A History of Thailand

Book Description
This lively, accessible book is the first new history of Thailand in English for two decades. Drawing on new Thai-language research, it ranges widely over political, economic, social, and cultural themes. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit reveal how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree labour evolved into a rural society of smallholder peasants and an urban society populated mainly by migrants from Southern China. They trace how a Buddhist cosmography adapted to new ideas of time and space, and a traditional polity was transformed into a new nation-state under a strengthened monarchy. The authors cover the contests between urban nationalists, ambitious generals, communist rebels, business politicians, and social movements to control the nation-state and redefine its purpose. They describe the dramatic changes wrought by a booming economy, globalization, and the evolution of mass society.


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This book covers the past three centuries of Thai history. Over this period, a landscape of sparsely populated forest and jungle was transformed into villages and paddy fields. An older order of mandarin nobles and unfree labor was replaced by a rural society of smallholder peasants and an urban society populated mainly by migrants from southern China. Through the twentieth century, Thailand has been drawn into the international system, the American camp in the Cold War, the economic ambit of rising Japan, and the forces of globalization. The balance between rural and urban in the economy, society, and culture changed rapidly with the coming of 'development' in the 1950s. Over recent decades, the country has been transformed by the evolution of mass society. Control of the nation state is still contested between forces with a patriarchal belief in change from above, and advocates of democracy and liberal values.


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