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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
An interesting and standard narrative for how Thailand avoided colonization. There's a lot to commend it.<p>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.<p>I have no idea how valid this idea is, or how much of a factor it would have been, I'm not a historian.
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.<p>Of course the reality of nation state politics is complex and there's never going to be a single "true" theory.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
> Likewise, Thailand has some indigenous minorities<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
[dead]