Northeast Thailand: An Historical Perspective

Abstract

One of the earliest and most consistent themes in Thailand's history has been the steady process by which cultural and linguistic minorities have been integrated into the national society. The early Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayudhya had to absorb large Mon and Khmer populations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the later Ayudhya kingdom came to incorporate within itself substantial numbers of captives taken in wars with the Khmers, Chams, Vietnamese, Malays, Mons, and Burmese. Both the Ayudhya kingdom and its successor kingdom at Bangkok were able similarly to assimilate large numbers of Chinese as late as the beginning of the current century. The integration of ethnic Thai minorities, however, is a relatively more recent feature of history. Unlike the Mons, Khmers, Chinese and war captives, who were sharply distinctive culturally and linguistically and who lived near the capital, the substantial Thai minorities of the North, the South, and the Northeast share a common culture and language with the Thai of the Central Plains; and the areas in which they live were brought fully within the national polity only within the past century. The pressures and techniques which served earlier to move non-Thai minorities into the national culture have by these very facts been much less effective in their operation on the Thai minorities: the people of the North, South, and Northeast have not been subject to the same linguistic and social pressure, either qualitatively or quantitatively; they have not lived nor have they been forced to operate in close proximity to the Central Thai; intermarriage has been much less frequent; and they have much deeper-rooted and betterdeveloped local and regional sentiments. The four of mobility which Mr. Kirsch describes in operation among the Phu Thai-the Buddhist monkhood, the civil service, secular education, and the pai thiao (going around) patternare common to most Buddhist, valley Thai societies. In their local and regional contexts these channels historically have served to skim off many of the most able young men from the villages and put their talents at the service of the community. Since the sudden political integration of the North, Northeast, and South in the decades bracketing the turn of the century, the national government has attempted to plug the three institutionalized channels existing at the local and regional level into a national network.' This is