This lively, accessible book is the first new history of Thailand in English for two decades. Drawing on new Thai-language research, it ranges widely over political, economic, social, and cultural themes.

    Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit reveal how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree labour evolved into a rural society of smallholder peasants and an urban society populated mainly by migrants from southern China. They trace how a Buddhist cosmography adapted to new ideas of time and space, and a traditional polity was transformed into a new nation-state under a strengthened monarchy.

1. Before Bangkok
2. The old order in transition, I76OS to I86OS
3. Reforms, I85OS to I9IOS
4. Peasants, merchants, and officials, I87OS to I93OS
5. Nationalisms, I9IOS to I97OS
6. The American era and development, I94OS to I96OS
7. Ideologies, I94OS to I97OS
8. Globalization and mass society, I97OS onwards
9. Politics, I97OS onwards