State, Community, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Thailand, 1351-1767

Abstract

Ayutthaya (1351-1767) stands apart from other Tai-speaking kingdoms in its longevity, its administrative complexity, and its cosmopolitanism. It is also historically significant as a direct predecessor of the modern Thai nation-state. The cultural and political history of Ayutthaya holds the potential to not only illustrate the nature of Ayutthayan society, but to reveal the origins of regional differences and communal identities in Thai society that persist to the present day. An examination of notions of ethnicity shows that the while a form of modern Thai was the language of the Ayutthayan state for all of its history, the concept of Ayutthaya as a Thai state did not emerge until the sixteenth or the seventeenth century. In addition, ethnic diversity and the slow, inter-generational integration of minority communities into the Thai ethnic majority changed the nature of Thai ethnicity. By the mid-eighteenth century, Ayutthaya had become a Thai state, but one in which numerous non-Thai, or formerly non-Thai, ethnic groups were fixtures of the social landscape and played integral roles in the political and economic life of the state.