This paper discusses “Thainess,” prior to the 1990s. Before then, people in what is now Thailand and also nearby, distinguished socially between
tai and
kha. Whereas
tai were literate members of lowland kingdoms that had law codes, professed (local forms of) Buddhism, and sometimes built large architectural structures, the
kha were illiterate forest people, had oral codes, mostly were animists, and lived in wooden structures beyond the pale of what the
tai considered civilization. Ayutthaya and similar centers were multi-ethnic in nature, with a literate “civilized” elite. These centers only became “Thai” (a kind of back-formation from
tai intended to mean “free”) when King Rama VI (r. 1910-24) and other rulers adopted and adapted Western ethnicity-based definitions of nationalism. Applied socially, Thainess negatively impacted the newly defined “Other,” people not ethnically Thai, in forestry, citizenship, and other areas. Thai was not
tai at all.
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