An ‘Ethnic’ Reading of ‘Thai’ History in the Twilight of the Century-Old Official ‘Thai’ National Model

Recent political events in Thailand have shed light on a long neglected and dangerous corner of ‘Thai’ history. An oceanic shift in Thai politics, only beginning to be tracked, now threatens the ‘Thai race nationalist model’, the foundations of which date back to the early twentieth century. Made near complete under military dictatorship after 1958, and perfected after the bloody crackdown of 1976, this model has enjoyed apparent rejuvenation since the 2006 coup, now with the monarchy at its centre. This paper focuses on the question of Lao ethnicity and the North East of Thailand, or Isan. It shows how a combination of linguistics, a pseudo-science of race and ethnicity and historical revisionism have created the appearance of an ethnically and culturally homogenized ‘Thailand’. The paper argues that an ethnic history from the periphery has run parallel to the history of the Thai centre, and its broad contours become ever sharper. ‘Thailand’, as a nationalist construct, now faces competing ‘ethnic’ narratives.