The Crown & The Capitalists, The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation by Wasana Wongsurawat (review)

The Crown and The Capitalists examines the making of the Thai nation state through a focus on the ethnic Chinese in Thailand and their association with the Thai court. The changing relations and policies of Thailand towards its largest ethnic minority is scrutinized within a complex trans-national web of European colonial geopolitics, Chinese national politics and Japanese militarism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The contributions of the Chinese entrepreneur class, from crown traders to European colonial subjects with privileges of extra-territoriality, towards the coffers of the kingdom as well as in fostering Siam-China diplomatic relations largely shaped Siam's policies towards the ethnic Chinese, between the fourth and sixth reigns. Wasana examines these policies from the lens of education, print media, economy, regional diplomacy in the period of the Greater East Asia War and finally the global impact of the Cold War. Each of these themes are discussed in five separate chapters.

The monitoring of Chinese education and newspapers discussed in the first two chapters sets the tone for the ensuing anti-Chinese sentiments in the country. Despite the compulsory Education Act, the state faced limitations in providing public education to the masses and private Chinese education compensated for this insufficiency. It produced a part of the manpower for Siam's civil service. Essentially Chinese education through the use of the standard Mandarin created an 'imagined' solidarity with China and its national politics. It was the latter, particularly, the anti-monarchist and republican leanings coming out of China in the post-revolutionary period that displeased the Siamese King Vajiravudh, in turn prompting nationalization of Thai education.

The Chinese educated in Siam, including leading capitalists and journalists, began publishing Chinese newspapers in the country. Publisher-owners of these newspapers were also subject to stringent state surveillance. A transnational imagined community is evoked through Chinese language publications that connected host and home over generations and trans-distance. The outcome is a plurality of imagined communities that connected overseas Chinese to their respective ancestral clans in southern China, prompting a provincial 'Nanyang solidarity', while Chinese newspapers, in standard script, connected diaspora Chinese with mainland politics. Diaspora identities became intertwined with both subdialect and Chinese national identities.

Chinese newspapers were another turf for rival Chinese capitalists for prominence in the Siamese Chinese community and thus the content reflected different inclinations towards Chinese politics, morphing from reformist, revolutionary to republican nationalist. However despite their slant, ethnic Chinese publishers were alternately wary and strategic in courting the trust of the Thai court. Overseas Chinese in Siam were indeed strong allies of the Thai monarchy, and their involvement in the kingdom's economy profited both parties. In a similar vein, they were also a transnational resource for China's post-war reforms and development. This prompted demands for ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs to show their undivided loyalty to the nation, pursued through an economic nationalization or Thai-ification policy by Rama VI. The scheme turned propagandist and racial under post revolution Thailand; ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs were targeted, in part to cripple the royalist-elite Chinese clique and their strong control of the national economy. Stoking anti-Chinese sentiments through writings and policies, demonstrated under the sixth reign and People's Party eras, clearly heightened Thai nationalism. It served to validate Thailand's nation building process, inspired by alliance with Japan and its ultra-nationalist model.

Japanese imperialism polarized Thai society into various political camps; from Phibun (pro-Japan), Pridi (pro-Allied) to the return of the old royalists led by Seni Pramoj through the Free Thai Movement (US-based, pro-Allied, pro-China camp). With Japan's defeat Thailand reverted to royalist nationalism with strong military alliances. The book underscores the continuity of the royalist clique as a formidable force in Thai politics, albeit a transition from absolutism to constitutional monarchism under the People's Party...