A History of Thailand
The standard modern history, strong on business families and state capital.
Summary
Baker and Phongpaichit wrote a general history of Thailand from the eighteenth century to the present, organised around the formation of the state, the economy and the social order rather than around dynastic chronology. Both authors have written extensively on Thai political economy, and Phongpaichit is an economist at Chulalongkorn University.
The interpretation is that modern Thailand was built by a centralising bureaucratic state, established under Chulalongkorn in the late nineteenth century in response to colonial pressure, which absorbed the Chinese commercial class into a Thai national identity and governed through a coalition of monarchy, military and bureaucracy. The authors trace the 1932 constitutional revolution, the military governments, the American alliance and the economic transformation of the 1960s and after, the growth of a business class and then a middle class, the 1997 financial crisis, and the rise of Thaksin Shinawatra as the first politician to build a mass electoral base outside the Bangkok establishment.
The economic sections are the strongest, covering rice agriculture and its taxation, the Chinese business networks, the shift to manufacturing exports, and the concentration of wealth in Bangkok relative to the north and northeast.
The authors write from a position critical of the royalist-military establishment, which readers should note, and their sympathies show in the treatment of Thaksin and of the 2006 coup. Later editions extend the coverage through subsequent coups and constitutional changes. The book is the standard single-volume history in English and is widely assigned, but it is a survey and specialists dispute particular interpretations, especially on the role of the monarchy.
Key takeaways 7
- Thailand's modern state was created by centralising bureaucratic reforms undertaken to resist colonial partition rather than by internal demand.
- The Chinese commercial class was absorbed into Thai national identity rather than remaining a separate minority, which shaped the business elite.
- A coalition of monarchy, military and bureaucracy governed Thailand for most of the twentieth century regardless of constitutional form.
- Economic growth from the 1960s created a business class and then a middle class whose political demands the old coalition could not accommodate.
- Wealth and public investment concentrated in Bangkok, which is the underlying basis of the country's political divisions.
- The 1997 financial crisis discredited the technocratic establishment and created the opening for Thaksin's electoral coalition.
- Thaksin was the first Thai politician to win power by mobilising rural voters with material policy rather than through establishment networks.
Who should read it
Investors and operators working in Thailand who need the political economy behind the country's recurring political instability.
About Pasuk Phongpaichit
Emeritus professor of economics at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok; writes on Thailand's economy, politics, corruption and inequality.
The Thailand books track one economy through a credit-fuelled boom, the 1997 devaluation and the political conflict that followed, measuring the informal economy and the business-political networks instead of assuming them away. Anyone underwriting Southeast Asian exposure finds here the local mechanics linking capital, patronage and policy.
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