Arjun Subrahmanyan

The nationalist plot of modern Thai history stresses the kingdom’s exceptionalism as the only un-colonized state in Southeast Asia and highlights the steadiness of unbroken monarchy. Critics of the established narrative by contrast argue that Siam/Thailand bore many similarities to neighboring satellites of the Western powers that subordinated traditional authority and hence was a “semi-colony” of the West rather than a truly independent state. This paper argues that the semi-colonial view remains a better frame to study modern Thai history and that semi-coloniality produced a hybrid political culture among an educated new generation born around 1900. The young generation forged the popular struggles that after the 1932 end of the absolute monarchy sought to build a more fair and equitable society. These aspirations and the hybrid political culture of the time are a crucial but often overlooked part of modern Thai history.

Influenced by cultural studies, anthropology, and literary criticism, many historians of colonial and postcolonial societies cite Western powers’ notions of civilization as a partial explanation for their political and economic dominance. The effects of Western hegemony are often presented as creating a two-tiered world that, regardless of how self-serving or racist Western imperial claims to superiority might have been, shows how developing societies’ adaptation to modernity are consistently evaluated on the basis of their assimilation of Western standards of personal behavior. By contrast, few histories of the third world show a convergence in globalizing processes—or “habitus,” as Jory terms societies’ civilizing behaviors—stemming from common politico-historical changes. The reason is an unfamiliarity with methods pioneered in historical sociology, coupled with a belief that such methods privilege the West or privilege Eurocentrism. In an approach inspired by Norbert Elias’ The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Hoboken, 2000; orig, pub. Basil, 1939),...

The U.S. and the War in the Pacific, 1941-45 analyzes the Pacific War with a focus on America’s participation in the conflict.

Fought over a great ocean and vast battlefields using the most sophisticated weapons available, the Pacific War transformed the modern world. Not only did it introduce the atomic bomb to the world, it also reshaped relations among nations and the ways in which governments dealt with their own peoples, changed the balance of power in the Pacific in fundamental ways, and helped to spark nationalist movements throughout Asia. This book examines the strategies, technologies, intelligence capabilities, home-front mobilization, industrial production, and resources that ultimately enabled the United States and its allies to emerge victorious. Major themes include the impact of war, conceptions of race, Japanese perspectives on the conflict, and America’s relations with its allies. Using primary documents, maps, and concise writing, this book provides students with an accessible introduction to an important period in history.

Incorporating recent scholarship and conflicting interpretations, the book provides an insightful overview of the topic for students of modern American history, World War II, and the Asia Pacific.

While the suffering of Allied prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma railway during the Second World War is well documented, much less is known about the Asian labourers employed on the project. Focusing on Thai and Chinese workers in Thailand, this study argues that although Asian labourers often suffered in a way comparable to prisoners of war, they also exercised some agency in their dealings with the Japanese. Many workers were motivated to work on the railway by relatively high wages, and at times they employed physical resistance against their treatment. Those workers resident in Thailand often exercised the option of absconding from railway work sites. At times, as elsewhere in the war, race became a central issue and showed not merely social prejudice but political calculation as well. The Thai government acted to protect Thai workers from the excesses of Japanese employment, but this was often at the expense of Chinese labourers resident in Thailand, outsiders who bore the brunt of harsh treatment.

Thailand's monarchy and military have dominated the narrative of the country's modern history, and their leadership is often accepted as evidence of a cultural preference for authoritarianism. Despite a long history of military coups that have upended the course of the country's democracy, however, Thailand's democratic history is a vital though largely ignored aspect of modern Thai society. Based on extensive archival research, Amnesia delves into the social and political beginnings of Thai democracy and explains how a bloodless revolution against the monarchy in 1932 introduced a constitutional democracy and ignited enduring hopes for a fairer society and a more representative government. The "People's Party," a small group of commoners who staged the revolution in the name of democracy, found an enthusiastic audience for their bold populist rhetoric among wide swathes of society. In Amnesia, Arjun Subrahmanyan illustrates how the idealism of the first decade of Thai democracy, now largely forgotten, still shapes Thai society.

The monarchy and the country’s military dominate discussions of Thai political history. The country’s democratic history meanwhile is much less well known. To many people, historiography – the history of the writing of history – is a dull affair that only concerns academics. But the changing representations of the origins of democracy in the 1932 revolution that ended the absolute monarchy show the politics of history as a continuous problem that still shapes Thai society. The interpretations have been bound to the bitter partisanship that has accompanied a history of political instability. This article examines the changing interpretations of 1932 in their historical contexts and demonstrates the central antagonism towards the ideal of popular sovereignty, despite its long history in the country, that is still held by the military and monarchic elite.

Buddhist modernist movements transformed the religious practice and social engagement of one of the world's principal faiths in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These movements produced diverse effects on Asian societies which, despite generic similarities, are best understood in particular socio-historical contexts. This article examines the work of a group of young Thai monks and laymen who had an ambitious aim to morally improve and empower people; and the practical adaptation of this impulse in a society in transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional democracy in the 1930s. Like many modernist movements, their work was innovative. But it also was an inheritance of religious and political history, and the Thai modernist case thus shows a contradiction between novelty and custom that was resolved in a way that blunted the movement's reformist energy.