Showing 21-30 of 52 results
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How Bangkok came to be
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 03/11/2017
» In 1963, Edward Van Roy arrived in Thailand to work on a survey of hilltribes. This was a golden era of anthropology with an emphasis on ethnicity and villages. Since his retirement from the UN in 1997, Van Roy has been tramping round the localities of old Bangkok, peering into the temples and shrines, rooting out the memories of the remaining old residents, and ransacking libraries for memoirs and histories.
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Integration or disintegration
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 11/08/2017
» One of the lesser-known activities of the European Union in this region is the funding of academic research designed to "help the EU and its member states make coherent and culturally relevant foreign policies" towards the region.
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Respected Southeast Asian history scholar, Michael Vickery, dies
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 07/07/2017
» With the death of Michael Vickery in Battambang, Cambodia last Thursday, Southeast Asian history lost a giant.
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The perfection of humour
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 02/06/2017
» The story of Vessantara, or Wetsandon, is perhaps the most famous and best-known tale in Thailand. Although originating among the jataka tales of India, most think it a local creation (Thais call it chadok). There is a Pali version in the early Buddhist texts, and official Thai-language adaptations since the 15th century. But the story also lives in popular memory, in pictures on wat walls, and in performances at annual festivals, and in these forms there is great scope for creative adaptation.
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The romance of the Siamese war elephant
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 03/03/2017
» 'Some so superb surpass a city's worth."
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Understanding China's banks
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 26/01/2017
» Every couple of years now, a book appears predicting the imminent crisis, breakdown, collapse or disintegration of China. The professor Cassandra touting a recent example passed through Bangkok last week. Among such works there is a subset that focuses on finance, especially banking. These books and articles argue that China's banks are inefficient because of government control; that they are racking up debt, much of which is hidden; and that, unless they are quickly privatised, they will be the spark for the aforesaid crisis, breakdown, collapse, or disintegration. In the last month, I have twice been treated to this argument first-hand, once from an American and once from a Japanese.
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Saving the Fort Mahakan community
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 11/04/2016
» Last week, the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) posted an order to evict the residents of the Fort Mahakan community within a matter of days. Immediately, journalists, activists, academics, and town planners rose in protest, condemning the BMA as philistine wreckers of a small but important part of Bangkok's battered heritage.
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Retelling a great Lao-Thai tale
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 22/02/2016
» Sinxay is a story which appears in slightly different versions with slightly different names in Mon, Thai, Lao and Khmer. The plot is a classic quest in which a hero prince is banished by the machinations of evil siblings, travels long through forest and mountain, defeats many fearsome enemies, and is eventually celebrated in a great homecoming. Old versions were written in verse for recitation at festivals. Key scenes were popular with artists painting temple murals. During the nationalist era in the 1940s, the great littérateur of Laos, Maha Sila Viravong, began a prose version in a conscious attempt to create a Lao national literature. More recently, Sinxay has been celebrated as a kind of national hero in Laos. In 2005, Khon Kaen municipality adopted Sinxay as symbol of the city, and characters from the tale sprouted on the peaks of the city's lamp posts.
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Remembering a great scholar
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 17/12/2015
» Ben Anderson died in Surabaya, Indonesia, on Dec 11, slightly short of his 80th birthday. Southeast Asia has lost one of its great scholars. This book, published last year, is a collection of his main writings on Siam.
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Charnvit in a nutshell
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 09/11/2015
» In 1973, Charnvit Kasetsiri became the first Thai historian to gain a doctorate from a top-flight American university and have his thesis published by the university press. In the official history of Thailand at the time, Sukhothai was described as the first Thai kingdom, a Golden Age which displayed everything good about Thai civilisation and Thai values. The role of the subsequent Ayutthaya period was to decline from this peak, so that the Bangkok era could be another great era of revival and resurgence. Charnvit's thesis quietly gnawed away the foundations of this national mythology by describing the rise of the Ayutthaya kingdom. He added a series of articles on Ayutthaya's growth into one of the great commercial powers of early modern Asia, and the cradle of the Thailand we know today. One of these articles began with a banner headline "Ayutthaya was the first major political, cultural and commercial center of the Thai". Goodbye Sukhothai.
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