Customer Reviews

A History of Thailand

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The authors of this compact Cambridge University Press history of Thailand deliver on their promise. This is a vintage CUP product: balanced, full of measured opinion, error-free in typography and layout, sweeping without shallowness.

There is not a better one-volume entrance to this fascinating but lesser-known South East Asian Country.

Taking the nation-state seriously, the authors show how an ethnically diverse region with formidable Chinese influence and lineage gradually took shape as the somewhat mythical 'Thai people'. Known as Siam until modern times, Thailand was an ally of the US during its Vietnam era with mixed results when the GIs arrived for R&R and even more traumatic adjustments when they took their dollars and left.

Later the hot money of the greater Asian Tigers moved here from Taiwan and Japan, only to migrate to China when cheaper labor became available to foreigners in that country.

The Thai are nothing if not survivors. Nor were they ever fully colonized, a badge of honor in a region that knew perhaps too much of European and Asian pretenders to do just that.

I knew nothing of this country s history and now I m confident of boring people to death on the subject.
The three factors that make the nation; Buddhism,the Monarchy and rice agriculture, are covered in clear detail.
From the first chapter, the early years unfold through early settlers,land reclaimation and conflict.
Later chapters explain the use of Western advisors brought in to modernise and the final creation of a Nation State only some 100 years ago.
I bought based on other reviews against other books on the subject and have not been disapointed.

This book is primarily a history from the current line of kings (roughly 1800) through the present. Thus, if you want to learn how modern Thailand was formed, it is an excellent source. If you are looking for earlier information, it is very sketchy.

I am a Thai and since my childhood I have read many history books on our nation. All of those books is written by Thai, mostly in the view of historians. This book looks into Thai history from the view of economist. That makes it unique and more interesting (at least for me). For the readers who want to know about Thai history, this book should be the first one to read.

As another previously stated, the early years prior to the Chakri Dynasty are very poorly covered. The Chakri Dynasty coverage up to the time of RAMA the 6th is not very bad, but somewhat vague and not in-depth enough in relation to the Monarchs` rule. Much credibility was also lost when the great fakir/fraud Anna Leonowen`s 1871 fabrication was written as fact. This left me wondering how deep the research was done, or was much of the material heresay. A pivotal event, the Paknam Incident and its aftermath were very sparsely covered as well. The years of RAMA the 7th and the rise of Pridi and Phibun were done well, but this is where the book VERY steeply begins to degenerate. There is much evidence today of Pridi`s involvement in the 1946 regicide, but this puzzlingly is very sparsely covered. Only later in the RAMA the 9th chapters does the real authors` bias begin to seep in deeper and deeper into the text. The authors (one a very liberal prof at Chula BTW) begin to memorialize waxingly the communist movement in Thailand in the 1930s painting Pridi as almost a saint (early Paris trained communist forefather) while his rival is repeatedly compared to Hitler and Mussolini. Later the arch nemisis of the Thais unapolegetically becomes the Yanks by the 1950s. From chapter 7 on up it is the continually the bloody Yanks who are the root of all Thailand`s modern day problems. They also alude to if the Thais had followed the lead of the CPT Thammasat students then Thailand would be so much better off today...(kind of like those other great SE Asian Marxist economic success stories: Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Burma). Well anyway the communist party members of Thailand are the heroes while the current King is painted as a clueless bumbling, but cheerful puppet to whichever way the winds blew until 1973. At that time he showed backbone according to the authors, but then went back into his flower gardens of Hua Hin. The overall anti-monarchy and anti-Yank bias grew rather tedious after awhile and it was indeed difficult to weed through the last 100 pages of the book. If you indeed want a truer version of Thai history, I would recommend Wyatt`s book. It is much longer and probably a bit more academic, but it is not a student primer on SE Asian socialism advocacy. Both these authors seem very learned and articulate; it is sad that they could not keep their leftist ideology out of a very complex nation`s history that is far more complex than simple "left" or "right" analogies.

This is a great introduction to Thai history and is especially strong on understanding the important role of the Chinese immigrants and merchant family dynasties in the political and economic roles in Siam and Thailand. I have read several books on Thai history and expected this book to repeat what I had already knew but to my delight I learned a great deal. For those who want to explore this subject further I would recommend the works by Wyatt and of course the classic history by Prince Damrong.

Thailand is admittedly very difficult to understand the political situation there seems out of control and incomprehensible to many in the West. That being said, Baker and Pasuk's A History of Thailand is the best one-volume history of the country I've seen and will do much to explain modern Thai politics.

A History of Thailand is organized chronologically, but each chapter also focuses on a specific theme. For example, the reigns of Kings Mongkut and Chulalongkorn are under the chapter "Reform" and the chapter places a heavy emphasis on their state-building measures. The authors do a particularly good job of not getting too bogged down in names, dates, and places and instead focusing on the big picture.

The book is also fairly up to date (this is the 3rd revised edition). Of course, events in Bangkok are shifting quickly, but this book does about as a good a job as any of giving you the history you need to understand modern Thailand.

Unfortunately, the book does take a "past is prologue" approach to history before the 20th century. Everything before the end of Chulalongkorn's reign (1910) is covered in 90 pages. I understand the authors' limitations on space, but at times it seems the early years fly by a bit too quickly (Mongkut, we hardly knew ye). For more on pre-20th century Thailand, David Wyatt's Thailand: A Short History might be better.

Overall, I can't think of a better history of Thailand to recommend to somebody who wants to learn more about this troubled country.

If you're looking for a readable and historically accurate introduction to Thai history, this is it. Look no further! This is a great improvement over Wyatt's tome, which is more widely read as "the" introductory book, but is really sub-par in its representations of historical realities. These authors (finally!) do a good job, within the constraints of the book's length, of explaining how an array of feudal city-states were eventually consolidated and, basically, colonized by Bangkok powers, resulting eventually in the nation-state of Thailand. A good companion book: "Siam Mapped" by Thongchai Winichakul. Finally someone did it right!

Having visited Thailand a couple of times I knew some of the basic history. This book helps fill in the gaps in my knowledge and tells the story of Thailand from the pre-nation days. The focus is mainly on the 20th century and to some extent the mid- to late- 19th. This makes perfect sense as there was no "Thailand" before that time or at least before Bangkok became the capital. There is some time spent dealing with the small kingdoms that were part of what eventually became Siam and later Thailand as well as how the monarchy changed over time. But the book mostly deals with how the nation-state came about and how it evolved.

The style is eminently readable and very well-researched and documented. Obviously a book such as this is aimed at a fairly limited audience. It has been a fine commuting companion for me.

It is fascinating to see how history in Thailand keeps on repeating itself even to this very day.