Thailand: The Worldly Kingdom

258 Pages·2007·2.16 MB·English

by  Maurizio Peleggi

TTHHAAIILLAANNDD
tthhee wwoorrllddllyy kkiinnggddoomm
mmaauurriizziioo ppeelleeggggii

thailand

Thailand
The Worldly Kingdom
Maurizio Peleggi
reaktion books
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33Great Sutton Street
London EC1V0DX
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2007
Copyright © Maurizio Peleggi 2007
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Peleggi, Maurizio
Thailand : the worldly kingdom
1. Thailand – History 2. Thailand – Social life and customs
3. Thailand – Civilization
I. Title
959.3
ISBN-13: 978 1 86189 314 7
ISBN-10: 1 86189 314 0
Contents
Introduction:Civilization, Globalization
and the Thai Nation 7
one Landscapes 22
two Boundaries 57
three Institutions 90
four Ideologies 116
five Modernities 144
six Mnemonic Sites 171
seven Others 193
Chronology 215
References 218
Select Bibliography 239
Acknowledgements 249
Photo Acknowledgements 250
Index 251
Note on Romanization and Lexical Conventions
Various systems are employed to romanize the Thai script, some of
which approximate actual pronunciation while others highlight the Pali
and Sanskrit etymology of Thai words. Romanization in this book follows
the Royal Institute’s General System of Phonetic Transcription (1939)
with some slight modifications. Personal names too have been transliter-
ated accordingly for the sake of consistency, regardless of the individuals’
preference (e.g., Wachirawuth instead of Vajiravudh); however, in the
References and the Bibliography names are entered in the translitera-
tion favoured by the individual author. Names are listed in the Index in
the romanized form adopted in the book, followed in parenthesis by the
individual’s preferred form. Following common usage, historic figures and
authors are entered in the Bibliography and index by their first name.
Italicized Thai words are not pluralized (e.g., wat for both singular and
plural). Chinese words and names are romanized according to the Pinyin
system of phonetic transcription.
Introduction:
Civilization, Globalization
and the Thai Nation
Saffron-robed monks, slender dancers, monumental ruins, gilded
Buddha images, exquisite handicrafts – here are some of the stereo-
typical images of Thailand featured in travel guidebooks and adver-
tisements. As always, tourism promotion formats real aspects of a
country’s physical and cultural landscapes into instantly recogniz-
able clichés to allow easy product identification. In the case of
Thailand, the appeal of such clichés of exoticism made the country
one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations over the last
two decades or so. This international popularity generated wealth
but also fears of an erosion of the distinctive Thai identity, leading
academics and bureaucrats to rally behind the cri du cœur, ‘We love
Thai culture!’ Concurrently, the national agency for the promotion
of tourism reassured prospective visitors about the country’s
enduring traditions in the face of rapid modernization with the
slogan: ‘Thailand remembers its gracious past and anticipates its
dynamic future.’
Although never formally colonized, Thailand was exposed to
Western influences (and interferences) as much as the rest of South-
east Asia – if not more, in fact. One aspect of the culture of colonial-
ism on which scholars have recently focused is the documentation
of the history and archaeology of the subjected countries. In
Thailand too, pre-modern narratives of the past, in which the secu-
lar and the religious and the mythical and the historical were fused
7
thailand
together, were replaced by empirical history, which became an
instrument for the legitimization of the modernizing monarchy
and later a fundamental ally to the nationalist ideology. Because it
had no need to account for the rupture in the traditional political
order caused by Western colonialism elsewhere in the region,
Thailand’s historical narrative could locate the nation’s origins in
the thirteenth century by virtue of the secular continuity of the two
institutions – the monarchy and the Buddhist monastic order –
upon which the third pillar of the state’s symbolic trinity – the
nation itself – is predicated.
This book considers the emergence and consolidation of mod-
ern Thailand in the form, not of a diachronic narration of events,
but of a thematic examination of the social, political, cultural
and intellectual forces that shaped the process of state formation
and nation building. To write the history of a country outside the
chronological framework that places historical actors and events in
a linear narrative may seem unorthodox; but while possibly more
demanding on the reader, this approach seeks to highlight the
relationship of the forces constitutive of the Thai nation-state to
that constellation of phenomena – from imperialism to nationalism,
from urbanization to the diffusion of mass media, from the institu-
tionalization of religion to the politicization of youth – characteristic
of modernity in both metropolitan and colonial and post-colonial
contexts. Situating, historically as well as conceptually, the emer-
gence of modern Thailand in the wider process of the emergence
of the modern world is important because of the entrenched view
of the exceptionality of Thai nation building in the regional ambit
of South-east Asia. This book is thus intended as an introduction
(admittedly partial and perhaps even idiosyncratic) as much as a
reinterpretation of Thai modern history.
The seven interconnected themes that give the chapters their
titles form the set of analytical prisms though which the history
of Thailand is reframed in this book. Chapter One, ‘Landscapes’,
describes the geographical, ethnic and cultural features of the king-
dom and its inhabitants as they were shaped by the nation building
project. Chapter Two, ‘Boundaries’, examines the delineation and
modification of the nation’s territorial, social and gendered spaces.
Chapter Three, ‘Institutions’, considers the monarchy, the Buddhist
8