Thongchai Winichakul - Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation

Siam Mapped : A History of the Geo-body of a Nation

By Thongchai Winichakul.

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS

ISBN10 | ASIN: 0824813375

PRINT ISBN13: 9780824813376

EBOOK ISBN13: 9780585239538

PUBLICATION DATE : 1994

The Presence of Nationhood

After denmark defeated Scotland in the first round of the World Cup soccer tournament in 1986, it was reported that 97 percent of Denmark's population of five million had tuned in to the telecast of the match. A TV announcer commented on the remaining 3 percent: Only the Swedes and the traitors must not have been watching. 1 The humor of this comment is revealing. It is a comic reference to the significance of nationhood in modern times. Yet its tragic aspects are countless. As the world approaches the twenty-first century, we witness the breakup of socialist Eastern Europe into serious ethnic and nationalist conflicts among the would-be states. Indeed, all over the planet there is conflict among people who identify themselves as part of a particular nation against another. The comment about the audience of the soccer match makes sense because the international competition evident in the statement implies the wider context of hostilities, rivalries, and antagonism among nations in other spheres. The comment was intelligible because it played with the normative perception of the nature of a nation and its relations to modern individuals.

On the one hand, it is generally supposed that a nation is a collective body to which individuals must belong. It is further presumed that a nation is an entity whose atoms or partsits nationalspossess a similar nature. A nation has essential traits commonly imbued in its members, who, moreover, have the same national interest. Patriotism, loyalty, and other affiliations in terms of ideas, sentiments, and practices appear to be natural relationships. On the other hand, it is always supposed that a nation exists in the global community of nations. That is to say, there are other nations who have other often alleged to be whatever is happening in those countries: the Other. Apart from mobilizing popular support behind the army, the broadcast is clearly part of the official industry to produce a standard of Thainess.

While these attempts at standardization aim for inarguable interpretations of Thainess, there are other contending interpretations. In all cases, however, they challenge the official view only in order to propose yet another standard of Thainess. To dissolve the notion of Thainess altogether is perhaps unthinkable. Even the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), the most radical opposition to the Thai establishment in recent history, achieved its successful ideological propagation in the late 1970s partly because of its strong nationalist sentiment, which was on the threshold of anti-Westernism. An obvious sign of this tendency was the somewhat puritanical character of its cultural programs calling for traditional, populist culture while attacking the influx of decadent Western culture and the hypocrisy of the state, which could not prevent the deterioration of Thai culture. A student leader who joined the party in the jungle and finally departed from it once remarked that, considering traditional values, the Communist Party inherits the Thai legacy more than observers recognize. 24 So far, Thai critics of the CPT have been silent on this point. But is it because they have not recognized this conservative characteristic of the CPT or is it an identical tendency commonly held by those critics as well?

Another contending interpretation of Thainess which is more recent and still influential is an intellectual tendency that attracts many people by its conservative radicalism. Basically it attacks the failure of modern Thai society in the light of Buddhist Thai tradition, arguing that modernity, capitalism, and consumerism have uprooted Thai people from the fundamentals of Thai civilizationhence the degradation of modern culture and the deterioration of morality and Buddhism in Thai society as a whole. In turn, it calls for a return to Thainess, the roots or fundamental values of Thai civilization, and the reassertion of Thai intellect, all of which are based on Buddhism.25 These people also oppose militarism and the establishment, since militarism is responsible for the degradation of Thai society and is in no way comparable to the monarchical leadership of the past.26

Some people of this current persuasion, moreover, propagate the idea that Thainess is deeply rooted in the ways of life and the intellect of the people, particularly the peasantry. Thainess and Thai intellect in this view are located in the countryside and originate from the opposite end of the elitist pole.27 Like the elitist Thainess, however, its opposition is Western culture. A book of poetry by a prime propagator of this view claims: autonomous in their own right, they were on the margins of many spheres of overlords' power. In other words, they were frontier towns from the perspective of the overlordseither their own frontier or that of the enemy. As frontier towns, they were left more or less independent and neglected, so long as there was no war between the overlords of the region. But in a war situation, any tributaries en route between the rivals would become the first victims. Under more lenient circumstances, a local ruler might be forced to submit himself to the force of the overlord; otherwise, he would be replaced by a loyalist of that overlord. In the worst case, either they would be forced to supply food and manpower, or they would be plundered, destroyed, and depopulated, in order to deprive the enemy of supplies. As a Siamese commander put it in the case of Phuan in 1833:

Be careful not to let any Phuan people return to their home town. In the dry season, keep trying to remove those Phuan who are still in the town. If they are cooperative, convince them; if after persuasion alone there are any Phuan left, the king proposes to use force to move them completely. Don't leave any potential food supply for the enemy.

By all these methods, the tiny tributaries regarded as frontier muang were forced to change allegiance from time to time for their survival. The sovereignty of these states was therefore ambiguous and complicated by the shifts of allegiance and the reverses following conquests. But an occupation was always temporary, and the aim of a takeover was in fact to compel a tributary ruler to submit his allegiance, which by no means guaranteed the conqueror's exclusive possession. Despite the conqueror's claim, these frontier tributaries were still multiply sovereign.

In the indigenous polity in which the power field of a supreme overlord radiated like a candle's light, these tiny chiefdoms were always located in the overlapping arena of the power fields.14 Unlike the border between Siam and Burma which kept both sides apart, all other borders of Siam were shared by others. Their frontiers were overlapping. In the indigenous interstate relations, the overlapping margin of two power fields was not necessarily considered a problem unless it served as a bridge for the enemy to invade. Multiple sovereignty was well recognized by the parties involved as the status quo. Even Chulalongkorn and his Burmese counterpart preferred leaving Chiang Saen under both overlords.15 Thus the ambiguous sovereignty of these frontier tributaries was useful and desired by the overlords. Instead of establishing an independent state as a buffer zone, in this indigenous practice the overlords shared sovereignty over the buffer zones as long as the rulers of the frontier tributaries were loyal to all relevant overlords. Not only had Siam never been bounded by the modern kind of boundary but it was also surrounded by common frontiers, the shared borders.