1.0 Introduction

The political landscape of 20th Century Thailand was irrevocably transformed the moment the People Party led a coup d’etat in 1932 against the ruling Chakri dynasty. Ending centuries of the tradition of absolute monarchic rule, the coalition of military and civilian bureaucrats sought to pave way towards a democratic system of governance, envisioning the complete transfer of sovereign power from the monarch to the people of the nation-state.1 In the successive decades after, however, Thailand became embroiled in a period of political uncertainty, marked by episodes of disruptive military coups and persistent power struggles among the political elites. What was meant to be a watershed moment for the democrats and the people, had – in fact – unwittingly set the stage for an increasingly polarised political arena, as supporters of the old monarchical order vied for influence over the new.2 As Thai society navigated the turbulence of authoritarian military rule and royalist revival under Sarit, the encroachment of the Cold War at the borders of Thailand would in time open new possibilities for the political ambitions of local actors within the nation-state.

This essay will look at the ways in which the historiography of Anderson has influenced approaches to socio-cultural analysis of the Cold War in Thailand. His method highlights how official narratives and state institutions created social identities. Central to this discussion is the concept of “Thai-ness”, which will serve as a key analytical lens through which to explore this historiographical perspective. This essay aims, however, to challenge this approach, which over-emphasises structuralist analysis, seeking to demonstrate its inherent problems of under-appreciating the agency of local actors and specific histories which provide nuance to the overall historical landscape of Thailand, particularly in the Cold War period. In the final section, this essay will show how emerging subjects of study in the broader literature of Thai Cold War history have potential to illuminate a de-centralised historiography of identity creation. This essay will show through Ford’s work on Thai Buddhist monks how specific historiography of local actors can add nuances to local histories, presenting an alternative framework from which to understand how identities come to be produced.

2.0 Anderson’s American Era

Traditional historiography of Cold War Thailand has often privileged top-down frameworks, focusing on the nation-state’s elites’ ability to engineer social identities. The structuralist approach shows how these loci of power consolidate influence, and in the Cold War context how it aligns with global superpowers” ideological interests. A large body of work has featured the constructed, state enterprise of “Thai-ness”, which began with Anderson’s critique in Studies of the Thai State.3 Anderson’s historiography critically departs from an essentialist “Thai-ness” that was often characterised by earlier historians as “timeless”, culturally Thai,4 and “ipso facto unique”.5 Instead, he offers a structuralist explanation to demystify this supposed axiom that had plagued Thai studies. This approach highlights Anderson’s idea of Thailand’s inherently semi-colonial character,6 emerging from his concept of a state-endorsed “imagined community”.7 He emphasises how modern nationalism is inextricably tied to global political forces. It follows then that the global West holds an active role in shaping the nation’s socio-cultural fabric, particularly in the Cold War era. Anderson calls this period in Thai history as the “American Era”,8 identifying the locus of power with the United States and framing socio-cultural developments as emanating from a central institution-state. While Anderson’s historiography is nuanced and does not exclusively frame Thai histories reducible to the influences of the Western-bloc, the historiography of identifying the locus of power and authority as central for analyses has nevertheless been influential. It therefore informs the methods used to explain socio-cultural developments. The following section adopts this framework to examine how this Cold War historiography has framed the production of social identities in Thailand, focusing on the emergent studies of “Thai-ness”.

3.1 The Constructed “Thai” Citizen

The construction of the state-sanctioned “Thai” citizen can be regarded as a particularly emblematic example of Anderson’s historiography. Thai-ness from the Andersonian perspective is engineered and “state-endorsed”.9 In a similar sense, it is absorbed, disseminated and legitimised proactively by the activities of the Thai state.10 Analyses, such as in the work of Phillips and Krittikorn, similarly approach the developments of Cold War social identities from analysing elite and institutional actors. Phillips extends the Andersonian “American Era” in his exploration of how the Cold War created “Thai-ness”.11 For Phillips, Sarit and his predecessor, Phibun, were deeply preoccupied with not only its US-alliance, but also the ways in which they led cultural programmes to legitimise state foreign policy and the military authoritarian regime.12 Sarit reformed Thai nationalist discourse such that Cold War anti-communist campaigns were not exclusive to executive and legislative orders (such as the re-issuing of the 1952 Act of Un-Thai Activities and severe suppression of Leftist activities and opposition),13 it was deeply cultural and reformative. For Phillips, the Cold War Thai administration actively created a new Thai nationalist identity, citing the Tourism industry as an explicit site of its cultivation and nationalist propaganda efforts.14 Not only was it a state apparatus fuelling print material that showcased a specific “traditional” Thai basked in rural life and monarchy culture,15 it actively produced a cultural third space that validated its authenticity through experiential means.16 This use of entertainment and cultural performativity is also discussed in Krittikarn who emphasises how the “corporeal presence of the royal” was instrumental in symbolically representing the Thai “under protective royal patronage”.17 Using consumer culture imported from the free-world, both Phillips and Krittikarn show how institutionalised forms of cultural production were intentionally curated programmes of Sarit’s regime. For Phillips, this was in the form of encouraging a tourism calendar for both domestic and international audiences, including the institutionalisation of largely obsolete royal ceremonies such as the Barge ceremony and Tod Kathin,18 which quickly became a tourist attraction to be held on a near-annual basis after 1960. For Krittikorn, this was in the form of “invent[ed]” traditions that integrated the royals into the daily lives of citizens: mass distributions of manufactured visual representation of images and royal emblems across homes and public spaces and elaborate Royal tours to rural villages.19 By featuring members of the royal family and historically rooted traditions in everyday settings and providing public access to them - an unimaginable practice prior to the 1932 revolution - their presence or the “royal gaze” became a “productive” ideological tool for the state’s nationalist project.20 It encouraged both domestic and international audiences to perceive these state programmes and initiatives as inherently Thai, embedding within them a curated experience of the “authentic” Thai that is inseparable from the state and monarchy.21

3.2 Thai-ness as State Loyalty

The binary of Thai-ness and un-Thai-ness thus, in these analyses, is indelibly absorbed into binaries that are introduced by the state and wider global community, such as Thai-ness and foreign-ness, the traditional and the modern, the belligerent communist and the capitalist state-loyal defender of Thai culture and heritage.22 Similarly, this binary has also been used by Harrison to argue for a constructed Thai-ness that is deeply anti-communist and “Americanised” in popular culture.23 She argues for instance, the Thai film industry was deeply influenced by censorship and the Ministry of Culture, promoting films which served to “bolster the US-fueled rhetoric”.24 Fundamental to her paper is the ways in which the popularity and career of Mit was used to assert and shape mass attitudes that were favourable to state anti-communist propaganda. She evidences the ways in which the film adaptation of a popular Thai comic character, “The Red Eagle”, characterises his enemies as Chinese and communist-coded, subversive, unjust, and a “threat” to Thai culture.25 This binary of course is complemented by Mit’s masked hero, whose vigilantism defends successfully against the agents of subversion; his victory is framed through narrative against audience’s desire to protect Thailand from these threats.26 Just as Phillips locates the state apparatus as a locus for social meaning for the state-sanctioned “Thai-ness”, Harrison extends Anderson’s historiography and argues how the Ministry of Culture and by extension US hegemony created an “apposite cultural symbol” for the public,27 where communism is not only a threat to peace and security, but also Thai culture and identity. Here, the cultural figure of Mit’s character recalls the anti-communist state’s role, in the words of Sarit, as a “defender”, the “father of the people”:28 democracy, communism and state disloyalty are banished to the outskirts of Thailand, as deeply un-Thai and enemies of the state deserving of state punishment.

4.0 De-Centring the Socio-Cultural

A key limitation of this historiography on the topic of Thai identity creation is its excessive focus on institutional and elite authority as the main driver for producing social identities, often to the misrepresentation of the agency of more peripheral and local actors. In the following section, this essay will closely examine Ford’s work on Thai Buddhist monks and how his historiography foregrounds and therefore demonstrates how social identities develop through a contestation of power-relations defined by localised histories and active local actors.

5.1 Buddhist Monks as Local Actors

Ford’s historiography on Thai Buddhist monks in the Cold War shows how social identities were not merely constructed, but a process that was deeply embedded in the local contexts, continuously negotiating through power relations and a constellation of socio-historical locally-specific identities. Ford’s historiography lays bare the increasing polarisation and politicisation of the national Sangha by capturing, through narrative, the long-standing rivalry between the rural, populous Mahanikay, and the royalist, exclusive and centrally-based Thammayut orders. Although both hail from Theravada Buddhist traditions, Ford explains that their rivalry was not merely institutional, but also deeply rooted in geographical (rural and central), class, ethnic (Lao and Thai), and religio-cultural divisions.29 The Thammayut order, historically tied to the royal family, enjoyed significant privileges, particularly after the 1902 Sangha reforms that nationalised Buddhism, allowing Thammayut elites to dominate the Buddhist hierarchy and engender aristocratic overrepresentation and domination.30 However, this monopoly was put to an end by the Sangha’s democratisation under Phibun in 1941, leading to mutual resentment between factions. This “minefield of factional competition” eventually intensified,31 mobilising the Sangha – especially during and after Sarit’s regime, which oversaw the abrogation of the 1941 Act – as monks became politicised and reframed as key local actors in the nationalist revival to unite “Nation, Religion, King”.32 A survey of the life of Phimolatham, a highly influential senior Mahanikay monk, reveals how his incarceration under the Sarit regime on false charges of communist activity exposed deep- seated fault lines within the Thai religious sphere. His arrest not only shows the extent to which Cold War politics penetrated the religious domain, but also highlighted how social identities were actively produced and manipulated through more localised histories and monastic factional discourse.

5.2 Localised Cold War Dynamics

Throughout Phimolatham’s ecclesiastic career, Ford frequently contrasts the shifting political landscape of Thailand in the 1950s with developments within the Sangha, particularly its increasing polarisation as the Cold War reached its apex on the Southeast Asian peninsula; the threat of communist insurgencies and regional instability across Thailand’s borders in China, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam were key considerations in administrations following the turn of the decade in 1950.33 Phimolatham’s identity, and his treatment by these successive administrations, fluctuated across a continuum of identities and binaries, as the state aggressively sought to co-opt Buddhist monks in the ideological campaign to purge the country of communist sympathies. They established a program of “counter-Communist information activities” released by the Ministry of Interior in March 6, 1950,34 which would begin a process of recruiting Buddhist monks to socialise anti-communist ideology across Thailand, targeting the Northeastern reaches known to be a “bastion of communist influence”.35 His internationalist attitude towards religious diplomacy in Burma,36 his non- conformist refusal to collaborate in communist counter-insurgency with the Phibun administration,37 his reformist attitudes, and even his humble birthplace,38 hailing from the Lao-deviated, poor, communist-prone provinces of north-eastern Isan,39 would become pivotal to the charges laid against him and his associates, which led to his arrest in 1962.40 This led to what Ford observes: “this [problem of communist infiltration] presented the recurring spectre of the “political” or “false” monk - a radical disguised in robes - who passed easily into the omnipresent clerical ranks in order to sow dissension from within”.41 The charges were driven not only by Sarit’s resentment of Phimolatham’s questionable loyalty to the state (due in part to his Mahanikay affiliations), but also by opposition across several perceived ideological lines and channels from within the Sangha itself: resentment from the Thammayut order over his growing influence, as well as distrust from factions within both the Mahanikay and Thammayut,42 who were suspicious of his rural Lao-associated background, his class, and his reformist, internationalist views.43 These traits led to him being labelled as “anti-establishment” and a “tacitly pro-communist” sympathiser.44 His controversial engagement with the Burmese Theravada order, in spite of prevailing xenophobic attitudes among many of his peers, was also a point of contention and used against him by his Thammayut opposition in order to restore their influence over the Sangha. His arrest was not only a result of political lines drawn by the Sarit administration to further agenda and co-opt the religious domain in its campaign against communist insurgency, but a series of internal factionalism, resistance and power struggles from within the monastic orders, ultimately leading to his disrobement in 1962. Ford illustrates this dynamic through the rise of the right- wing anti-communist Supreme Patriarch Kittisophana. His ascent to power within the nationalised Sangha was arguably expedited by strategic political manoeuvring, including his factional role in instigating a series of accusations that led to the arrest of Phimolatham. In asserting strong anti-communist views to “preserve our nation”,45 he aligned himself closely with the state’s ideological agenda. Kittsophana’s influence was not only shaped by personal ambition but also by his affiliation with broader social and political forces; namely, the Thammayut order, his proximity to Sarit’s administration, and his royalist loyalties.46 The sangha would then oversee a successive line of Supreme Patriarch that mobilised anti- communist campaigns, “groom[ing]” nationalist monks positioning the Sangha to become a formidable force in countering communist threats.47 Most prominent was the militant monk, Kittivudho, an ideal religious authority for the anti-communist cause, going so far as to later sanction the killing of communists: “I ask you to ponder this: how would you choose between the violation of the prohibition on killing and survival of the nation, religion, and the monarchy?”48

Through just the narrative examples of these figures alone, Ford’s historiography shows something which is susceptible to being marginalised from Anderson’s approach: monastic identity was never static or produced from authorities; in fact, it was highly contested, taking on different elements and associations depending on the context. For example, the accusations against Phimolatham were extremely specific to a broader suspicion of communist insurgency within the ranks of the monastic order, as well as his identity within the Sangha itself, a reformist, Burmese-loving internationalist, and a Mahanikay “political”, “infiltrator”, “false monk”.49 It was continuously negotiated and redefined through networks of power and alliances. These interactions could produce new socio-political archetypes within the Sangha: the insidious, corrupt insider monk, the quiet communist sympathiser, or the anti-establishment dissenter, each shaped by a mix of broader Cold War and locally- defined, culturally-specific dynamism.

6.0 Conclusion

This essay has shown that while Anderson’s how state institutions and “Thai-ness” during the Cold War, such an approach risks flattening the complex processes underlying identity formation in Thailand during this period of intense political upheaval. Building on Anderson’s foundation, historians like Phillips and Krittikorn reveal how Sarit’s regime, together with royalist elites, actively engineered a nexus between state, monarchy, and Thai , where anti-communism became a core trait of the construction of the state-sanctioned “Thai” citizen – or Thai-ness. Yet, by de-centring and foregrounding local actors, as Ford’s work on it becomes clear that identity was never solely imposed from above, nor was it uni-directional. Rather, it was contested, negotiated, and reframed within local contexts, histories, and the intersecting power-relations of the local actors themselves. For instance, the struggles within the Sangha - between Thammayut and Mahanikay orders, between royalist loyalists and reformers, and individual resistance - all serve to highlight the agency of local actors as of study for Cold War historiography. By evaluating these two approaches, this essay suggests that a productive historiography of Cold War Thailand must move beyond singular, top-down structuralist thinking, instead embracing multi-directional and locally focused analyses that capture the intricate interplay between structure and agency in the production of Thai identities and its study. In the same vein as Kwon, this essay suggests for a of Thai Cold War historiography. Kwon writes:

“There has never been a conflict called the cold war. The bipolarized human community of the twentieth century experienced political bifurcation in radically different ways across societies—ways that cannot be forced into a single coherent conceptual whole.”50

This essay aimed to demonstrate the importance of understanding socio-cultural developments, such as the historiography of identity formation, in historiographical approaches that reveal the intersection of localised histories of Thailand and their indigenous actors.

FOOTNOTE

1 Nattapoll Chaiching, "The Monarchy and the Royalist Movement in Modern Thai Politics, 1932–1957," in Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, eds. Søren Ivarsson and Lotte Isager (NIAS Press, 2010), 152-3.

2 Ibid., 147.

3 Benedict R. O’G Anderson, “Studies of the Thai State: The State of Thai Studies,” in Explorations and Irony in Studies of Siam over Forty Years, eds. Benedict R. O’G Anderson et al. (Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2014), 33.

4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 19.
6 Ibid., 27.
7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006), 24.

8 Benedict R. O’G Anderson, “Introduction,” in In the Mirror: Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era, eds. Benedict R. O’G Anderson and Ruchira Mendiones (Suk Soongsawang, 1985), 19.

9 Anderson, “Studies of the Thai State,” 31.
10 Ibid., 41-3.
11 Matthew Phillips, Thailand in the Cold War (Routledge, 2016), 9.
12 Ibid., 119-120.
13 Donald E. Nuechterlein, Thailand and the Struggle for Southeast Asia (Cornell University Press, 1965), 111.

14 Phillips, Thailand, 147.
15 Ibid., 152-3.
16 Ibid., 166-7.
17 Sarun Krittikarn, "Royal Spectacle and the Modern Gaze: Visualizing Monarchy in Thailand," in Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, ed. Søren Ivarsson and Lotte Isager (NIAS Press, 2010), 68, 70.

18 Phillips, Thailand, 154-5.
19 Krittikarn, “Entertainment,” 68.
20 Ibid., 73-4.
21 Ibid., 70; Phillips, Thailand, 171.
22 Rachel V. Harrison, “The Man with the Golden Gauntlets: Mit Chaibancha’s Insi thorng and the Hybridization of Red and Yellow Perils in Thai Cold War Action Cinema,” in The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, eds. Tony Day and Maya H. T. Liem (Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2010), 210.

23 Ibid., 199, 202.
24 Ibid., 199.
25 Ibid., 210.
26 Ibid., 214.
27 Ibid., 199, 225.
28 Thak Chaloemtiarana, Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism (Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2007), 82, 106.

29 Eugene Ford, Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2017), 88-9.

30 Ibid., 87.
31 Ibid., 57.
32 Ibid., 97, 268-9.
33 Ibid., 23, 106.
34 Ibid., 23.
35 Ibid., 108.
36 Ibid., 78.
37 Ibid., 102.
38 Ibid., 105.
39 Ibid., 243.
40 Ibid., 99.
41 Ibid., 100.
42 Ibid., 89-90.
43 Ibid., 88.
44 Ibid., 91.
45 Ibid., 269.
46 Ibid., 89
47 Ibid., 229.
48 Ibid., 269.
49 Ibid., 100-2.
50 Heonik Kwon, The Other Cold War (Columbia University Press, 2010), 6.

REFERENCES

Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 2006.

Anderson, B. “Introduction.” In In the Mirror: Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era, edited by Benedict R. O’G Anderson and Ruchira Mendiones. Suk Soongsawang, 1985.

Anderson, B. “Studies of the Thai State: The State of Thai Studies.” In Explorations and Irony in Studies of Siam over Forty Years, edited by Benedict R. O’G Anderson et al. Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2014.

Chaiching, N. “The Monarchy and the Royalist Movement in Modern Thai Politics, 1932– 1957.” In Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, edited by Søren Ivarsson and Lotte Isager. NIAS Press, 2010.

Chaloemtiarana, T. Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism. Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2007.

Ford, E. Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia. Yale University Press, 2017.

Harrison, R. “The Man with the Golden Gauntlets: Mit Chaibancha’s Insi thorng and the Hybridization of Red and Yellow Perils in Thai Cold War Action Cinema.” In The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, edited by Tony Day and Maya H. T. Liem. Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2010.

Krittikarn, S. "Royal Spectacle and the Modern Gaze: Visualizing Monarchy in Thailand." In Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, edited by Søren Ivarsson and Lotte Isager. NIAS Press, 2010.

Kwon, H. The Other Cold War. Columbia University Press, 2010.

Nuechterlein, D. Thailand and the Struggle for Southeast Asia. Cornell University Press, 1965.

Phillips, M. Thailand in the Cold War. Routledge, 2016.