In The crown and the capitalists, Wasana Wongsurawat offers a bold and new interpretation of Thailand's development into a modern nation-state and how it devised an official brand of nationalism in relation to the Chinese minority. The book traces the metamorphosing relationship between the monarchy and Chinese capitalists through changing domestic politics and external challenges, from the threat of colonialism, the rise of imperial Japan, to the polarising global politics during the Cold War.
This monograph draws on primary sources from three different archives in three countries: Thailand, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Wongsurawat has woven these pieces of evidence into a compelling narrative, with sharp and thoughtful analyses, interpretations, and discussions. The differing perspectives of Thailand and China gained from these archival sources shed new light on historical events that have been written about hundreds of times over. As emphasised in the Introduction, a transnational perspective is necessary in understanding Thailand's nation-building. Not only were the Chinese an ethnic minority with close ties to their homeland, after the signing of ‘unequal’ treaties, many of them became British or French subjects and enjoyed extraterritoriality. To become a nation-state, the task of the Thai government was thus to achieve full sovereignty over its borders and citizens. The rest of the book is organised thematically and chronologically into five chapters.
Chapter 1 (Educating citizens) discusses the struggle between the Thai state and the Chinese community over education, at the heart of which were the differing perceptions of citizenship between China and Thailand. The Thai government believed that public education had two main goals: to train officials for the newly modernised bureaucracy and to shape individuals residing in Thailand into members of a modern nation. The Republic of China viewed the Chinese diaspora, regardless of their location, as having Chinese citizenship by blood, and thus that they should receive a Chinese education.
In chapter 2 (Publishing nations), Wongsurawat illustrates the propaganda war between King Vajiravudh and local Chinese newspapers. Chinese newspapers were not homogeneous and evolved over time both in their purpose and relationship with the Thai state. For Vajiravudh, the motivation for penning various op-eds was to communicate with the literate urban elite and manufacture a brand of Thai nationalism. Thailand, however, could only fully assert control over Chinese schools and Chinese newspapers after the treaties with colonial powers had been re-negotiated and extraterritoriality abolished. The cultural mandate and public education during the People's Party government in the early 1930s then became the new method of disseminating propaganda and instilling state-approved values in Thai citizens.
Chapter 3 (Economic Thai-ification) describes how Thai monarchs relied on the Chinese trade network to run the country's economy and enrich the crown, and how the People's Party attempted to dismantle this system. In doing so, Wongsurawat problematises the term ‘Thai-ification’, as it would imply that Thailand's economy was once ‘un-Thai’ and needed to be ‘Thai-ified’. In fact, the country's economy had always been in the hands of the ruling elite. In this chapter, the importance of the transnational perspective is emphasised: in the 1800s, China lost its position as the dominant power in Southeast Asia to Britain and France. This geopolitical shift pushed the Thai state to modernise and revise its relationship with Chinese capitalists.
The focus of chapter 4 (The Greater East Asia War) is how that war shaped Thai politics and the country's relationship with the ethnic Chinese and China. For Prime Minister Phibunsongkram, Japan was a superpower ally that was hostile to the Chinese, which could prove useful in disassembling the close relationship between the Chinese and royal elites. In entering an alliance with Japan, Phibunsongkram tied the survival of the People's Party to Japan's fortunes in the Second World War. The Free Thai Movement's legitimisation through Chinese and Allied recognition, and the subsequent downfall of the left-leaning faction in the movement, however, thwarted Phibunsongkram's aspirations and returned the royalist faction to power.
The fifth and last chapter of the book (The Cold War) examines how after 1945 the monarchy and Chinese capitalists regained dominance by aligning themselves with the United States, the most influential power in the Pacific Theatre at the time. After violence and riots in Thailand, conservative elites and Chinese capitalists collectively had ‘political amnesia’ and banded together to cement royalist nationalism and economic hegemony over the country.
This monograph offers an important contribution to the study of Thai history, the Chinese diaspora, colonialism in Southeast Asia, and the influence of global superpowers on domestic politics. Scholars in these fields will find the book useful and a compelling read. Beyond academia, this book coincides with the growing current political discourse in Thailand on what it means to be a ‘nation’. Wongsurawat's account will undoubtedly help many understand the historical causes of the political and economic forces that shaped Thailand into what it is today.
