![]() ![]() Rather, various regimes - Thailand has a long history of coups and of power switching back and forth between the military and business, and traditionalists and reformers - have tended to come back and reconfigure the monarchy as a figurehead standing for whatever it is they want it to stand for, as a means of aiding socio-political stability. The picture is drawn of a Thailand in which the urban-rural divide is strong not only in a geographic sense but also with respect to political identity the monarchy is correctly perceived as a balancing force, but not because the monarchy was strong in itself. The bulk, however, is spent on modern Thailand, with a brief chapter added in the second edition on the post-2006 era after which Thaksin was exiled, the military coup, yellow vs red shirt protests, etc. The first third of the book is spent on pre-20th century Thailand - sketching in particular the structure of its monarchy and the geopolitical region it dominated, the Mekong (stretching to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma). Its also the only up-to-date socio-economic history of Thailand I could find on international bookshelves so this makes it somewhat of a reference text for the layman. A solid history of modern Thailand, running from the 1700s to the present day ~2009. ![]()
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