From Works in Progress, a media company promoting economic growth.
I'm sure a credible argument could be made in the opposite direction with a different case study - i.e. celebrating their own identity even if it bemuses international markets / imperialists (Japan and manga/anime for example).
Of course, it's an interesting study, but do all remember to resist the temptation to take too much from it!
Entertaining and educational historical narrative, much of it was new to me. The main idea is that kings of Siam willingly and actively embraced European culture and modernization efforts, unlike other countries in Asia which resisted and implemented them reactively, often by force.
This included imposing unified national language and cultural homogeneity across their territory, with centralized government, laws, administration. The other side of that is the suppression of regional languages and culture, as it happened during European nation-building with Welsh, Gaelic, Breton, Occitan, Alsatian, German and Italian dialects. Similarly in China, Japan, and elsewhere.
The building of telegraph lines, railways, and schools helped solidify nation state authority. I wonder how that relates to the internet, as a tool of communication as well as social control and centralizing power.
A way to summarize how Thailand resisted colonization is that it colonized itself, and successfully adapted culturally to the wave of Europeanization and modern global order of nation states.
It very definitely patterned its behavior on colonizer to survive - even becoming a local-sphere colonizer itself, interestingly. Definitely a case of "if you can't beat 'em, (temporarily) join 'em."
Always interesting to read how something very difficult was done very well. Understanding the West's true and purported motivations, bending their own culture - choosing what to adopt or not and how - without breaking, ceding some land, and it all working out in the end. Quite remarkable.
There's a lot of stuff there that needed to succeed in several different ways (technical, local population, foreign image) to work, and it did.
Comparing this article's description of Siam definitely not getting colonized:
> In the face of overwhelming military force, Chulalongkorn ceded the territory, making a necessary concession to preserve the kingdom as a whole. Siam was forced to cede territory to the French in what is now Laos and Cambodia, creating much of the modern borders of Thailand. The French established a demilitarized zone along the Mekong, and the Siamese had to pay an indemnity of three million francs. European powers readily resorted to gunboat diplomacy but even here, France felt compelled to frame its demands in terms of legitimate Vietnamese territorial claims rather than naked conquest.
> Between 1893 and 1909, Siam would cede around 40 percent of its territory to France and Britain. But the strategic retreat meant Chulalongkorn preserved what mattered most: the political independence of Siam’s core territories.
with its contrasting description of Burma definitely getting colonized:
> Following its defeats in the Anglo-Burmese Wars of 1824–26 and 1852, Burma had been forced to surrender four provinces, pay a crippling £1 million indemnity (about $160 million today), and accept the presence of a British overseer with veto power over the king’s decisions.
...
> When Britain manufactured border disputes to complete Burma’s annexation in 1885, Mindon’s modernization efforts provided no protection against a colonial power that was, by that point, committed to conquest.
It rather seems to me like Siam was about two decades into a process that would usually take a few decades more, but got a respite due to World War I distracting the colonizers. (Maybe an even better counterexample to the article's thesis that adopting the trappings of Western civilization protected against invasion by European powers.)
An interesting and standard narrative for how Thailand avoided colonization. There's a lot to commend it.
The biggest criticism I usually see of this narrative is that the British and the French may have also seen Thailand as a neutral buffer zone between their respective empires. By staying out of Thailand, they reduced the risk of conflict between them, supposedly.
I have no idea how valid this idea is, or how much of a factor it would have been, I'm not a historian.
The two narratives are not mutually exclusive. In contrast to other parts of the world, the English and French would have just divided the territory with arbitrary lines. Why did they suddenly need a buffer zone?
Rather as this history describes, the Thai monarchy and government appears to have modernized (Westernized?) just in time to be able thread a needle between two empires, playing them off each other to maintain independence.
It is worth noting that the word "Thai" has come to mean "free" in the eponymous language. Thailand literally means "land od the free".
Note that this history conveniently ends before World War II.
I've also seen this suggested before, often enough and by historians that I'd say it's at least a well known theory. The fact that this article doesn't even mention it makes me a but suspicious that it's biased.
Of course the reality of nation state politics is complex and there's never going to be a single "true" theory.
My suspicion here is that the buffer theory takes agency away from the Thai and makes it seem like just luck, while this article does the opposite, and the reality is probably a big mess somewhere in between those.
If Siam realized that there was value in being a buffer, rather than a warzone, and made the changes necessary to become that buffer so that accepting it as such was better for the colonial powers than trying to take it, that’s not taking away agency; that’s standard politics for small states nestled between major powers.
That sounds like a viewpoint that would be vulnerable to just accepting everything that is as preordained. Every country's destiny is heavily influenced by their neighbours.
It is by no means a given that Britain and France would see a need for a neutral buffer zone given that the home countries of the two powers only had a small channel separating them in Europe. They'd be used to the idea of sharing a border. We can all but guarantee that both of them had people looking at the map every so often and asking if it made sense to officially add Siam to the imperial holdings.
It depends whether one considers Thailand to have been part of informal empire or not, much like the British influence over Portugal, Chile and Argentina.
Either way, Thailand was also a Cold War hold out. It bordered Cambodia, Laos and Burma, and Vietnam by sea, all of which became Communist-run. The west helped prop it up.
There is a whole other argument about Thailand's current relationship with the west, which is complex to say the least.
They decided to “nation-state”. The border theory doesn’t hold since colonial nations border each other pretty much everywhere else.
The reality is, a nation state (a la french model) is much more powerful than the primitive kingdom structure or any other structure really. Most of these kingdoms/empires didn’t have education for the masses or mass levies.
All of Thailand's neighbours to the north fell to Communism. There was a major attempt to make Malaya (as was) Communist as well, which failed.
However, I'm sceptical of the term nation state. I don't consider France to be a homogenous nation, since it contains areas like Brittany, Alsace and Basque areas. Likewise, Thailand has some indigenous minorities.
I think I should be more precise, a Modern nation state. One that imposes laws afar to all minorities/regions, establish some institutions (medical/education/tax/etc..) and raise an army (check some african countries armies or the lack thereof).
The reason why I mentioned the french is because they were the first to modernize at a significant scale (which enabled them to take over all of Europe?) during their revolution.
> Likewise, Thailand has some indigenous minorities
I don't think I've ever been in a country that doesn't have indigenous minorities so I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. Maybe a very small country like Iceland could claim not to have any indigenous minorities? Otherwise they basically all do.
Put it this way. I am Scottish, and when people say somewhere like the UK is a "nation state", I'm sceptical. Scottish attitudes towards the UK range from total attachment to total alienation, but with the majority maintaining some level of Scottish national identity within that. I've met people from France who did not consider themselves French but to be Breton, Basque, Corsican etc as their national identity.
I don't know much about Thailand's minorities, but if it is anything like some Asian countries such as Nepal or the Philippines, its national identity is probably more complex.
You're right to mention Iceland, although by area it isn't that small! Remote island nations probably qualify better as nation states than conglomerates such as Thailand and France.
>people from France who did not consider themselves French but to be Breton, Basque, Corsican
Corsicans, sure. But, in my experience, for Bretons and Basques it is very rare for them to deny their French identity in the way that plenty of Scots deny their Britishness. For whatever reason, the layered-identity model actually seems to work in France.
You can always break some UK laws and find out whether you are ruled from London. Expensive experiment for sure, but I'm certain of the outcome.
Likewise, the Catalans (a region in Spain) recently found out whether they belong to the nation state Spain. Their seditious "leaders" were thrown into prison by Spain.
From Works in Progress, a media company promoting economic growth.
I'm sure a credible argument could be made in the opposite direction with a different case study - i.e. celebrating their own identity even if it bemuses international markets / imperialists (Japan and manga/anime for example).
Of course, it's an interesting study, but do all remember to resist the temptation to take too much from it!
Entertaining and educational historical narrative, much of it was new to me. The main idea is that kings of Siam willingly and actively embraced European culture and modernization efforts, unlike other countries in Asia which resisted and implemented them reactively, often by force.
This included imposing unified national language and cultural homogeneity across their territory, with centralized government, laws, administration. The other side of that is the suppression of regional languages and culture, as it happened during European nation-building with Welsh, Gaelic, Breton, Occitan, Alsatian, German and Italian dialects. Similarly in China, Japan, and elsewhere.
The building of telegraph lines, railways, and schools helped solidify nation state authority. I wonder how that relates to the internet, as a tool of communication as well as social control and centralizing power.
A way to summarize how Thailand resisted colonization is that it colonized itself, and successfully adapted culturally to the wave of Europeanization and modern global order of nation states.
It very definitely patterned its behavior on colonizer to survive - even becoming a local-sphere colonizer itself, interestingly. Definitely a case of "if you can't beat 'em, (temporarily) join 'em."
Japan did the same. And its colonies (Taiwan, Korea) became similar sucesses inheriting the institutions and infrastructure.
Always interesting to read how something very difficult was done very well. Understanding the West's true and purported motivations, bending their own culture - choosing what to adopt or not and how - without breaking, ceding some land, and it all working out in the end. Quite remarkable.
There's a lot of stuff there that needed to succeed in several different ways (technical, local population, foreign image) to work, and it did.
Comparing this article's description of Siam definitely not getting colonized:
> In the face of overwhelming military force, Chulalongkorn ceded the territory, making a necessary concession to preserve the kingdom as a whole. Siam was forced to cede territory to the French in what is now Laos and Cambodia, creating much of the modern borders of Thailand. The French established a demilitarized zone along the Mekong, and the Siamese had to pay an indemnity of three million francs. European powers readily resorted to gunboat diplomacy but even here, France felt compelled to frame its demands in terms of legitimate Vietnamese territorial claims rather than naked conquest.
> Between 1893 and 1909, Siam would cede around 40 percent of its territory to France and Britain. But the strategic retreat meant Chulalongkorn preserved what mattered most: the political independence of Siam’s core territories.
with its contrasting description of Burma definitely getting colonized:
> Following its defeats in the Anglo-Burmese Wars of 1824–26 and 1852, Burma had been forced to surrender four provinces, pay a crippling £1 million indemnity (about $160 million today), and accept the presence of a British overseer with veto power over the king’s decisions.
...
> When Britain manufactured border disputes to complete Burma’s annexation in 1885, Mindon’s modernization efforts provided no protection against a colonial power that was, by that point, committed to conquest.
It rather seems to me like Siam was about two decades into a process that would usually take a few decades more, but got a respite due to World War I distracting the colonizers. (Maybe an even better counterexample to the article's thesis that adopting the trappings of Western civilization protected against invasion by European powers.)
An interesting and standard narrative for how Thailand avoided colonization. There's a lot to commend it.
The biggest criticism I usually see of this narrative is that the British and the French may have also seen Thailand as a neutral buffer zone between their respective empires. By staying out of Thailand, they reduced the risk of conflict between them, supposedly.
I have no idea how valid this idea is, or how much of a factor it would have been, I'm not a historian.
The two narratives are not mutually exclusive. In contrast to other parts of the world, the English and French would have just divided the territory with arbitrary lines. Why did they suddenly need a buffer zone?
Rather as this history describes, the Thai monarchy and government appears to have modernized (Westernized?) just in time to be able thread a needle between two empires, playing them off each other to maintain independence.
It is worth noting that the word "Thai" has come to mean "free" in the eponymous language. Thailand literally means "land od the free".
Note that this history conveniently ends before World War II.
I've also seen this suggested before, often enough and by historians that I'd say it's at least a well known theory. The fact that this article doesn't even mention it makes me a but suspicious that it's biased.
Of course the reality of nation state politics is complex and there's never going to be a single "true" theory.
My suspicion here is that the buffer theory takes agency away from the Thai and makes it seem like just luck, while this article does the opposite, and the reality is probably a big mess somewhere in between those.
If Siam realized that there was value in being a buffer, rather than a warzone, and made the changes necessary to become that buffer so that accepting it as such was better for the colonial powers than trying to take it, that’s not taking away agency; that’s standard politics for small states nestled between major powers.
That sounds like a viewpoint that would be vulnerable to just accepting everything that is as preordained. Every country's destiny is heavily influenced by their neighbours.
It is by no means a given that Britain and France would see a need for a neutral buffer zone given that the home countries of the two powers only had a small channel separating them in Europe. They'd be used to the idea of sharing a border. We can all but guarantee that both of them had people looking at the map every so often and asking if it made sense to officially add Siam to the imperial holdings.
It depends whether one considers Thailand to have been part of informal empire or not, much like the British influence over Portugal, Chile and Argentina.
Either way, Thailand was also a Cold War hold out. It bordered Cambodia, Laos and Burma, and Vietnam by sea, all of which became Communist-run. The west helped prop it up.
There is a whole other argument about Thailand's current relationship with the west, which is complex to say the least.
They decided to “nation-state”. The border theory doesn’t hold since colonial nations border each other pretty much everywhere else.
The reality is, a nation state (a la french model) is much more powerful than the primitive kingdom structure or any other structure really. Most of these kingdoms/empires didn’t have education for the masses or mass levies.
All of Thailand's neighbours to the north fell to Communism. There was a major attempt to make Malaya (as was) Communist as well, which failed.
However, I'm sceptical of the term nation state. I don't consider France to be a homogenous nation, since it contains areas like Brittany, Alsace and Basque areas. Likewise, Thailand has some indigenous minorities.
I think I should be more precise, a Modern nation state. One that imposes laws afar to all minorities/regions, establish some institutions (medical/education/tax/etc..) and raise an army (check some african countries armies or the lack thereof).
The reason why I mentioned the french is because they were the first to modernize at a significant scale (which enabled them to take over all of Europe?) during their revolution.
> Likewise, Thailand has some indigenous minorities
I don't think I've ever been in a country that doesn't have indigenous minorities so I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. Maybe a very small country like Iceland could claim not to have any indigenous minorities? Otherwise they basically all do.
Put it this way. I am Scottish, and when people say somewhere like the UK is a "nation state", I'm sceptical. Scottish attitudes towards the UK range from total attachment to total alienation, but with the majority maintaining some level of Scottish national identity within that. I've met people from France who did not consider themselves French but to be Breton, Basque, Corsican etc as their national identity.
I don't know much about Thailand's minorities, but if it is anything like some Asian countries such as Nepal or the Philippines, its national identity is probably more complex.
You're right to mention Iceland, although by area it isn't that small! Remote island nations probably qualify better as nation states than conglomerates such as Thailand and France.
>people from France who did not consider themselves French but to be Breton, Basque, Corsican
Corsicans, sure. But, in my experience, for Bretons and Basques it is very rare for them to deny their French identity in the way that plenty of Scots deny their Britishness. For whatever reason, the layered-identity model actually seems to work in France.
You can always break some UK laws and find out whether you are ruled from London. Expensive experiment for sure, but I'm certain of the outcome.
Likewise, the Catalans (a region in Spain) recently found out whether they belong to the nation state Spain. Their seditious "leaders" were thrown into prison by Spain.