Abstract

Reinventing Siam: Ideas and Culture in Thailand, 1920-1944

by

Arjun Subrahmanyan

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Peter Zinoman, Chair

In 1932, a small group of civilian and military bureaucrats staged a coup that deposed the Thai absolute monarchy and introduced a constitutional democracy. The dominant historiography of this event has focused on elite politics, and identified the coup as a "revolution" that fundamentally changed Thai history. My thesis, however, argues that an authoritarian political culture persisted despite the introduction of a democratic system and hence there was strong continuity between the old and new regimes. I argue that the real "revolution" of the period was intellectual and took place among middle-class society. Two more fundamental processes preceded and accompanied the irregular transition to a constitutional political system in interwar Siam, and both would be of much more profound social importance than 1932's tangled politics. "Outsiders" to the political and bureaucratic elite "insiders" developed two new discourses that challenged authoritarian politics. The first was a new conception of social integration and community that sought to end the starkly uneven development between the country and the city. Second, outsiders sought the creation of a modern self - critical, autonomous and cosmopolitan - as an agent of social welfare and enlightenment. I explain the discursive battle between insiders and outsiders and the central role of foreign ideas. Even as elite conservatism limited the new democracy, the social discourse challenged state orthodoxy and showed the young generation's assimilation and adaptation of Western ideas to push for social reform and a more inclusive society.