Abstract
This paper exposes colonial remnants in modern-day Thailand through a postcolonial materialist analysis of Lao Khamhom's ‘Dust Underfoot’. Revolving around the conflict between a minor member of the Bangkok royalty and a Khmu forest worker in northern Thailand, this short story sheds light on Siam's semicolonial conditions created at the turn of the nineteenth century. Though nominally independent, Siam was subject to the capitalist world economy. This was clearly discernible in the British-dominated teak industry in the North. Siam, however, was not so much a victim as a collaborator and beneficiary of colonial capitalism. The Siamese monarchy sustained British capital by recruiting Khmu ethnic subjects into an exploitable labour force for timber production. This collaboration with the British enabled the monarchy to consolidate its economic, political and cultural power over its population. ‘Dust Underfoot’ underscores Siam's colonial legacies by critiquing the continued exploitation of the Khmu and other lumbermen by the emerging Thai sakdina-turned-bourgeois class in the 1950s. Following in the footsteps of the West, these royal elites viewed themselves as civilized rulers lording it over their ‘savage’ subjects. This paper also discusses the story as a seditious challenge to the hegemonic Buddhist ‘god–king’ discourse and translational process that underpins the foundation of the rule of the Thai monarchy.