Product Description

Covering the past three centuries of Thai history, this book reveals how a landscape of sparsely populated forest and jungle was transformed into villages and paddy fields, with a rural society of smallholder peasants and an urban society populated mainly by migrants from southern China. It demonstrates how throughout the twentieth century, Thailand has been drawn into the international system, the American camp in the Cold War, the economic gambit of rising Japan, and more recently, the forces of globalization. The authors also survey the country's transformation accompanying massive social evolution over recent decades. (Control of the nation state is still contested between forces with a patriarchal belief in change from above, and advocates of democracy and liberal values.)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #584900 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'As the most conceptual study of thailand yet it reaches a new level of sophistication.' BBC History Magazine

'Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit cover this ground with secure jusgement and great insight.' Times Literary Supplement

'In A History of Thailand, Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, two respected Bangkok-based scholars, offer a lively, highly readable account of modern Thai history, the first such history in English for two decades.' Financial Times

'[This book] is the first attempt in English to write a history of this country in the modern sense of 'history' ... This book is essential reading for anyone seriously interest in Thailand: how it came about; its present strengths and weaknesses; and its potential in the future of a very unstable world.' Journal of the Siam Society

'... an engaging and factually rich introduction to the history of modern Thailand.' South East Asia Research

'This is the first new history of Thailand for two decades, written by a husband and wife team who have already written a number of books on contemporary Thailand. Their challenge was to marshal coherently a deal of complicated and unfamiliar material.' Asian Affairs

About the Author
Christopher Baker writes regularly in the Thai and Asian regional press. He is the co-author of Thailand: Economy and Politics, Thailand's Boom and Bust, Thailand's Crisis and Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand.

Pasuk Phongpaichit is Professor of Economics at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. She has written widely in Thai and English on the Thai economy, Japanese investment, the sex industry, corruption, and the illegal economy.

Customer Reviews

excellent and balanced look at one of the lesser Tigers
The authors of this compact Cambridge University Press history of Thailand deliver on their promise. This is a vintage CUP product: balanced, full of measured opinion, error-free in typography and layout, sweeping without shallowness.

There is not a better one-volume entrance to this fascinating but lesser-known South East Asian Country.

Taking the nation-state seriously, the authors show how an ethnically diverse region with formidable Chinese influence and lineage gradually took shape as the somewhat mythical 'Thai people'. Known as Siam until modern times, Thailand was an ally of the US during its Vietnam era with mixed results when the GIs arrived for R&R and even more traumatic adjustments when they took their dollars and left.

Later the hot money of the greater Asian Tigers moved here from Taiwan and Japan, only to migrate to China when cheaper labor became available to foreigners in that country.

The Thai are nothing if not survivors. Nor were they ever fully colonized, a badge of honor in a region that knew perhaps too much of European and Asian pretenders to do just that.

An excellent book!
The defects of David Wyatt's book have long been evident; it is my own private theory that the man simply cannot write (he spent 20 years -- two decades! -- revising his first edition, and didn't improve it much).

This book, on the other hand, is lively and obviously interested in its subject! Perhaps most importantly, the authors know how to select and organize the information presented to the reader.

Anyone who asks me for a recommended history of Thailand in the future will get a recommendation for this book.

A History of Thailand
This book is primarily a history from the current line of kings (roughly 1800) through the present. Thus, if you want to learn how modern Thailand was formed, it is an excellent source. If you are looking for earlier information, it is very sketchy.