The Council on Thai Studies presents our 2020 Friday Keynote:

THE CROWN AND THE CAPITALISTS: THAI STUDIES FROM A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Wasana Wongsurawut, Ph.D. (History, Chulalongkorn University)

Thailand was never colonized by the West. As an independent state that granted extraterritoriality to colonial subjects and one with the largest ethnic Chinese community in Southeast Asia, Siam survived and prospered through the colonial era by taking advantage of the extensive and influential trade network of ethnic Chinese colonial subjects across the South China Sea.

Through the many decades since the end of the Second World War, ethnic Chinese tycoons and the Thai political elite merged to become one and the same by the turn of the 21st century. Many parallels could be drawn and much could still be learned from the many similarities of Thailand and Southeast Asia of the colonial period. The future of Thai Studies lies in the transnational perspective, which is key to understanding both the colonial and post-Cold War periods through the same wavelength.

About the speaker:

Dr. Wasana Wongsurawut is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Chulalongkorn University. She was trained as an historian of modern China, specializing in the history of the ethnic Chinese in Thailand and Sino-Thai relations. Wasana served as director of the Thai Studies Center and the Ph.D. program in Thai Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University between 2014 and 2017. The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation was published by University of Washington Press in 2019.

For the full schedule for the Council on Thai Studies 2020 Annual Meeting, please visit our conference website.