Premodern Thai History

Dr. Thanet AphornsuvanSoutheast Asian Studies Program

Faculty of Liberal Arts,Thammasat University

Beginnings of Tai

• The people of modern Thailand are varied. Definition of “Thai” is political: citizens of Thailand, subjects of Thai king. Cultural and linguistic=speak Thai and participate in Thai culture.

• All the things that make up Thai identity, however, have developed only slowly through many centuries.

• None of the modern Thai now refers to—political, cultural, linguistic—existed in its present form until recently.

• Core elements of contemporary Thai identity arrived here a thousand years ago. These were people called “Tai” shared a common linguistic and cultural identity which has become differentiated into a large number of separate identities.

• Thai culture, a civilization and culture, emerged as the product of interaction between Tai and indigenous and immigrant cultures. Mon, Khmer in old times and Chinese, Indian more recently.

• To trace the history of Thailand, must primarily be concerned with people, with culture, and society, and secondarily with their environment.

Thai vs Tai peoples

• The Tai peoples today are widely spread over several million square kilometers of the southeastern corner of the great land mass of Asia. Most obvious are the Thai or Siamese of Thailand. 60 million. Others include:

• Lao, most live in northeast Thailand. 4 million in Laos.

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• Shans, in northeast Burma (Mynmar). 3 + million

• In south China and uplands of SEA. Lu of Yunnan province, Black Tai, White Tai, Red Tai of Vietnam. About 2.5+ million

• Another group is Chuang people of Chinese provinces of Kwangsi and Kweichow, about 20 million Influenced by Chinese culture.

• Also Tai-Ahom in Assam of India, and in Hainan.

• All together Tai is about 70+million outside Thailand.

SEA Civilization

• 40,000 years SEA peoples inhabited in relatively permanent sites in much of the region. Hunting and gathering food from streams and forests, using wooden and bamboo tools. With stone choppers and knives led to tools as the blowpipe, the bow and arrow, animal and fish traps, and baskets.

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agriculture

• 10-20,000 years begun to engage in agriculture, cultivating peas and beans and domesticated animals, i.e. chicken.

• 10,000 years ago, individual ethnic groups began to be differentiated, linguistically and culturally, from the Yangtse Valley to the islands of the Indonesian Archipelago.

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Rice culture

• Core of technology of SEA civilization emerged at this time.

• Swine, cattle, fowl domesticated and rice was cultivated. Invented canoe, navigated to Japan, Melanesia, India. Metallurgy developed. Copper and bronze used. Iron-working, pottery.

Subsistence economy

• Formed subsistence agriculture based on rice, supplanted by fishing and gathering of forest products. They lived as nuclear families in small villages, regular communication and some trade with others.

Women status

• The region was under-populated, manpower was highly valued and women enjoyed a relatively high social status, certainly by contrast with Chinese and Indian women.

• In determining inheritance, equal value was accorded the maternal and paternal lines. Sons and daughters received equal shares of parents estates.

Local beliefs

• Folk beliefs were remarkably consistent. The world was regarded as being peopled with good and evil spirits that had power to aid or harm humans and thus had to be propitiated by ceremonies or offerings of food.

Spirit world

• Women believed to have a special power to mediate between mankind and the spirit world. Nature and the world were unpredictable and hostile forces with which humans had to cope as best they could

Beginnings of Tai history

• 1. The formation of the Tai communities and Muang(states). 9-10th c

• --In prehistoric times primitive and tribal peoples dominated the region of mainland SEA.

• --cultural traditions of SEA have a long complex relations between the highland and lowland peoples. “local genius”

• Adaptation to geographical features. High temperatures and monsoonal rainfall.

• The ridges of Indo-Malayan ranges,

• The furrows dominated by watercourses. The Irrawady and Salaween of Burma, the Mekong, Chao Phraya, Red River.

2. The Tai and the Classical Empires, A.D. 1000-1200

• --Development of Theravada Buddhist Civilization

• -Dvaravati

• -Angkor

• -Pagan

3. A Tai Century, 1200-1351

• The expansion of Tai-speaking peoples.

• --Coedes,=13th c was a watershed in the history of the Indianized states of SEA, because of the Mongol attack.

• --the Tai introduced a new type of social structure. Territorial units, known as “muang”, which were ruled by chiefly families.

• The sons of the chief were expected to found their own muang. Brought under control large areas of SEA.

• Kingdom of Lan Na

• -Sukhothai and the South

• Patani kingdom

4. Ayutthaya and Its neighbors, 1351-1569.

• -The Rise of Ayutthaya

• Renewal of Lan Na

• -The Rise of Lan Sang, Luang Prabang

• -Universal Monarchs, Universal Warfare

5. The Empire of Ayutthaya, 1569-1767.