[Tlc] Re: Historian wants country called 'Siam'

[Michael Jerryson]

Coming at this from another 'corner',

'Siam' was coined during Rama IV's period, and like Bob said, was packed in with nice wonderful racial connotations that became nationalized and legitimized under Rama VI. So I would concur that southern 'Thais' have a problem with racism, but I do not know whether "Siamese" or "Thai" would alleviate this, at least in the southermost provinces (not sure where in the south this woman was from, nor what her full identity was). The issue for most of the Malay Muslims in these areas is that both terms reflect a religious and ethnic bias (you can throw in linguistics too, one speaks paasaa/bahasa-THAI, or paasaa/bahasa-melayu). 

If you go further north to Trang or other southern areas where Malays speak Thai instead of Melayu, you might find a different attitude reflecting what you are referring to: "Thai" in these areas not under martial law has a space that allows for Thai Chinese, Thai Malay, etc., whereas Siamese does not. But this mentality does not intensely pervade (at least in my experience) Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.

warmly,

michael




Michael K. Jerryson
PhD. Candidate
Dept. Religious Studies,
University California-Santa Barbara
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