Download or read book Two Views of Siam on the Eve of the Chakri Reformation written by Sir Robert Laurie Morant and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the attempt by France to annex Siam (modern Thailand) in 1893 and Siam's success under King Chulalongkorn in withdrawing herself into international anonymity. Chapters: The Paknam Incident and the Chakri Reformation; Notes on Siamese Administration; Foreign Office Correspondence; Memorandum on the Present Political Situation in Siam; and Memorandum on the British Legation in Bangkok. Also includes preface, genealogical charts, notes, bibliography, and photographs.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Thailand written by May Kyi Win and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2005-10-04 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition, which first provides an overview of the country in the introduction, traces the long and complicated history in the chronology and goes into much greater detail in the dictionary. Offering 64 new entries, as well as updates and revisions to older ones, the dictionary presents important persons, places, institutions, and more in an easily accessible resource. Significant recent events are discussed including the 1997-98 Thai economic crisis and its effects, reforms of the national government, and the growth in political roles of both businessman and other middle class members. In addition, the book updates basic information relative to population growth, urbanization, and industrialization of the economy. All this is topped off by a solid bibliography making this an essential reference tool.
Download or read book The Life of Nyanatiloka Thera written by Nyanatiloka Thera & Hellmuth Hecker & Bhikkhu Nyanatusita and published by Buddhist Publication Society. This book was released on 2008 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ven. Nyanatiloka was one of the pioneers of Buddhism in the modern world and the first European Buddhist monk. As the world’s senior Western bhikkhu, ordained in 1903, Nyanatiloka attracted many disciples, through whose work his influence continues to be felt today, more than fifty years after his death. Nyanatiloka was also a renowned scholar and translator of Pali scriptures. His classic The Word of the Buddha, written more than a century ago, is still widely read. The core of this volume consists of a translation of Nyanatiloka’s autobiography, written in German when he was forty-eight. The remaining thirty-one years of his life, from 1926 until 1957, are presented as a biographical postscript, drawn from other sources. The story of Nyanatiloka’s life provides an inspiring example of one man’s ability to put aside his cultural doubts and hesitations and embrace wholeheartedly a non-Western system of values, ideas and practices. The greatest hardships do not seem to deter him any more than his achievements appear to go to his head. For those who have not experienced the turmoil and uncertainty of war and are accustomed to instant access of information through the internet, Nyanatiloka’s accomplishments are all the more remarkable. The Life of Nyanatiloka Thera offers a fascinating insight into the formative period of Europe’s encounter with the Dhamma.
Download or read book Materializing Thailand written by Penny Van Esterik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thailand has become well known throughout the world for wonderful cuisine, great package holidays, sumptuous temples and textiles. Noticeably absent from glossy tourist brochures but equally well known throughout the Western world is Thailand's seedier side - the world of child exploitation, rampant prostitution and AIDS. Thailand maintains its appeal by slipping the ugly and painful out of sight and by promoting women as exotic visual icons through beauty contests, state rituals and the sex trade. This book explores the construction of gender in Thailand and in particular the role Bangkok plays in establishing gender relations for the whole of the country. It examines the historical and cultural processes underlying Thai public culture, including historical theme parks. The author demonstrates how the materiality of the Thai world shapes gender relations and how Buddhism discourages essentialisms, including fixed binary gender identities. Throughout the book, appearances are shown to be critically important, and the essentialism of gender is maintained through display, public presentations, and everyday material practices. Anyone wishing to understand the complexity of Thailand will find this book provides a highly readable and insightful analysis.
Download or read book Worshipping the Great Moderniser written by Irene Stengs and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of social imaginary surrounding Thai kingship and Thainess that yield an intriguing amalgam of ideas concerning popular religion, Buddhist kingship, nationalism, and material culture. It explores the contemporary appeal of King Chulalongkorn and considers what this ruler's unprecedented popularity says about Thai society.
Download or read book The King and the Making of Modern Thailand written by Antonio L. Rappa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The making of modern Thailand is grounded in specific political institutions, Brahmanical tropes, and sacred Buddhist traditions stylized with Hindu rituals. Over and above these mysterious practices and ancient customs, modern Thailand is a product of the late Great Rama IX Bhumibol Adulyadej. Most Thai people have only known one King. Born in Europe and educated during World War II, Bhumibol was the son of a Harvard medical doctor who had a penchant for jazz music and fast cars. When he returned to Thailand in 1951 to assume his royal duties, he could hardly speak Thai but his French and German were remarkable. Bhumibol had inherited an impoverished country with nothing but a symbolic role as a figurehead monarch. He was surrounded by envious courtiers and royals from other families now sidelined by the rise of the Chakri. Scheming generals and authoritarian field marshals were emptying the Kingdom’s coffers. Using guile and wit, Bhumibol had turned the tide by 1973. He became the most powerful modern warlord in the history of the Kingdom. He survived attempted murder, crafty politicians, corrupt generals, sycophantic courtiers and impoverished masses. When he died on October 13 2016, Bhumibol was already the longest standing monarch in the world. King Bhumibol was deeply respected and well-liked by farang and locals alike. Despite his massive social and economic achievements many problems continue to plague the Kingdom. These are prostitution, human rights issues, pollution, corruption, cronyism in Chinese businesses, border conflicts with Cambodia, and the refugee problem. This book examines the role of Rama IX and the variegated set of problems that persist in life under the great white elephant and mango trees. Rappa draws from his primary research that includes interviews, surveys and first-hand observations of a remarkable kingdom and a uniquely remarkable king to reveal the internal security threats to democracy and civil society in the oldest Southeast Asian kingdom in late modernity.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Thailand written by Gerald W. Fry and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-08-08 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout its history, Thailand has shown remarkable resiliency, adaptability, and creativity in responding to serious threats and crises, and this since much earlier times when it was known as Siam. This book, while focusing on the modern period, does reach back to ancient kingdoms but also shows the impressive rise to a modern democracy, although still endowed with a king, and even more impressively, an economic “tiger.” Moreover, it has become a prime tourist destination and is thus known to vast numbers of foreigners as a sort of “instant Asia.” The Historical Dictionary of Thailand, now in its third edition, covers this amazing story in various ways. First, the chronology traces the most significant events from year to year. The introduction then provides a good overview of the land and people, the history and traditions, and where it now seems to be heading. The dictionary, which by now has hundreds of detailed and cross-referenced entries, looks more closely at important persons, places, institutions and events as well as more generally its politics, economy, society, culture and religion. So this is an excellent reference work not only for scholars but many others who have visited the country and were fascinated by it.
Download or read book Marriage Law and Modernity written by Julia Moses and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marriage, Law and Modernity offers a global perspective on the modern history of marriage. Widespread recent debate has focused on the changing nature of families, characterized by both the rise of unmarried cohabitation and the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, historical understanding of these developments remains limited. How has marriage come to be the target of national legislation? Are recent policies on same-sex marriage part of a broader transformation? And, has marriage come to be similar across the globe despite claims about national, cultural and religious difference? This collection brings together scholars from across the world in order to offer a global perspective on the history of marriage. It unites legal, political and social history, and seeks to draw out commonalities and differences by exploring connections through empire, international law and international migration.
Download or read book Confronting Christianity written by Sven Trakulhun and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2024-07-31 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confronting Christianity explores the history of religious encounters between Christian missionaries and Thai Buddhists during the nineteenth century, a period of Western imperialism in Southeast Asia that fundamentally transformed Siamese society and religious institutions. From about 1830 onwards, discussions on religion became a central arena of conflict between rival regimes of knowledge in Thailand, confronting traditional Buddhist views on nature and man’s existence with the ideals and practices of science and rationalism coming from the West. Protestant missionaries, mostly from the United States, became important brokers of knowledge, as one of their strengths was the ability to offer religion in tandem with modern science and technology. Historian Sven Trakulhun explains why the intrusion of evangelical Christianity strengthened the position of Theravāda Buddhism rather than undermining people’s belief in traditional forms of worship. Based on a wide range of Thai and Western primary sources, the volume describes how Christian missionaries unwittingly contributed to the making of what scholars of Buddhism have later rendered as “Buddhist modernism.” In response to Christian assaults on the traditional cosmology, Buddhist reformers fashioned an orthodox version of Buddhism that acknowledged the findings of modern science and at the same time deemed even more rational than Christianity. This new orthodoxy became a major source of moral authority for Thai kings and an important ideology for pushing their claims for religious leadership in the Theravāda Buddhist world. Trakulhun offers a thorough study of the encounter between Christianity and Buddhism and places the history of Siamese Theravāda Buddhism within the broad context of global intellectual history.
Download or read book A Civilized Woman written by Susan Fulop Kepner and published by Silkworm Books. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boonlua Debyasuvarn was born to a noble Siamese family in 1911 and not only witnessed, but participated in, the great events of her century. She was talented, intelligent, and determined to make her own place in the world beyond Thewet Palace, her family home. After the 1932 overthrow of the absolute monarchy, M.L. Boonlua became one of the first Thai women to earn a university degree. As an official in the Ministry of Education, she worked tirelessly to improve education within the kingdom and represent Thailand at international education conferences. She was a greatly respected teacher of literature and was much cherished for her charm, wit, and eminently quotable remarks. Her essays on literature became the foundation of modern Thai literary criticism and her novels are now recognized as unique social histories of the times in which she lived. Lucid and sensitive, this engaging biography documents Boonlua’s life within the context of her society and the enormous changes her country was going through in her lifetime. What Others Are Saying “An intimate view of an extraordinary life. M.L. Boonlua’s passage from precocious child of an aristocratic lineage under the absolute monarchy to fiery debater in the liberal explosion after 1973 cuts across the social upheavals of twentieth-century Thailand. Susan Kepner succeeds in conveying the sheer complexity of her life, resulting in not only a fine biography and literary appreciation but also a unique essay in social history.”—Chris Baker, historian and writer, co-translator of The Tale of Khun Chang Khun Phaen “This is not only an excellent biography of a unique Siamese lady, but it is also a wonderful social history of Siam from the reign of Rama VI to the end of the twentieth century. Anyone who wants to understand the subtleties of Thai culture and the delicacies of personal interaction should not fail to read this book.”—S. Sivaraksa, a Thai public intellectual
Download or read book Thailand written by Charnvit Kasetsiri and published by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. This book was released on 2022-04-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “As a historian, Charnvit Kasetsiri is not satisfied simply to have found an instructive angle from which to explore the mysteries in a modern experimental monarchy. His keen sense of time has filled his narrative with insights that only a few people could have identified. To me, that is a mark of one with a fine sense of what the past can mean. I thank him for the chance to see this mature and thoughtful Charnvit at work and commend this book to everyone who wants to understand Thailand better.” -- Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore “Charnvit makes clear in the final pages of Thailand: A Struggle for the Nation that he is not very sanguine about the country’s future. During Thailand’s democratic spring in 1974, the Thai constitution was changed to allow female succession. This apparent loosening of male prerogative had no effect on the reign change in 2016 when the designated male heir, Prince Vajiralongkorn, succeeded without challenge to become the tenth Bangkok king. Communism, long gone as the spectre that once haunted Thailand’s political order, has been replaced by another. The spectre now haunting Thailand is authoritarianism.” -- Craig J. Reynolds, Australian National University
Download or read book External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation written by Ja Ian Chong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book posits that when foreign actors face high opportunity costs of intervention in a weak state, their behavior may foster state sovereignty. This occurs as foreign actors work with local groups to avoid their worst fear, domination of the polity by rivals. Drawing from primary and secondary sources, Ja Ian Chong examines this argument by considering China, Indonesia, and Thailand between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The book augments existing perspectives on nationalism, sovereignty, and state formation by introducing insights from research on foreign intervention and local collaboration.
Download or read book Anglo French Relations 1898 1998 written by P. Chassaigne and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-12-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Fashoda incident in 1898 to the current Blair-Jospin 'entente', this book reviews one century of Franco-British relations. Friend or foe? Partner or rival? Model or counter-model? The two countries continually wavered between two extremes. Yet, as this collection of papers show, they have always had more things in common than suspected in the first place, and there has always been a strong case for cooperation.
Download or read book Term Paper Resource Guide to Nineteenth Century World History written by William T. Walker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-07-08 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this guide, major help for nineteenth-century World History term papers has arrived to enrich and stimulate students in challenging and enjoyable ways. Show students an exciting and easy path to a deep learning experience through original term paper suggestions in standard and alternative formats, including recommended books, websites, and multimedia. Students from high school age to undergraduate can get a jumpstart on assignments with the hundreds of term paper suggestions and research information offered here in an easy-to-use format. Users can quickly choose from the 100 important events, spanning the period from the Haitian Revolution that ended in 1804 to the Boer War of 1899-1902. With this book, the research experience is transformed and elevated. Term Paper Resource Guide to Nineteenth-Century World History is a superb source with which to motivate and educate students who have a wide range of interests and talents. Coverage includes key wars and revolts, independence movements, and theories that continue to have tremendous impact.
Download or read book Bones around My Neck written by Tamara Loos and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prince Prisdang Chumsai (1852–1935) served as Siam's first diplomat to Europe during the most dramatic moment of Siam’s political history, when its independence was threatened by European imperialism. Despite serving with patriotic zeal, he suffered irreparable social and political ruin based on rumors about fiscal corruption, sexual immorality, and political treason. In Bones around My Neck, Tamara Loos pursues the truth behind these rumors, which chased Prisdang out of Siam. Her book recounts the personal and political adventures of an unwitting provocateur who caused a commotion in every country he inhabited.Prisdang spent his first five years in exile from Siam living in disguise as a commoner and employee of the British Empire in colonial Southeast Asia. He then resurfaced in the 1890s in British Ceylon, where he was ordained as a Buddhist monk and became a widely respected abbot. Foreigners from around the world were drawn to this prince who had discarded wealth and royal status to lead the life of an ascetic. His fluency in English, royal blood, acute intellect, and charisma earned him importance in international diplomatic and Buddhist circles. Prisdang’s life journey reminds us of the complexities of the colonial encounter and the recalibrations it caused in local political cultures. His drama offers more than a story about Siamese politics: it also casts in high relief the subjective experience of global imperialism. Telling this history from the vantage point of a remarkable individual grounds and animates the historical abstractions of imperialism, Buddhist universalism, and the transformation of Siam into a modern state.
Download or read book The Diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow 1883 1888 A Diplomat In Siam Japan Britain and Elsewhere written by Ian Ruxton (ed.) and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-02-28 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are the edited (i.e. transcribed, annotated and indexed) diaries of Sir Ernest Satow (1843-1929) for the six years from the time when he left Japan early in 1883, through his time as Agent and Consul-General and subsequent promotion to Minister Resident at Bangkok, until his return to London and his request in December 1887 for another posting on health grounds. The period includes his visits to Japan (officially for rest and recuperation) in 1884 and 1886, and to Paris, Rome and Lisbon for research into the Jesuits in Japan conducted early in 1888, and the confirmation of his appointment to Montevideo in October of that year. Throughout the period his ultimate goal was promotion to Minister in Japan, which he achieved in 1895. The original diaries are in the National Archives (UK). Published for the first time on lulu.com.
Download or read book The Creation of the Modern Ministry of Finance in Siam 1885 1910 written by Ian Brown and published by Springer. This book was released on 1992-06-18 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using Thai-language archival material, this book examines a crucial element in the dismantling of the traditional government structure and the installation of a Western-style administration - the creation of a modern Ministry of Finance.
