Grace Charm D.

Carretero BA Political Science/ 2008-34359

PS 178 Prof. Tuazon

THAILAND: A CRYPTO-COLONIAL BUFFER (The Political Context of Non-Colonialism in Thailand) Thailand waves its flag as the only country in Southeast Asia not taken under the umbrella of the Europeans in the colonial period. This entails two points: It is either Thai people clenched its fist against the foreign entities or inherently, they are diplomatic enough to shell-out some of their peripheries for political necessity. In any case, it is worth flipping the pages of Siams, or in a contemporary sense, Thailands cunning political history. Turning over to the first leaf, to the late 1800s, Thailand has already been engaged in military disputes against its neighboring countries. Like the rest of the world, Thailand endeavors to raise itself among the others to earn political, hegemonic power in this so called power struggles. With its supremacy, its clout extended toward conquering Malaysia in the south, Laos in the north, Burma in the west and Cambodia in the east. Meanwhile, as western invasions gradually extended toward the Asian continent, specifically France and Britain, they collided at Thailand. As such, Thailand got into a tactful sacrifice.1 Thongchai Winichakul of the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, in his article, A Short History of the Long Memory of the Thai Nation, stressed that Thailands great leaders made necessary sacrifices of some territories to preserve the countrys independence. The territorial sacrifices were the traditional vassals who never considered themselves parts of Siam. Laos was even grateful of French for liberating it from Siam. 2 He further laid emphasis on the fact that, to avoid armed conflict among themselves (colonizers) over their colonies, they established Thailand as a neutral zone, a buffer of their colonial territories. This hence is a matter of geo-politics that paved the way to the establishment of Anglo-French Convention of 1896, assuring Thailands independence.3 Such autonomy may, in an essence, has in itself a pseudo character. In an economic perspective, Thailand never has sovereignty at all. It is still submerged in the colonial economy since the mid-19th century where both the Europeans and the local elites acquired benefits. The Thai elites themselves gave way to modernization and in turn honed their legal and political systems to fit in the Western standards, with extraterritoriality as the catalyst. Such changes include territorial administration, mapping, and the functionalized bureaucracy.4 The mode of imperializing Thailand can perhaps be likened to that of the Philippines via the imposition of structural adjustment programs as administered by the IMF-WB. These reformations in the Siamese themselves were not out of self-rule but were driven by Western ideas and political models and in fact under Western regulation. In this extent, Thailand gained independence in a sense that it was not essentially or directly colonized for it was not needed at all. Whatever the case may be, it responded very well to the colonial whims.

And it is in this light that Thailand became known as a crypto-colony of the West for it went into a condition of partial colonization or, according to Winichakul, a colonial condition that did not appear so. Such reformations did not happen smoothly. Still, it was bombarded with a plethora of resistance coming from the conservatives within the ruling class and a number of local powers repressed by the new system of territorial governance. This may be attributed to the idea that these local powers themselves were then benefiting from the old regime and changing the institutional structure and governance became a threat to their status. The old regime is the main actor for reforms, the absolute monarchy created the modern state and bureaucracy, the reformed Buddhist Sangha established modern education, at least from the perspective of Thai historians.5 However, these were no big deal for the reformists and did not challenge the already altered systems. Thai monarch adhered to the notion of self-civilization, which, from the traditional point of view, was believed to be the key to Thais becoming an independent country. But this was just a myth. In fact, Thais royal elites have in them the desire to be known as part of the worlds elites. However, although they supposed that they were successful in this case, there is no proof. As such, it is just an assumed recognition so they would be able to implant the idea of their being supreme over the others in a domestic context. That was never a propaganda against the colonial entity. The self-civilizing process was enforced under foreign control. This then paved the way for the creation of nation and royal nationalism (monarchism) especially in the 19th to 20th century. To quote Winichakul, The primary mission of nationalism in Siam from its beginning was to reaffirm the states control and supremacy rather than to liberate from the aliens rule.6 Hence, Thailands crypto-colonial characteristic is justified. By re-orienting their political and economic systems in accordance to the Maxims of the West, it can be said that Thailand had a partial cleansing of its traditional mode of governance. Michael Herzfeld, in his article entitled The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value, described a crypto-colonial condition as the adoption of bureaucratically conceived, fundamentally positivistic understanding of territorial nation-state.7 In the case of Thailand, it became a geo-political colony of Britain and France in the light of Herzfelds argument. Thailands giving up of its territories and reformations of its administrative institutions to gain its right to self-rule marked its crypto-colonial shape. To further the analysis, Herzfeld in-depthly critiqued that Thailand took a condition where its independence marked a symbolic and material dependence on the colonial powers. (Herzfeld, The Conceptual Allure of the West: Dilemmas and Ambiguities of Crypto-Colonialism in Thailand). Although Political Authoritarianism and Democratic Participation may be considered as products of local system, Western ideas are manifested in the existence of a strong elite group that established the concept of nation-state that represented colonial whims. Moreover, Herzfeld discussed the elites institutionalization of concepts like decorum, law and order illuminating a very Western mode of governance. Another is that, there is an implicit bureaucratization of culture which is implanted in their social norms as rules and laws on diplomatic discipline, city planning and centralized government10. These displayed an international dimension of political system incorporated with it being imperialized. As such, it is also evident that apart from economic injections, there also seems to be some use of political

and economic power to exalt and spread the values and habits of a foreign culture at the expense of a native culture."8 Therefore, Thailands political character can then be said to be a hybrid system from the perspective of comparative politics.9 In it is a social diversity reflected in its character of being a semi-colonized country or indirectly, a crypto-colony of the West. In whatever case, such political context became the pillar of its current nationalism and governmental structure.

Notes:
1

Winichakul, Thongchai. (1994). A Short History of the Long Memory of the Thai Nation. Retrieved at http://web.uvic.ca/~anp/Public/posish_pap/Winichakul.pdf.

Thongchai Winichakul. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geobody of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Thongchai Winichakul. 1995. Changing Landscape of the Past: New Histories in Thailand since 1973. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 26, no. 1 (March): 99-120.

4 5 6 7

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Herzfeld, Michael. (2005). The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. Retrieved December 11, 2010. www.alanmacfarlane.com/ancestors/herzfeld.htm.

Tomlinson, John.Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. Posted by John N. Ponsaran. Retrieved at http://jk22b.blogspot.com.

Lawson, Kay. (1998).The Human Polity. Houton Mifflin Company, USA. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.

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