thai] was to be ofthe Thai race/ethnicity [chua chat thai].48 Save for some Chinese and many if notmost Muslim Malay in the South (who, peculiarly, are ethnically registered as‘Muslim’), most ethnicities were subsumed into the Thai race.49 Even today, citi-zens who admit that their grandparents are Khmer or Lao affirm without a thought

43 Ibid, p 97.44 Ibid, p 97.45 Thailand, National Statistical Office and National Economic Development Board (nd), pp 18–20;

Keyes (1987), p 14.46 Secretary of the Army, United States Government (1989), p 70.47 See Diller (1991), p 95; percentages arrived at by Keyes (1987), p 16, are slightly different.48 At one time a core concept in the creation of nationalism, from the early 1900s to at least the late

1970s, the use of the term chua chat [race] became less pervasive in official documents; it is nolonger on citizens’ identification cards or their house registrations. However, it is still widelyused in nationalist discourse, such as Sumit (2444 [2001]), in which, for example, one of the four‘dimensions’ explored in the book is chua chat (p 1).

49 Smalley (1994), p 322. For the Chinese in Thailand, see Keyes (2002), pp 1179–1180. For recentchanges, see: Thailand, Council of State (2506 [1963]), and Thailand, Council of State (2543[2000]).


that they are Thai citizens and of the Thai race/ethnicity.50 ‘Thai’ becamepolysemous, signifying nationality, race/ethnicity, the name of the people specifi-cally in the central region of Thailand, the name of the language family and thename of the language. Simultaneously, ethnicity was subsumed by region. Newregional identities (Isan Thai, Northern Thai) emerged already situated in an im-plicitly ethnic hierarchy. Yet, people from Bangkok only occasionally refer tothemselves as Central Thai, more commonly they are just Thai.

This focus on race heightened interest in the ‘authentic Thai’ [thai thae], whichwas defined through a particular moral/spatial order. As Smalley points out,

‘…within this territorial expanse comes a graduation of significance for assess-ing “Thainess”. Thai territory is organized around centres, of which the supremeis Bangkok. Bangkok is the core of the country, and in it “Thainess” is mostperfectly expressed. The farther you get from Bangkok, the more peripheral thearea, the less perfectly Thai. Peripheral areas are expected to imitate, to followBangkok.’51

Within this spatialized moral hierarchy, people in the North East have developeda complex sense of identity. They have been simultaneously ethnically negatedand socially marginalized. It is the poorest and least well educated region, creat-ing a ‘rather negative self-perception’.52 Writing in 1994, Smalley described NorthEasterners as ‘apolitical,’ passively fatalistic, conformist and ‘exhibiting a hightolerance for capricious superiors who treat them with force and discrimination’.And yet even then, Smalley continues, ‘The northeast is the one region of Thai-land where the threat of disunity has sometimes begun to surface in a major languagegroup’.53

The model of race history

The effects of this manipulation of ethnic terms had an enormous influence on‘Thai’ historiography. On a superficial level, it meant ethnic cleansing of history.In his revisions of royal chronicles, Prince Damrong expunged all ethnic refer-ences to the Lao. In the original chronicle of the Second Reign, penned byThipakorawong, for instance, there are references to various Lao groups. InDamrong’s revisions, however, the word ‘Lao’ (along with many references toother ethnic groups) was removed.54

The Thai elite emerged in the early twentieth century with a restructured andrecreated ‘Thai’ sense of self, defined racially/ethnically by anthropology, delin-eated by geography and armed with a language capable of generating the nationalistconsciousness, rhetoric and world view that have largely defined the boundariesof modern Thai thought and identity up to the present day. History would no

50 In 1994, Smalley reports that on Thai people’s national identification cards was listed their eth-nicity [chuachat]. While ethnicity is no longer on people’s ID cards, the use of the term chua chatis still quite common. See Smalley (1994), p 322.

51 Smalley (1994), p 324.52 Ibid, p 336.53 Smalley (1994), p 87.54 Streckfuss (1987).


longer be a tracing of the king’s lineage back to the disciples of Buddha.55 Nowthere could be a history of ‘the Thai race’.

A key role was played in this by King Vajiravudh (r 1910–1925), the so-called‘Father of Thai Nationalism’, who strove to have both Thais and foreigners rec-ognize ‘the existence of the Thai as a separate people’.56 During his reign, the ideaof the Thai race having migrated from the Altai Mountains and settled in southernChina was proposed. According to this version of ethnic origins, the Thai foughtfor their independence from the Chinese (hence Thai meaning free) and eventu-ally came further south. This allowed Sukothai to be considered as the first Thaikingdom, followed by Ayutthaya (from c 1350 to 1767) and then finally Thonburi/Bangkok (from 1782 to the present). The nationalist narrative explains how theThai then fought against the Western powers and maintained their independence.Other kingdoms of Tai people that did not conform to this line of evolution weremarginalized and pushed into the periphery of Thai historiography. Henceforth,Thai history would be the story of evil non-Thai forces trying to subjugate theThai; there was unity because everyone who mattered was ethnically Thai.57

One of the new ‘Thai’ histories of the 1930s was Chai Ruangsin’s Prawatisatchat thai [A History of the Thai Nation], so titled because, in the author’s words,‘I aimed to compose a history of the Thai race …which means a history of theThai nation, the people of the Thai people, the Thai people and not in any way inthe manner of [tracing] Thai royalty’.58

What stands out here is that even though the conjuring trick which made theLao (and other ethnicities) seemingly disappear occurred quite openly, for schol-ars of Thailand, ethnicity and race remained off the radar.59 The idea of the unifiedThailand was so accepted in the minds of scholars that an ethnic rendering ofpolitics or history was never imagined or articulated.

The complex configuration of race, ethnicity and nationality posed obvious dif-ficulties for scholars of ‘Thai Studies’. For example, the very title of David Wyatt’sThailand: A Short History already locks him into telling the story of the Tai raceand Siamese/Thai kings. Although he carefully avoids referring to ancient Tai as‘Thai’ (see Language Schema 1 in Figure 1) and dutifully calls the people ‘Siamese’until 1939, when he switches to ‘Thai’ and ‘Thailand’, he inadvertently or advert-ently Thai-ifies most of the population (rather along lines of Language Schemas 2and 3 in Figure 1) and the Thai Race Nationality Model (Table 1).60 To be fair, allscholars of Thailand find it unavoidable or at least near hopelessly complicated todescribe ‘Thailand’ and ‘the Thai’ in any other way.61

As one scholar attending the International Thai Studies Conference in 1990said,

‘The term “Thai”, which constitutes a central theme of our conference, andwhich has served to designate all the members of the ethno-linguistic group of

55 Charnvit (1976), pp 4–5.56 Vella (1978), p 187.57 Streckfuss (1987), pp 65–75.58 Chai (2478 [1935]).59 There are some notable exceptions, such as Jit Phumisak (2524 [1981]). For foreign scholars

prior to the early 1990s, see Keyes (1967), and Anderson (1978).60 See, for instance, Wyatt (1984), p 247: (‘Siamese society’ in 1932, p 253).61 See Keyes (1987), pp 14–23 126, 134–135, 165–169, 175, 202–203.


the “Lao-tai”, has undergone a slippage of meaning and displacement of role,since the word “Thailand” has seen the light of day. And since this rather ge-neric term is used to designate the citizens of Thailand instead of “Siamese”,one presently no longer knows when saying or writing “Thai” which Thais aremeant – whether Thais in general including Laos, or Thais, the inhabitants ofThailand?’62

Although it appears confusing, this sense of the Thai race is directly linked to anationalist model of ‘Thainess’ that found its earliest expression intellectually inthe works of Prince Damrong, King Vajiravudh and Luang Wichit. This formationlaid the foundation for later constructions such as ‘Thai-style democracy’ and‘Democracy with the King as Head of State’. It was put into place by a nationaleducational curriculum which emphasized the linguistic, cultural and ethnic unityof the people.

It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that an entire state complex wasdeveloped to address any threat to this perceived sense of unity. The componentsof this model of nationalism focusing on race were categorized and made into anall-encompassing set of state policies by the military and bodies such as the NationalIdentity Board and the National Security Council. This race-based model of national-ism was legally enforced through national security laws.

Smalley’s Table 18.1 nicely lays out the key components of this model thatmight be dated to the late 1980s (my own additions are in square brackets):

‘Allegiance to the monarchyAllegiance to the religion [that is, Buddhism]Allegiance to the nation

Including territoryIncluding governmentIncluding people

Sharing languageSharing social structures [hierarchy]Sharing worldview

Common perception of history [royalist]Common perception of similarity/differenceCommon perception of identity’63

This model, organized around the idea of race, seemed intact until the 1990s whennew components emerged that challenged Smalley’s schema. The 1997 constitu-tion, ‘the people’s constitution’, provided a framework for Thai politics to mature,and decentralization allowed the beginnings of real local control, which in turnspawned increasingly diverse local cultures. Pressures from new localisms pushedthe state to adopt in principle policies encouraging cultural diversity. Conserva-tive security forces lost much of their ‘enemy function’: the communist threat ofthe Cold War era was over and the century-old historical focus on threateningoutside forces subsided somewhat.64 The ‘crisis of Thai identity’ became not so

62 Houmphanh Rattanawong (1990), as quoted in Evans (1999), p 6.63 Smalley (1994), p 325.64 Jory (2003).


much the confrontation between ‘Thai’ and ‘Western’ identities, but a more schizo-phrenic one of a ‘Thai’ identity versus another, long suppressed, internal identityor identities.65

Since the early to mid-1990s, there has been a growing appreciation of Thai-land’s multi-ethnic nature, and its expression or suppression has figured in theexercise of political power. This suggests the possibility of a historical narrativeorganized along ethnic lines, in which the Thai state, representing ‘Thainess’, hasworked to maintain the myth of ethnic unity, juxtaposed against resurgent non-Thai ethnic identities struggling for greater local autonomy.66

An ethnic reading of ‘Thai’ history

In his provocative and pioneering effort, ‘Politics of ethnicity in Thailand’, CharlesKeyes takes in the breadth of ethnic factors as they have related to Thai politicalpolicy. He postulates that the ‘appearance of cultural homogeneity’ in Thai stud-ies has been ‘deceptive’, arguing that the census is political and avoids questionsof ‘ethnic self-identification’. Indeed, Keyes points out that the ‘absence of ethniccleavages in contemporary Thailand is a consequence not of … the distinctivehistorical processes that have shaped how these differences have been situatedwithin the framework of the Thai nation’.67 Keyes further argues that the ‘inclu-sive vision of the Thai nation’ historically promoted by the Thai state has largelysucceeded.68

Thailand has been successful, according to Keyes, because not many Thai gov-ernments ‘have instituted policies that are based on explicit recognition of ethnicdifferences within the country. Many significant cultural differences have simplybeen ignored or subsumed within a vision of the country as divided not by culturebut by region.’ Thailand has never ‘officially reified ethnic differences’ or ‘as-cribed to ethnic groups essentialist timeless characteristics’.69

At one level, of course, this has certainly been true. But, at another, it can beargued that Thailand’s policy on ethnicity has been closer to a ‘forced inclusion’that has sought to diminish or erase any vestiges of ethnic difference that might bein conflict with the ‘Thainess’ model of nationalism. It is curious yet telling thatin his article Keyes mentions every ethnic group or grouping in Thailand exceptthe Thai ethnicity. The ongoing project of inclusion for various groups in Thai-land into Thainess presupposes that the project is not ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’.

The question here is whether that formation of Thainess, as a type of ethnic/racialist categorization, is itself a form of ‘constricted nationalism’ that has ‘offi-cially reified’ Thainess, giving the ‘Thai race’ ‘timeless characteristics’. Thainessmay be inclusive, but once inside there is a specific and rather narrow interpreta-tion of what that quality constitutes. Smalley has written that ‘Nationalism is ethnic

65 In this vein, see Sulak (1991), pp 45–58, or Kasian (2002), pp 202–227.66 Accordingly, a number of scholars have hinted at the ethnic aspect of Thai studies. See also

Anderson (1991), many of the chapters in Reynolds (1991a), but in particular Reynolds (1991b)and Diller (1991). See also Thongchai (1994), Keyes (1995), Jory (1999) and forthcoming, Bakerand Pasuk (2005), pp 61–67, Peleggi (2007), especially pp 117–127, and Streckfuss (2010).

67 Keyes (1997), p 1.68 Ibid, p 1.69 Ibid, pp 22–23.


Figure 2. Thai, Lao and other ethnolinguistic groups in Thailand (2004).Source: Adapted, by permission, from various ethnolinguistic maps inSuwilai Premsrirat et al (2004).

identity with political ramifications’.70 The ethnic/racialist identity of Thainess isinclusive, but it is also hierarchical:

‘The unquestioning ethnic superiority felt by the educated people of Bangkok…isreinforced in many ways. Their status, the power and control exercised by theirgroup, its large size, their location in the heart of the country, their position atthe top of the language hierarchy, institutions such as the government, educa-tion, the media, the dominant Buddhism, economic growth, relative politicalstability – all of these support a positive view of their ethnicity and a sense oftheir superiority.’71

These observations suggest a different way of viewing race and ethnicity in Thai-land. It is argued here that while Thai government policy has perhaps not beenexplicitly ‘ethnic’, it has been racialist in that it has created both a hierarchicaland an essentialist model of nationalism that has marginalized most of the coun-try’s population, ascribing to them second-class status. So, in practice, the policiesseem very ethnically driven. This has been particularly true since the 1980s when

70 Smalley (1994), p 333.71 Ibid, p 337.

– Central Thai/

Southern Thai

– ‘Lao’

– Mixed Thai/Lao

–Other


Figure 3. Rebellions in Siam, 1901–02.Source: Base map adapted, by permission, from Suwilai Premsrirat et al(2004).

the idea of the ‘Thai race’ was ramped up, spurring a ‘renewed interest’ in ‘dis-covering the essential Thai elements’.72

So what would an ethnic reading of ‘Thai’ history look like? If we return to theethnolinguistic reality of the 2000s (see Figure 2) and compare it to the variousincidents of political resistance and upheaval over the last century, the implications ofthis new version of history become clear. Drawing from the excellent work of SuwilaiPremsrirat et al, I shall show how an ethnic reading of ‘Thai’ history not only disruptsthe nation’s historical narrative, but recasts many events of the twentieth century ascritical to the expansion of social justice throughout Thailand.73

In 1901–02, there were three unrelated rebellions – one in the North East, onein the North and one in the deep South (see Figure 3). All three included varyingelements of anti-Thai sentiment. Although expressed more in local and anti-stateterms, Chatthip concedes that there was also an ‘ethnic consciousness’ behind thepeasant rebellions on the Khorat Plateau in the North East.74

72 Keyes (2002), p 1181. Keyes calls this renewed interest a ‘seeming contradiction’, but it is not acontradiction if we argue that this renewed interest is in line with a project to reify Thainesswithin a hierarchy.

73 Suwilai et al (2547 [2004]).74 Keyes (1987), pp 55–56. See Chatthip (1984), p 128.


Figure 4. Thai government projects opposed by the Assembly of thePoor, 1995.Source: Base map adapted, by permission, from Suwilai Premsrirat et al(2004).

Jumping forward to the 1940s, many of the anti-Japanese forces in Thailand,the Seri Thai, or Free Thai movement, were North Easterners. They represented aprogressive force in Thai politics at the time, with many becoming Members ofParliament and passing the most liberal Thai constitution to date. Pro-governmentforces killed four of this group’s key leaders in the late 1940s and early 1950s,contributing ‘to the growing sense among Northeasterners of alienation from thecentral government’.75 In the South, there was the 1948 ‘Dusun-nyor incident’ inPatani in which 30 Thai policemen and somewhere between 30 and 600 MalayMuslims were killed in Patani.76 These incidents in the North East and South bothhad barely submerged separatist sentiments along ethnic lines.

Twenty years later, this sense of simmering resentment was partially expressedin ethnic terms with the rise and spread of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT),with its representation strongest, again, in the North, the North East and the South.Surprisingly, the CPT had very little success in working with central Thai wherethe classic revolutionary conditions existed – skewed land tenure, landlessness

75 Keyes (1987), p 73; Wyatt (1984), pp 258–259, 261, 264–265, 267.76 Chaiwat (2007), pp 174–175.

NORTH17 projects

CENTRAL2 projects

NORTH EAST74 projects

BANGKOK5 projects EAST

2 projects

SOUTH4 projects


and an industrial proletariat. Although the areas of Communist infiltrationchanged from 1969 to 1974, and to 1978, the majority lay outside Thai-speak-ing areas.77

Some 15 years after the collapse of the CPT, the most significant social move-ment in recent Thai history came into play – the Assembly of the Poor (AOP). Ofthe 124 issues that bring together the AOP, only a handful of groups/issues (7%)were in the central or eastern regions. Even the Bangkok membership primarilyoriginated from the North East. There were a few AOP groups in the South –small-scale Muslim fisherfolk. But the vast majority of AOP groups (90%) werein the North and the North East (see Figure 4). In other words, very few (if any) ofthe AOP membership spoke Thai as their primary language, although given thebroad spectrum of its members, Central Thai is the AOP’s common working lan-guage. However, from its very inception, the AOP has called for local controlover resources and policies, and so its local expression has always been in Lao orKhammuang (Northern Thai) or a Karen language or Malay.78 An income dispar-ity also has its ethnic aspects, with some correspondence in the North, and verystrongly so in the North East.79

The bulk of support in the 2001 and 2005 elections for former Prime MinisterThaksin Shinawatra’s political party came from the North and North East. Afterthe military coup in 2006, the referendum on the 2007 constitution was passedwith 57% of the nationwide vote. In the North and North East, most votes wereagainst the constitution, while the Central region and the South approved it. Fig-ure 5 shows the 2011 parliamentary vote, with the majority of votes going to thepro-Thaksin party, Phue Thai, clustered in the North, North East, and certain partsof Bangkok.

The Red Shirts, a movement made up of anti-coup and pro-Thaksin forces,came together in 2008. After the military crackdown in April–May 2010, a numberof political maps appeared on social networking sites such as Facebook that seemedto express separatism or even a kind of civil war. In one the word, ‘I’ [ku], a first-person pronoun used when showing contempt or disdain for the party addressed,is represented by red North and North East, and ‘you’ [meung, the counterpartsecond-person pronoun] is in the yellow Centre and South (the colour for the pro-coup, anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy, or PAD). The gist of the titleis ‘We can just go our own separate ways’ [jathiangkan pai yai]. For the southernmostprovinces, it says, ‘Let them go’ [hai khao pai]. Another cartoon using the samecolour-coded spatial distribution shows a red North which has grown weary andsuggests separating as a way to end the fighting. The North East says ‘hold on’ –it wants ‘one more round where victory is sure to be won’. The southernmostprovinces, seemingly delighted, ask if the North and North East are imitatingtheir struggle.

Although the pattern is not consistent in every case, it is nonetheless clear. In allthe above instances, it is either the non-Thai hinterlands expressing demands tothe Thai centre, or it is the Thai centre suppressing something in the non-Thaihinterlands. Although the non-Thai hinterlands rarely express themselves in anti-

77 Thailand, Ministry of Interior (2512 [1969]) and (2517 [1974]), and Thailand, Office of the PrimeMinister (2520 [1977]).

78 Missingham (2003), p 49.79 Website: http://www.thaiwebsites.com/images/Distribution/regionalGDP.jpg.


Figure 5. Thai parliamentary election results, 2011.Source: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2011/07/04/regional-voting/. Repro-duced by permission of Dr Chris Baker.


Thai terms as such, there is some sort of movement in history (or its suppression)coming primarily from non-Thai peoples.

The selection of events above that happened in regions outside central Thailandand to ethnic ‘minorities’ is not completely arbitrary. They are not local eventsthat have local meaning alone. They are national events that have occurred inlocalities outside ‘Siam proper’. What does the observation that a number of keyhistorical events have happened in areas outside central Thailand signify? Arethese events merely unrelated local histories? Is this an attempt to de-centre Thaihistory?

There is something telling in the observation that if the people of the North Eastwere acknowledged as part of a distinct ethnic group, then we would understandThai history in a very different way from how we do today. In that case, it wouldnot simply seem to be the case that the central Thai were oppressing other ethnicgroups, but the very sense of legitimacy conferred to the exercise of politicalpower would be called into question. It is one thing to say that the state is highlycentralized, thus causing a level of neglect of regions away from the centre, butquite another thing to argue that one ethnic group is using some mechanism toshield the outright use of political power to oppress many others. Legitimacywould evaporate on the spot. I argue that this is in fact what is happening.

In terms of North Easterners, there are two ethnic/racialist reversely relatedmechanisms at work here: the first stripped the Lao of their ethnicity; the secondplaced them at a lower level in relation to Thainess. For them, and for all the otherregional ethnicities, history has been experienced very differently.

For the Bangkok elite and other urban Thai spread throughout provincial citieswho support the Yellow Shirts/PAD, the key landmark in modern history is thehanding of power by the Thai monarch in 1932 to greedy politicians. There are noevents to speak of for the following 68 years, other than a movement of forces –politicians, capitalists and foreigners – poised to destroy Thainess. The singleevent of significance to them post-1932 was the culmination of all these forces:the election of Thaksin Shinawatra by ignorant ‘other’ ethnicities who sold theirvotes. Accordingly, the military has assumed the position in the eyes of the eliteas the only force that can preserve the status quo.

Many ‘liberal’ intellectuals viewed the successful protest movement of October1973 as the finest expression of Thai democracy and the violent repercussions of6 October 1976 as the moment which ended it. In turn, they saw the May 1992uprising as yet another expression of a democracy thwarted, and perhaps the 2006coup as a necessary, albeit regrettable, tool to save democracy. For them, tearsand melancholia have accompanied all these struggles.

Interestingly, many Red Shirts do not draw their inspiration from the student-led struggles of the 1970s, or the more middle-class struggle of 1992. Instead theyreturn the lost promise of the 1932 overthrow of the absolute monarchy and theideals of Pridi Banomyong, who was one of the first Thais to promote populist-like policies, and the first to acknowledge and celebrate the ethnic diversity thatcould be expressed in ‘Siam’. His march into Bangkok with the Seri Thai forcesmight have been one of the first post-1932 expressions of the non-Thai hinter-land’s demand to have a national hearing.

Under this reading, I argue that many of the progressive, transformative move-ments in Thai history have come not from the centre, but rather from groups such


as the Seri Thai, the Assembly of the Poor and, most recently, the Red Shirts.Unlike Bangkok students or the middle classes in 1973 and 1992, who now callfor less democracy, these non-Thai groups stand against coups and the impunitythey create. They are pro ‘Western’ human rights, against laws such as lèse majesté(which are the remnants of military coups), critical of the courts (which are notaccountable to the public) and clamouring for greater democracy. In short, theyare proposing a radically different kind of ‘Thailand’.80

A visceral and revealing indication of these contrary views of events can beseen in the way ‘Thai’ society – that is, the Bangkok urban elite – has chosen toweep over the dead. For those who died in protests in 1973 and 1992, tears havebeen shed and memorials built. It is a commemoration of ‘our’ struggle for de-mocracy. It is ‘we’ who struggle; those who might have come from elsewhere buthave now identified with the greater ‘Thai self’. For many, the horrifying aspectof October 1976 was as a scene of ‘Thais killing Thais’.

But where were the tears and the soul-searching that accompanied the death ofperhaps hundreds of Malay Muslims in 1948 or those who lost their lives at TakBai in the deep South in the crackdown against protesters there in 2004? Wherewas any sense of compassion for the Red Shirts who were chewed up in the slow-motion massacres of April and May 2010? From the elite in Bangkok, there wasnone. The Malay Muslims in 1948 or in Tak Bai in 2004 were ‘them’. Theseincidents happened far away, amongst non-Thai who were not ‘our’ comrades.The Red Shirts of 2010, just as the Assembly of the Poor before them, had brought‘the other’ to the streets of Bangkok.81 Their deaths were seen as tragic perhaps,but nevertheless largely justified. No tears were shed for them, the distant non-Thai ‘other’.

Conclusion

The nationalist model set out in the early twentieth century, based on the constructionof a culturally and ethnically homogeneous ‘Thailand’, was made almost com-plete under military dictatorship after 1958, and perfected after the bloodycrackdown of 1976. To many, this model has enjoyed apparent rejuvenation sincethe 2006 coup. But is this model in fact in a state of collapse? Is ‘Thailand’ liter-ally and figuratively coming apart against a backdrop of Red Shirt protests whichpitted Bangkok/Thainess against submerged and regional identities, and insur-gency in the South – and with democracy rather than racing the clarion call fornew and largely non-Thai political forces at play?

In the past 10 years and despite the incessant calls for unity, many of the strapsholding Thai society together ‘racially’, ‘ethnically’, religiously, regionally andpolitically might have snapped. Many of the components in Smalley’s late 1980sscheme have come under fire: there are competing sects of Buddhism; ‘govern-ment’ is under increased scrutiny; courts are condemned for bias; hierarchy isbeing challenged. With the lid coming off, barely submerged ethnic identitieshave been given some breathing space.

80 Although such might have been the promise of the Assembly of the Poor as well, the AOP failedto ever connect with segments of the Thai at the centre.

81 The Farmers’ Federation of Thailand also brought the hinterland to the capital in the mid-1970s.See Haberkorn (2011).


What, then, remains of the older model? With the political divisions that havebeen manifested in Thailand over the last decade or so, it is not religion, or nation,or government, or world view, or ‘people’. A spin on Thongchai’s critique of thenationalist-royalist narrative of Thai history arrives at a new formulation: Thai-land is unified because it was not colonized; its essential unity is based on ethnicand cultural homogeneity organized around the monarchy.82 It is nationalism or-ganized around race as spiritually led by the king. As we have moved into theperiod after the 2006 coup, it seems that the only thing holding Thainess togetheris allegiance to the monarchy, or rather that the lèse majesté law compels it.

The discourse on race, as expressed through ‘Thainess’, has infused the debateover both the monarchy and the lèse majesté law. Those advocating preservationof the law have questioned the ‘Thainess’ of those calling for its revision or re-peal. When Giles Ungpakorn spoke on a Red Shirt stage in 2008 and questionedthe role of the monarchy, fellow academics explained this position as a result ofhim being half-Thai. When a labour activist was fired for appearing on televisionwearing a T-shirt that said that not standing for the king’s anthem in movie thea-tres was not a crime, a labour court decision queried whether she was really a Thaibecause she had not recognized that ‘the spirit of the Thai nation is…that the Thaipeople respect and revere the king’.83

More recently, in late 2011, the army chief opined that if any Thai did not likethe lèse majesté law, they should leave the country. When the Nittirat Group,comprising seven law professors at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, called foran amendment to the law, an army general ‘criticised overseas-educated academ-ics’ and said, ‘They have freedom of expression and the right to organise a campaign.But they should not forget that they are Thai.’84

Central Thais make a ‘proprietary claim’ to Thainess and ‘Thai’ history.85 It isthe history of the centre that in the end has ethnic overtones: an ethnicity that isinclusive becomes an ethnicity that is hierarchical. In this initial and far fromdefinitive experiment, it is possible to see the vague contours of an ethnic render-ing of a history that is no longer Thai, but nonetheless has been expressed fromwithin the boundaries of ‘Thailand’, both geographically and ideologically. A centre-based history cannot ultimately make sense without its periphery. Rather thancontinuing with a century of the centre occasionally looking out, the time hascome for a history of the periphery looking in.

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An 'ethnic' reading of 'Thai' history in the twilight of the century-old official 'Thai' national...

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