No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Inscribing Siam: The state of documentary and spatial practices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2019
Abstract
The administrative (Chakri) reforms in Siam which took place around the turn of the twentieth century are probably one of the most studied topics in the history of Thailand. This period is usually described as the time when the royal elite worked to create a Siamese nation-state under the guidance of the absolute monarchy. This transformation encompassed both territorial integration and administrative centralization. Here we offer a new perspective on this transformative period through an analysis of changing documentary and spatial practices in Siam from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, which were one of the most crucial, intrinsic dynamics of state formation. The emphasis is on the mundane practices of documentation—among other spatial-material practices and processes—that produce the effect that the state exists. We show how this new paper regime articulated a standardization of written official documents, the birth of the file as a technology to deal with the avalanche of documents circulating between sections of the burgeoning administration, and the spatial organization that created the office—fields where officials produced and stored documents according to specific regulations. We exemplify this new regime of documentary practices in Bangkok and beyond, with special reference to the paper and spatial works of the provincial gendarmerie.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019
References
1 Scott, J., ‘State simplifications: Nature, space, and people’, Nomos, Vol. 38, 1996, pp. 42–85 (esp. p. 54)Google Scholar, and Scott, J., Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998Google Scholar.
2 National Archives, Thailand (hereafter NA), R6 N 4.3/6, ‘Letter to the Head of the Department of the provincial gendarmerie and metropolitan police, [no date] November 1916’.
3 NA R6 N 4.5/23, ‘Letter to the Minister of Local Government, 6 September 1918’.
4 Anderson, B., ‘Studies of the Thai state: The state of Thai studies’, in The Study of Thailand: Analyses of Knowledge, Approaches, and Prospects in Anthropology, Art History, Economics, History and Political Science, Ayal, E. B. (ed.), Ohio University, Athens, 1978, pp. 193–247Google Scholar.
5 With regard to territory, for example, Winichakul, Thongchai, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 1994Google Scholar, shows not only how boundaries were established but also how new notions of space came into being. Vandergeest, P. and Peluso, M., ‘Territorialization and state power in Thailand’, Theory and Society, Vol. 24, 1995, pp. 385–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Larsson, T., Land and Loyalty. Security and the Development of Property Righs in Thailand, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2012Google Scholar, analyse how the state organizes its territory through a process of territorialization and the establishment of property rights. Kakizaki's work deals with how the construction of railways was linked with a conquering of space and the expansion of Bangkok's political and economic influence: Kakizaki, I., Laying the Tracks: The Thai Economy and its Railways, 1885–1935, Kyoto University Press and Trans Pacific Press, Victoria, 2005Google Scholar. In terms of state apparatuses, Warren, J., Gambling, the State and Society in Thailand, C. 1800–1945, Routledge, London and New York, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar, analyses the link between gambling and state formation. Loos, T., Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand, Silkworm, Chiang Mai, 2002Google Scholar, documents a transformation in legal structure and the influence of transnational currents on Thai law. Mead, Kullada Kesboonchoo, The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism, RoutledgeCurzon, Oxfordshire and New York, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Rajchagool, Chaiyan, The Rise and Fall of the Thai Absolute Monarchy, White Lotus, Bangkok, 1994Google Scholar, detail the bureaucratic restructuring, especially in response to the demands of capitalism in the late nineteenth century. Other studies deal with changing symbols of the state. Peleggi, M., Lords of Things. The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy's Modern Image, University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 2002Google Scholar, deals with changing sartorial representations and spectacles of the monarchy. Jory, P., Thailand's Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man, State University of New York Press, New York, 2016Google Scholar, examines changing perceptions of the jatakas—tales of the Buddha's past lives—and the formation of a monarchical ideology. Sattayanurak, Attachak, Kan plian plaeng lokkathat khong chon chan phu nam thai tang tae ratchakan thi 4—pho so 2475 [Transformation of the Worldview of the Thai Elite Class from the Fourth Reign to 1932], Chulalongkorn University Press, Bangkok, 1998Google Scholar, studies the changing notion of time and history that puts the monarch at the centre as history-maker. With regard to how the population was perceived and organized, for example, Puaksom, Davisakd, Chuea rok rang kai lae rat wetchakam: Prawattisat kan phaet samai mai nai sangkhom thai [Germ, Body and the Medical State: A History of Modern Medicine in Thai Society], Chulalongkorn University Press, Bangkok, 2007Google Scholar, has analysed the emergence of the ‘medical state’ and its perception of population, and Tamthai Dilokvidhyarat, ‘State numeracy: A history of the recording of information in Siam, 1890–1925’, PhD thesis, The Australian National University, 2014, has analysed how the Thai state's recording of empirical data enhanced the functionality of the state with respect to exploiting and developing the population. Others have studied changing perceptions and categorizations of the population in terms of race/nationality, such as Streckfuss, D., ‘The mixed colonial legacy of Siam: Origins of Thai racialist thought, 1890–1910’, in Autonomous Histories. Particular Truths. Essays in Honour of John Smail, Sears, L. (ed.), University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, 1993, pp. 123–153Google Scholar, or ‘civilization’, for example, Winichakul, Thongchai, for, ‘The quest “siwilai”: A geographical discourse of civilizational thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Siam’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 59, No. 3, 2000, pp. 528–549CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 For example, Lim, S., Siam's New Detectives: Visualizing Crime and Conspiracy in Modern Thailand, University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar; H. Kawaguchi, ‘Document use and the political structure in the Siamese government during the reigns of King Rama III and Rama IV’, paper presented at the 11th International Conference on Thai Studies, Bangkok, 2011; Nooch, Kuasirikun and Constable, P., ‘The cosmology of accounting in mid 19th-century Thailand’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 35, 2010, pp. 596–627Google Scholar; Constable, P. and Nooch, Kuasirikun, ‘Accounting for the nation-state in mid nineteenth-century Thailand’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4, 2007, pp. 574–619CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, a recent exception to this trend is Laungaramsri, Pinkaew, Atalak ekasan. Wongsa withaya kan khuap khum prachakon khong rat thai [Identity Paper: A Genealogy of the Control of Population by the Thai State], Chiang Mai University Press, Chiang Mai, 2018Google Scholar, in which the author discusses the material and performative aspects of identity papers.
7 For example, Weber, M., Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1978Google Scholar; Giddens, A., The Nation-State and Violence: Volume Two of a Contemporary Criticism of Historical Materialism, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987Google Scholar.
8 For example, Mathur, N., Paper Tiger. Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015Google Scholar; Hull, M. S., Government of Paper. The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan, University of California Press, Berkely, Los Angeles, London, 2012Google Scholar; Gupta, A., Red Tape. Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2012Google Scholar; Feldman, I., Governing Gaza. Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917–1967, Duke University Press, Durham, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joyce, P., The State of Freedom. A Social History of the British State since 1800, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoler, A. L., Along the Archival Grain. Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2010Google Scholar.
9 Hull, M. S., ‘Documents and bureaucracy’, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 41, 2012, p. 257CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Weber, Economy and Society, for example, pp. 956–989.
11 Giddens, The Nation-State, p. 44; Goody, J., The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Other state-centric approaches include, among others, Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol's call to ‘bring the state back in’: Evans, P. B., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T. (eds), Bringing the State Back in, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann's writings on the autonomous power of the state as a product of the usefulness of enhanced territorial-centralization to social life in general: Mann, M., ‘The autonomous power of the state: Its origins, mechanisms and results’, Archives européennes de sociologie, Vol. 25, 1984, pp. 185–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or Tilly's theory of state-making, revolving around the intimate link between war and state-formation and of the state as ‘protection racket’: Tilly, C., Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1990Google Scholar, and C. Tilly, ‘War making and state making as organized crime’, in Bringing the State Back in, Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol (eds), pp. 169–187.
13 T. Mitchell, ‘Society, economy and the state-effect’, in State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, G. Steinmetz (ed.), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, and London, pp. 76–97, and Mitchell, T., ‘The limits of the state: Beyond statist approaches and their critics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 1, 1991, pp. 77–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hansen, T. B. and Stepputat, F. (eds), States of Imagination. Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Mitchell, ‘The limits of the state’, p. 94.
15 Gupta, Red Tape, p. 152.
16 Mathur, Paper Tiger, p. 2. Arjun Appadurai has made the same points in his discussion of the ‘numerical gaze’ of the colonial state in India. The colonial state produced data in such large quantities that they were, in fact, unmanageable. Appadurai, however, does not link this policy of quantification with a failure in the colonial state's governance. Rather, he links this avalanche of numbers with the creation of an ‘illusion of bureaucratic control and a key to a colonial imaginaire in which countable abstractions, both of people and of resources, at every imaginable level and for every conceivable purpose created the sense of a controllable indigenous reality’: Appadurai, A., ‘Number in the colonial imagination’, in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. Perspectives on South Asia, Breckenridge, C. A. and van der Veer, P. (eds), University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1993, pp. 314–339Google Scholar (esp. p. 317).
17 Gupta, Red Tape, pp. 142–143.
18 Mathur, Paper Tiger, p. 115.
19 Sharma, A. and Gupta, A., ‘Introduction: Rethinking theories of the state in the age of globalization’, in The Anthropology of the State, Sharma, A. and Gupta, A. (eds), Blackwell, Oxford, 2006, pp. 1–41 (esp. p. 13)Google Scholar.
20 Feldman, Governing Gaza.
21 Hull, M., ‘Ruled by records: The expropriation of land and the misappropriation of lists in Islamabad’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 35, No. 4, 2008, pp. 501–518CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hull, M., ‘The file: Agency, authority, and autography in an Islamabad bureaucracy’, Language & Communication, Vol. 23, 2003, pp. 287–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hull, Government of Paper, p. 18; and Latour, B., Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999, p. 192Google Scholar.
22 Hull, Government of Paper, p. 130.
23 Ibid., p. 21.
24 Joyce, The State of Freedom, pp. 10–11.
25 Baker, C. and Phongphaichit, Pasuk, A History of Thailand, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, p. 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Ibid., p. 50.
27 Kawaguchi, ‘Document use’. In fact, many historical studies claim that the ‘Early Rattanakosin’ period (1782–1851) saw a surge in Bangkok's assertion of power over various outlying areas, especially concentrated in the hands of Bunnag aristocrats. See, for example, Seksan Prasertkul, ‘The transformation of the Thai state and economic change (1855–1945)’, PhD thesis, Cornell University, 1989; M. R. Rujaya Abhakorn, ‘Ratburi, an inner province: Local government and central politics in Siam’, PhD thesis, Cornell University, 1984; Auamporn Sornsuwan, ‘The Chinese in the Thai political elite's perception, 1895–1932’, Master's thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 2005. Yet, in this article, we examine what exactly this ‘power’ was, or, more precisely, the mechanisms/processes that made it posible to exercise this power. From the aforementioned and other studies, Saichol Sattayanurak suggests a number of these mechanisms: the alliance between the Bunnags and the rich Chinese families, especially the taxfarmers, in the cities and towns; the shifting balance of favour and disfavour by the Bunnags over the conflicts of the latter groups, as well as wars waged by Bangkok against rebellious vassalages. With thanks to Saichol Sattayanurak, personal communication, 2 March 2017. The fact that we learn about these processes through the documentary uses of bai bok, supha akson, and santra is precisely the point we are making. There was indeed a war against Kedah in the south in 1839, for instance, but we learn about this mainly from Chotmai het luang udom sombat [The dispatches of Luang Udom Sombat], Phim Thai, Bangkok, 1915, which, if anything, emphasizes the materiality of power: the dispatches supplied the Bunnag nobleman who was leading an army down south with the ‘tunnel vision’ of what was said and decided in the palace in Bangkok. When, to where, and how many cannonballs should be fired depended equally on what was carried in the dispatches as much as it did on many other factors.
28 Constable and Nooch, ‘Accounting for the nation’.
29 Historical Commission of Prime Minister's Secretariat, Chotmai het nakhon chiang mai [Historical records on Chiang Mai], Prime Minister's Secretariat Office, Bangkok, 1999, pp. 71–74; NA R5 M 2.12 Ko, ‘Governance Section, bai bok (Ubon Ratchathani)’.
30 Damrong Rajanubhab, Thesaphiban [Provincial Administration], Rung Rueang Tham, Bangkok, 1955, p. 17.
31 NA R4.1 Ko/8, ‘The royal letters and various proclamations’.
32 Ibid.
33 The title, also known as the Front Palace, refers to a position second only to the monarch. It was usually given to a king's brother or son, and usually designated them as heir presumptive. The position can be dated back to the Ayutthaya period (conventionally, 1351–1767) and was abolished in 1855 as the new title of crown prince was preferred.
34 NA R4.1 Ko/8, ‘The royal letters and various proclamations’.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Buls, C., Siamese Sketches, White Lotus, Bangkok, 1994 [1901], p. 20Google Scholar.
42 We take the term ‘file-engineer’ from Joyce, The State of Freedom, p. 162.
43 Ibid. For Latour's definition of ‘black box’ in relation to science studies, see, for example, Latour, B., Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987, pp. 2, 81–82, 131, 253Google Scholar.
44 Ibid., pp. 233–235.
45 Damrong, Thesaphiban, pp. 18–19.
46 So-called for its dye from the khoi tree (streblus asper).
47 Damrong, Thesaphiban, p. 19.
48 Ibid., p. 18.
49 Ibid., pp. 22–23.
50 Ibid.
51 Rajanubhab, Damrong, Rup lae rueang thiao [Images and Writings on Travelling], Pim Thai, Bangkok, 2014 [1924], p. 28Google Scholar.
52 Latour, Science in Action, pp. 232, 235.
53 Wongworadet, Bhanu Bhandu, Chiwiwat [The Development of Life], Khuru Sapha, Bangkok, 1961 [1884], p. 7Google Scholar.
54 Damrong, Thesaphiban, p. 24.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., pp. 32–33.
57 Hull, ‘Documents and bureaucracy’, p. 261.
58 Weber, Economy and Society, for example, pp. 957–959.
59 Damrong, Thesaphiban, p. 22.
60 Ibid., p. 13. Damrong was not the first nobleman to go to the office and receive a salary. According to him, Prince Devawongse, the minister of foreign affairs, was the first one to do ‘like the lesser officers’: ibid., p. 22. Fees could be levied directly from the population on various occasions and in different areas, such as a taking fee from tax-farming, a trading post, exemption for corvée labour, or from seeing through an affair.
61 Ibid., p. 23.
62 Ibid., p. 17.
63 Ibid., pp. 9–11.
64 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
65 Rajanubhab, Damrong, Thesaphiban. Reprinted for the 120th Anniversary of the Ministry of Interior, Department of Provincial Administration, Bangkok, 2012, pp. 245–249Google Scholar.
66 NA R5 M 2.14/1, ‘The mahat lek tamruat inspecting outer cities’.
67 For a detailed discussion of the photographic practice, see Sing Suwannakij, ‘King and eye: Visual formation and technology of the Siamese monarchy’, PhD thesis, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 2013.
68 Maruphong, Siriphat, Kan truat lae chat ratchakan nai monthon krung kao lae monthon pachinburi [The Inspection and the Organization of Government in Monthon Ayutthaya and Monthon Prachinburi], Rong Phim Rueang Tham, Bangkok, 1972, pp. 56–57Google Scholar.
69 Ibid., pp. 45–46.
70 Ibid., p. 48.
71 Ibid., pp. 15–16.
72 Williams, C., Police Control Systems in Britain, 1775–1975. From Parish Constable to National Computer, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his seminal study of the formation of the police and changing notions of crime in Thailand, Samson Lim also shows how information about crime and criminals changes from an oral- to paper-based mode of production. He notes how the new documentary practice of writing, and later typing, turned knowledge into a ‘modern’ knowledge. See Lim, Siam's New Detectives.
73 For more details, see Ivarsson, S., ‘La gendarmerie royale du Siam et ses officiers Danois, instruments du contrôle d'un territoire et de ses habitants, 1897–1926’, in Les Gendarmeries Dans Le Monde. De La Révolution À Nos Jours, Houte, A.-D. and Luc, J.-N. (eds), Presses Universite Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, 2016, pp. 213–224Google Scholar.
74 See, for example, the descriptions of gendarme stations in Hosseus, C. C., Through King Chulalongkorn's Kingdom (1904–1906). The First Botanical Exploratrion of Northern Thailand, White Lotus, Bangkok, 2001 [1912]Google Scholar.
75 If nothing else is indicated, then the following section is based on NA R6 N 4.1/157, ‘Kho bangkhap rabiap kan tamruat phra nakhon ban lae tamruat phuthon [Regulation for police and provincial gendarmes], 1918’, and an account published by one of the Danish officers serving in the gendarmerie: Seidenfaden, E., Det Kongelige Siamesiske Provinsgendarmeri Og Dets Danske Officerer [The Royal Siamese Gendarmerie and its Danish Officers], Poul Kristensens Forlag, København, 1999Google Scholar.
76 According to Seidenfaden, all gendarme stations had the same outline. Their size may have differed, but they always had the same spatial plan. Ibid., p. 150.
77 NA R6 M 10/3, ‘Phraya Maha Ammat, Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Interior, to the King, 23 March 1915’, pp. 30–31.
78 See NA R6 M 10/2, ‘Prince Kamrob's inspection reports from various Monthon to the Gendarmerie Division, 1914–1915’. The file contains nine reports.
79 Feldman, Governing Gaza, pp. 14–20.
80 ‘Field of supervision writing’ comes from Foucault, M., Psychiatric Power. Lectures at Collège de France 1973–1974, Picador, New York, 2003, p. 55Google Scholar.
81 Quoted in Maruphong, Kan truat, p. 7 (Preface).
82 Gupta, Red Tape, p. 160.