The 1990s witnessed a dramatic decrease in the political power of the Thai military, which had been the most powerful force in Thai politics since the 1932 revolution. This essay considers the reasons for this shrinking of political power, and argues that the military owed its earlier political power to its potential to stage a successful coup. The long history of political intervention by the military shows that a successful coup needed the strong leadership of the army chief and the solidarity of army top brass to defeat or at least neutralize the various forces opposing the coup, and that such leadership and solidarity could be attained only through an annual reshuffle of army officers. Examination of the annual reshuffle in the last twenty years reveals that the May 1992 incident damaged the military more seriously than any other factors (the end of the Cold War, global and domestic democratization tides, and so on). Since 1992 special attention has been paid to avoid concentration of important posts into the hands of any particular class of the military academy. Through this policy, it became difficult for an army chief to consolidate his power sufficiently to stage a coup. This has resulted in the decrease in military power in politics, because the government can now reject demands from the armed forces.

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This essay clarifies the process by which archeological administration was introduced in modern Thailand in the period from the First World War to the 1932 Revolution. A major turning point was the replacement of German linguist Oskar Frankfurter as chief librarian of the Wachirayan Library by French epigraphist George Cœdès, as a result of Thailand’s involvement in the war on the side of the Allies. Since Cœdès had settled in Thailand, strong ties developed between its cultural administration and the École française d'Extrême-Orient (French School of Asian Studies). On the strength of this relationship, the French government proposed that the Thai government set up an archeological service. In response to the French request, Prince Damrong drafted the Decree of Investigation and Conservation of Antiquities, the first regulation for the preservation of cultural properties in Thailand, which was promulgated in 1924.

In the late 1920s, Prince Damrong engaged in many important works: at the suggestion of Fernand Pila, a French Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Thailand, he published Buddhist Monuments in Siam, which is today considered to be the first Thai art history; he established the Royal Institute, the first comprehensive organization of cultural administration; he made legislative preparations for controlling exports of cultural properties; and he reformed Bangkok Museum. Also, he drafted the Act for the Establishment of Bangkok Museum, the first systematic law consisting of nineteen articles to govern and manage cultural properties. From 1929, curators of the museum such as Luang Boribanburiphan and Manit Wanlipodom started nation-wide archeological investigations under the direction of Prince Damrong. Even after Prince Damrong lost power in the Thai government as a result of the 1932 Revolution, the museum’s curators remained at the re-established Fine Arts Department, and continued to play central roles in the administration of archeological and cultural properties.

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This article aims to reveal the effect of railways on rice transport from the Northeast in wartime and postwar Thailand. Thai railways suffered insufficient transport capacity due to a shortage of rolling stock after the outbreak of World War II for two reasons: Thai rolling stock was requisitioned for Japanese military trains and the railway system gained unexpected “new line” in the “lost territory.” When Central Thailand, the main rice-producing center, had a poor harvest in 1942, the Japanese military was urged to return part of the rolling stock to deliver the rice from the Northeast or Battambang to Bangkok. The Japanese complied with the request to the extent of running a special rice train, but the rolling stock was soon reassigned again to military purposes, to the detriment of rice transport. After the war ended, Thailand tried to improve its situation through the delivery of rice to the Allies and the resumption of rice exports under the International Emergency Food Committee. As more rolling stock was urgently needed to increase rice transport from the Northeast and rice exports from the country, procurement was accomplished by bartering rice. However, the volume of rice transport did not exceed the prewar level even after the rehabilitation of rail transport. During the war, the stagnation of rail transport was not such a serious problem because rice production in the Northeast had also stagnated. The more serious problem occurred after the war as rice production grew rapidly in the Northeast and railways could not cope with the amount of rice dispatched from the region. As domestic transport demand continued to expand more than railway transport capacity, the railways no longer coped with it.

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This paper examines changes in the Thai perception of China during the Thanom administration (1963–73), when Thailand turned from “hostilities” to “rapprochement” toward China. The paper attempts to clarify the changing perceptions, their causes, and the logic used by the government in attempting the policy shift.

The decade under study is categorized into three periods: (1) confrontation (1963–68), (2) adjustment (1968–71), and (3) rapprochement (1971–73). During the confrontation period, the demonization of China, the deification of the United States, domino theory, and forward defense doctrine were adopted to justify Thailand’s participation in the Vietnam War. During the adjustment period, opinion toward China was divided into two groups: Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, students, and some intellectuals encouraged rapprochement with China, while other military-related officials opposed it. During the rapprochement period, under international pressure, Thanom’s military administration felt the urge to approach China. China was then dichotomized from the image of Communism and recreated into a “converted criminal.” The image changes during each period were not only the result of domestic and international conditions but also helped facilitate the government’s policy shifts.

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This essay is an attempt to reassess the nationalism of the first Phibun government before the outbreak of the Pacific War. In Thailand, orthodox nationalism is usually equated with an ideology demanding loyalty to “chat (a Thai word for nation), religion and the king” and giving the king the highest value. This formulation does not conform to academically predominant views of nationalism and nations so well. First, nationalism is an ideological movement vesting the highest value in the nation, not the king. Thai orthodoxy is royalism rather than nationalism. Second, nation can be defined as a group of people characterized by a shared culture, popular sovereignty and equality. But the word chat scarcely has such a connotation as it usually means the country, the state or ethnic groups.
 Phibun's nationalism has been blamed for deviation from this orthodoxy and characterized as militarism, statism, and cultural Westernism. He was a nationalist only in the economic aspect. In this essay his nationalism is reexamined in terms of academic (not Thai) orthodoxy. Phibun was a leader of the People's Party, which successfully put an end to the absolute monarchy and realized the popular sovereignty on June 24, 1932. A brief check of the lists of cabinet ministers since the third Mano government, starting in April 1933, proves that Phibun's first government, formed in December 1938, was not a military government but one of the whole Party. The Party, faced with a political challenge from royalist conservatives, had to make every effort to convince the people that the new regime was better than the old one. It launched economic and social development policies to improve people's lives. No less important was an attempt to turn the highest object of the people's loyalty from the king to the nation. Phibun pushed these policies further. He made June 24 a national day and held grand ceremonies on this day every year from 1939 to demonstrate the democratic and national legitimacy of the regime.
 However, the masses still lacked a national consciousness, for there had been little effort to instill it either from above or from below. Insofar as Phibun intended to stabilize the new regime by vesting the highest value in the nation instead of the king, he logically had to nationalize the masses. He thus embarked on an ardent policy to create a national culture, which is indispensable for the formation of a nation. This invented culture was Thai only in name and Western in fact, because what was important was whether the people would come to share it, and no other adjective could facilitate the people's coming to share it and imagining a nation better than “Thai.&rdquot; This undertaking to create a national culture and consciousness is quite common among nationalists in this century, and Phibun must be regarded as a far more typical nationalist than the more orthodox Thai nationalists.

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The aim of this article is to describe the characteristics of Japanese military transport on Thai railways during World War II, by analyzing the train schedules now held in the National Archives of Thailand. These schedules contain such data as the number and type of carriages on each train together with their origin and destination for almost every day from the beginning of the War until September 1945. Although the author initially compiled the data from these schedules hoping to grasp the overall volume of Japanese military transport, it soon became evident that the data did not cover all types of activity, because there were not enough train movements from Malaya to Thailand in the schedules. This forced the author to complement the schedules with an analysis of bills for Japanese military transport issued by the Thai railway department. The author divides the war time period into four stages for analysis: 1) front-line-expansion (December 1941-June 1942), 2) construction of the Thai-Burma line (July 1942-October 1943), 3) the opening of the Thai-Burma line (November 1943-December 1944) and 4) network division (January-September 1945).

During stage 1), the main transport flows were found on two routes: from Bangkok to Malaya via the Southern line and to Phitsanulok or Sawankhalok via the Northern line, corresponding to the Malaya Operation and the Burma Operation, respectively. Other flows originated from Cambodia to the same destinations via the Eastern line and Bangkok. During stage 2), flows from Bangkok to Malaya and from Cambodia to Bangkok still existed, although their volumes were reduced. On the other hand, new flows emerged from either Bangkok or Malaya to the starting point of the Thai-Burma line to supply its construction. Stage 3) experienced an increase in transport due to the opening of Thai-Burma line and the Imphal Operation. Flows to Malaya and the Thai-Burma line still accounted for the majority of the transport, but flows to the Isthmus of Kra and the North also increased to supplement the Thai-Burma line. Finally, during stage 4), transport volume further expanded, while the total distance of transport dramatically dropped, as many lines were halted at several points due to Allied bombing, to the extent that all long-distance transport was suspended, except on the Eastern line.

The characteristic features of wartime Japanese military transport through Thai railways are threefold: 1) long-distance railway transport as a substitute for maritime transport, 2) supplementary transport to the Burmese front-lines, and 3) the existence of commodity transport unrelated to troop movements. This transport concentrated on supplementing the Burmese front-line rather than transport to Malaya, except during the Malay Operation period. As Japanese forces arrived at Saigon or Singapore for deployment to Burma, military transport on Thai railways became the main form of long-distance “international” movement. Before the War, Thai railways were of little importance as international lines compared to maritime transport. This “international” railway activity, while limited only to military transport, eventually emerged for the first time in Southeast Asia through the creation of “international” rail links with Cambodia and Burma, and a shortage of maritime vessels during wartime. Furthermore, there was a considerable amount of commodity transport apart from troop movements, a fact which has not been sufficiently dealt with in the “official” histories of the War.

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This article aims to analyze how Thailand tried to recapture its railways from the Japanese army and maintain them during World War II. While many military trains went south toward Malaya after the outbreak of war, few returned to Bangkok. Thailand, therefore, took the hardline stance of refusing to allocate its rolling stock to the Japanese army unless its rolling stock in Malaya was returned. As a result, Japan proceeded to return Thai rolling stock from Malaya.
 Thailand also said that more trains should be used to transport rice from the Northeast and East in order to satisfy Japanese demand, for which it requested a military train that was currently running on the Southern line. Although the negotiation ran into difficulties, the Japanese army finally accepted this reduction in the number of military trains.
 Furthermore, there was a severe shortage of lubricating oil, which was indispensable for train operations, after the outbreak of war. Thailand wanted to buy lubricating oil from Japan, but Japan was reluctant. It agreed only after Thailand warned that it would curtail its loan of military trains to Japan.
 In this way, Thailand succeeded in reclaiming and maintaining its railways. The main factors behind this were negotiation by bargaining points and the acquisition of concessions through sympathy. Thailand used bargaining points to negotiate with Japan; it insisted that Japan's demand could not be met unless Japan accepted its request. Furthermore, Thailand had to persuade Japan that it was incapable of accepting Japan's demands; it did so by presenting reasons for Japan to sympathize with it. Thailand's two-pronged strategy—presenting bargaining points and acquiring concessions by eliciting sympathy—functioned well to a certain extent.

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