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Thaification, orThai-ization, is the process by which people of different cultural and ethnic origins living inThailand becomeassimilated to the country's dominant culture: that ofcentral Thailand.
Thaification was a step in the creation in the 20th century of the Thaination state in whichCentral Thai people occupy a dominant position, as opposed to the historically-multicultural kingdom ofSiam. A related term, "Thainess", describes the particular characteristics that distinguish the Thai from others.
Thaification is a byproduct of thenationalist policies mandated by the Thai state after theJune 1933 Siamese coup d'état. The coup leaders, said to be inspired byWestern ideas of an exclusivenation state, acted more in accordance with their close German nationalist and anti-democratic counterparts to effect kingdom-wide dominance by the Central Thai culture. Minority-owned businesses, like the traditionally-merchantThai Chinese were aggressively acquired by the state, which gave preferential contracts toethnic Central Thais and cooperative ethnic Chinese.[1]
Thai identity was mandated via 12Thai cultural mandates and reinforced in the heartlands and in rural areas.Central Thailand became economically and politically dominant, and Central Thai, unlike the multilingual Siam, became the state-mandated language of themedia, business, education and all state agencies. Central Thai values were successfully inculcated into being perceived as the desirable national values, with increasing proportions of the population identifying as Thai. Central Thai culture, being the culture of wealth and status, made it hugely attractive to a once-diverse population that sought to be identified withnationalist unity.
The main targets of Thaification wereethnic Chinese and otherethnic groups on the edges of the kingdom, geographically and culturally: theLao ofIsan (อีสาน),[2] thehill tribes of western andnorthern Thailand, and alsoThais who speak theSouthern Thai language. There has also been a Thaification of the immigrant Indian and Vietnamese populations. Thaification also targeted theethnic Malay but is somewhat less successful.[3][4]
Thaification by the government can be separated into three sets of policies:
In the first set of policies, the government targeted specific policies and actions at fringe groups. An example of this is the Accelerated Rural Development Programme of 1964, the Isan component of which included the strengthening of allegiance toBangkok and the rest of the country as one of its objectives.
The second set of policies consists of policies applied nationally, but that disproportionately affect fringe groups. One example of this is the prescribed use ofCentral Thai language in schools. This had little or no effect on the central Thais, or the Siamese people, who already used the language as a native but made bilinguals of speakers ofIsan in the northeast, ofNorthern Thai (คำเมือง) in the north and ofPattani Malay (ยาวี) in the south.
Harsher methods were imposed on the Thai Chinese.[5] After thePeople's Republic of China was founded in 1949, a series of anticommunist Thai military juntas, starting with that ofright-wing dictatorPlaek Phibunsongkhram, sharply reduced Chinese immigration and prohibitedChinese schools in Thailand.[5] Thai Chinese born after the 1950s had "very limited opportunities to enter Chinese schools".[5] Those Thai Chinese who could afford to study overseas studiedEnglish, instead ofMandarin Chinese for economic reasons.[5] As a result, the Chinese in Thailand have "almost totallylost the language of their ancestors" and are gradually losing their Chinese identity.[5]
A third set of policies was designed to encourageThai nationalism in the nation's peoples such as the promotion of theking as a national figurehead and saluting theflag in school and the twice-daily broadcasts of thenational anthem (Thai:เพลงชาติ;RTGS: phleng chat) onradio andtelevision at 08:00 and 18:00 as well as in public spaces. Encouraging Thai nationalism had the intended side effect of discouraging other loyalties, such as that toLaos, stemming from the central Thais' fear of Lao cultural and political dominance in the Isan region[6] and that of Malay (Thai:มลายู;RTGS: malayu) in the south.
