Land and Loyalty: Security and the Development of Property Rights in Thailand 9780801464089

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
1. Securitization and Institutional Development
2. Capitalizing Thailand
3. Weapon of a Weak State
4. Conserving Smallholder Society
5. Combating Specters and Communists
6. Old Solutions, New Challenges
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

LAND AND LOYALTY

A volume in the series Cornell Studies in Political Economy edited by Peter J. Katzenstein A list of titles in this series is available at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Land and Loyalty Security and the Development of Property Rights in Thailand Tomas Larsson

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2012 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2012 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Larsson, Tomas, 1966– Land and loyalty : security and the development of property rights in Thailand / Tomas Larsson. p. cm. — (Cornell studies in political economy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5081-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Land tenure—Economic aspects—Thailand. 2. Economic development— Thailand. 3. Capitalism—Thailand. 4. Thailand—Economic policy. I. Title. II. Series: Cornell studies in political economy. HD890.55.Z63L38 2012 333.309593—dc23 2012001130 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my mother and father

Contents

List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments

ix xi

1.

Securitization and Institutional Development

2.

Capitalizing Thailand

15

3.

Weapon of a Weak State

30

4.

Conserving Smallholder Society

73

5.

Combating Specters and Communists

108

6.

Old Solutions, New Challenges

147

1

Notes Bibliography Index

153 171 201

vii

Figures and Tables

Figures 2.1.

Poverty incidence, 1962–2002

16

2.2.

Conceptual framework linking land rights, growth, and confict

19

Land sales and new mortgages registered in Thailand, 1955–2000

21

2.4.

Agricultural credit from financial institutions

22

2.5.

Fertilizer consumption in Thailand, 1961–2000

22

2.6.

Per capita GDP in Thailand, 1820–2000

28

3.1.

Map of central Siam and the twenty-four-hour zone

41

3.2.

Government expenditure on land administration, 1904–5 to 1919–20

60

Government expenditure on land administration, as percentage of total, 1904–5 to 1919–20

61

3.4.

Per capita GDP in Japan and Thailand, 1820–1940

71

4.1.

Registered mortgage instruments for immovable property in Burma, 1910–51

103

5.1.

Area under title in Thailand, 1955–2000

109

5.2.

Clashes between insurgents and Thai security forces, 1965/66–85

114

Number of employees in the Department of Lands, 1955–2000

119

Phibun Songkhram officiates at title deed distribution ceremony, September 1953

120

5.5.

Thailand’s Polity2 score, 1950–2000

131

5.6.

A model of institutional change

133

5.7.

Population-agricultural land ratios in Thailand and the Philippines, 1961–2001

140

2.3.

3.3.

5.3.

5.4.

ix

x

FIGURES AND TABLES

Tables 2.1.

Land ownership and entrepreneurship in Thailand, 1997

25

4.1.

Socio-economic profile of rural Siam, 1929–30

95

4.2.

Rural credit markets, 1933–34

96

5.1.

Area of title deeds issued, by survey method

122

5.2.

Numbers of provinces in which different types of survey were undertaken

123

Acknowledgments

In my work on this book and the research on which it is based I have been supported by teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. At Cornell University, I benefited from the tremendous intellectual generosity of Jonas Pontusson, Ronald Herring, Peter Katzenstein, Victor Nee, and Thak Chaloemtiarana. I was also fortunate to be able to learn about the making of states, nations, and markets in seminars led by Benedict Anderson, Richard Bensel, and Valerie Bunce. In Bangkok, where most of the research for this book was done, I especially thank Charles Mehl and Tongroj Onchan at the Mekong Environment and Resource Institute for all their help and advice. They, together with Orapan Nabangchang, Thippawal Srijantr, Eathipol Srisawaluck, and Anthony Zola, introduced me to the often mind-boggling intricacies of land tenure reform in Thailand. The National Research Council of Thailand facilitated my research at the National Archives, the Council of State, and the Department of Lands (DOL). At the DOL, I am particularly thankful for the help extended to me by Wanna Rakyao and Ratchanee Dungchim. The staff at the National Archives in Bangkok and London kindly and efficiently helped me locate many of the historical documents on which my argument rests. As a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore I was provided with the time and a congenial environment which enabled me to work on the book manuscript. My employers at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, and St John’s College generously granted me leave so that I could spend a full year away from my teaching responsibilities. My argument has been sharpened thanks to questions and comments from participants in seminars and workshops at Cornell University, UC-Riverside, UC-Berkeley, Northern Illinois University, Oxford University, the University of Cambridge, and Växjö University. At various stages in the writing process, including some early drafts, my argument has benefited from the comments and criticisms of Patrik Aspers, David Biggs, the late Nigel Brailey, Richard Doner, Stephan Haggard, Derek Hall, Ian Harris, Staffan Lindberg, Tamara Loos, Michelle Tan, Emil Uddhammar, Peter Vandergeest, Andrew Walker, and James Warren. Two anonymous reviewers for xi

xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Cornell University Press and its editor Roger Haydon provided insightful critiques of the first full draft of the book manuscript. Gavin Lewis expertly copyedited the final manuscript. Sections of this book draw on previously published material. I acknowledge Elsevier for permission to reprint portions of “Intertextual Relations: The Geopolitics of Land Rights in Thailand,” Political Geography 26, no. 7 (2007), and Lynne Rienner Publishers for permission to reprint portions of “Western Imperialism and Defensive Underdevelopment of Property Rights Institutions in Siam,” Journal of East Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (2008). My research was made possible through financial support from the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, Stockholm, and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. My wonderful friends and family have made sure that the long periods I have been engrossed in the writing of this book have been subject to frequent and pleasant interruptions. For this I owe a special thanks to my wife, Chanita, and to our lovely daughters, Martina and Carolina.

LAND AND LOYALTY

1 SECURITIZATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

What are the causes of economic development? Increasingly, scholars of political economy answer “institutions” in general and property rights institutions in particular. As Matthew Lange argues, “the protection of property rights is quite possibly the most basic type of social regulation necessary for market production and expansion” (2005, 58). Emphasizing the importance of private property, prominent economists have defined a “good” institution as “a social organization that ensures that a broad cross-section of the society has effective property rights” (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2003, 86, emphasis in original). While the notion is not entirely novel, the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto (2000) has popularized the idea that the transformation of informal into formal property rights provides the key to economic prosperity, precisely because this is what makes property rights “effective.” This understanding of the importance of formality has in recent years been manifested in “rule of law” initiatives by national governments and international development agencies alike. It has also found an institutional home in a High Level Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, launched in 2006 and co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Hernando de Soto. That formal property rights institutions matter—perhaps particularly for the poor—is a powerful idea.1 But what are the political and historical origins of such institutions? It is this question that this book addresses. The degree to which states are exposed to international competition is an important part of explanations for the emergence of more efficient property rights structures enforced by the state. As Douglass North has noted, “Relatively 1

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inefficient property rights threaten the survival of a state in the context of more efficient neighbors, and the ruler faces the choice of extinction or of modifying the fundamental ownership structure to enable the society to reduce transaction costs and raise the rate of growth” (1981, 29).2 While the intuitions behind this line of argument were developed in the context of Europe’s historical experience—with its strong links between warmaking, state-building, and commerce (Tilly 1990)—East and Southeast Asia offer a more recent example of how an intensely competitive regional security environment can motivate state elites to create strong states and pursue economic growth-enhancing and welfare-promoting policies (Stubbs 1999, 2005; Zhu 2000; Kang 1995, 2002, 29–40; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005; Campos and Root 1996; Woo-Cumings 1998). In other parts of the world, less developmentally positive logics of state formation have prevailed, not necessarily because there has been an absence of war or threats thereof. For postcolonial Africa, respect for the sovereignty norm is often identified as an important explanation for the survival of weak and developmentally ineffective states (Jackson and Rosberg 1982; Jackson 1990). In a more competitive geopolitical context, such states would have been swallowed up by stronger rivals (Herbst 1990). But this Darwinian logic does not necessarily apply even in regions that, like East and Southeast Asia, have seen intense and persistent geopolitical rivalries. Although postindependence Middle Eastern states have focused great energies on preparing for and engaging in war, the developmental impact of such efforts has been limited, mainly because extractive efforts have been directed toward “external” sources of revenues, whether in the form of natural resource rents (oil) or foreign military assistance from wealthy allies (Heydemann 2000; Lustick 1997; Barnett 1992). Wars do not necessarily make states, even if geopolitics “influence the probabilities of changes in property rights” (Campbell and Lindberg 1990, 644). The apparently indeterminate effects of external security threats on state formation have generally been addressed by making the models more elaborate: by adding explanatory variables that specify the conditions under which states will be induced to build state capacity (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005; Thies 2004). In doing so, much of the literature that emphasizes the role of external and internal security threats in accounting for economic and political outcomes of various kinds treats threats as if they were “objective” and state responses as if they were the only “rational” ones given the circumstances. I take a different approach. Most threats to security are not self-evident, and neither are the policies and institutions that will counter them most effectively and efficiently (Widmaier, Blyth, and Seabrooke 2007). State elites are susceptible to misperception, myopia, myth-making, and hysteria (Jervis 1976; Mueller 2005; Van Evera 2003; Snyder 1991, 31–55). Uncertainty and indeterminacy is also a

SECURITIZATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

3

consequence of the fact that security remains an “ambiguous symbol” (Wolfers 1965, chap. 10) and an “insufficiently explicated” concept (Baldwin 1997, 24) not only for scholars but also for statesmen. Furthermore, the capacity of humans to anticipate the future, and their desire to shape it, means that political action is often prophylactic and, as such, motivated not so much by unmediated, imminent existential threats as by (perhaps unjustified) fears about the future. Policy formulation in the face of security threats therefore tends to proceed by way of a particular form of counterfactual reasoning: “We’d be sorry if we didn’t.” When to act and what to do is therefore never directly determined by the “objective” level of external security threats arrayed against a state, but rather by such factors as the threat perception and risk aversion of the actors, their beliefs about what policy responses are likely to be efficacious, and their assessment of domestic political consequences. Using a minimal conception, security often refers to two core values: state sovereignty and territorial integrity. But even these values are not necessarily held equally dear in all times and all places—such as premodern Southeast Asia— but rather constitute the core values of the classic Westphalian state. Using a wider definition of security, in the interest of portability across contexts, security threats are here understood as referring to events and phenomena that political actors intersubjectively interpret as necessitating change in order to protect cherished values and identities. In this book the main focus is on security threats that are perceived as fundamentally external in origin—although these may also be associated with internal, Quisling-like dimensions.

Securitization as a Causal Mechanism How, then, to understand the role of “security threats” as a cause of institutional change? The “mechanismic” turn in social science may offer a way forward. While the conception of causal mechanism is a contested one, a baseline definition states that a causal mechanism is “the pathway or process by which an effect is produced or a purpose is accomplished” (Gerring 2008, 178). Instead of thinking of external security threats as (simply) an independent variable, we can conceptualize security threats as elements of a causal mechanism—securitization. I conceive of securitization as an argumentative process that connects the perception of a threat with the formulation and implementation of policy that is intended to alleviate the threat (Balzacq 2009, 2011; Guzzini 2011). Securitization involves an agent that identifies a threat against something regarded as a fundamental value. In this book, the state is the securitizing agent, and the two most important referent objects of securitization are the state itself and the society

4

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over which it seeks to rule, with sovereignty and (national) identity, respectively, as the currencies in which security is measured (Waever 1995). The process of securitization furthermore involves an articulation of causal beliefs that motivate choices of policy instruments (Goldstein and Keohane 1993). In contrast with the so-called Copenhagen School’s understanding of securitization as (just) a “speech act” (Waever 1995; Buzan, Waever, and Wilde 1998), securitization when conceived as a causal mechanism therefore requires that a securitizing rhetorical “move” is followed by actual “security practice” (Floyd 2010, 54).3 Our attention is thus shifted away from (mere) discourse towards the actual policy instruments that states use to deal with dangers (Balzacq 2008). These policy instruments may be of a traditional military variety, or they may be categorized as economic, political, social, cultural, environmental, etc. The choice of policy instruments are determined by causal beliefs. State officials in different countries frequently hold different beliefs about how particular policies may enhance security. For example, Centeno (1997) shows that Latin American leaders in the nineteenth century viewed borrowing money abroad and printing money as policies that could finance preparation for and engagement in war. In Siam, similar policies were viewed, perhaps not unrealistically, as a certain road to ruin.4 In this book the focus is on the property rights regime and policies relating thereto. There is nothing inherent in such policies that make them causally related to security, however that is conceived. But political actors can make the argumentative link between threats and policies (securitization). They can also sever established connections between threats and policies (desecuritization). Or property rights policies may not be regarded as relevant to questions of security at all. However, although issues and policy instruments that state elites regard as having a direct bearing on matters of national security are highly variable (Katzenstein 1996, 10), the property rights regime is likely to be viewed by public officials at least in part through the lens of security. This is particularly true if security is conceived in the broader sense of the stability of the overarching political order. Given the substantive focus of this book, securitization as a causal mechanism builds bridges between usually quite separate political realms. The first is the “high politics” of international diplomacy and national security. The second is the usually low politics of cadastral surveys, land-titling schemes, and agricultural finance.5 In my argument these two spheres are closely intertwined. Herring (1983, 4) has emphasized the significance of “the perceptual model of elites of the rural world: the prevailing understanding of what is wrong, what is possible, what will work.” The argument here is that what appears to be wrong, to be

SECURITIZATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

5

possible, and to be workable in relation to the rural world is critically shaped by understandings of what is possible and workable in terms of the wider geopolitical context. This is particularly true in periods when, as has frequently been the case, property rights institutions serve as critical benchmarks of civilization and hallmarks of rival ideological camps in world politics. Securitization is a causal mechanism which, following Elster’s conception, is “frequently occurring and easily recognizable” but with unknown “triggers” and “indeterminate consequences” (1998, 45). Securitization can therefore cause a wide range of outcomes, depending on how threats are linked to policies. At one extreme, securitization can lead to the deliberate construction of a thriving agricultural economy, as was the case with the South Korean and Taiwanese land reforms: these were counterrevolutionary responses to the communist challenges emanating from China and North Korea (Tai 1974), which subsequently provided the economic basis for the construction of successful developmental states (Grabowski 1994).6 On the other hand, securitization can cause state leaders to intentionally impoverish their societies. Such was the case in the Southeast Asian archipelago in the seventeenth century, where rulers such as the sultan of Magindanao (in what is today the Philippines) suddenly decided to ban the cultivation of valuable spice crops—pepper, cloves, nutmeg—in order to avoid war with violently monopoly-seeking European powers, most notably in the form of the Dutch East India Company (Reid 1993, 299–300). Another illustrative example is provided by the contrasting approaches that the military juntas in Bangkok and Rangoon adopted in the early 1960s in order to secure themselves against the threat of communism. In Bangkok, the generals lurched rightward, embracing the principles of private property and capitalism while mobilizing traditional legitimating symbols such as the monarchy and the monkhood (Thak 2007 [1979]; Suehiro 1996). In Rangoon, in contrast, General Ne Win embarked on the “Burmese Road to Socialism”—including the nationalization of land—in order to win the hearts and minds of the rural population and to reduce the military threat posed by Mao’s China (Callahan 2003, 209). Burmese state elites essentially sought to preempt a communist takeover by joining the fraternity of socialist states. In these examples, the causal mechanism—securitization—is the same, but the policies adopted vary greatly, as do the consequences for long-term economic and political development. Thus, while we can make a reasonably strong argument that security threats have a significant impact on property rights regimes, we cannot necessarily make predictions of how they do so. As Tilly argues (1995, 1601), “regularities in political life . . . consist of recurrent causes which in different circumstances and sequences compound into highly variable but nonetheless explicable effects.” Securitization is one such recurrent cause.

6

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Context Is (Almost) Everything Why do outcomes vary even though the mechanism is the same? The answer is that the contexts are different. In order to explain outcomes, social scientists are increasingly focusing their attention on the interaction between causal mechanisms and the context in which they operate. This, according to Falleti and Lynch (2009), is the only way that causal explanations can be rendered credible. But since context is endless, while the scholar’s life is short, we must focus our attention on the most critical aspects of the context. Here I have generally been guided by existing theories about security threats and state formation and the concept of property itself. History can be divided into periods depending on the character of the international system and the overarching patterns of rivalry in world politics. The era of colonial expansion in Southeast Asia can thus be treated as analytically nonequivalent to the Cold War era of decolonization. These are different contexts, the perceived threats are different, and we would not necessarily expect causal mechanisms to operate in the same way in both time periods. Sequencing is another important temporal dimension of the context (Pierson 2004, chap. 2). In what order things happen can determine whether or how securitization operates. This is an argument that I develop most explicitly in chapter 3, through a comparison of Siam and Japan (see also Larsson 2008). But throughout the book there is also another way in which sequencing matters. How securitization operated at more or less critical historical junctures affects how it operates in subsequent episodes. In this case, the choices that rulers make regarding property rights policies—if and how to securitize—“not only limit future options, they may also precipitate later crises, structure available options, and shape the choices made at those junctures” (Haydu 1998, 353; see also Haydu 2010). We should expect this to be true of many different kinds of policies, but particularly so of those that relate to property rights. This is because property rights institutions are characterized by powerful feedback mechanisms. How property rights are securitized can therefore affect resource allocation, wealth accumulation, and power relations within (and, indeed, between) countries. By manipulating property rights, usually in periods of crisis, state actors can “alter the organization of the economy” and thereby give rise to entirely new interest groups in society (Campbell and Lindberg 1990, 635). In this sense, “policy produces politics.” Another guide to relevant aspects of the context is provided by recognition of the multidimensional nature of property rights. Property rights in land are often conceptualized as a “bundle of rights” which may include different combinations of the rights to use, abuse, exclude others, inherit, give away, rent out, lease, sell, buy, mortgage, tax, expropriate, and so forth. Over a single plot of

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7

land many different persons and juridical entities may hold different bundles of rights. These may, furthermore, vary from field to field and from village to village. The process of formalization is intended, in part, to standardize the bundles of rights that landowners enjoy—to make society more “legible” and thereby provide the institutional underpinnings for an integrated national market (Polanyi 1957 [1944]; Scott 1998). To complicate things further, the authority to redefine these property rights bundles may reside in different social and political organizations and institutions, at different levels of the polity. As I have argued elsewhere, property rights in land are regulated at different legal-geographic scales (Larsson 2007a). Here it is useful to think of these scales as institutional “layers” (Falleti and Lynch 2009), with different property rights regulations located at the international, national, and local levels. Examples include property-related provisions in international treaties, formal land law issued by national governments, and informal, customary land rights. How land rights are regulated in terms of these different dimensions or layers constitutes aspects of the context that can affect how securitization operates. In addition, fundamental transformations of the state delineate critical changes in the context (Falleti and Lynch 2009, 1160). We would not, for example, expect the mechanism of securitization to operate in the same way in nonbureaucratic states as it does in bureaucratic states (Centeno 1997). Another powerful illustration can be found in the spread of nationalism and the resulting “nationalization” of (state) interests and security (Anderson 1991; Meyer et al. 1997; Abdelal 2001; Helleiner and Pickel 2005). In the period covered by this book, Thailand undergoes precisely such a fundamental transformation with attendant consequences for how securitization operates. In the mid-nineteenth century, Siam was a dynastic state enmeshed in a hierarchical regional order with (a rapidly declining) China at the apex and a plethora of minor principalities at the bottom (Thongchai 1994; Sarasin 1977). It was not considered “civilized” and as such was not allowed full membership of the Eurocentric international society of states (Gong 1984). A hundred and twenty or so years later, Siam had been transformed into one sovereign state (and constitutional monarchy) amongst all the others (Jackson 1990; Bull and Watson 1984). Such fundamental transformations of states are frequently followed by shifts in how the securitization mechanism operates, not least by creating new values and identities that can be threatened. Geography is another important aspect of the context. The geographic location of states affects how public officials perceive and respond to security threats. Stubbs (2005), for instance, makes a powerful argument for the significance of geographic location in the Cold War as an explanation for divergent patterns of

8

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institutional and economic development. A country’s location can be more or less insecure. As a final note on the question of mechanisms and contexts, I should make clear that although this book focuses squarely on a single mechanism— securitization—it does so on the basis of a firm belief that it provides a powerful explanation for the trajectory of institutional development in Thailand. It is not based on an assumption that securitization will always be the most relevant causal mechanism when we seek to explain how property rights evolve. Nor is it assumed that securitization is the only relevant causal mechanism even in the case of Thailand. Other mechanisms are surely at work. But in the interest of making the argument and the presentation as clear as possible, I have sought to avoid the proliferation of mechanisms that characterizes parts of the mechanism-enthusiastic literature. The analytical attention is therefore squarely focused on securitization and the context within which it operates.

The Question Thailand has since the 1990s been portrayed as a paradigmatic example of the benefits—in terms of economic growth and poverty alleviation—of providing the rural poor with formal land rights (World Bank 1997, 44, 2004, 80–83; Phillips 2006, 49; de Soto 2000, 169; Slater 2002; Bledsoe 2006, 152, 155, 172; Burns 2007). Research into the economic consequences of a twenty-year land-titling program, launched in 1984, has provided some of the strongest evidence for the positive effects—in terms of access to capital, investment, productivity, and income—that result when a state defines and enforces property rights in land in such a way that uncertainty and transaction costs are reduced (see Feder and Tongroj 1987; Feder et al. 1988; Department of Lands 2002). These reforms have contributed to an impressive record of economic growth: Thailand is one of only thirteen countries that have achieved “high, sustained growth in the postwar period” (Commission on Growth and Development 2008, 19).7 Today, Thailand’s centralized land administration system is notable for the speed with which transactions involving formal land holdings can be completed—the time required to “close” officially a real estate transaction at the Department of Lands averages two and a half hours (Brits, Grant, and Burns 2002, 11). The regulatory costs and requirements associated with land transactions are extremely low in international comparison: Thailand placed fifth out of 181 countries in the “registering property” category of the World Bank’s 2009 “Ease of Doing Business” ranking. In comparison, Malaysia ranked 81st, the Philippines 97th, and Indonesia 107th (World Bank 2008). Thailand therefore

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9

stands out as something of an exception in a region otherwise characterized by the “paucity of formal, effective, and nationally integrated tenure systems” (Hall 2004, 409).8 Indeed, the Thai land-titling bureaucracy’s aim is to provide full title for all land that can be titled, a degree of investment in the official specification of private property rights in land unheard-of in most countries, and certainly without precedent in the Anglo-Saxon capitalist economies that are frequently identified as the archetypical sources of inspiration for promarket institutional reforms in the developing world (Evans 2004). Many similar reforms have floundered elsewhere (Platteau 1996; Jansen and Roquas 1998; Zoomers and Haar 2000; Lund 2001; Wachter and English 1992; Economist 2006a, 2006b; Onoma 2010). As a consequence, Thailand has served as a “model” for land formalization programs throughout the developing world (Hall, Hirsch, and Li 2011, 35). However, the existing literature is almost completely silent on the history and politics of land titling in Thailand, and it is this lacuna that this book seeks to fill. The question is not why formalization of land rights was associated with good developmental outcomes. Of that we have a fairly good understanding. What puzzled me was why it had been possible to dramatically improve property rights institutions in Thailand. Substantive significance aside, my curiosity was further stimulated by the cognitive dissonance that arose in confrontation with the image, predominant in the scholarly literature, of the Thai state as one in which patrimonialism and predation have flourished (Christensen et al. 1993; Hutchcroft 1999; MacIntyre 2003; Doner and Ramsay 2000; Haggard 2000; Riggs 1966). More recently, Doner (2009, 140) and Slater (2010, 8 n. 19) have argued that the Thai state has seen no meaningful increase in its institutional capacities in the postwar era. For Doner (2009, 113) this is particularly true in regard to its (in)ability to define and enforce rural land rights. Interpretations of the Thai “case” diverge wildly, and it is precisely for this reason that it provides such an intriguing opportunity to unravel some of the mysteries of institutional development.

The Argument Initially, I assumed that an explanation for this would need to be built around an understanding of the politics surrounding a massive World Bank–financed land-titling project that had been launched in the 1980s. But I soon realized that this assumption was mistaken. By the time the World Bank became involved, a succession of Thai governments had already for many years been busy converting informal or imprecise rural land documents into well-specified formal land

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titles. Trying to get a firmer grip on the “how possible” question thus pushed my research further back in Thai history. Eventually I stopped in 1855, the year when Siam’s King Mongkut signed an unequal treaty with John Bowring, the British plenipotentiary to the Far East who had famously declared that “free trade is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is free trade” (Todd 2008, 385). That treaty not only liberated the trade in goods and in land, it also introduced the principle of extraterritoriality and in so doing opened up an option for “exit” from the grip of the Siamese state. This treaty is a central aspect of the context in which securitization subsequently operated as a causal mechanism. I shall argue, first, that in this institutional context the process of securitization led to an intentional underdevelopment of property rights institutions in response to the nineteenth-century threat of colonization. The threat of settlement by subjects of powerful imperialistic states can induce weak states to create (or maintain) obscure and inefficient property rights in land. A state’s willingness to provide the institutional underpinnings of a national market in land may be seriously undermined if doing so would simultaneously and automatically create an international market. Second, the underdevelopment of property rights institutions in this earlier episode made possible the dramatic improvement in property rights institutions in Thailand in response to the twentieth-century threat of communism. In contrast with many other Southeast Asian countries, where counterrevolutionary land tenure reforms were spectacularly unsuccessful (McCoy 1971), they worked in Thailand. In the study of long-term economic and political development in developing countries, colonial policies, in particular, are often identified as having powerful causal effects on subsequent development (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001; Kohli 2004; Krieckhaus 2006; Lange 2009; Mahoney 2001, 2010). For Southeast Asia, the heavy hand of colonial policy history has been explored in works by, for example, Furnivall (1948), Anderson (1991), and Hutchcroft (2000). The colonial legacies—in the form of identities and the distribution of economic and political power—are generally understood to be characterized by feedback effects resulting in path dependence. The legacies produced by policies enacted by Siam in the face of the threat of colonialism, however, are more ambiguous. What is characterized by a certain degree of path dependence in Thailand is the distribution of agricultural land, namely, who owns it. Land predominantly fell into the hands of peasant smallholders, not absentee landlords or plantation companies. What is not path dependent is how smallholders own land, i.e. with or without clear formal title that facilitates access to formal credit markets. As late as in the 1950s, Hanks remarked how prime agricultural land was generally

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11

pawned and sold “without reference to the mildewing papers at the District Office” (Hanks 1972, 114). Such informality is no longer the norm. In this respect the hand of history has weighed less heavily on Thai state officials than on their colleagues in many other societies where land rights, during the colonial era, became either concentrated and poorly specified (such as the Philippines, discussed in chapter 5) or widely distributed but defined in narrow, communal terms (as was the case in many African societies including Ghana, discussed in Larsson 2007b). While the securitization mechanism operates in different ways in response to the threats of colonization and communism, a single logic underpins the choice of land-related policies. Essentially, the state manipulated property rights in land in order to enhance its security by engendering a modicum of broad-based loyalty. While Hirschman (1970, 76) believed that “exit is ordinarily unthinkable, though not always wholly impossible, from such primordial human groupings as family, tribe, church, and state,” exiting from the mainland Southeast Asian state has historically been eminently thinkable. In Thailand, as in much of the region, a low population-land ratio made upping sticks—and settling beyond the (limited) geographic reach of the state—a real possibility when demands for corvée and taxation became too onerous (Akin 1996, 21–47, 205–22; Anderson 1978, 218–24; Adas 1981; Scott 2009). The imperialist and communist rivals to the Thai state offered analogous but politically constructed exit opportunities to broad segments of the population. As a consequence, the creation of positive inducements to deter exit became a priority. By providing access to land and credit through the manipulation of property rights, the Thai state could raise the opportunity cost associated with exit. It thereby provided a “rational” basis for loyalist behavior, “the decision not to exit” following “from a perfectly rational balancing of prospective private benefits against private costs” (Hirschman 1970, 98). In short, property rights in land can be used as a loyalty (or boundary control) mechanism (Rokkan 1974)—and that political function is particularly salient in periods when states face external threats.9 But precisely whose loyalty is deemed critical is of course an open question.

Comparative Perspectives While I seek to explain an outcome in a particular country, my approach is explicitly comparative. Comparisons serve two purposes in this book. The first is to illuminate the operation of the causal mechanism, securitization, in different contexts. The second is to highlight the developmental and political consequences

12

CHAPTER 1

of the different ways in which land rights have (or have not) been securitized. Episodes in the Thai case are therefore compared and contrasted with experiences in Japan, Burma, and the Philippines. Why these countries? Both Siam and Japan faced the threat of colonialism in the nineteenth century and became subject to unequal treaties. Siam could have followed a Japanese path of institutional development if not for the fact that the unequal treaties had given foreigners rights to acquire land before the country was recognized as fully sovereign. Japan serves as a useful contrast because the sequence of events was reversed. The comparison of Siam and Lower Burma during the Great Depression of the 1930s is used to illustrate both the immediate and the longer-term consequences of Siam’s earlier securitization of property rights in a period of deep economic crisis. The comparison with Lower Burma, which was a directly ruled British colony, is apposite because both societies were heavily dependent on the cultivation of rice for export; furthermore, neither had the “dual” property rights regime so often found in colonial societies, whereby one set of land laws applies to natives, and another to Europeans and other “commercial races.” In both countries, foreigners were allowed to acquire land. Timing and sequencing also matter in this comparison. In Siam, policies and practices relating to land were securitized (with the nation as referent object) prior to the Great Depression. This put limits on the extent to which land was commodified. In Burma, a similar move was made only (long) after the Great Depression. This difference meant that the crisis of the 1930s hit Burma much harder, with serious economic and political consequences both in the short and the long runs. Finally, the comparison of Thailand and the Philippines illuminates how historical legacies in the form of rural social structure in turn shaped the choices that the two Cold War–era allies were able to make in response to the challenge of communism. In Thailand, but not the Philippines, the formalization of rural land rights was an easily available option, because it did not involve any more extensive redistribution of landed wealth.10 As a consequence of the comparisons with Burma and the Philippines, the Thai experience can be situated in relation to the broader literature on the developmental consequences of colonialism. This may seem odd, given that Thailand was never colonized. While this is formally true, the country’s subordinate position in the international state system and the global division of labor has frequently been explicitly acknowledged by describing it as semicolonial, neocolonial, cryptocolonial, and autocolonial (for a recent discussion, see Harrison and Jackson 2010). While many of these arguments make the point that the Siamese state was essentially “the same” as a colonial state, my argument is that important contextual differences need to be acknowledged. Most importantly,

SECURITIZATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

13

extraterritoriality and other aspects of the treaty regime constrained the Thai state’s use of coercion against its subjects during the early stages of the arguably still ongoing process of “internal colonization” (Brown 1994, chap. 5; Gillogly 2004). In this respect the Thai state offers an instructive contrast to the more coercion-intensive paths to state formation taken in many other colonized societies (Callahan 2003; Young 1994; Scott 1976). Because of the institutional constraints imposed by the treaties, the Siamese state had to rely less on brute coercion and more on bargaining with the subject population. Because of this I prefer the theoretically less heavily loaded term “quasi-colonial” as a label for both the country’s attenuated sovereignty from 1855 to 1938, when unequal treaties were in force, and the historical legacies they engendered.11 The case of Siam also illustrates a weakness in an argument that is frequently repeated in the literature on the comparative political economy of East and Southeast Asia, namely that the colonialism “variable” has no explanatory weight because the outcomes of interest do not correlate with the identity of the colonizing powers (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005, 336; Stubbs 2005, 13). But what has mattered in the case of Siam is not its noncolonial status per se, but rather that the policies that were implemented in order to avoid becoming colonized gave rise to particular legacies, in such forms as state capacities, socio-economic structures, and conceptions of security. To properly fit Thailand—and other noncolonized developing countries—into comparative historical analysis alongside postcolonial states therefore requires us to carefully identify theoretically relevant historical legacies. The property rights regime and the resulting organization of agriculture would be a prominent candidate (Shafer 1994; Paige 1975, 1997; Mahoney 2001; Young 1994). In addition to these international comparisons, two lines of comparison are internal to Thailand. The main line of comparison is between the operation of the securitization mechanism in three different contexts. The first and the last of these focus on periods when Thai state officials respond to intense geopolitical pressures. Between these two periods is a period of more muted security concerns, which is nevertheless highly significant because in this period the rise of official Thai nationalism creates a new referent object of securitization—the nation. The second internal line of comparison focuses only on the final historical episode, when the threat of communism was the paramount security concern. Here I compare the nature and effects of securitization of property rights policies in two different property domains: the private and the public. The comparison shows that securitization strengthens formal property rights in the private domain but weakens formal property rights in the public domain. The mechanism is the same, but the context and the outcomes are not. This line of comparison

14

CHAPTER 1

thus presents an explanation for the bifurcated character of the rural property rights regime in Thailand—and thereby bridges the gap between the contrasting ways in which the rural land rights regime has been described.

Outline This final section outlines the remainder of the book. Chapter 2 provides a motivation for the substantive focus on formal rural land rights, by relating it to important political and economic outcomes. Building on existing models that link land titling to economic growth (Feder et al. 1988; Byamugisha 1999), the chapter develops an original political model that incorporates a security dimension. The chapter then goes on to survey the evidence linking the formalization of land rights to economic outcomes in Thailand since the early 1960s. The following chapters describe the historical and political circumstances that made the “capitalization” of Thailand possible. Chapter 3 covers the impact of the threat of Western colonialism following the Bowring treaty of 1855 up to the outbreak of World War I. The chapter also includes a comparison with the Meiji-era land reforms in Japan. Chapter 4 traces the continued evolution of land rights as the threat of colonization diminished with the outbreak of World War I, as Thai nationalism emerged as a political force, and as rural society was exposed to the ill winds of the Great Depression. The new political forces and historical experiences reinforced rather than challenged the status quo in regards to rural land rights. Thailand’s experiences are compared with those in Burma, with particular attention paid to the consequences of the Great Depression. Chapter 5 covers the emergence of the threat of communism, and the resulting disruption of the status quo orientation of the Thai state. This chapter pays particular attention to how the threat of communism stimulated the Thai state to introduce technological, administrative, and legal innovations that paved the way for accelerated formalization of rural land rights within the private domain, while holding back similar developments in land categorized as belonging to the public domain. The chapter compares and contrasts the Thai response to the threat of communism with that of the Philippines, in order to highlight both the significance of historical legacies and how differences in context affect whether and how securitization becomes linked to property rights policies. Chapter 6 concludes with a discussion of the ways in which more recent changes in the geopolitical context are affecting whether and how securitization, as a causal mechanism, is shaping property rights policies in Thailand as well as more broadly.

2 CAPITALIZING THAILAND

Since the middle of the 1950s the Thai state has engaged in the formalization of land rights on a massive scale—with the area under title rising from 2.05 million hectares in 1955 to more than 20 million hectares in 2000—as part of an effort to bring economic development to rural areas.1 As is well known, such attempts to rapidly “improve the human condition” often fail, sometimes disastrously so (Scott 1998, 30). At face value, however, the economic development story of Thailand gives us reason to believe that in this instance it worked. This chapter describes the socio-economic effects of the unfolding “property revolution” in Thailand in the latter half of the twentieth century. To what extent—and how—did the formalization of rural land rights affect economic growth, poverty, and inequality in Thailand? And given that similar efforts at institutional change frequently have failed either to be implemented or to deliver the intended benefits, what has made the institutional transformation that has underpinned Thailand’s achievements in rural economic development possible? The chapter begins with an overview of broad economic trends in Thailand since the 1960s. Three conceptual frameworks that link formalization of land rights to economic outcomes are then presented. Two of these come from the existing literature and the third is original. A brief statistical picture of the emergence of land and credit markets follows, using both aggregate nationallevel data and findings from smaller surveys. Finally, the economic literature on the relationship between land titling and economic development in Thailand is explored, and the argument is made that there is strong evidence for a 15

16

CHAPTER 2

substantively significant link between property rights and the intended economic growth and poverty alleviation.

Growth, Poverty, and Inequality Trends By the mid-1990s, the average farm household income in Thailand was almost four times as high, in real terms, as it had been in 1970 (Shigetomi 2004, 313). The incidence of rural poverty fell from 96.4 percent of the rural population in 1962 to 12.6 percent of the rural population in 2002 (see figure 2.1).2 It is noteworthy that in spite of this progress, poverty remains a predominantly rural phenomenon. In 2000, the rural population accounted for 93 percent of people falling below the poverty line but only for 68 percent of the total population (Warr and Isra 2004, 4). Thailand’s reduction in poverty is evident using a variety of measures capturing different aspects of poverty. These achievements in poverty reduction were primarily based on rapid economic growth (Warr 2000a, 2002,; Warr and Isra 2004). From 1961 to 2000, overall GDP growth averaged 6.8 percent per year, while agricultural GDP growth averaged 4.1 percent per year (Medhi and Kakwani 2003, 740). There has been no consistent trend in inequality over the past four decades; sometimes inequality has been rising and sometimes it has been falling. Viewed 100 90 Rural

Percent of population

80

Urban

Total

70 60 50 40 30 20 10

20 02

98 19

19 94

19 90

19 86

82 19

8 19 7

74 19

19 70

66 19

19 62

0 Year FIGURE 2.1 Poverty incidence as a percentage of the rural, urban, and total population, 1962–2002 (see n. 2). Based on Warr 2002, 2003; Warr and Isra 2004.

CAPITALIZING THAILAND

17

over the long term, income inequality appears to have fallen somewhat: the Gini coefficient stood at 0.563 in 1962/63 and at 0.490 in 2000 (Medhi and Kakwani 2003, 743). However, since the quality of the underlying survey data leaves much to be desired, particularly for the early years, it is open to question whether the data from the 1960s and 1970s are really comparable with the data from the 1980s and thereafter.3 Thus, great caution needs to be observed when making statements about long-term trends in inequality in Thailand. In the shorter term, however, a net rise in income inequality is evident. From 1988 to 2000, the ratio of the wealthiest to the poorest quintile shares rose from 9.79 to 12.21 (Medhi and Kakwani 2003, 743). This means that the wealthiest 20 percent of the population earned more than twelve times as much as the poorest 20 percent of Thailand’s population in 2000. Naturally, many different factors have contributed to these important socioeconomic outcomes—growth, poverty reduction, and inequality. I do not claim that the formalization of land titling explains “everything.” However, I do present and weigh what evidence we have for (and against) a causal link between the formalization of land rights and economic outcomes.

Conceptual Frameworks: Formal Land Rights and Economic Development Feder et al. (1988) posit that tenure insecurity reduces investment incentives. This leads to less investment and less demand for inputs that are complementary to capital, such as labor and fertilizer. In addition, lenders are unwilling to lend money except at high rates of interest, as land held under informal and insecure tenure has no or limited value as collateral. Land titling is therefore assumed to increase tenure security and improve investment incentives. This creates increased demand for labor and other variable inputs that raise the productivity of the land. As a consequence, land prices rise and the income derived from the land increases. Land titling is also assumed to improve security to potential lenders, which induces greater supply of cheap long- and short-term credit to farmers. This provides a boost to investment and to the use of variable inputs, and raises the productivity of the land. So, within this conceptual framework, land titling has a positive effect on farm-level outcomes through two channels: an investment channel and a credit channel. Byamugisha (1999a, 1999b) has developed a conceptual framework where land titling, in addition to farm-level effects, also has effects beyond the farm gate. These include an expansion of the potential market for bank loans and an associated expansion of lending. As liquid land markets emerge, the wealth

18

CHAPTER 2

locked up in land can more easily be mobilized and channeled into other forms of investment, including stocks and bonds. Land titling thus contributes to financial deepening.4 Land titling also enhances labor mobility. The secure landowner can rent out her land without fear of losing it. She can migrate to the city in search of employment. Or she can seek off-farm self-employment. “The ease with which people can buy, lease or sell land creates a favorable environment for mobility of labor from areas of low labor productivity (with low economic returns) to those with higher productivity, thereby raising overall labor productivity, efficiency of investment and economic growth” (Byamugisha 1999a, 11). So, within this conceptual framework, land titling also has positive effects on financial markets and labor markets. To the positive implications of the farmlevel dynamics for economic growth, we therefore need to add effects on broader economic structures that have positive effects on economic growth. Both the above models exclude broader political economy dynamics. It is, however, possible to incorporate political dimensions by drawing on a few different strands in the literature. Several studies have found support for the hypothesis that inequality has a negative effect on growth (Persson and Tabellini 1994; Deiniger and Squire 1998). High inequality is an important factor in civil war (Collier and Hoeffler 2004) and political violence has a harmful effect on economic development, in part through its effect on the security of property rights (Haber, Razo, and Maurer 2003). According to Keefer and Knack (2002), social polarization in terms of income inequality and land inequality has a negative effect on economic growth because of its negative consequences for property rights institutions. Countries with an inegalitarian distribution of property rights are less likely than their egalitarian counterparts to be successful in establishing secure property rights (Lamoreaux 2011). How might land titling fit into this nexus of inequality, violent political conflict, and economic development? In this framework, land titling leads to a more equitable distribution of effective property rights (i.e., collateralizable assets), reduces the threat of political instability and violence, and thereby leads to more rapid growth (see Figure 2.2). In this framework, the reduced threat of political conflict has a positive impact on incentives to invest and on economic growth. The posited political dynamic builds on a strand of thought that links inequality to economic outcomes by raising the likelihood of political instability and violence. Increased income inequality (and lower absolute levels of income) have been found to increase the number of members of society who have a “taste for revolt”—and therefore support political activities that fundamentally threaten existing property relations and institutional arrangements (MacCulloch 2004, 2005).5 As the probability of serious political conflict rises, incentives to make productive investments erode.6 First, the security of existing claims to property is reduced amidst socio-political

CAPITALIZING THAILAND

19

Formalization of land rights of the poor

Security in land ownership

More efficient resource allocation

More equitable distribution of collateral

More investment

Shared economic growth

Reduced threat of political instability and violence

More secure property and contractual rights

More predictable policy

Improved incentives to invest FIGURE 2.2 Conceptual framework linking formalization of land rights of the poor to reduced political conflict and to economic growth.

unrest, and investors cannot be certain that they will be able to reap the long-term benefits accruing from productive investments that are made today. Secondly, the future course of fundamental economic policy becomes more difficult to predict (Carmignani 2003, 1–2; Keefer and Knack 2002). This is not necessarily because one cannot foresee what policies a future new order government might pursue. Political polarization based on economic inequities may also induce the possibly soon-to-be ancien régime to pursue myopic and erratic economic policies. Inequality thus threatens to mire a society in a vicious circle of conflict, low growth, and more conflict.7 In this scenario, the political factors (political instability and violence) and the economic factors (inequality and growth) are jointly endogenous. The central developmental challenge in conflict-ridden, low-income countries is therefore to establish a virtuous circle. In order to do so, a government needs mechanisms

20

CHAPTER 2

by which it can make the prospect of “shared growth” credible to those who already have a taste for revolt and, perhaps more importantly, those who might easily acquire a taste for revolt. By shared growth I mean economic growth that makes a significant impact in terms of poverty reduction. In their analysis of the Asian economic “miracle,” Campos and Root (1996) highlighted the importance of such mechanisms. In Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, redistributive land reform was an important mechanism for making shared growth credible. In many other countries, the failure to implement land reform has, in contrast, failed to make shared growth a credible prospect—with negative consequences for political stability and long-term economic development. The trajectories of South Vietnam and the Philippines illustrate the point. Provided that those with a taste for revolt hold some assets to begin with, formalization of those property rights can function as a mechanism for making shared growth credible.8 As formalization raises the value of assets and improves access to credit, the distribution of assets and effective property rights becomes more equitable. In this framework, land titling leads to faster growth through two channels. The positive effect on farm productivity and market efficiency broadly conceived constitutes the first channel. The reduction in political polarization is the second channel, which we can think of as a social peace growth bonus.

The Emergence of Formal Land and Capital Markets The fact that a state goes to the expense and trouble of providing formal title to land does not mean that land and credit markets will automatically emerge. If there is no underlying demand, nothing will happen. In this section I use data from the Department of Lands and other government agencies to measure the expansion of formal land and credit markets, with a particular emphasis on rural markets. We find that the push to formalize land ownership that began in the mid-1950s was indeed followed by a dramatic expansion of formal market activity, signaling the mobilization of land as a commoditized and capitalized factor of production. Just how dramatic the expansion was, can be seen in figure 2.3 which shows the number of land sales and mortgages (with land as collateral) registered annually with the Department of Lands. Lest the trend in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s appears to be overshadowed by the explosion in land transactions in the 1980s and 1990s, it might be noted that the number of new mortgages registered annually increased more than sixteenfold from 1955 to 1975. Of particular interest is the dramatic expansion of rural credit extended by financial institutions.9 The ratio of agricultural credit to agricultural GDP

CAPITALIZING THAILAND

21

1,000,000

Sales

Mortgages

800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000

00 20

95 19

90 19

85 19

80 19

75 19

70 19

65 19

60 19

55

0

19

Number of recorded transactions

1,200,000

Year FIGURE 2.3 Number of land sales and new mortgages registered in Thailand, 1955–2000. Department of Lands, various years-a.

increased from 6 percent in 1970 to over 70 percent in 1996 (Meyer and Nagarajan 2000, 317). This was partly due to the expansion of commercial lending in rural areas, but much of the expansion is linked to the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), which was founded in 1966. According to a survey of rural credit markets in Asia, “the penetration of BAAC in rural areas” was found to be “more significant than any other single rural financial institution in Asia,” reaching some 90 percent of the country’s farmers (Meyer and Nagarajan 2000, 321–23). With rural land available for use as collateral, the state agricultural bank and Thai commercial banks have been able to expand lending to rural borrowers on a large scale (see figure 2.4). It is of course possible that these figures provide an indication not so much of growing market activity as of the increasing rate by which such transactions are successfully captured by the administrative apparatus of the state and by institutional lenders. While informal transactions in regard to land and credit have been and remain features of the marketplace in Thailand, there is little evidence that would support the notion that extensive preexisting informal market activity has simply been formalized. An indirect indicator that the changes are real rather than statistical figments of state imagination is found in the parallel expansion of the market for variable inputs. For example, the consumption of fertilizer rose from 150 kilos per square kilometer of agricultural area in 1961 to close to 7.8 metric tons per square kilometer in 2000 (see figure 2.5).

22

CHAPTER 2

Baht (in billions)

300

Commercial banks Agricultural coops

BAAC

200

100

0 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

Year FIGURE 2.4 Agricultural credit from financial institutions (billion baht). Redrawn from Meyer and Nagarajan 2000.

9

Metric tonnes per km2

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

20 00

19 97

94 19

91 19

88 19

85 19

82 19

19 79

76 19

73 19

70 19

19 67

19 64

19

61

0

Year FIGURE 2.5 Fertilizer consumption per square kilometer of agricultural land in Thailand, 1961–2000. Agricultural land includes arable land, land under permanent crops, and permanent pastures. FAOSTAT 2006.

The data presented so far provide insight into the emergence of land and credit markets in Thailand at a high level of aggregation. We would, however, also like to know to what extent these markets have come to play a role in the life of rural households. In this respect a survey conducted just prior to the onset of

CAPITALIZING THAILAND

23

the Asian financial crisis in 1997 provides some of the best data available.10 The survey was conducted in provinces that spanned a wide range in terms of socioeconomic development.11 The 1997 survey indicated that Thai households were very active in credit markets “as roughly half of the sample has between one and two loans and only about a third of the households have no outstanding loans” (Giné 2005, 15). The significant presence of formal credit institutions in providing long-term loans in rural credit markets was readily apparent: the formal sector accounted for 69 percent of the total lending volume and 59 percent of the total number of loans (Giné 2005, 15). Loans from formal institutions tended to be larger, have longer maturities, and require collateral. The survey also provided some insights into regional similarities and differences in the development and characteristics of rural credit markets. While BAAC emerged as the most important individual source of rural credit overall, it clearly played a more prominent role in the poorer northeast than in the relatively wealthy central region (Kaboski and Townsend 1998). The survey also indicated that reliance on formal sources of credit—loans from the BAAC and from commercial banks combined—was greater in the poorer areas than in the wealthier areas. The survey revealed that land titles were extensively used as collateral for loans. In light of the significant differences in terms of income and wealth, the response to the question “What did the household offer as collateral for this loan?” emerges as surprisingly uniform across the sample. Around 20 percent of respondents in all four provinces named “land title” as the collateral they used (Townsend 2005). What, if anything, can the findings of the Townsend survey tell us in general about the twin processes of formalizing property rights in land and the evolution of credit markets in Thailand? Most significant is the fact that large inequalities in terms of income and wealth are not reflected in effective access to and use of formal land rights and credit. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the poor are more dependent on institutional sources of credit. This indicates that the relatively less well off probably have had the most to gain from the creation of a formalized rural property rights regime.12

Socio-economic Consequences of Land Formalization We now know that substantial land and credit markets have been established in Thailand. But what effects have they had on economic outcomes? As noted above, capital markets provide one potential avenue for the wealth of the rich to “trickle down” to the poor (Alghion and Bolton 1997). Land-titling initiatives are therefore based on the expectation that they will create opportunities

24

CHAPTER 2

for individual households to escape “poverty traps” caused by credit market imperfections and unequal distribution of wealth (in the form of collateralizable assets). If the number of individual escapees from the poverty trap is sufficiently large, we would expect this to be reflected not only in household-level outcomes but also at higher levels of aggregation.13 How far does the Thai case comports with these theoretical expectations? While the period of rapid expansion of land titling began in the mid-1950s, there are unfortunately no studies that have analyzed the impact these efforts had (if any) during the first few decades. However, as we move forward in time our luck changes. A number of studies have been conducted in order to evaluate the impact of a World Bank–financed land titling project that was launched in 1984 (the Thailand Land Titling Project, or TLTP).14 One of the studies, by Feder et al. (1988), has arguably provided “the most compelling evidence of a link between tenure security and agricultural productivity” (Maxwell and Wiebe 1999, 831). The study was motivated by a desire to clarify and quantify the benefits associated with land titling, so as to guide future World Bank activities in this area (Feder et al. 1988, ix). Based on survey data from villages in four provinces (Lopburi, Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen, and Chaiyaphum) where squatters (who held no official title to land) and legally titled farmers “operate[d] in geographical proximity within a similar agroclimatic environment,” Feder et al. concluded that, farmers owning legal title to their land enjoyed greater access to institutional sources of credit, because they could use land as collateral (1988, 67–68), and invested in land improvement to a greater extent than farmers without secure title (1988, 103–8). In addition, titled land was found to be significantly more valuable (i.e., was assigned a higher market price) than untitled land (1988, 93). Thus, the study concluded that the productivity gains associated with land titling greatly outweighed the relatively minor cost of providing squatters with full legal title to their land (1988, 148). Field surveys revealed that the benefits associated with title deeds were perceived not only by the researchers but also by farmers. In the northeast, farmers were mainly interested in titles because they offered improved access to credit. In the north, they looked forward to improved tenure security and reduced land conflicts (Tongroj et al. 1990, 97). A more recent study evaluating the socio-economic impact of a later phase of TLTP concluded that land titling was associated with, among other things, more intensive use of the land, increased yields, increased land values, and rising incomes (Center for Applied Economics Research 2002). Another World Bank study, using aggregate provincial data on land titling and credit markets, found that total credit per household grew faster, from 1991/92 to 1995/96, in provinces where the second phase of TLTP was being implemented,

CAPITALIZING THAILAND

25

than in provinces outside the project area. Growth was higher yet in provinces that had been the focus of implementation of the first phase of the project (Pagiola 1999, 19). While the formalization of land rights probably played a role in macro-level outcomes, studies that seek to isolate and quantify the impact of land titling on the economy as a whole are rare. The econometric study by Byamugisha (1999b) is one exception. It found that land titling had statistically significant, positive effects on Thailand’s financial development and economic growth in the period 1960 to 1996.15 While the 1997 Townsend survey was unconnected to the land-titling project and the World Bank, the data it produced is well suited to evaluating economic theories concerning the nexus of institutions, asset inequality, and economic growth. Several recent publications throw light (at least indirectly) on the role of formal property rights in land in shaping economic behavior and outcomes. In a study of the importance of financial constraints for entrepreneurial behavior, Paulson and Townsend (2004) found that past wealth—which is mainly comprised of land ownership—had a significant effect on the likelihood that a Thai household would start a business.16 Survey data also revealed a striking contrast in the landownership patterns of entrepreneurial and nonentrepreneurial households (see table 2.1). In this case the direction of causality is of course unclear and it may well run in both directions—with landowners being more likely to start up businesses, and business owners being more likely to invest in land. Even so, the data point to an important link between collateralizable land ownership and entrepreneurship. The median business-owning household owns ten times as much collateralizable land as the median non–business-owning household, but owns total landed assets worth no more than 2.6 times as much. For non–business owners, collateralizable land accounts for only 15 percent of the total value of their land “portfolio,” whereas it accounts for 58 percent in the case of business owners. If we assume that causality runs the other way—from

TABLE 2.1 Land ownership and entrepreneurship in Thailand, 1997 WHOLE SAMPLE NO BUSINESS

CENTRAL REGION

BUSINESS

NO BUSINESS

NORTHEASTERN REGION

BUSINESS

NO BUSINESS

BUSINESS

Total value of land

200

515

250

893

190

244

Value of land that

30

300

15

632

40

100

can be used as collateral Source: Adapted from Paulson and Townsend 2004, 239. Note: Land values are medians measured in thousands of current (1997) baht.

26

CHAPTER 2

business ownership to landholdings rather than from landholdings to business ownership—what could explain this pattern? One hypothesis would be that business owners may prefer to invest their profits in collateralizable (rather than noncollateralizable) land because they accumulate titled land to improve their access to credit from commercial banks and other formal financial institutions. There is also some direct evidence that formal property rights in land do, indeed, play an important role in the financial life of small firms in Thailand. One survey revealed that Thai firms in the nontraded sector in particular are “heavily dependent on bank credit, which is primarily determined by collateral values” (Piti and Don 2003, 12). Given the central role that small firms have played in the Thai economy, employing 60 percent of the workforce and accounting for 50 percent of GDP (Paulson and Townsend 2004, 229), any policy measure that facilitated their ability to access credit—such as expanded land titling—would likely have a noticeable, economy-wide impact on investment and growth.17 Thailand’s relatively equal distribution of land has distinguished it from several of its more conflict-ridden neighbors in Southeast Asia (Paige 1970; Jacoby 1961). In light of the nexus of inequality, political conflict, and economic growth discussed above, it is appropriate to ask how land titling has affected inequality in Thailand. The effects of land titling on distributive outcomes has not been well researched and the distributive effect of a move from informal toward formal land rights is very much dependent on the political context. As suggested by Feder and Nishio (1998, 40), “there are a priori grounds to expect, under certain circumstances, increasing inequality and even abuse of the poor, while other circumstances would allow enhanced equity and poverty alleviation.” The evidence presented above suggests that land titling led to rising asset values and improved access to formal credit markets for large segments of the rural population. In this sense land formalization may have had a positive impact in terms of economic equity, at least in the short term. Using land and home ownership as a proxy for access to capital markets, Fofack and Zeufack find that greater access to formal credit markets “might reduce income inequality in Thailand.” They therefore suggest that the “possession of collaterable assets especially in the poorest regions of Thailand such as the Northeast region” should be “encouraged or facilitated” (1999, 24). Since that has, indeed, been an important aim of government policy at least since the mid-1950s, one can make a counterfactual argument that income inequality in Thailand would likely have been greater than actually observed in the absence of rural land titling. National survey data can tell us some things about poverty and inequality, but not all of the things we would like to know. Most studies on poverty and inequality in Thailand do not tell us anything about the extent to which those who are poor today also were poor—in absolute and relative terms—decades ago. One

CAPITALIZING THAILAND

27

exception is Rigg’s study of two villages in a province in the impoverished northeastern region, which tracked changes in the fortunes of eighty-one households from 1982 to 1994 (1998). In these twelve years, the average income of the surveyed households rose by 44 percent in real terms. Rigg did not find the national trend of rising inequality reflected in the villages: “income differentials for the five income ‘quintiles’ have neither dramatically widened, nor significantly narrowed” (1998, 1129). He also found that the villagers who were the poorest in 1982 had made significant gains both in absolute and relative terms (1998, 1132). It is particularly interesting that the patterns of landholding, among the poor and the nonpoor alike, did not change. Land was a poor predictor of income differentials, and there was no tendency toward concentration of landholdings or landlessness (1998, 1135, 1137). Difference in the legal status of landholdings was not a significant factor of social and economic differentiation, as formal titles had become the norm already by 1982.18 Rigg finds that these trends in income and inequality are mainly accounted for by the increasing reliance by “farmers” on incomes from other sources than farming and agriculture. This is in line with what one might expect in light of the conceptual framework outlined above. A frequently voiced concern in Thailand is that the commodification of land and the indebtedness that becomes possible with titling will cause farmers to involuntarily lose their land. Rigg’s study addressed this concern indirectly. Studies by Stifel and Montesano have done so more directly. Stifel’s (1976) study of land ownership in two provinces in the central plains, Ayutthaya and Nakhon Pathom, found that the evidence did not “support the conventional wisdom that equality is worsening and that land sales, absentee ownership and mortgage losses are increasing in the Central Plain” (1976, 265). Montesano (1992) studied land and credit market dynamics in three subdistricts in three different provinces (Pa Kum Koh in Sukhothai, Khao Kaew in Chainat, and Tha Kham in Phrae) from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Based on an extensive survey of land documents from the respective land offices, he found that “the extension of land documentation . . . has not stimulated farmers’ loss of land to creditors.” On the contrary, Montesano found that access to institutional credit was associated with “a reduced dependence on transfers of land ownership in general and of the sale of land in particular as a means of reallocating productive resources” (1992, 198). The differential impact of land titling on economic outcomes in different areas also has equity implications. Land titling has likely had the greatest impact in the relatively less developed areas of the country. Feder et al. (1988, passim) found that land titling had the least significant impact on access to credit and on land values for farmers in the highly commercialized province of Lopburi because informal sources of credit were already well developed there. This suggests that the state’s intervention into the rural economy by formalizing property

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rights in land and expanding institutional credit has served to compensate for the relatively lower level of development of informal sources of credit in the poorer and less-commercialized areas of the country. Land titling would therefore have had the effect of reducing regional economic disparities. Based on the evidence presented here, we can conclude that the land-titling initiatives of the Thai government in recent decades are likely to have had a positive effect on long-term economic development, by supporting the productive endeavors of social groups that form the backbone of the country’s economy— farmers and small business owners. These findings point to strong and substantively significant linkages between land titling, credit expansion, and economic growth in Thailand.

7,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000

20 00

19 80

60 19

19 40

19 20

19 00

18 80

0 18 6

18

40

0

18 20

1990 international Geary-Khamis dollars

In a lecture entitled “Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk,” Olson (1996, 6) proposed that there are “hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars that could be—but are not—earned each year from the natural and human resources” of low-income countries. These big bills are left on the sidewalk not because the individuals living in low-income countries are less inclined or equipped to pick them up than individuals living in high-income countries are. No, if a low-income country could just get its institutions “right,” the big bills would be picked up in a hurry. The evidence presented in this chapter supports this institutionalist view. Once

Year FIGURE 2.6 Per capita GDP in Thailand, in normalized 1990 international Geary-Khamis dollars, 1820–2000. The Geary-Khamis method of aggregation provides simultaneous estimates of international prices and country purchasing power parities. Based on Maddison 2003.

CAPITALIZING THAILAND

29

the relevant institutions—in this case formal property rights in land—were put in place, markets for land, labor, and credit responded. Thailand was able to register very rapid economic growth over a period of several decades, punctuated by the financial crisis in 1997 (see figure 2.6). A laggard for more than a century, Thailand suddenly and unexpectedly joined the exclusive group of fast-growing low-income countries. From the mid-1950s onwards, Thailand “capitalized” in both the transitive and intransitive senses of the word. Land assets were converted into capital on a massive scale. And historical legacies—the rural property rights regime—proved to be a developmental advantage. These observations prompt two questions that are central to the comparative historical analysis developed in the coming chapters. Why were unusually large bills waiting to be picked up in the Thai countryside? And what happened that made it possible for Thais to suddenly start picking them up?

3 WEAPON OF A WEAK STATE

In studies of economic development in East and Southeast Asia, security threats are often assigned a central role as drivers of developmental state activity (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005; Stubbs 1999, 2005; Feeny 1982; Zhu 2000, 2002; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006). When World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, Siam had faced the threat of colonization for almost a century, and an imminent threat for the past three decades. However, the imperialist threat had not inspired a developmental response from the government of Siam (Anderson 1978; Battye 1974). The country’s physical infrastructure and institutional development remained surprisingly weak. Why did the Siamese state not respond in a more developmental fashion? The absence of any broad-based economic development policy in Siam has frequently been explained with reference to the narrow vested interests of the Siamese elite—which only rarely were overridden by security concerns (Feeny 1982, chap. 5; Holm 1991, 132; Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005). In contrast, I emphasize here how security concerns in significant respects counteracted the developmental impulse. Property rights institutions were securitized by Siamese state officials in response not only to the military threat posed by colonial powers but also to the broader security concerns provoked by provisions in international treaties with the European imperial powers. Given the institutional constraints of the treaty regime—which opened land markets, fixed land taxes, and introduced extraterritoriality—the Siamese state used land rights policy as an instrument to protect and eventually enhance its sovereign status and territorial integrity in the face of the threat of colonization. The treaty provisions constitute critical elements of the context within which the securitization mechanism operated. 30

WEAPON OF A WEAK STATE

31

The Evolution of Property Rights in Land In the premodern legal and administrative system, the king was, in theory at least, chao phaendin (lord of the land), and as such the ultimate owner of all land within the realm.1 By the 1850s, traditional laws still governed property rights in land. Peasants enjoyed usufruct rights to land, conditional on its regular cultivation (the peasant lost the right to the land if it was left fallow for three consecutive years). The state issued land documents that were mainly intended to facilitate taxation, and to prevent or settle conflicts over land. They did not, however, confer property rights vis-à-vis the state. Peasants were supposed to ask officials for permission for clearing waste land, but they frequently did not. Even when they did, officials would frequently issue bai yiap yam and tra chong (temporary reservation certificates) without actually inspecting the claims.2 In the 1860s, the state increased its efforts to raise revenue derived from land taxes, and in support of this endeavor sent officials from Krom Na (the Rice Field Department) to survey the rice fields in the fertile Chaophraya River valley, and to issue tra daeng, title deeds that defined the annual tax liability of the landowners. In part because of the shortage of manpower in mainland Southeast Asia, political struggles—and the state’s role in defining and enforcing property rights— have historically tended to focus on manpower rather than land. Up until the late nineteenth century, the king, his officials, and the noble families were more occupied with the capture and extraction of labor—through slavery, serfdom, and corvée—than with the accumulation or management of land resources (Akin 1996; Terwiel 1983). It is true that in the Siamese system of social stratification, sakdina, which literally translates as “rice field status,” was used as an indicator of relative social position—a royal prince might have a sakdina rank of 50,000, a noble a sakdina rank of 1,000, and a slave, at the bottom of the hierarchy, a sakdina rank of 5. However, as emphasized by Brummelhuis, “there is not a single trace to be found [in the historical records] of land allocation or of any form of land control or landownership corresponding to the sakdina system” (2005, 34–35). After 1855, when Britain forced Siam to lift the ban on rice exports, the relative value of land rose, and property rights in man declined while the state paid increasing attention to the regulation of property rights in land (Feeny 1982, 1988b, 1989, 2002; Christensen and Akin 1994). In addition to economic rationales, the abolition of slavery, the phasing out of corvée, the introduction of conscription, and the centralization and modernization of land and forest administration in the reign of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868–1910) were part of the Siamese state’s efforts to conform to the “standard of civilization” and to gain recognition from the Western powers (Gong 1984; Feeny 2002, 190; Thongchai 2000; Jackson

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2004; Herzfeld 2002). Whether “cosmetic” or not, these reforms had a significant transformative effect on the political economy of property rights. As the aristocratic elite—kings and nobles—gave up coercive control over manpower, they also lost their ability to keep large tracts of land (located close to Bangkok) under cultivation. As a result, “the large landholdings of the aristocracy immediately disintegrated” (Tomosugi 1980, 126). Only on the most valuable and productive land did the elite retain their control under a system of tenancy. As land values rose following the boom in rice exports from the 1860s onwards, the inadequacies of the premodern system of land administration became increasingly clear. The land documents issued by the state were not particularly helpful in settling conflicting claims. The state did not keep a central register of landholdings and land transactions, and had never felt a need to produce cadastral maps. The lines of authority in regard to the issuance of land documents were muddled. Different officials would frequently issue land documents to different persons for the same plot of land. While land tax receipts came to be recognized by the courts as evidence of ownership, these were often found to be inadequate since they did not clearly specify the location and boundaries of the land for which taxes had been paid. Disputes over land, frequently violent, swamped Krom Na and the judicial system. The Siamese state was simply unable to “see like a state” (Scott 1998). Feeny has argued that changing relative factor prices led to growing demand for institutional change, and that the Siamese state responded “efficiently” by supplying the property rights institutions demanded, because, in this case, elite interests coincided with broader societal interests. This interpretation warrants closer scrutiny. In support of the notion that the Siamese state supplied productivityenhancing property rights in land, the existing literature points to a land law that is said to have been issued in 1892. According to Feeny (1982, 94), this law “replaced a rather ad hoc system with a more comprehensive system of property rights in land.” While this law did not include centralized record keeping, it did provide for the issuance of transferable title deeds that could be used as collateral. The 1892 law is deemed by Feeny (1982, 95) to have “significantly improved the security of land rights and helped to make procedures and documents more uniform.” The 1892 initiative was followed in 1901 by the enactment of a land law, based on the Torrens system, which established a system of centralized land registration and based the issuance of title deeds on a modern cadastral survey (Lingat 1940, 42ff.; see also Sunthari 2001, 174). These two pieces of legislation support the conclusion that the Siamese state responded with “developmental” property rights reforms in response to shifting relative factor prices that enhanced the value of land.

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33

But this conclusion is at the very least premature. First, the 1892 legislation referred to by Feeny was never enacted. The document cited as evidence is only one among many unsuccessful draft laws and regulations relating to property rights in land and land taxation that were considered between 1888 and 1901 (Kitahara 2000, 4–5).3 Thai scholars who have written on land law reform in the reign of Chulalongkorn make no mention of the law, and neither do comprehensive collections of historical laws and regulations (Lingat 1940; Sunthari 2001; Department of Lands 2001b; Noppharat 1977; Sathian 1935–, vol. 13; Chaiyot 1987).4 Second, the extent to which the new laws actually enhanced security in property is at best unclear. The 1901 law and the amended version promulgated in 1909 introduced new elements of insecurity because they linked legal ownership exclusively to the possession of a new title deed, thus discounting imperfect but well-established ways of showing proof of rights to land (such as land tax receipts and occupancy). In the process, paying taxes on land and having a legally recognized property right to land became conceptually distinct matters (Tomosugi 1980, 123–24). The new laws were poorly implemented, caused much confusion, and did not prove to be of much use for raising revenue.5 In a study of northern Thailand, Anan (1988, 252–54; 1984, 88–90) argued that the promulgation but nonimplementation of “modern” land laws both reinforced the role of “traditional” patron-client and kinship relations in securing access to land, and also inhibited the development of a land market. In effect, the Siamese state ensured the de facto continuation of what remained essentially a premodern property rights regime in land. Accepting Feeny’s assumption that the socio-economic conditions were such that it would have served the economic interests of both the Siamese elite and society in general if the state had established an administrative and legal system that strengthened property rights in land in the early 1890s (if not earlier), we are left with a puzzle: Why did it not happen? What other factors intruded into Siamese calculations of interest to cause this and several similar draft laws to be rejected? The answers to these questions will emerge in the course of this chapter, but I want to state the broader theoretical implication up front: shifting relative factor prices and elite interests (conceived narrowly as private economic interests) do not necessarily take us very far in understanding the political economy of property rights reform.6 The fact that the Siamese state did not, after all, respond with a major overhaul of the property rights regime in 1892, is evidence in support of the view posited here; according to which the state becomes actively nondevelopmental in order to protect its sovereignty in the context of geopolitical vulnerability. The insecurity created by the 1901 and 1909 laws also served this political purpose.

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On the precise reasons that the 1892 draft land law was shelved we can only speculate. Judging by subsequent debates on similar draft laws, it may have been regarded as too complex to implement and as imposing too heavy a tax burden. A document written sometime after January 1898 described the fate of the many drafts of a general land law that had been debated by the Legislative Council. In 1895, the committee scrutinizing a draft land law had concluded that it “was of too wide a nature, and when it would come into force it would be impossible to carry out the provisions therein contained.” In 1898, a draft land law was once again being considered. A meeting of senior Ministry of Interior officials agreed that “the law embodied all kinds of taxes on lands and if put into force it would be impossible to carry it out.” The minister of finance concurred.7 Why would these laws have been impossible to implement? I would suggest that the critical flaw, from a political perspective, was that the drafts were designed with a fiscal purpose in mind—the emphasis was on establishing new crop and land taxes, not on the provision of secure title to land. As such, these laws would, if enacted, have imposed new rates of taxation on land—which the state, under the existing system of extraterritoriality, would have been able to levy on Siamese subjects only. As I will show below, these land laws were under consideration at a time when the state was concerned with keeping (and extending) its jurisdiction. The enactment of a law that would have actually increased the financial disincentive associated with Siamese subjecthood would have been ill-timed indeed.

The Institutional Pivot: The Bowring Treaty and the Loss of Sovereignty In the course of the nineteenth century, Siam’s traditional rivals on the Southeast Asian mainland were reduced to colonies of European powers.8 Siam’s historical security concerns were thus replaced by the threat of further European expansion. By the mid-1880s, European power in the neighboring territories had been consolidated, and the threat to Siam’s independence became increasingly acute.9 The Siamese state’s response to this threat was, however, conditioned by the existence of a series of international treaties that Siam had concluded with European powers and the United States some thirty years earlier. The most important of these was the so called Bowring treaty of 1855 between Siam and Great Britain. The treaty (and the detailed provisions contained in the supplemental Parkes agreement of 1856) became a pivot around which Siam’s international relations and domestic politics were to turn over the following half-century.10 The British envoy, Sir John Bowring, had set out to ensure that British commercial interests in Siam were well protected. The treaty achieved much more than this, however.

WEAPON OF A WEAK STATE

35

It set Siam on a developmental trajectory that was not broken, in some respects, until the Cold War era. How did the Bowring treaty affect the Siamese state’s interests in regard to the provision of formal property rights in land? It did so by limiting the ability of the state to tax land, the right of the state to decide who could own land where, and the jurisdiction of the Siamese government over British subjects in Siam (through extraterritoriality). These different aspects of the treaty influenced the policy options available to the Siamese state in its efforts to respond to external threats and to strengthen its authority and control over territory and population. In addition, the treaty created issue linkages between matters of taxation, land rights, and jurisdiction in Siam’s international relations. From the perspective of the royal court in Bangkok, it was not at all clear what its interests were in regard to a treaty as such, much less what they were in regard to individual treaty provisions proposed by the British. King Rama III (r. 1824–51) had been the first Siamese monarch since the revolution of 1688 to establish diplomatic relations with the West. He had concluded a treaty—based on the principle of reciprocity—with the British in 1826, in part as a response to Siamese fears of an imminent British invasion, generated by the British victories in the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824–26. Towards the end of his reign, however, Rama III spurned British requests to remove obstacles to British trade through the conclusion of a new treaty. The Brooke mission’s attempt to forge such a treaty in 1850 was unsuccessful. Vella observes that the Bowring treaty, concluded by King Mongkut (Rama IV, r. 1851–68) four years after the death of Rama III, was the result not of a fundamental rethinking on the part of the Siamese, but rather of a subtle shift in judgment: “The difference in 1855 was that Rama IV, who knew more about the West than his brother [Rama III] had, in weighing the danger of Western influence against the danger of thwarting Western desires drew the conclusion that the latter danger was the stronger” (Vella 1957, 140). Mongkut’s accession to the throne on the death of Rama III had thus paved the way for a successful conclusion of the negotiations. Mongkut reversed Rama III’s policy of refusing to conclude a new treaty (and to grant extraterritorial rights and right of settlement for British subjects). However, Mongkut was soon second-guessing his own judgment. Mongkut recognized that the Bowring treaty entailed a loss of regional prestige, and suspected that Siam might have paid too high a price for the treaty. When Harry Parkes arrived in Bangkok in 1856 he reported that the king was upset because the Anglo-Japanese Convention put more restrictions on the British than the Bowring treaty did, and Britain had not been forceful enough in dealing with Cochin China, “the Government of which country had made the Treaty

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a subject of a taunt towards that of Siam” (File concerning Harry Parkes’ mission . . . 1975, 30–31). In an essay written shortly after the ratification of the treaty, Mongkut expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the British had not yet forced a similar treaty on the Vietnamese monarch. The Siamese government had, upon the conclusion of the treaty, urged Bowring to not allow Vietnam to remain ekarat (independent, free, sovereign). In an essay entitled “On Thailand, a small country in frightening peril,” Mongkut (n.d.) expressed fear that the treaty had caused a loss of Siamese prestige in the eyes of Siam’s Lao and Khmer vassals.11 The title of the document is indicative of the Siamese government’s self-image, which perhaps explains its willingness to meet British demands not with bluster, like the Vietnamese, or with a tough negotiating strategy like the Japanese, but with a fear of causing offense and a readiness to compromise. But with the benefit of hindsight, a tougher negotiating stance might not have provoked immediate military aggression and could have won Siam a better deal from Bowring.12

Extraterritoriality and the Loss of Jurisdiction Extraterritoriality provisions were a key feature of the Bowring treaty. Article 2 stated that “any disputes arising between British and Siamese subjects shall be heard and determined by the [British] consul, in conjunction with the proper Siamese officers; and criminal offences will be punished, in the case of English offenders, by the consul, according to English laws, and in case of Siamese offenders, by their own laws, through the Siamese authorities. But the consul shall not interfere in any matters referring solely to Siamese, neither will the Siamese authorities interfere in questions which only concern the subjects of her Britannic Majesty” (Bowring 1969 [1857], 2:216). This provision was elaborated on in article 2 of the Parkes agreement, which included the following restriction on the Siamese authorities: British subjects, their persons, houses, premises, lands, ships or property of any kind, shall not be seized, injured, or in any way interfered with by the Siamese. In case of any violation of this stipulation, the Siamese authorities will take cognizance of the case, and punish the offenders. On the other hand, Siamese subjects, their persons, houses, premises, or property of any kind, shall not be seized, injured, or in any way interfered with by the English, and the British consul shall investigate and punish any breach of this stipulation (Bowring 1969 [1857], 2:234–35). Thus, the Siamese government ceded jurisdiction to the British consular authority. This infringement on state sovereignty would create considerable

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difficulties for the Siamese government. While systems of extraterritoriality similar to that in Siam were introduced in China and Japan, “the unusually large number of foreign subjects of Asian origin soon placed the Siamese authorities in a far more difficult position” (Jeshrun 1965, 290). The treaty did not define who was entitled to protection as a foreign subject, and neither did subsequent treaties with other states. As noted by Lysa (2003, 133), the problems associated with extraterritoriality only came to the fore in the late 1880s, as the community of “alien Asiatics”—Burmese, Shan, Khmer, Laotians, Vietnamese, and Chinese, among others—grew rapidly.13 As British and French possessions in Asia expanded, large numbers of immigrants to Siam from Burma, Indochina, and China could claim protection as foreign subjects.14 In addition, persons who could claim an ancestral connection to territories now under European control—such as descendants of war captives who had been resettled in Siam—also were able to enjoy extraterritorial privileges. In the imperial competition for influence in Siam, consuls were often eager to expand the number of their protégés there. In addition, a black market in foreign “certificates” emerged, producing a population segment composed of fake foreign subjects.15 This was an anomalous situation. As noted by the adviser for foreign affairs to the Siamese government, Edward Strobel: “the crux of the whole matter was that when Siam entered into Treaties with foreign Powers [in the 1850s], the persons . . . to whom it was intended to accord the privileges under those Treaties, were the members of the white western races of the world, between whom and the Siamese a great gulf was fixed from a religious, ethical, social, and moral standpoint.” It had not been intended, argued Strobel, that there would “grow up within Siam a large community of alien Asiatics similar to those in Siam in their creeds and modes of life and thought; and in very many cases . . . descended from a common race-stock.” Neither had it been thought appropriate that “such a community should enjoy within Siam the same differentiation from the natives of the country as that enjoyed by whites” (Foreign Office 1906a).16 The privileges intended for the white Westerner proved, however, rather attractive. According to one (perhaps apocryphal) story, Chulalongkorn was reported in The Times of London as lamenting that “the time may come when there will be only one Siamese subject in my kingdom, and that one myself ” (“France and Siam” 1897). In 1901, the minister of foreign affairs was reported to have complained to the Dutch consul that “the consular corps in Bangkok would soon have more subjects than the king himself ” (Bootsma 2005, 55).17 In short, by the 1890s, the expansion of the number of foreign subjects had begun to severely cripple the state’s prestige and authority. This was also recognized by the British consul who refused to grant extraterritorial protection to members of the Siamese navy who had ancestral roots in Burma. The French consul was less

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concerned about undermining Siamese authority and provided protection for Siamese government officials of Cambodian descent (Jeshrun 1965, 300).

Taxation and the Loss of Fiscal Autonomy As Bowring himself recognized, the treaty provisions concerning taxation “involved a total revolution in all the financial machinery of the [Siamese] Government” (Bowring 1969 [1857], 2:226). The treaty forced the Siamese to abolish the trading monopolies and to reduce the import and export taxes that had been the main source of state revenue, as well as an important source of elite wealth.18 Siamese import taxes would henceforth be levied at a flat rate of 3 percent on the market value of the imported goods (article 8). The code of regulation appended to the treaty further fixed the export and inland duties on all major Siamese export products.19 Finally, the treaty stipulated that land owned by British subjects “will be subject to the same taxation that is levied on Siamese subjects.”20 The Parkes agreement then specified what taxes the Siamese government could levy on land.21 These taxes were, moreover, denominated in absolute terms and therefore gradually lost value in real terms (Feeny 1982, 83). The decline in revenue potential (within existing institutional constraints) weakened the fiscal incentive for the Siamese state to invest in the definition and enforcement of property rights in land.22 According to Harry Parkes, the treaty negotiations surrounding matters of taxation and revenues in effect amounted to “a recodification of their Financial System” (File concerning Harry Parkes’ mission . . . 1975, 47). And not only was the financial system recodified—it was codified in an international treaty. Thus, the Bowring treaty compelled the state to seek a new fiscal base, and strictly limited its fiscal and judicial autonomy. While seeking to regain some of the lost fiscal autonomy, Siam’s first foreign financial adviser, Mitchell Innes, commented in 1898 that “I do not know of any country which is tied hand and foot like Siam as regards its internal taxation. The Turkish capitulations are less severe, and I think . . . that the bonds on the Chinese Government do not extend beyond customs” (Vikrom 1972, 127–28).23 The Siamese government did not regain fiscal autonomy until 1926, and up to that time the government was constrained in two respects. First, it was limited in its ability to pay for infrastructure investment.24 Second, it was limited in its ability to capture the benefits of infrastructure investments (Feeny 1982, 83).25 These factors probably influenced the distribution of state infrastructure investment. The treaty-imposed restrictions on land taxes meant that the state could not effectively capture the gains associated with investments in irrigation and highways. In contrast, it could more easily capture some of the gains from state railways. While private capital could have been mobilized for the purpose

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of financing infrastructure development, Siam would in this regard have had to depend on foreign capitalists. However, the Siamese were loath to give any major infrastructure concessions to foreigners—due to the security implications.26 The overall effect was to put a break on the utilization of the country’s agricultural potential. While agriculture certainly did expand, it did so at a pace and in a way that differed considerably from the colonial situation in neighboring countries. As a result, Thailand became “a nation of small farmers” (Ingram 1971, 58).

Land Rights and Limitations on Foreign Economic Penetration The Bowring treaty and the supplemental Parkes agreement of 1856 contained provisions that circumscribed Siamese sovereignty in the areas of trade, taxation, judicial power over foreigners, and regulation of foreigners’ rights to acquire land. The Bowring treaty stipulated that a British consul would be allowed to settle in Bangkok, and that he would enjoy the right to hear and determine disputes involving “British subjects” according to English law (in case of criminal offenses). Although British subjects would have the right to trade freely in all Siamese seaports, they would have the right to reside permanently only in Bangkok, or within limits assigned by the treaty. Article 4 of the treaty deserves to be quoted at length: British subjects coming to reside at Bangkok may rent land, and buy or build houses, but cannot purchase lands within a circuit of 200 sen (not more than four miles English) from the city walls, until they shall have lived in Siam for ten years, or shall obtain special authority from the Siamese Government to enable them to do so. But with the exception of this limitation, British residents in Siam may at any time buy or rent houses, lands, or plantations, situated anywhere within a distance of twenty-four hours’ journey from the city of Bangkok, to be computed by the rate at which boats of the country can travel (Bowring 1969 [1857], 2:217). Article 4 further stipulated that any purchase of such lands had to be facilitated through official channels: the prospective purchaser had to apply to the British consul who in turn would approach the appropriate Siamese authorities and request that they issue a title deed. In practice, this meant that each and every land sale involving a foreign buyer required special royal approval. This regulatory requirement effectively raised the transaction costs for any foreigner who wished to acquire land in Siam. Land transactions that had been agreed between buyer and seller were put on hold, often for more than a year, until royal permission had been granted.

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These provisions were not regarded by the British as particularly restrictive. Parkes observed that “this condition of the Treaty—the four mile circuit—which was inserted at the urgent desire of the Siamese, is an instance of the absence of useful aim or purpose which characterizes many of their proposals. Thus the stipulation that British subjects cannot be allowed to purchase lands within the four mile circuit until they shall have resided in Siam for ten years, will probably have a very limited application as the right of leasing land within this circuit is not forbidden, and may have nearly the same effect and value as the immediate right of purchase” (File concerning Harry Parkes’ mission . . . 1975, 55–56). This comment suggests that the intent of the British was limited to facilitating trade, for which it was deemed sufficient that British merchants would be able to lease offices and warehouses. As regards the boundaries of the twenty-four-hour zone, Parkes noted that “these limits comprise a very large portion of the fertile delta formed by the four rivers which flow into the head of the Gulf ” (File concerning Harry Parkes’ mission . . . 1975, 60). Most of this land, however, remained uncultivated at the time, so the ability of foreign capital to bring it under cultivation remained limited in the absence of direct government grants. Again, this suggests that the British were primarily interested in facilitating commerce and were not bothered by the fact that the treaty provisions provided little if any support for the development of large-scale, foreign-owned agricultural enterprise in Siam (see figure 3.1). Parkes also had to push for the Siamese government to issue a proclamation that guaranteed Siamese subjects “their freedom under the Treaty to dispose of their houses or lands to British subjects” (File concerning Harry Parkes’ mission . . . 1975, 47). This was prompted, in part, by the fact that an official-looking proclamation had been issued a few days after Parkes’s arrival in Bangkok, which threatened severe punishment to any Siamese who sold “land, gardens or fields being the land of the King to Foreigners” (File concerning Harry Parkes’ mission . . . 1975, 90). A counterproclamation was issued after the area within which British subjects had a right to acquire land had been defined more precisely, through the services of a British survey team. During the negotiation of the treaty, Mongkut had recognized a tension between economic development and state security. In a proclamation regarding “treaty farang” (Westerners), he observed that while Western expertise in agriculture would be of great benefit to Siam—turning forests and wastelands into rice fields and plantations, thus increasing revenue and creating employment for poor Siamese— the cultural differences between the farang and the natives could easily give rise to dangerous situations, in which the peoples living in Siam would oppress, rob, beat, or kill Westerners.27 Mongkut perceived a similar danger in allowing Westerners to buy land in the capital: this was likely to give rise to disputes with the city dwellers. The diplomatic implications of such events were clear enough. Thus, to the

FIGURE 3.1 Central Siam and the twenty-four-hour zone. The legend reads, “Map showing the area and boundary of the twenty-fourhour zone according to friendship treaties with various countries. Scale 1:400,000. Survey Department Printing Room, Bangkok.” The map is not dated, but government correspondence indicates that a map of the twenty-four-hour zone was produced in 1906 (see n. 48). The state of completion of the railroad lines that can be seen radiating from the capital Bangkok, slightly below the center of the map, also suggests it would have been produced around this time. Courtesy of the National Archives of Thailand.

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Siamese government the purpose of the restrictions on foreign land acquisition was to reduce the risk of politically dangerous altercations between the Siamese and subjects of the colonial powers taking up residence in Siam. The twenty-four-hour zone also limited the ability of local chiefs in the outer circle of the Siamese state to enlist the support of foreign capital in their efforts to assert independence vis-à-vis Bangkok. To them, the commodification of land, and its alienation to powerful foreigners, would otherwise have been a strategy by which to counterbalance the expansionist central state. In 1908 a visiting British vice consul reported from Pattani in southern Siam the “existence of a considerable number of spurious British subjects” and expressed astonishment at the large number of “natives of Patani who . . . offered to sell me land at nominal prices, apparently thinking that the acquisition by me of large tracts of land would enhance British influence in the country” (Foreign Office 1909a). While the effort to surreptitiously criminalize the sale of land to foreigners met with immediate British disproval, Siamese officials were able to securitize the property rights regime—in the sense that a perceived threat was explicitly linked with a policy of (partially) restricting foreign land acquisition, which in turn was institutionalized in an international treaty. The direct effect of these restrictions on the evolution of the property rights regime was to provide the Siamese with a legitimate reason for denying foreign requests to acquire land in a large part of their territory. This limited the penetration of European capital, but it did not stop “alien Asiatics” from remaining on their land, and more recent immigrants from clearing land and settling down. A considerable number of foreign subjects were to acquire land outside the twentyfour-hour zone on an informal basis. This was particularly true in northern Siam, where British subjects, primarily from Burma and the Shan States, formed a significant part of the population. But it was increasingly true also of the east and northeast, where the French authorities were actively recruiting protected persons in population groups that claimed ancestral links, however vague, to the territories comprising French Indochina.28 The Siamese government displayed a relatively tolerant attitude toward the “alien Asiatics” until the late 1890s—in part because many of them were living so far away from the foreign consuls that their extraterritorial protection was more theoretical than real. However, once the growth of a population segment that enjoyed effective extraterritorial rights began to seriously undermine central state authority, the official attitude became less tolerant.29 And with that, the twenty-four-hour zone regulation became a source of “constant friction, suspicion, and subterfuge” (Foreign Office 1903a). Friction, suspicion, and subterfuge were not limited to the twenty-four-hour zone. In several instances, foreigners sought to become Siamese subjects in order to gain access to land. One of the earliest was the Italian Joachim Grassi, who

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was a partner of wealthy Thais in the Siam Canals, Lands and Irrigation Company which in 1889 won a twenty-five-year concession to develop the Rangsit area north of Bangkok. According to the contract with the government, Grassi was required to renounce his French protection and become a Siamese subject.30 However, it remained unclear to the Siamese authorities if he had actually complied with that requirement. Eventually, Grassi sold his interests to a German subject, but the question of the part-owner’s jurisdictional identity remained a live issue for the government.31 In hindsight, the Siamese authorities interpreted the activities of the Siam Canals company as an example of German “peaceful penetration.” The extensive land rights that the company had acquired on a large tract of land in Nakhon Nayok province raised a red flag for the minister of agriculture (and former minister of justice), Prince Rabi: “If the government makes this kind of mistake only a few more times, there will be nothing left of the Thai kingdom. It will be like a colony of the Siam Canals, Lands and Irrigation Company; and from another perspective, a colony of a German-owned company with absolute authority.”32 The infringement on state authority was evident in the company’s decision to issue its own title deeds—bai trok. This was a direct challenge to state authority and to the power of the king.33 Adding insult to injury, the company had used bai trok to circumvent the Siamese government’s control of land acquisition by foreigners. A statement by a British subject regarding land he acquired at Rangsit in 1907 throws light on the modus operandi of the company: “I took a fictitious name of a Siamese subject because at that time British subjects had to get a special permit from the Siamese Government before they can hold land in the Rangsit concession. . . . The practice of putting forward the fictitious name was at that time quite common with the knowledge and consent of the company.”34 In addition to the formal restrictions on foreign landholdings, the state sought to create and uphold an informal norm against land sales to foreigners, even in those areas where this was supposedly permitted by treaty. The British consul Ernest Satow observed in 1887 that the Siamese authorities had “for years past interposed every possible obstacle” to the attempts of British subjects to acquire land in Bangkok. As a consequence, “no Siamese subject would now venture to appear before the Bangkok authorities and acknowledge the sale of his land to a foreigner, as it is well known to be the policy of the King to prevent foreigners from obtaining land” (Satow 1887). In a similar vein, Noppharat (1977, 205) shows that Chulalongkorn sought to prevent large-scale acquisition of land by foreign subjects by warning the prospective sellers against following through with such transactions. In 1900, when the king learned that a royal prince was planning on selling a plot of land at Rangsit to an American, the king asked one of his officials to warn the prince

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that such a transaction was highly undesirable: “The farang have extraterritorial jurisdiction, which creates great difficulties for our administration. If they become owners of large plots of land like this, bandits can hide there and it will be difficult for us to capture them.” The king thought that it would be best if the land were sold instead to a Thai, and emphasized the importance of not letting the farang know about the (unofficial) royal disproval of the land sale, as this was likely to give rise to complaints and cause trouble for the government. It sufficed, thought the king, that the norm against sale of large plots of land to foreign subjects be known and respected among “ourselves.”

The Basis of a Future Bargain The outcome of Siam’s diplomatic intercourse with Great Britain in 1855–56 had important long-term consequences. Furthermore, there was one other important aspect: the Bowring treaty and subsequent unequal treaties with other countries set the stage for a future bargain. The treaties limited the Siamese government’s ability to enact legislation that touched upon their provisions without first winning consent thereto from British and other foreign governments. The treaties also put in place a judicial system that incorporated the principle of extraterritoriality, without clearly defining who was to be regarded as foreign and who was Siamese. Finally, they contained only one major limitation on the right of foreign capital in relation to Siam: restrictions on the right to acquire land. The first two of these points constituted significant encroachment on the sovereign status of the Siamese state. The final point bolstered Siamese sovereignty by placing the authority to control foreign acquisition of land—though simultaneously circumscribed by treaty-based rights—in the hands of the central Siamese government. The treaty regime therefore contained the seed of a future diplomatic bargain, whereby Siam could regain lost sovereignty in the legislative and judicial areas by making concessions in regard to foreign rights to acquire land as a quid pro quo.35 In due course we will turn our attention to that diplomatic bargaining process. Before doing so, however, a detailed discussion of Siam’s geopolitical predicament and Siamese threat perceptions is called for.

The Strategic Advantages of (Selective) Backwardness The nondevelopmental response of the Siamese state to imperialist encroachments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been attributed to the absence of a security threat significant enough to prompt it to mobilize

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economic and military resources that would enable it to counter such a threat (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005; Anderson 1978). This section scrutinizes that contention in light of a Siamese policy debate on the nature of the threat of European colonialism and on appropriate government responses to it. The policy debate makes clear that the Siamese regarded an aggressively developmental response as counterproductive: as increasing rather than reducing the danger. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Siam was a potential flashpoint in the globe-spanning Anglo-French imperial rivalry. The overarching question— the Siamese Question—was whether Siam could remain independent and, if it could not (as most contemporary observers agreed), which of the rival empires the kingdom would eventually be absorbed into. Beginning in the 1890s, the intensity of Anglo-French rivalry increased at the same time as the number of rivals grew, with Germany, Russia, and Japan attempting to expand their presence in Southeast Asia. Amidst this imperial rivalry, Siam’s position as a semisovereign state whose borders were not recognized exposed it to great dangers. Yet given the Siamese understanding of the country’s security interests, and the means available to the state in seeking to bolster its authority and control, institutional underdevelopment was actually a strategic advantage—one that not only corresponded to Siamese interests, but also suited the imperial interests of France and Britain.

A Strategy for Siamese State Preservation An 1885 petition for government reform, as well as the responses it generated, constitutes one of the best sources we have for understanding Siamese perceptions of the threat of colonialism, especially when considered together with a response by one of the persons invited to sign it, and two documents written by King Chulalongkorn. The authors of the petition were princes attached to the Siamese embassies in London and Paris. The petition had been initiated by Prince Prisdang, following the receipt of a request from Chulalongkorn asking for his personal opinion on how to maintain Siam’s independence in the face of colonial expansion in the Southeast Asian region.36 The signatories argued that the strategy for avoiding colonization that Siam had been pursuing since the reign of Mongkut was no longer sufficient, and that more radical political reforms were urgently needed. The dangers were identified in terms of the ways in which European powers could legitimate the colonization of Siam. They could do so by appealing to kindness and justice for humanity; to Asia’s lack of progress (khwam mai charoen) as an obstruction not only to Asians but also to the civilized (European) countries; to Siam’s failure to protect the lives and property of Europeans; and to

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obstruction of free trade and of the exploitation of natural resources on the part of the Siamese government (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 2–3). Interestingly, the document made a direct parallel between European legitimation of colonization and traditional Thai land law, according to which a person who failed to make productive use of land forfeited the usufruct right, which then reverted to the state. In similar fashion, kings must make productive use of their realms—or their sovereign rights would be open to challenge. The authors were thus able to explain and perhaps even legitimate European colonial doctrines—according to which the utilization of natural resources was central to any claim of sovereignty—in terms of traditional Siamese land law (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 4). The princes warned that the colonial threat was imminent, because the reasons used to legitimate imperial expansion were applicable to Siam, and because France, through its colonies in Indochina, had come within striking distance of the country. Siam had been able to survive so far because the Western powers had been busy devouring other Asian countries. Now there was no “food for the Europeans” left in Asia with the exception of Siam. To counter the threat Siam could not remain, as hitherto, inactive (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 15, 6). The petition also articulated the philosophy underlying the established Siamese strategy for countering the colonial threat. This was a strategy of gentleness (on wan) and willingness to compromise with the intent of thereby engendering a feeling of pity (khwam songsan) in the adversary. The authors argued that this strategy would continue to protect Siam only in the very short term. Instead, Siam must follow the Japanese road of domestic reform in order to gain the respect of international society. This did not, however, mean that the country should adopt a firm military stance (and much less an aggressive one). Gentleness and compromise remained necessary ingredients in the Siamese response to colonialism—but they alone were not sufficient to guarantee Siam’s continued survival as an independent nation (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 7–8). The princes declared, however, that the use of force could not secure Siam’s security. The historical record did not support the notion of successful military defense by Asian states against European powers, and Siam was too poor and backward to support an army that could measure up against European military power. More importantly, even if Siam were able to mobilize financial resources to equip a sufficiently large army, the Western powers would not be willing to deliver modern weapons to the Siamese armed forces (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 8–11).37 The princes made an effort to debunk the notion that Siam’s independence could be preserved through reliance on the country’s strategic location as a potential buffer state between British and French colonial possessions in Southeast Asia. The problem with this strategy, they declared, was that such a buffer state

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might be reduced to a narrow strip between the two empires—thus entailing a significant reduction of Siam’s territory (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 12). The princes also regarded the belief that reliance on superficial reforms of Siamese governance could secure the country’s future as mistaken. They mentioned, as examples of reforms that had been made for the sake of improving Siam’s image in the eyes of Western powers, the sending of ambassadors to Europe; the establishment of a telegraph and a postal system; the abolition of slavery; the opening of schools; the abolition of the law that Siamese subjects must crawl on the ground in the presence of the king; and the adoption of Western-style clothing and royal regalia. These were not indications of genuine progress, the princes declared, but rather served merely to bamrung ta, superficially enhance Siam’s international image (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 13–14). The princes also pointed out that friendship treaties and the promotion of a diversity of Western economic interests in Siam would not provide protection against European aggression, as the example of China showed (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 14–15). Neither would international law afford any protection to Siam, since it applied only to “civilized” countries. Japan, however, because of its successful domestic reforms, would soon enjoy international legal rights. The princes advocated a Japanese “model” as applicable to their own country: Siam would have to put its laws and government on a modern footing if it was to enjoy the rights afforded by international law (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 15–16). The only way that Siam could escape colonization was by instituting reforms that would win the respect of European nations. The princes believed that this required Siam to end the absolute monarchy and establish a constitutional monarchy. They did not go so far as to suggest the introduction of parliamentarism, but they felt that it was necessary for the state to make it evident that the government ruled with the consent of the governed and enjoyed broad popular support. Thus, Siam had to enact political reform that would make its political institutions similar to those of Europe: constitutional, meritocratic, and guaranteeing the rule of law and freedom of speech. Again, the authors pointed to Japan as the only Asian country that had gone down this route, and advocated that Siam should follow suit (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 19–22). In addition, the princes pointed to a second strategy that Siam could pursue in parallel with or preferably in sequence to the strategy of political modernization. As long as the government’s administration was weak, foreign investment was more likely to create a pretext for foreign intervention, as shown by the examples of India, China, and Burma. However, once Siamese administration had become “civilized,” foreign investment—in railroads, roads, shipping, canals, and the like—would give foreign nations an interest in maintaining the political independence of Siam (Naretworarit et al. 1983, 24–26).

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The proposals engendered three responses. The first was a separate memorandum addressed to the king, written by Choem Saeng-Chuto (Chaophraya Surasakmontri), one of Siam’s leading military commanders, who had played a central role in the formation of a standing Siamese army. The general had been sent a copy of the petition and invited to sign it, but had declined to do so and instead offered his personal opinion on how Siam could escape the colonial threat. He might have been expected to have a vested interest in a rapid buildup of Siam’s military and military-industrial capability, but any such impulses were effectively checked by his acute awareness of Siam’s precarious strategic position. Choem in general agreed with the analysis presented in the petition, but was less certain what the correct solution might be. He expressed less faith in the ability of domestic political reform to achieve national security, since he thought that success in this regard was hampered by lack of trust in the Siamese government on the part of foreigners and Siamese alike. He therefore recommended the king, as a first step, to travel to Europe to familiarize himself with Western methods of governance, establish direct personal relations with European monarchs and ministers, and raise the monarchy’s prestige in the eyes of Siamese civil servants and subjects at large. Such a trip would thereby significantly reduce the threat of colonial expansion and, furthermore, enable the king to implement whatever far-reaching governmental and legal reforms he found most suitable (Choem 1983, 49–50). Choem’s memorandum also contained an interesting analysis of the role of the military in protecting Siam’s independence. He commented on plans to establish military garrisons and fortifications along the border with the French colonies, and suggested that this could be interpreted by the French as an indication of aggressive intent, and therefore provoke them to take action against Siam sooner rather than later. It would therefore be advisable for the Siamese government to maintain a minimal military force while concentrating its efforts on improving the civil administration. Only after the country had been put in “good order” (riaproi)—and won international recognition—should the government consider a buildup of military capability.38 This, he said, was the pattern that had been followed by Japan (Choem 1983, 50–51).39 The king’s attitude to the question of reform was expressed both in a direct response to the princes, and in a speech composed in 1887 that outlined his understanding of the rationale for reform (Chulalongkorn 1983a, 1983b). For our purposes, the most important aspect of both these documents was that they indicated broad agreement with the princes’ assessment of Siam’s strategic situation and the appropriate ways of countering the European threat. The king wrote that differences of opinion in these respects were so minor as to be unworthy of mention (Chulalongkorn 1983a, 55). On the other hand, the king did not think that

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it was possible to implement the radical constitutional reforms proposed by the princes. Thus, while wide-ranging governmental reforms were necessary, these should not be allowed to diminish monarchical power. In seeking to legitimate the preservation of the absolute monarchy in Siam, the king argued that he had never behaved in a dictatorial way and that his subjects had never demanded constitutional change. In contrast with the princes’ “maximalist” overhaul of the Siamese state, the king proposed (and pursued) state reform along minimalist lines: he would only pursue reforms that subjects demanded and that society was ready for (Chulalongkorn 1983b, 106–7). Chulalongkorn thus articulated a relativist position: there was not one appropriate (European) model of governance that could be imposed on any society. On the contrary, the method of government had to be tailored to the needs of the place and the time. He thus legitimated the maintenance in Siam of a model of governance—the absolute monarchy—that more advanced societies, including Japan, had already abandoned. The 1887 document did not elaborate a royal view of the colonial threat that was in any way separate from the assessments of the princes. The king merely noted in conclusion that the administrative reforms he was proposing were intended to “secure Siam’s independence and the happiness of all subjects” (Chulalongkorn 1983b, 106–7). His reform program was focused on improving the administration of justice and taxation, as well as strengthening his control over the armed forces, the organization of which he considered to be in many respects “decayed” (Chulalongkorn 1983b, 96). In essence, the reforms were intended to put the government administration on a functional (rather than territorial) footing, and to centralize royal control over manpower and revenue. One conclusion we can draw from this debate is that there was considerable consensus among Siamese state elites that the colonial threat could not be countered by a military buildup. Indeed, a military strategy would probably have been self-defeating. Instead, Siam would have to rely on diplomacy and domestic legal and administrative reforms to win recognition and acceptance from the great powers. While economic development and prosperity were desirable goals, it was also recognized that they had to be pursued in ways that minimized the risks associated with foreign economic penetration. Administrative reforms, likewise, had to be pursued in ways that so far as possible avoided domestic political instability. Not necessarily because a domestic revolt threatened the state, but because unrest could provide the Western powers with a convenient pretext for intervention. In the aftermath of the serious Franco-Siamese crisis of 1893, which exposed Siam’s military weakness in the face of French aggression,40 the nonmilitary emphasis continued, as “the military was virtually discounted as an agent of external security” (Battye 1974, 378).41 The emphasis on administrative reform

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was strongly urged by the general adviser to the Siamese government, the distinguished jurist and former interior minister of Belgium, Gustave RolinJaequemyns: “It is now the internal situation, which requires the most immediate care, because, to say the whole truth, the enemies of Siam are just now taking advantage of it for advocating, more or less openly, in foreign papers, the necessity of a French or an English Protectorate over this country, and for spreading, amongst the native population, the idea that they have an interest to become foreign protégés, especially French ones, rather than to remain Siamese subjects.”42 The absence of a developmentalist response—in military and economic terms—in Siam should not be interpreted as the result of a security situation characterized by a relatively low level of external threat. On the contrary, such a response was warranted by the extremely precarious nature of Siam’s geopolitical position and the semisovereign status created by the treaties of the 1850s. The Siamese state faced colonial powers that could only be “resisted” indirectly. An on wan response was well tailored to a strategic situation characterized by marked asymmetries of power and close proximity to threatening rival powers. This exploration of Siamese elite discourses on security highlights an important methodological issue of importance to scholars pursuing covariational analysis and, hence, coding cases on variables such as the extent to which states are subject to “external threats.” Today we know that “Thailand was never colonized,” as the oft-repeated refrain goes. But it is not at all clear that this was known, at the time, to central political actors. The best means available to check against hindsight bias is to explore contemporaneous documents that throw light on how political decision makers actually perceived their geopolitical environment and the threats it posed.

Great Power Interests and the Neutralization of Siamese Lands In an 1896 declaration, France and Britain sought to control and limit their competition over Siam by agreeing to guarantee the continued independence of the country—defined as the central region of the Chaophraya River valley— and de facto dividing Siamese territories outside this core into separate British and French spheres of influence (see Jeshrun 1977, chap. 4). As part of this understanding, the European rivals were expected to prevent their nationals from investing in the “wrong” sphere (Jeshrun 1977, 223). British fears of the strategic implications of foreign (non-UK) investment in southern Siam were further manifested in the Anglo-Siamese Secret Convention of 1897, which was designed to prevent rival European powers from inserting themselves between the British possessions on the Malay Peninsula and British Burma. Article 3 of the convention obliged “His Majesty the King of Siam not

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to grant, cede or let any special privilege or advantage whether as regards land or trade within the above specified limits [Siamese territories or islands lying to the south of Muong Bang Tapan] either to the Government or to the Subjects of a third Power without the written consent of the British Government.” This article was not intended to provide Britain with any special privileges, but “rather to prevent foreigners from obtaining special leases of land and special trading rights as a means to an end” (Thamsook 1965, 54–55). The end being, of course, to eventually acquire political control over these territories. In similar fashion, France subsequently demanded from Siam that “foreign and rival capital should be debarred from [the Siamese territories in] the valley of the Mekong” (Foreign Office 1903b). Britain appeared particularly wary of the possibility that Germany or Russia might establish a presence in southern Siam (Jeshrun 1965, 293), whereas the French suffered occasional “alarmist scares” about foreign penetration in Siamese territories close to French Indochina. In one such incident it was alleged that “sundry Japanese have secured concessions of land on the Siamese side of the boundary of Cambodia (a protected state) and that Japanese traders are flocking like vultures to Siam” (“Warning to Siam” 1908). The Indochinese press at times “seemed obsessed with the idea of a combined Japanese and Siamese army crossing the Mekong and conquering French possessions” (Bangkok Times 1909). These new diplomatic arrangements had consequences for the ways in which the Siamese state approached the creation of formal property rights in land. The secret convention, for example, had the effect of obliging the Siamese authorities to “find all kinds of pretexts for delaying a reply to applications or concessions, and ending, perhaps, by their having to refuse the concession when no plausible ground existed” (Thamsook 1965, 55). The British government had the right to veto all foreign investment in Siam’s southern territories, and this veto right led not only to long delays in the processing of applications from foreign capitalists who sought to invest in mines and plantations in the south, but also to their frequent rejection. The Siamese government was, however, unable to explain the true reason for such rejections (since doing so would have revealed the existence of the secret agreement with Britain), and therefore had to face, alone, foreign consuls frustrated by the Siamese government’s creatively invented “technical” rationales for denying their countrymen the right to exploit Siam’s natural resources. The secretive nature of the convention also meant that such obstructionism exposed the Siamese government to harsh criticism from aggressively expansionist commercial interests in Singapore, as well as from the British governor there, who was never informed of the existence of the secret convention (SarDesai 1977, 273).

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As with the Bowring treaty, the secret convention, and similar pressures from France, provided the Siamese state with perverse incentives in regard to the commodification of fertile agricultural land: land policies were formulated and implemented in order to prevent large-scale investment in agriculture. The pattern of obstruction necessitated or motivated by the secret convention continued to be useful to the Siamese state even after it was abrogated, in the context of further negotiations over extraterritoriality and foreign land rights. The broader theoretical implication of the neutralization of Siamese lands is that it was not only the Siamese state that could make securitizing “moves” in relation to land on Siamese territory. The rival colonial powers sought to securitize Siamese lands, too, because it was perceived that imperial security required the Siamese state to prevent politically destabilizing settlement and investment in areas close to imperial borders.

Striking a Bargain: Trading Formal Land Rights for Jurisdiction The promise of full, formal property rights in land became one of the last bargaining chips available to the Siamese in their efforts to establish jurisdiction over foreign-protected white and Asiatic persons. Efforts by Britain to link its approval of the Siamese plan to raise import duties to concessions on the land question failed because the foreign advisers to the Siamese government regarded rights to land as “the last lever in the hands of the Siamese Government with which to obtain a mitigation of the extra-territorial system” (Foreign Office 1906b).43 In fact, in the Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1907 and the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, Siam traded eased restrictions on foreign land acquisition as a quid pro quo for concessions on extraterritoriality, which ended direct foreign jurisdiction over non-Siamese Asiatic subjects.

Modernized Insecurity The value of Siamese lands—in both strategic and economic terms—increased rapidly from the 1880s, and this provided the Siamese state with an opportunity to counter the expansion of “alien Asiatics.” The strengthening of central control and the introduction of a modern land titling system in Siam were an important part of this process, and were purposefully used in the Siamese state’s quest to bolster its authority. Most importantly, the process of formalization of property rights posed a threat to the informal landownership of “alien Asiatics,” and thereby raised the economic cost associated with that status.

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Extraterritoriality had by the 1890s become a factor in an increasing number of conflicts over land, causing serious difficulties for the Siamese government in asserting its sovereignty in the regulation of property rights. The power and immunity associated with status as foreign subject could be used to chase off rival claimants to increasingly valuable agricultural land. Conflicts over land, in combination with the possibility of seeking foreign legal protection—and thereby escaping Siamese jurisdiction (and most taxation)— risked setting off a destabilizing process whereby changing one’s legal identity became a strategy for laying claim to land (Chaiya 1985, 56–58). It was a sign of the times that, in the mid-1890s, farmers began flying the protective French flag over their rice fields in the Rangsit project (Orathip 1980, 59). An official memorandum from 1899 warned that if foreign subjects were allowed to acquire land easily, “they will soon own all agricultural land, because, as we have seen, wherever foreign subjects hold land, they acquire power, and the people nearby have to live in fear, they have to endure abuse, and cannot seek redress in the courts. Those who cannot stand it have to move in search of new lands . . . and those who do not yield to the mistreatment fight back, in some instances to their death.”44 In one prominent case, a conflict over land close to Bangkok led to a violent dispute between French protégés and Siamese subjects in which one of the latter was killed. The Siamese authorities arrested the suspected ringleader of the French protégés, Mohamed Billeh, who was alleged to have been the perpetrator of “several acts of violence committed against persons residing between canals Nos. 10 and 11 at Sansep.” Mohamed Billeh was among other things accused of “ejectments by violence, cutting down of twenty-two houses, destruction of goods belonging to the inhabitants, extortion of money by threat of violence . . . resistance to police force with an armed troop, attack on peaceful inhabitants, attempted and perpetrated murders; and it still appears that, since this date, far from abating from his system of intimidation, he continues in every way to terrorize the whole district” (Foreign Office 1898a).45 Mohamed Billeh claimed that he was a subject of France, and the French consul argued that he did not fall under Siamese jurisdiction. According to Siamese government investigations into Mohamed Billeh’s background, his Malay father had been born in Cambodia and settled in Siam in 1832. Mohamed Billeh had been born in Bangkok and had served in the Siamese navy. He had registered as a French protégé in 1894, and claimed that he had been appointed by the French consulate to “act as Headman over French Mohammedans and Cambodians in Siam.” The Siamese authorities charged that Mohamed Billeh had not only “defied all local authority” but also “incited the people to seek French protection” (Foreign Office 1898b). In the end, the diplomatic controversy over Mohamed

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Billeh’s proper jurisdictional identity was resolved in a compromise and he was deported to Saigon. The Siamese government, with its poorly developed land administration system, was ill equipped to deal with cases where individuals who had “escaped” Siamese jurisdiction accumulated land through strategies of coercion and violence against Siamese subjects. Moreover, any violence directed against foreign subjects risked provoking imperial intervention. The Siamese state responded by reversing the traditional policy of tolerance of the acquisition of land by foreign subjects outside the twenty-four-hour zone, and by issuing a new title deed law in 1901, the consequence of which was that (in theory at least) the legal validity of all existing land claims would be thoroughly scrutinized. British diplomatic reports provide some insights into how this process created insecurity for, and imposed opportunity costs on “alien Asiatics.” An 1898 British diplomatic dispatch from the northern city of Chiang Mai, a former Siamese vassal state which had now come under direct Bangkok control, characterized the twenty-four-hour zone as an “antiquated limit to foreign trade, the landmark of a past period of barbarism” and described the situation created by the new Siamese policy: The unsatisfactory tenure of land in this district throughout is a constant source of complaint by British subjects. A few years ago, an Order was issued in Chiengmai, and the other large towns of the north, prohibiting native owners of land, under heavy penalties, from selling or disposing of their land to foreigners. It is only recently that natives are becoming less afraid of the consequences, and are selling and mortgaging their land very frequently to British subjects. Many British subjects have applied to me in the matter of the purchase of land. I have written to the High Commissioner requesting that officials be sent as in Bangkok, to measure the land about to be purchased, and make out the title-deeds. I have also spoken to Phya Song on the subject, and he quite agreed with me that the time had come when foreigners should be allowed to buy land in this district, and beyond the twenty-four hours’ limit. As a matter of fact, British subjects have continued “to buy and rent houses, lands, and plantations” in all the large towns of the north without protest from the Siamese officials. But in many cases that have come before the International Court, the British subject who has purchased land has, after many years’ tenure, been ousted from the land, at its nominal value, at the instance of a native plaintiff (in an estate, for instance) merely because the British subject holds no official title-deeds, and cannot hold land according to Treaty. Thus, any person who can

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prove relationship to the seller of a piece of land to a British subject, can enter a suit in the International Court for the latter’s eviction, after payment of considerable sums of money in improvements, and the British subject has to leave his land without any compensation for the enhanced value of the land, or for the improvements effected, interest on capital, &c. This state of things is intolerable (Foreign Office 1903c).46 A few years later, the Siamese government’s safeguarding of the “barbarous landmark” became a cause of widespread popular discontent, even revolts. In conversations with a British diplomat, Siam’s foreign minister, Prince Devawongse, commented that the Shan Rebellion of 1902 was caused by grievances stemming from “the measures taken by Siamese officials to prevent the acquisition of land by foreign settlers” (Foreign Office 1903a).47 A similar situation arose in the south: “British subjects [in Trang province] who have wet padi fields continuously planted from to year are allowed to retain their present holdings, but they are not allowed to enlarge them by taking in any more land; and those who have been in the habit of squatting on Government land at irregular intervals, planting in one year and leaving it the next, and returning again at a future occasion, have been stopped. They have no titles to show, and consequently have no redress” (Foreign Office 1909b). While the new land law and the ambitious land-titling effort launched in the wealthier parts of central Siam in 1901 may in some respects have increased security of tenure for recipients of the title deeds, the prospect of a thorough investigation of land claims throughout Siam also had a chilling effect on an important segment of society. The new land-titling scheme was understood by the British as being part of a broad diplomatic offensive, aimed, ultimately, at ending extraterritoriality: “Signs are not wanting that, in order to obtain their object, the Siamese Government mediate using pressure, by disputing the right of British subjects to the land already held by them” (Foreign Office 1905). The legalistic turn at the beginning of the twentieth century thus enabled the Siamese state to legitimately question “the ownership of real property by British subjects in any formal or judicial proceeding” (Foreign Office 1903a). Although it was regarded as “incredible that the Siamese Government would seriously attempt to evict a large percentage of the population in the North” (Foreign Office 1905), the threat was real enough to prompt the British to begin negotiations whereby the right of British subjects to acquire land would be secured in return for concessions regarding jurisdiction over them.48 The “anomalous” characteristics of the system of extraterritoriality were further used by the Siamese government to legitimate restrictions on the ability of foreign subjects to hold formally recognized title to land outside the

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twenty-four-hour zone. Devawongse acknowledged that this policy ran counter to the principles of free trade in land and of free movement of people, and that it therefore was “not in harmony with modern ideas now prevailing in Europe.” He could nevertheless make a plausible argument that neither was “the privilege of extra-territoriality and of extra-territorial jurisdiction enjoyed by the subjects of all Treaty States” (Foreign Office 1901).49 The continued maintenance of the treaty-based restrictions on the ability of foreign subjects to own land were seen as essential to the Siamese state’s ability to “prevent the spreading over the whole country of a population of privileged guests, some of whom are not easy to deal with, and are rather apt to understand their privileges as if abuse of natives and contempt of local authorities were part of them” (Foreign Office 1901). The Siamese government thus took the position that free trade in land would only be allowed after the system of extraterritoriality was abolished or modified in such a way that it would no longer pose a threat to state authority. The formalization of property rights provided the Siamese state with an additional opportunity to undermine claims to extraterritorial protections. The new title deeds by default specified that the owner of the land was a Siamese subject. The owner could challenge this with the help of a foreign consul, in which case the Siamese officers would cross out the words “Siamese subject” and write in by hand the landowner’s correct jurisdictional status. In this way, land titling could be used to create documentary evidence that would undermine future claims of extraterritorial protection—unless the owner was willing to accept the expense involved in getting the consul to act (Noppharat 1977, 208).50 In addition, the ostensibly modernizing reforms could in and of themselves be used in support of Siamese claims for international legitimacy. King Chulalongkorn mentioned the introduction of a modern system of land titling in some of his speeches. The context in which he did so—hailing the arrival in Siam of modern technologies such as railroads and telegraphs—is illustrative of how land administration could also serve as a claim for recognition as a “civilized” nation (Chulalongkorn 1914, 164ff.). The claim was apparently also made in the process of treaty negotiations. In a memorandum to the U.S. Department of State, Jens I. Westengard, adviser to Siam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, argued that cadastral surveying and the enactment of a law based on the Torrens system indicated that “Siam has made progress which . . . will compare favourably with that of almost any other country.”51 One suspects, therefore, that one of the attractions of the new Siamese land law was that it could function as a marker of the country’s modernity. For the Siamese state, the global reputation of the Torrens system may have outweighed other, more practical, considerations. As noted by Feeny, the new land administration system became

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a subject of criticism for being poorly designed and implemented (1982, 97). Vandergeest and Peluso (1995, 402) suggest that “the history of law relating to property in land in Thailand . . . is a history of the wholesale adoption of Western models, incapacity to implement these models effectively throughout Thailand, and subsequent reforms that combine some recognition of local practice with attempts to make people conform to national laws.”52 However, none of these commentators explain why the Siamese state might have wanted to adopt Western models that it was incapable of implementing. There is little evidence of direct Western political pressure for reform of the system of land administration as such. For example, the prereform Siamese legal machinery was sophisticated enough for the law officers of the British Crown to conclude that Siamese law regarding mortgages of real property appeared to be “well understood and not irrational,” and therefore to recommend that the British consulate’s “attempt to establish a register of mortgages of lands or houses by British subjects should be abandoned” (Foreign Office 1898c). By introducing a land law based on the Torrens system, Siam was simply following a global trend. The system, which originated in South Australia in 1858, had rapidly spread to a large number of British territories and to parts of the United States (Hogg 1920; Meek 1949; Shick and Plotkin 1978).

Trading Land Rights for Jurisdiction In a first round of negotiations, initiated in 1898, easing the restrictions on foreign landownership was linked to the question of taxation rather than extraterritoriality. In response to Siamese requests for increased fiscal autonomy—an easing of the treaty-based restrictions on taxation—Britain tried to make such a concession conditional on an expansion of the right of British subjects to own land. At the suggestion of the India Office, Britain initially proposed that Siam should make the following concessions in exchange for the abrogation of the taxation schedule: British subjects would be allowed to own land throughout the country, and the level of taxes on land rented, held, or owned by British subjects would not exceed that on similar land in Lower Burma (Foreign Office 1900b; Vikrom 1972, 130ff.). The latter condition was met with no protest. The Siamese government did, however, object to the first condition because of its broader diplomatic implications: giving British subjects the right to freely own land in Siam would enable other governments to claim the same rights for their subjects, by invoking the most favored nation clauses of their treaties with Siam. This, according to Devawongse, was likely to become a source of serious political difficulties. Many of the problems with other governments that he foresaw would, one may assume,

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result from the fact that the opening up of foreign access to Siamese land would run directly counter to the letter and spirit of the secret convention. The unofficial “closed door” policy that Britain had imposed on southern Siam was incompatible with the principle of unrestricted trade in land throughout Siamese territory. In the end, the British agreed to abrogate the taxation schedule in 1900, thus giving Siam a freer hand in the management of its fiscal affairs, without gaining any significant concessions in return.53 In 1902, the Siamese initiated negotiations with Britain seeking to gain jurisdiction over British Asiatic subjects in the areas covered by the 1883 AngloSiamese Chiang Mai Treaty, which had established an International Court in the Siamese vassal state of Lanna, presided over by a British consul or vice-consul alongside Siamese judges, with jurisdiction over cases involving British subjects (Tej 1977, 53, 69; Engel 1978, 33). In essence, Siam was willing to provide aliens with formal rights to land if they gave up their right to have cases removed from the international court to the British consular court. Initial British responses were positive. Consul Beckett in Chiang Mai thought that a cancellation of the removal clause would not “materially alter for the worse the present position of British subjects, it would certainly, on the other hand, add very considerably to the prestige of Siam in the eyes of other natives, a matter in which a supersensitive race like the Siamese lay great stress” (Foreign Office 1903d). The negotiations did not immediately reach a successful conclusion, however. Essentially, the British thought that giving up extraterritoriality was too high a price to pay for the right to acquire formal property rights in land. Britain sought to offer other concessions, but “Siam was not prepared to entertain any proposition which did not offer as a quid pro quo a prospect of the abolition of foreign jurisdiction in Siam” (Vikrom 1972, 160). In 1907 Siam and France concluded a treaty that transferred jurisdiction over French Asiatic subjects and protégés to Siamese courts of law. In return, they were to enjoy the same rights as Siamese subjects, including the right to own land throughout the country’s territories (Sayre 1928, 78). All non-Asiatic French subjects retained their extraterritorial rights, and continued to be denied full rights to acquire property. France nevertheless gained territory in exchange for handing over jurisdiction over its Asiatic subjects: as part of the agreement Siam ceded the provinces of Battambang, Siam Riap, and Sisophon to France. Because of legal difficulties, Britain could not immediately follow suit with a similar treaty. In earlier negotiations regarding the extraterritorial rights of British subjects in Siam—in the early 1880s, and again in 1905—it had been proposed that consular protection be reserved for white British subjects and denied to British Asiatic subjects. It had, however, been found by the law officers of the Crown, in an opinion dating from 1882, that there were “grave constitutional

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objections” to such racial discrimination being introduced in Siam (Foreign Office 1906c). Another basis for a solution to the problem of extraterritoriality therefore had to be sought. In the treaty of 1909 Britain agreed to put all British subjects under modified Siamese legal authority, in exchange for which Britain gained unrestricted rights of property, residence, and travel for British subjects,54 as well as cession of four of the Malay states over which Siam held suzerainty, namely Kelantan, Tringganu, Kedah, and Perlis (Sayre 1928, 80).55 In addition, the Siamese state gained expanded authority over the remaining part of southern Siam, as the secret convention was abrogated.56 Another land-for-jurisdiction bargain was struck in 1909, between Siam and the Catholic mission. The mission and the lands owned by it were brought under Siamese jurisdiction, and in return the lands that had been granted to the mission would be provided with full legal title. The process of issuing new title deeds, initiated in 1901, had “brought matters to head” in the long-standing argument between the government and the mission in regard to the church’s landholdings. In a petition to the king, the mission observed that “for a long period, it is true, the Mission has been graciously authorised to cultivate lands in different parts of the Kingdom, which permitted the grouping of its own faithfuls around the Church. But during these last few years, uncertainty has arisen as regards to that which concerns the conditions in which the Mission, considered as a corporation, might possess lands, in harmony with the new dispositions of the laws and regulations relative to landed property.”57 The issuance of “modern” title deeds was thus directly linked to the change in the jurisdictional status of the mission: “if a new title deed has been issued, the Mission has accomplished one of its chief desires, and thereafter it shall be dealt with as a Siamese subject in connection with that land.”58 In the same year, negotiations for a revision of the treaty with Denmark were initiated following a request by the Danish East Asiatic Company to establish a rubber and coconut plantation in the southern province of Chumphon.59 The treaty was concluded in 1913, trading Danish extraterritorial rights for a lifting of the restrictions on foreign land acquisition. In short, by using land as a bargaining chip—and by judiciously deploying the “rule of law” as a political instrument—the Siamese state managed to strengthen its sovereignty and win back some of the fiscal and judicial authority that had been lost in 1855. However, the Siamese state was still far from sovereign. It did not have the right to choose what duties to charge on imports, and its courts were saddled with “foreign advisers.” In addition, the threat of further colonial encroachment had not disappeared, and property rights policy continued to be intertwined with the diplomatic process seeking the abrogation of unequal treaties.

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Thinly Veiled Obstruction One of the implications of the argument made here, which links the formalization of property rights in land to a diplomatic strategy, is that the Siamese state’s enthusiasm for implementing the new land law should decrease once the immediate diplomatic objectives had been achieved—as indeed was the case. According to Feeny, the state was “less active in doing cadastral surveys” after 1909 (1982, 96). This is significant since, according to the law, titles could only be issued in areas that had been so surveyed. Indeed, it appears that government expenditure on mapping and land administration reached an early peak around the financial years 1906–7 to 1908–9, after which expenditure levels saw a significant drop (see figure 3.2).60 Only by 1918–19 had government expenditure slowly increased enough to exceed the 1907–8 peak. Using an alternative indicator, spending on land administration as a share of total government expenditure, the Siamese state’s prioritization of land rights formalization peaked in 1907–8— at 2.8 percent of total expenditure—after which it fell and stabilized at a level of around 2.0 percent (see figure 3.3). This loss of enthusiasm was reflected in a gradual slowdown in the pace of land titling. There are gaps in the available data for the period 1909–10 to

2,000 1,800 Tical (in thousands)

1,600 1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1904–5

1907–8

1910–11

1913–14

1916–17

1919–20

Year Land Records and Mines Cadastral Survey Branch

Special Land Commissioners Topographical Survey Department

FIGURE 3.2 Government expenditure related to land administration (thousand tical) 1904–5 to 1919–20 (see n. 60). Statistical Yearbook of the Kingdom of Siam 1916, 1921.

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Total expenditure (%)

3

2

1

0 1904–5

1907–8

1910–11

1913–14

1916–17

1919–20

Year FIGURE 3.3 Government expenditure related to land administration, as a percentage of total expenditure, 1904–5 to 1919–20. Includes expenditure for topographic and cadastral surveying, the Department of Land Records and Mines, and Special Land Commissioners. Statistical Yearbook of the Kingdom of Siam 1916, 1921.

1914–15, but we know that the number of title deeds on file rose from 238,761 in 1908–9 to 459,673 in 1915–16, a 93 percent increase in seven years. In contrast, by 1925–26, the number of title deeds on file had risen to 558,151, which represents a mere 21 percent increase over the number of title deeds issued in 1915–16 (Feeny 1982, 96). In southern Siam, in particular, British capitalists were frustrated by the unwillingness of the Siamese government to issue landownership documents, thus hindering them in their efforts to create a plantation economy. Following the conclusion of the 1909 treaty—which meant that the government no longer had legitimate reason for denying British subjects the right to acquire land beyond the twenty-four-hour zone—it was observed that Nothing in the treaty of 1909 has been regarded by the Siamese with so much disfavour as the provision under which British subjects are placed on the same footing as Siamese subjects in regard to the acquisition of land. Even the loss of such shadowy rights as Siam possessed over the provinces ceded to Great Britain did not cause so much resentment as the possible increase of British holdings in the Siamese Malay territory. The reason is to be found in the apprehension lest there should be a large influx of British subjects in the Malay peninsula, and that economic questions connected with their properties may become the

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ground for pressing forward claims of a political character. These fears find a certain justification in statements openly expressed in Singapore and other centres that the absorption by Great Britain of the whole of the Malay peninsula must eventually be realised and is merely a matter of time (Peel, Beckett, and Crosby 1912, 271–72). The British legation in Bangkok had to exert considerable effort to counter the “evident determination in influential quarters to exclude British subjects as much as possible from the Malay peninsula” (Peel, Lyle, and Crosby 1914, 326). British diplomats in Siam identified Interior Minister Damrong as the architect of this policy of “unofficial and veiled obstruction to foreign enterprise” in southern Siam.61 The political motivation behind Siamese obstructionism was understood as resulting from a combination of private and national concerns: In the first place, the country is very rich and full of valuable mineral deposits, while there is every prospect that when the construction of the Southern Railway will have been completed, wealth and population in this portion of the Siamese kingdom will increase very considerably, so that even places possessing at present no importance will in all probability become thriving, prosperous centres. To keep this prospective source of wealth as much as possible to themselves has been the object of the few Siamese officials with capital to invest. The other motive may be ascribed to the fear entertained that Great Britain has the intention eventually to absorb the whole Malay peninsula, and it has found expression in the rejection, on various pretexts, of applications for exclusive prospecting rights, refusal to issue title deeds, delays on the part of local authorities in executing the legal formalities connected with the purchase and sale of land, owing to the alleged inability to take the necessary steps without instructions from the Ministry of Interior, as well as in other ways which might be cited as showing a marked tendency to differentiate between British and Siamese subjects in such matters (Peel, Lyle, and Crosby 1914, 326). Among the legal formalities standing in the way of the issuance of title deeds was the legal requirement that this be preceded by a proper survey. However, instead of pressuring the Siamese government to increase the budget for surveying, the British legation urged the Ministry of Agriculture to start issuing temporary title deeds in areas of the country that had not yet been surveyed (i.e., the greater part of the country). The foreign adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture, W. A. Graham, responded to the request by observing that no regulation existed that would allow for that; but that the matter would receive the attention of the

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ministry. In the meantime, the British legation observed, “there can be no real security of tenure, and, moreover, transactions in the sale and purchase of land are hampered in consequence, since the production of a title of ownership is usually demanded by the intending purchaser before a sale can be effected” (Peel 1913, 343). The treaty regime imposed on Siam by Western powers created perverse incentives for the Siamese state. The Siamese state underinvested in the provision of modern property rights because productivity gains could not be captured by the state under the existing (treaty regulated) taxation system; the operation of a free market in land threatened to put prime agricultural land in the hands of capital-rich subjects of the great powers; and the issue linkage that arose from the treaties made it possible to trade additional land rights for foreigners in return for reform of the system of extraterritoriality. As a consequence, land law was used to raise rather than to reduce transaction costs, to obstruct rather than facilitate the commodification of land, and to promote Siamese interests in diplomatic negotiations. The tactics that the Siamese state had developed in order to keep the secret convention secret were thus shown to be politically useful also after its abrogation. Legal ambiguity and obstructionism remained important weapons in the Siamese government’s effort to stem the flow of foreign capital into rural areas. This strategy was evident not only in the area of land titling. In two letters to the king, the minister of agriculture in May 1910 predicted a large-scale influx of British capital into southern Siam, now that the government had been “forced” to open up the area for economic development. “Soon Englishmen who now fall under Thai jurisdiction will make large numbers of requests to lease land for cultivation.” The minister likened the awaited influx of foreign business to an unavoidable, impending flood. “Since we can’t prevent it, we must let the waters come. But we should find a way to make use of the coming flood.”62 The minister had therefore drafted a law that would make it possible for the state to lease out large plots of land to British investors in southern Siam. The need to draft such a law was in part, it appears, motivated by the fact that its alleged drafting had already been used by the governor of Phuket as an excuse to turn down two British requests to lease land from the state. Nevertheless, the minister argued that a new law was needed, since the existing land laws were not suited to cultivation that required large investments on large tracts of land.63 This particular draft was shelved, but a royal decree with temporary regulations relating to the establishment of plantations was issued for the southern provinces of Chumphon, Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Pattani, and Phuket (Department of Lands 2001b, 79–81). The intent of the law had, however, been shifted. The decree did not introduce the principle of leasehold. It did, however, impose restrictive conditions: one-tenth

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of the area claimed would have to be brought under cultivation within two years, and the total area would have to be brought under cultivation within five years. In addition, the decree contained a provision that enabled the local administration to declare “reservations” for members of the settled local population; and this was used to obstruct the influx of British (and other nonlocal) capital into agriculture in southern Siam (Noppharat 1977, 212).64 In the same year, the drafters of the Civil and Commercial Code finished the section dealing with partnerships and companies. It included a provision aiming to severely limit the ability of corporate bodies to acquire land in Siam.65 The French legal adviser commented that the original purpose of such a provision— of “limiting the extension of mortmain in Siam, and also of preventing foreigners from acquiring . . . immoveable property which the treaties did not allow them to acquire personally”—had largely lost its importance following the conclusion of the new treaties, which extended the right to possess land to French Asiatic subjects and British subjects. The adviser regarded this provision as a major obstacle to the country’s economic development: “no company is allowed to bring in new areas into cultivation be [sic] clearing waste land, digging canals or turning jungle into plantation. No company is allowed to build houses or markets in towns, etc. The limitation may restrict the economical [sic] development of Siam and the introduction of foreign capital.”66 That did not, however, settle the matter. Damrong asked him to find a legal remedy so that corporations could be prevented from acquiring large tracts of land in Siam. Damrong argued that “when companies have obtained a large concession of land, and made canals or other irrigation works, instead of disposing of the land at a reasonable price to agricultural men, attracting new settlers and increasing the wealth of the district, they would only try to make money by leases or otherwise as much as they can, regardless of the future of the population.”67 Rather than including restrictions on corporate landholdings in the company law, the code commission proposed that the matter be settled in the part of the civil code dealing with land tenure, allowing the state to make land grants only if “the grant is not likely to prejudice the welfare and future prospects of the inhabitants of the district. The restriction would then be placed on a sound and nonobjectionable basis. And there would be nothing in it which may be construed as involving a prejudice against companies, foreigners or any other particular class of persons.”68 The foreign adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture warned that a company law that placed restrictions on the rights of companies to hold land would not only “endanger the internal welfare and prosperity, but, in view of promises and undertakings made in recent treaties, may provoke external danger also.”69 In the next chapter I will return to the civil code commission’s work in this regard. These legal debates do, however, suggest that there was more to the constant

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“drafting” of laws and regulations than met the eye. The process of drafting was used to legitimate resistance to foreign economic penetration and the commodification of land. The debate is also suggestive of an ongoing rhetorical shift. While the nondevelopmental policy impulse had roots in national security concerns, after 1910 it was increasingly legitimated with reference to the “welfare” of the population—including future generations of Thais. The diplomatic correspondence and the law-drafting debates throw clarifying light on otherwise elusive comments by the foreign adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture, who declared that “it would be an absurdity to expect any development in agriculture” in Siam, given that “every obstruction has been put in the way of using capital whether local or foreign”; and judged the land laws to be wholly inappropriate to local economic conditions: “stringent and in every way prohibitive, whereas they should be the opposite, when operated in an area where there are large stretches of waste land waiting to be cultivated.”70 While Siam did witness a rapid expansion of agriculture after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the country lagged significantly behind its most similar colonized neighbor, Burma. In the period 1860 to 1890, Siamese rice exports increased only 30–50 percent as much as Burmese rice exports (Ingram 1971, 80). The expansion of the rubber industry in Siam also progressed at a remarkably slow pace. By 1920, Burma’s annual rubber production had topped two thousand tons, whereas Siam’s had only reached four hundred tons (Stifel 1973, 130; Keong 1973, 228). According to Stifel (1971, 1973), the slow expansion of rubber cultivation in southern Siam can be explained by Siamese government obstruction—motivated by a desire to protect the state’s territorial integrity— which limited the ability of foreign capitalists to gain access to sufficient quantities of land and labor, two crucial inputs for the development of a plantation economy. The Thai rubber industry thus came to be dominated by Siamese, Malay, and ethnic Chinese smallholders. By manipulating property rights institutions, the Siamese state had in effect closed off the developmental path toward a plantation economy taken by many colonized Southeast Asian societies.

Siam in Comparative Perspective: Japan Like Siam, Japan was subjected to unequal treaties imposed by Western imperial powers. As in Siam, these treaties opened Japan to foreign commerce, introduced the principle of extraterritoriality for foreigners, and restricted Japanese tariff autonomy.71 Despite these constraints, Japan was able to respond in a strongly developmental fashion to the Western challenge—not only by pursuing industrialization, but also by relying, to a great extent, on the surplus produced by

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the agricultural sector to finance modernization. Unlike Siam, the Japanese state made a determined developmental “push” in the area of land administration— among other measures, by undertaking cadastral surveys, issuing land titles, and collecting land taxes. What accounts for this different response to the imperialist threat? One possible answer is that the Japanese state faced a more severe external threat than the Siamese state did. Notably, Anderson has argued that the Siamese monarchy ceased to contemplate engaging in warfare from around 1840 to 1940 because “the real external security of the Thai monarchical state had been guaranteed by the European imperial powers.” That “guarantee” took the form of the establishment of colonial control and the demilitarization of Siam’s traditional rivals—especially the Burmese and the Vietnamese (1978, 202). Doner, Ritchie, and Slater (2005) have explained the nonemergence of a developmental state in Siam, among other factors, by the less severe nature of the security threat faced by Siamese elites, in comparison with those faced by elites in Japan (and in South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore). “The modern Thai state was formed in the second half of the nineteenth century in the face of imminent colonial threats. But fortuitous positioning as a buffer between French and British possessions allowed Thai monarchs to preserve national sovereignty through negotiations rather than war” (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005, 349). A different interpretation of the respective geopolitical predicaments of Japan and Siam is, however, possible. Japan’s geographical separation from the Asian mainland afforded it “natural” protection from rival powers (Bedeski 1990, 62). In contrast to Siam, great power competition over Japan was muted, and the Western powers “took no territory in Japan, and did not carve out spheres of influence for themselves” (Auslin 2004, 7). To this we might add Brown’s observation (1991, 95) that Japan’s neighbors (Korea and China) were weak and growing weaker, while Siam’s neighbors (the colonial powers Britain and France) were strong and growing stronger. As a consequence, Japan faced a threat of invasion or incorporation into a neighboring empire that was much less serious than that faced by Siam. Because of the “weakness of Siam’s geo-political position,” the Siamese state was forced to adopt “an essentially submissive, reactive relationship to western power in all its forms” in order to avoid provoking aggression (Brown 1991, 95). In Japan, the much lower level of immediate foreign threat allowed it to adopt an ambitious external strategy (Kahler 1988)—the pursuit of empire that, within a few short decades after 1868, led to the defeat of two of the world’s greatest empires, China and Russia, at the hands of the Japanese military. To use a European analogy, Japan was like Britain some distance removed from geopolitical rivalries, while Siam was in a more vulnerable position, serving as a buffer between great powers, somewhat like a Southeast Asian Poland or Belgium.

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Classical geopolitical factors such as geography and the strength of neighboring powers were more favorable to Japan’s than to Siam’s national security. But geography is not the only geopolitical factor of relevance. In the case of Japan, the unequal treaties were compatible with a long-term developmental strategy based on positive linkages between state building, economic development, and national security. In the case of Siam, they were not, at least not in regard to the rural property rights regime. As noted in the earlier discussion, Siam’s submissive and reactive approach included deliberate attempts to restrict the penetration of foreign capital into the Siamese hinterland. The treaty regime gave rise to a conflict between the formalization of land rights and protection of territorial sovereignty and integrity. In addition, the tax provisions of the treaty regime effectively prevented the Siamese state from establishing direct agricultural taxation as the basis of its fiscal system. The case of Japan is a useful comparison because slight differences in institutional “design” and historical sequence of events meant that Japan faced a radically different incentive structure. In Japan, the formalization of land rights was not only compatible with, but central to, the state’s efforts to enhance national security; in Siam it was not. Like their Siamese counterparts, Japanese elites resisted the penetration of Westerners into their country (Auslin 2004, 10). In contrast to Siam, however, in the unequal treaties between Japan and the Western powers, the rights of foreigners to acquire land and real properties were severely limited. In effect, foreigners could lease or buy houses in the treaty ports, but nowhere else. The treaties did, however, constrain the Japanese government in regard to taxation. But it did so in a much less damaging way than in the case of Siam: since import tariffs were fixed at a low rate (5 percent ad valorem) the Japanese state was “forced” to continue to rely on agricultural land taxation. Such taxation played a central role in the fiscal system of late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan, accounting for 78 percent of central state revenues from 1869 to 1881 (Smith 1959, 211) and for 27 percent of central state revenue as late as 1909–11 (Bird 1977, 163). This had important implications for state policy and economic development. The state could directly capture part of the gains from productivity improvements resulting from infrastructure investments and other efforts aimed at boosting agricultural yields. The surplus thus extracted from agriculture could also be used to finance state investment in such areas as infrastructure projects and military capability. Military modernization played a central role in the Meiji reforms, not only in its own right. The military’s demand for resources was an important catalyst for the state to develop supporting institutions, such as the centralized taxation system (Westney 1986, 168). These reforms further provided the preconditions for the emergence of a sophisticated financial system, which

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in turn played a key role in the process of economic modernization (Rousseau 1999; Sylla 2002). The Japanese state could invest in these areas without worrying about potentially negative security implications. Because of differences in the treaties, Siam and Japan faced radically different political incentive structures in regard to the development of formal property rights in land. The modernization of Japan’s land rights regime was never seriously constrained or impeded by provisions in the unequal treaties, as it was in Siam. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Japanese state built a “rich nation, strong army” in order to meet the security challenge posed by Western imperialism (Samuels 1994). This entailed a successful push toward industrialization, which in turn rested on a variety of institutional and legal changes with respect to property rights. While there are important continuities between Tokugawa (1600–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) Japan in terms of the administration and regulation of property rights in land, the Meiji Restoration led to the introduction of modern notions of individual private property rights and modern land survey techniques.72 In Tokugawa Japan, land surveys had been aimed at assessing land values as a basis for levying taxes. This entailed clarifying boundaries between villages, which were collectively responsible for paying taxes, but did not entail the demarcation of individual fields. As part of the financial reforms of the Meiji Restoration, tax reforms were introduced so as to stabilize revenues. No longer would villages be collectively responsible for payment of land taxes based on an estimate of the productivity of the land. Now, land taxes would be levied on individual persons or households (as landowners or leaseholders), market prices would provide the basis for assessment of land values, and taxes would be paid in money rather than in kind. The new system required the abolition of “feudal” land relations and the establishment of private property rights, as well as the introduction of new and more precise survey techniques, and a shift in administrative focus toward the mapping of individual properties.73 Title deeds were issued to farmers, establishing them as individual owners of the land. The cadastral survey was essentially completed by 1876, by which time 109.33 million landownership certificates had been issued (Yamamura 1986, 382), and with the title deeds came the right to freely buy and sell land. The issuing of title deeds entailed a legalization of economic activities that had been sub rosa under Tokugawa rule. These included the accumulation of land by moneylenders (Hayami 1975, 47; Smethurst 1986, 47–48). In destroying the old order, the land tax reforms succeeded in separating the hereditary nobility, the daimyo, from an important source of power, namely control over land. The new order provided farmers and other individuals with an improved economic incentive structure, with important implications for economic development (Nakamura 1966, 195 n. 75; Smethurst 1986, 48). As a consequence

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of the reforms, capital investment in agriculture grew rapidly and resources were allocated more efficiently (Yamamura 1986, 394). In addition, Japan witnessed a dramatic expansion of the area under cultivation—a process closely linked with the rise of landlordism (Smethurst 1986, 61ff.). Most significantly, the new rural property rights regime and the attendant taxation system served to align private and public interest in promoting the productivity of Japan’s many small farms. This explains the eagerness with which the Meiji leadership searched for ways to increase farm productivity (Havens 1974, chap. 2; Smethurst 1986, chap. 3). The land tax reform of 1873 has been credited with being “the single most important reform of the Meiji Restoration” (Hayami 1975, 47). According to Nakamura (1966, 177), the land tax reform “constituted the economic machinery that the Meiji leadership employed to destroy the old economic and social system and to create a new one.” In contrast, the Siamese state sought to obstruct the penetration of foreign capital particularly into peripheral areas of the Siamese “geobody,” so as to prevent these areas from falling under the control of encroaching Western powers. Since Japan’s geopolitical situation was much less precarious—due to a less exposed geographic location and a treaty regime that afforded foreigners fewer rights—the Japanese state did not hesitate to create land markets in the country’s periphery. The Meiji reformers thus implemented land tax reform and established private and individual title to land also in recently acquired and not yet assimilated areas such as Hokkaido (annexed in 1868) and Okinawa (annexed in 1872) (Morris-Suzuki 1998, 25–27). In this important respect, the different treaty regimes in Siam and Japan engendered two very different modes of “internal colonialism.” In the case of Japan, the state’s hold on peripheral spaces and peoples was strengthened through the wholesale introduction of formal land rights, modern land taxes, and Western-style land and credit markets. In the case of Siam, a similar process came under way only after much delay, close to a century after the Meiji Restoration. As Japan sought to abolish the system of extraterritoriality and gain tariff autonomy through a revision of the treaties, the Japanese were successful in countering any efforts to expand land rights in the form of a treaty. The idea that foreigners were to be allowed to acquire land in Japan was intensely unpopular with the public, and because of this it was agreed that such rights would be created through future legislation passed by the Diet (Jones 1931, 141, 151). While nationalist pride lay at the root of Japanese resistance to foreign economic penetration, the argument was also advanced that allowing capital-rich foreigners to acquire land would jeopardize the government’s agricultural policy, which aimed to promote small holdings (Jones 1931, 136). Non-Japanese were given the right

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to acquire land only in 1926. And that right was severely limited: large areas of the country were classified as “essential to national defense,” and foreigners wishing to buy land there were required to first gain approval from the minister of war or the minister of the navy (Reischauer 1936, 127). This comparison with Japan has served to highlight the importance of treaty provisions regarding extraterritoriality, taxation, and foreigners’ land rights. In the case of Siam, the issue linkages between these three treaty provisions had led to a low-level, nondevelopmental political equilibrium. In the case of Japan, in contrast, the treaty provisions helped create and sustain a positive, developmentalist dynamic. The comparison has also alerted us to the importance of historical sequencing: the extent to which the state saw the creation of land markets as compatible with its interests was contingent on its being allowed to regulate who could (and could not) gain access to that market. The Siamese state did not, after 1855, have the right to regulate access to the land market. The Japanese state did. As a consequence, the Japanese state sought to provide the institutional underpinnings for an integrated national market for land, while the Siamese state sought, effectively, to prevent the emergence of a nationally integrated land market. In the face of the threat posed by Western imperialism, both Japanese and Siamese state elites securitized their rural property rights regimes. Property rights policies such as formal land documentation and taxation were used as tools that served to directly or indirectly enhance security. But because of subtle differences in the institutional and geopolitical context, securitization resulted in very different immediate policy outcomes, with significant implications for long-term economic development. As it was, both states achieved their respective goals, including the long-term goal of avoiding colonization. However, only the Japanese strategy was compatible with a significant increase in the real per capita income of the farming classes. Differences in the institutional context go some way, I would suggest, towards explaining the divergence between Japan’s and Siam’s economic trajectories after 1870. At that point in time, from a level of wealth that was similar to Siam’s, Japan experienced a sudden takeoff in terms of economic growth (see figure 3.4). This chapter has demonstrated how the Bowring treaty and the Parkes agreement between Britain and Siam shaped the way in which formal property rights institutions became linked to Siam’s quest for security in a precarious geopolitical context. Siamese state officials sought to use formal property rights as a means to prevent and minimize the extent to which the state’s territory became subject to economic and judicial penetration by foreign powers. While Siamese policies and practices regarding the definition and enforcement of property rights in land certainly went against the narrow economic interests

71

3,000 2,500 Thailand

2,000

Japan

1,500 1,000 500

40 19

20 19

00 19

80 18

60 18

18

18

40

0

20

1990 international Geary-Khamis dollars

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Year FIGURE 3.4 Per capita GDP in Japan and Thailand, in normalized 1990 international Geary-Khamis dollars, 1820–1940. Redrawn from Maddison 2003.

of the leading colonial powers, it was not necessarily detrimental to their imperial security interests. This adds a paradoxical twist to arguments about Siam’s semicolonial status. At a critical moment in history, it served not only Siamese security interests but also the strategic interests of London and Paris well that Siam “failed” to formulate and implement the type of “colonial land policies that were common to the rest of South-East Asia” (Dixon and Parnwell 1991, 216). An obscure and obstructionist land rights regime was widely perceived as a geopolitically stabilizing factor. A weak property rights regime thus became an attractive policy instrument for a subordinate state. Here it is perhaps also worth noting an important contrast between developments in Siam and those experienced at the same period of time in a number of colonized societies. In the latter, restrictions on the commoditization of land often took the form of a formalized communal land rights regime that was imposed on rural society by colonial powers, thereby strengthening control by native chiefs and leaders over natural resources (Bates 1984, 242–44; Boone 1994, 114–16). This historical legacy has in many cases remained a significant obstacle to “efficient” endogenous change in land-tenure institutions, as adjustments to the property rights regime have implications for more fundamental constitutional questions concerning the nature of political identities, citizenship, and the distribution of power within the polity (Boone 2007; Green 2006; Fitzpatrick 2007; Assies 2006). Colonial legacies of “plural” land law endure also in parts

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of Southeast Asia, most notably in Indonesia and Malaysia (Fitzpatrick 2007; Doolittle 2005). In Siam, in contrast, the legal system never extended recognition to any “native” laws different from the laws of Siam, or to any form of ethnically exclusive land rights (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001, 778; Sato 2003). It is noteworthy that a draft land law that would have granted nontransferable land rights to “families or tribes practicing hill cultivation” was considered in 1900 but never enacted.74 Whatever the precise reasons for the non-enactment of this particular law (on which we may only speculate), Siamese state officials would probably have been predisposed to reject efforts to transplant colonial models of “plural” land law on Siamese soil. Doing so would, in all likelihood, have conflicted with the country’s treaty obligations regarding the rights of foreign subjects to acquire land in Siam. It would, perhaps more importantly, have lent little support to, if not directly undermined, the state’s efforts to meet the “standard of civilization” and win Western recognition of Siamese sovereignty and territory (Gong 1984). In a study of the early development of modern racialist ideology in Siam, Streckfuss has argued that the aggressive multiplication of French protégés in Siam after 1893 was “more revolutionary than the mere seizure of territory could ever be,” and that the Siamese state’s response to this challenge “has largely defined the Thai state and its ideology up to the present day” (Streckfuss 1993, 134). While not limiting the argument to the post-1893 period, this chapter has shown that something similar can be said for the development of the Thai property rights regime. The system of extraterritoriality seriously compromised state sovereignty not only vis-à-vis the Western powers, but also in relation to the king’s ostensible subjects. One of the consequences of the resulting crisis was, according to Streckfuss, the emergence of a state-led politics of identity. However, the mere discursive construction of an encompassing national “Thai” identity provides little insight into how “alien Asiatics” might be induced to join this newly-imagined community (Anderson 1991). The dynastic state’s efforts to create a “people” were not limited to the arena of rhetoric, important as that was; but also involved the politically instrumental use of legal institutions governing property rights in land, with an eye towards the maximization of the number of Siamese legal subjects—the category from which Thai national identity would necessarily have to spring. The emergence of Thai nationalist discourse would in due course change the context in which securitization operates. Up until now it had been the king’s status as sovereign that had needed “securing.” With the advent of nationalism the welfare and long-term interests of the Thai “people” also becomes a referent object in the process of securitization.

4 CONSERVING SMALLHOLDER SOCIETY

During the period covered in this chapter, roughly from the onset of World War I to the end of World War II, Siam underwent important political and economic changes. While the Siamese state in the pre–World War I period favored a policy aimed at decommodifying land—or at least limiting the extent of commodification— for reasons related mainly to the protection of state sovereignty, the continuation of such a policy came to be favored also for a new reason. The rise of nationalism, often articulated in anti-Chinese terms, introduced a new referent object to the process of securitization: the Thai people. The role as protector of current and future generations of the Siamese peasantry and its landholdings against “foreigners” became an important component of the nationalist self-image of the new commoner elites and middle classes, who rose to positions of political prominence within the expanding state apparatus. This nationalist impulse became particularly pronounced following the 1932 overthrow of the absolute monarchy. In this new period, external threats loomed somewhat less large in the field of vision of Siamese policymakers than before. However, suspicions about French and British designs lingered, and became acute in the wake of the overthrow of the absolute monarchy. Meanwhile, Japan’s expansionist policies reinforced the Siamese fear of “peaceful economic penetration.” Institutional constraints—in the form of unequal treaties—continued to serve as a focal point both for diplomatic negotiations and for property rights regulation. Siam is frequently portrayed as having achieved full sovereignty as treaty revisions put an end to the system of extraterritoriality, but this is only partly true. While the jurisdictional 73

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limitations on Siamese sovereignty that had been introduced in 1855 had disappeared by 1938, legislative sovereignty continued to be impeded by treaty provisions: foreigners still enjoyed treaty-based rights to acquire land in Siam. Thus, the Siamese government’s hands remained tied in regard to the regulation of the country’s land markets vis-à-vis aliens. As a consequence, underdevelopment of the formal property rights regime remained an important weapon in the arsenal of the Siamese state. Surprising continuity was evident also in Thai rural society at large: by 1950, as in 1915, the national economy was dominated by a class of small farmers that was only weakly integrated into commodity and capital markets. The fundamental stability of state-society and rural-urban relations in Siam during this period stands in stark contrast with developments in neighboring countries, where nationalist independence movements gathered strength; the Great Depression caused massive social dislocation; and socialist and communist visions of the future caught the imagination of significant portions of the population, elites and peasants alike.

A New Referent Object: The “Backbone” of the Nation In the period of the world wars, nationalist sentiments in regard to landownership added a new facet to the security-related fears associated with extraterritoriality and foreign economic penetration of the earlier period. The rise of nationalist sentiments meant that the Siamese state gradually embraced a more broadly conceived “national purpose” (Abdelal 2001). The production of a nationalist ideology was, at least in part, triggered by dramatic changes in the geopolitical context. Two political developments in China played a particularly significant role: the republican revolution in 1911 and the rise of the Communist Party in the 1920s. These events had a profound impact on how the Siamese state related to its multiethnic society in general and to the large Chinese minority in particular.1 In effect, Siamese state elites saw themselves compelled to counter the revolutionary republican and communist ideas coming out of China by developing and reinforcing a nationalist ideology of their own. It is no coincidence that the “official” brand of nationalism (Anderson 1991, chap. 6) that developed in Siam in reaction to these (and other) developments elsewhere came to be characterized by its antirepublican and anticommunist emphasis. Since Thai nationalism has been studied at considerable length elsewhere, I focus here on an investigation of a hitherto largely ignored topic: the interaction between the parallel development of Thai nationalism and property rights in land.2

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With the rise of nationalism in Siam under Chulalongkorn’s son and successor, the English-educated Vajiravudh (Rama VI, r. 1910–25), a contradiction emerged between the royal management strategy of previous kings and the imperative to create and sustain a modern national identity. This tension came to be manifested also in regard to property rights policies. The Siamese state had, in meeting the challenge of colonialism, largely continued to rely on a premodern repertoire of statecraft suited to the management of a multiethnic empire. It had thus been entirely unproblematic for the state to rely on Chinese immigrants to settle and acquire land in Siam—as long as they acknowledged Siamese jurisdiction. To the Siamese ruling elite, ethnic identities were not a basis for critical political distinctions. Although a modern nationality law came into effect in 1913, Siamese governments largely continued to make no real distinction between nationality and jurisdiction—at least not in regard to property rights.3 So while some anti-Chinese rhetoric was produced by Siamese elites, most notably Vajiravudh himself, this chauvinistic streak in Thai nationalism was only very slowly translated into laws and policies that directly targeted the property rights of ethnic Chinese. The land law perceived to be most “anti-Chinese” of all legal enactments—the 1943 Alien Land Act, which prohibited all aliens from acquiring land unless such rights had been granted in an international treaty—did not even mention the Chinese (Coughlin 1960, 139). One reason for the ambiguous language may be that the 1943 law was only in part directed against the Chinese. Although the Thai government had aligned itself with Japan as the occupying power, it was not entirely comfortable with the prospect of Japanese economic domination. A British postwar diplomatic report commented, “The legislation was necessary, in 1943, to prevent the Japanese, who were present in the country in large numbers, from large-scale acquisition of land. Since the war it has been maintained, and has now been strengthened by the 1950 Act, as a restriction on mass acquisition of land by Chinese.”4 Prior to 1950, nationalist and anti-Chinese sentiments generally took subtle and indirect forms. The property rights regime in land was affected by the migration of the ethnic category “Chinese” from the politically unproblematic (“Siamese subject”) to the more problematic (“alien”), but not in overt and easily recognized ways. It is also noteworthy that the late 1930s and early 1940s witnessed a transformation in the official conception of Thai identity. The French-trained artillery officer Phibun Songkhram (prime minister 1938–44 and 1948–57) and his supporters reimagined Bangkok’s position and role in the world: it was to become the center of a great “Thai” dominion. Irredentism—the effort to recover the territories that the absolute monarchy had “lost” to the colonial powers—was coupled with further stretching of who counted as “Thai.” Whether they knew it

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or not, inhabitants of French Indochina, the British-controlled Shan States, and parts of southern China were embraced as ethnic brethren. Although Phibun aggressively sought to expand the country’s borders, he also recognized that the country already had more than enough lebensraum: the government encouraged immigration by “Thais” and provided assistance to farmers from French Indochina who wished to settle in the newly renamed country: Thailand.5 Thus, as a referent object of securitization in this period, the “Thai” nation appears ambiguous in ethnic and territorial terms. It is a moving target. But quite early on it nevertheless acquires a relatively stable conceptual core, namely the “Thai” peasantry. State officials came to regard the independent peasantry as the “backbone of the nation.”6 Their causal beliefs were such that the protection of this national foundation and essence required vigilance against the operation of market mechanisms, lest they would concentrate landholdings in the hands of wealthy non-Thais, leaving a class of “oppressed” tenants to eke out a living on land that was no longer theirs. In the process, the traditional conception of the land as ultimately belonging to the king was intertwined with the modern conception of land as national patrimony. The emotive link between a “free” peasantry and the Thai nation can be illustrated by internal government correspondence concerning the activities of an agro-industrial corporation, Siam Kasikon, which had managed to acquire eleven thousand rai of rice land from peasants in the central region. The governor of Samutprakan reported that this perfectly legal enterprise nevertheless was deeply disconcerting: the subjects (ratsadon) had as a consequence of their loss of land also lost their identity as thai (which has a second meaning: free) and become that (slaves). Unless such business practices were stopped, peasants would soon become “prisoners of wealthy companies or persons.”7 Official alarm was expressed also by the minister of interior, who feared that Siam Kasikon’s business strategy of massive land accumulation might be emulated by “some groups of persons whom the government dislikes.”8 Presumably this is a reference to “foreigners.”

The Chinese Factor It has been argued that Vajiravudh’s anti-Chinese newspaper writings had few “apparent results . . . either at the level of official government policy statements or of concrete action” (Ayal 1969, 288). There are a few positive examples of economic policies that were instituted in part in response to the new nationalist sentiments, though these tend to fall outside the bounds of economic nationalist policies as traditionally conceived. A prominent example is the establishment in 1916 of state-financed agricultural cooperatives, which “emerged as the

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cornerstone of the government’s agricultural policy in the period prior to the overthrow of the absolute monarchy” in 1932 (Copeland 1993, 41 n. 47), and which will be discussed further below. However, it is also important to recognize that decisions not to do something may be as significant as decisions to do something, though the former is generally much less apparent to the historian or social scientist because of the tendency of the historical record to reflect events rather than nonevents. The Bangkok land tax commission provides us with a window into one such nonevent. The plan to institute a proper land tax, based on the assessed value of land, in Bangkok provides an excellent example of how a decision to do nothing is motivated by nationalist security concerns. The most important problem foreseen to arise from the enactment of such a tax was that it was likely to lead to a transfer of land from “smallholders” into the hands of “foreigners.” Since the majority of landowners in Bangkok were “persons of small means” the committee charged with drafting the law believed that a land tax would cause them to sell their land to “capitalists.” In a draft memorandum it was observed that “such a result of the imposition of a land tax will in any case be a misfortune but when the fact is realized that the aforesaid syndicates are composed almost exclusively of foreigners, it will be understood that any pronounced disturbance of tenure may prove not merely a misfortune but something almost in the nature of a national disaster.”9 It is safe to assume that the “foreigners” referred to were predominantly ethnic Chinese under Siamese jurisdiction. A former minister of finance had warned the drafters of the law that a land tax “would cause the middle-class Siamese to leave their houses and to leave the town and all for the benefit, principally, of the Chinaman.”10 No new Bangkok land tax was ever enacted. This is a fine illustration of how important policy decisions in regard to the property rights regime were influenced by nationalist sentiments. But the policy decision in this case was a negative rather than a positive one: to not enact a land tax that was expected to lead to intensified commodification and development of land in Bangkok. The nonenactment of a Bangkok land tax is therefore an example of how economic nationalism—seeking to avoid “disaster”—was manifested in decisions to not enact and implement broadly speaking “developmental” policies. Moreover, it is important to recognize that such decisions make up an important category of security practice that may be extremely difficult to detect. More easily identified state actions that served to obstruct the development of land and credit markets are not always easy to code as nationalist or anti-Chinese, even though such sentiments played a significant role. The establishment by the state of cooperative credit societies in 1916 is a case in point. “Exploitation” of Siamese peasants by Chinese middlemen and moneylenders were regarded as “a really serious state of affairs, for the peasants are the backbone of Siam, and

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on their contentment and prosperity depends, to a large extent, the future wellbeing of this country.” Cooperative credit societies were therefore established to “protect the peasantry from the ruinous consequences of relations with Chinese money lenders,” such protection representing “a very great gain to the cultivators and to the State.”11 How would protecting the peasantry from Chinese merchant capital benefit the state? One answer is that members of the Siamese state elite regarded credit relations as power-laden relations, with the consequence that a peasantry beholden to Chinese creditors might turn into a peasantry that was not beholden to the central state. The fact that, in some districts, hundreds of peasants had become indebted to Chinese capitalists was therefore seen as a threat to state authority. “Usually, a debtor must fear the creditor, and therefore the power to speak and to act falls on the creditor more than on anyone else. Even local government officials cannot compete with creditors.”12 It is quite possible that official concern about exploitation of the peasantry was genuine. But the ethnic Chinese capitalist was also perceived as a threat to the power of the central state, and as a source of unwelcome political competition. In this context, it is not surprising that state officials played the anti-Chinese card, using Thai nationalism as a means by which to weaken a social group that threatened to undermine state authority. Such a statist interpretation of official Thai nationalism in the second decade of the twentieth century has two observable implications. First, the state would be expected to make a distinction between threatening and nonthreatening Chinese. Second, the threat would be associated with the penetration of merchant capital into rural areas, irrespective of its ethnic identity. The broad outlines of Siamese policy support both contentions. Official concern focused almost exclusively on a particular type of “Chinese,” the moneylender, middleman, and easily identifiable capitalist. Ethnic Chinese settlers who brought small and medium-sized plots of land under cultivation continued to be welcomed. The Siamese state continued to rely on Chinese settlers to preempt expansion of land and populations under extraterritorial control and authority. Recognizing that underpopulated Siam would have to rely on immigration to feed economic expansion, the state preferred settlers from China to immigrants from Japan, India, and Java, because the Chinese (unlike the Japanese, Indian, or Javanese) would automatically fall under Siamese jurisdiction.13 This preference for Chinese settlers was especially apparent in southern Siam, which experienced a rubber boom after World War I. The boom was fueled by immigration by Chinese from Malaya, where the British colonial administration had banned further land concessions to “foreigners” in 1917 (Kitahara 2003, 49). At the same time, the Siamese state continued to develop legal obstacles to the mobilization of land by large-scale capital. This is evident in the section of the

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Civil and Commercial Code, enacted in 1924, that banned the formation of companies engaging in, among other activities, kanthidin lae chamnong (land and mortgages). The French drafters of the code meant this phrase to signify “crédit foncier hypothécaire” (i.e., moneylending with land as security, or “the business of dealing with land by the method of mortgage”).14 Any company wishing to engage in such activities could only be formed with a special royal charter. This separate treatment of companies involved in land-related businesses would allow the state to include controls that went above and beyond the general regulations contained in the Civil and Commercial Code. For example, the royal charter could include a provision that the company would be allowed to hold land only for a limited number of years. It could also place an upper limit on the total acreage the company would be allowed to acquire.15 This requirement limited the ability of capitalists to engage in large-scale commercial real estate development as well as in institutionalized moneylending activities. In one prominent case from 1927, an “alien” had applied to register a corporation that would buy and sell land on a large scale with foreign financing, and with the land as security, on the model of crédit foncier. In effect, this would have amounted to the transplantation of a French model of economic development (which had already been exported to French Indochina) to Siamese soil. The request appears to have been denied because of traditional security fears of foreign economic penetration.16 Interestingly, within a year the relevant section of the Civil and Commercial Code was replaced with a special law controlling commercial activities that affect the “safety or happiness of the public,” where the restriction on the commercialization of land took the form of a ban on the formation of companies engaging in, among other things, crédit foncier activities. The legal instruments circumscribing the ability of corporations to engage in the commercialization of land was further strengthened through the enactment, in 1942, of a law that banned companies from “speculating” in land without permission from the state. It was motivated by the belief that giving free rein to powerful economic actors— corporations—in “uncontrolled” land markets posed a threat to Thai society (Raingan kanprachum sapha phuthaen ratsadon samai thi 2 chut thi 3 saman pho so 2485, 661–65, 802; Department of Lands 2001b, 173–74). These enactments spanned a significant period of time—from 1924 to 1942—and bridged the 1932 divide in Thai political history. They therefore manifest a consistent state concern with the potentially dangerous consequences of merchant capital penetrating into land markets. One of the distinct “advantages” of the anti-Chinese rhetoric was that it targeted a politically weak group of aliens but legitimated measures and policies that served to restrict nationals of other, more powerful and threatening countries from acquiring economic footholds in Siam. However, the official articulation

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of nationalism under Vajiravudh also carried with it a long-term political danger for the monarchical regime, as it provided a new standard against which it could be judged in the court of public opinion. As we will see in subsequent sections, royalists would not be able to retain monopoly rights over the articulation of the national interest.

Evading New Demands, Ending Extraterritoriality With the rise of Japan as a regional great power, the geopolitical context in which the Siamese state operated underwent yet another significant change—one that constituted both an opportunity and a threat. One the one hand, Japan was intent on dislodging Western imperial powers from Asia, and thus a natural ally of Siam. On the other hand, Japan was equally intent on making other Asian countries serve its imperial ambitions. Japan as opportunity came to play a central role in the diplomatic endgame that confirmed Siam’s recognition as a sovereign nation; and Japan as threat played an equally central role in the continued evolution of Siamese land policy and law. It is to this paradoxical Japan factor we now turn.

The Japanese Challenge In the early 1920s, the Japanese made a determined push for the conclusion of a new treaty with Siam. One of the most desired advantages that Japan sought to gain was the right to own land. There was considerable unease in Siamese circles about the prospect of opening the door to Japanese enterprise. It was feared that the new treaty provisions might lead to a large immigration of Japanese in Siam, which would be very undesirable. Japan is a country with a growing population which needs expansion to other countries. Her people are of the same stock as ourselves and are quite capable of settling in Siam. If such a contingency is realized, I need not explain how embarrassing it might be to H.M’s Government, as the Japanese are a powerful and a first class power, not like the Chinese at all.17 Ironically, Japanese had enjoyed this right up to 1898, when Japan foisted on Siam the last of the unequal treaties, thereby extending extraterritorial rights to Japanese subjects.18 As Japanese law did not, in fact, allow foreigners to own land in Japan, the Japanese negotiators were not in a position to offer Siam reciprocal rights to landownership.19 Japan, represented by the forceful ambassador C. Yada, therefore sought to include a provision whereby Siam would unilaterally grant

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Japanese subjects the same economic rights as native subjects. This was unacceptable to the outgoing adviser to the Siamese government on foreign affairs: “I look forward to a time when the Siamese Government may acquire the power to deal with land ownership through ordinary legislation. When such a time comes, it may be deemed desirable to place some restrictions upon foreigners which are not placed upon native subjects. If Mr Yada’s suggestion is accepted, this cannot be done during the life of the treaty.”20 The new foreign adviser, Francis B. Sayre, also questioned the advisability of allowing “Japanese nationals freely to enter and to own land in Siam without any restrictions,” but he argued that most favored nation (MFN) treatment offered the best way of extending the privilege, so that some day in the future, “Siam can be free to regulate such matters by domestic legislation.”21 After four years of negotiations, Siam and Japan agreed to allow the Japanese to own land in Siam on a reciprocal MFN basis.22 Siamese unease with the prospect of Japanese immigration had not, however, been allayed. In 1927, King Prajadhipok (Rama VII, r. 1925–35), instructed the minister of agriculture to formulate a comprehensive land policy. The instruction was prompted by the king’s concern about the emergence of large-scale real estate projects with foreign financial backing, as well as about foreigners acquiring land under the provisions of the new treaties, among them the treaty with Japan.23 The king’s attention had been drawn to an article published in a Japanese newspaper which, it appeared to him, “was written with a view to urge the Japanese to come and settle in Siam by buying up large tracts of lands.”24 At the same time, Bangkok newspapers began airing heated nationalist sentiments against foreigners—especially Japanese—who accumulated land in Siam. The reaction was prompted by a small influx of Japanese who acquired rice fields. In nationalist public opinion, rice farming was regarded as a “basic industry” that ought to be reserved for Thais (Nangsüphim thai 1929a, 1929b; Bangkok Times 1929). The king therefore argued that new legislation was needed to discourage foreigners from acquiring land in Siam.

Defining and Defending the National Interest The resulting Royal Commission on Land Policy convened over the course of several years to discuss drafts of a land law, known as the Public Lands Act. Two foreign advisers played key roles in the commission, advocating conservative “political” approaches to land policy. The American adviser on foreign affairs, Raymond B. Stevens, argued that small farmers owning their land laid the basis for “national prosperity, social development and political order.” In discussing the general principles that ought to underpin the land policy, he observed that

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“the revolution in Russia would never have had the support of peasants if they had been small land holders. Therefore from every point of view it is desirable as far as possible to restrict the ownership of land in Siam to Siamese nationals and to encourage small holders.” Stevens recognized that the treaties constrained the government in pursuing such a policy, but thought that “by changes in the law concerning wild lands it would be possible to discourage acquisitions by foreigners or the acquisition by Siamese nationals of land in large tracts.”25 The legislative adviser, René Guyon, who expressed agreement with Stevens, had furnished the commission with a “Memorandum on the land law of Siam and the rights of aliens to acquire land,” in which he sought to identify “the interests of Siam” in regard to the matter of foreign land acquisition: In order to understand the interests of Siam, [one] must certainly never [lose] sight of the peculiar position of the country. Siam has a territory of about the same [area] or even a greater [area] than that of countries like France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan (main islands), etc. But the population of her territory is only from 8 to 10 millions inhabitants, whilst the other mentioned countries have a population from 40 to 70 millions. The consequence is that, in the other countries, all the lands are practically occupied: either by the State for common purposes (highways, public domain, etc.), or by private owners, a few lands only remaining waste because they are of no use (mountains, sands, marshes, etc.). In Siam, on the contrary, there are big and valuable parts of the country which are not yet occupied, and may be conceded eventually by the Government as is provided by the Land Act. The land policy has consequently a much greater importance here than elsewhere: because, if the Government was not very cautious in the matter, a great part of the country could still fall into foreign hands, as long as the people of Siam themselves are not numerous or rich enough to improve and develop the whole of their own country. This has undoubtedly a very serious importance in the settlement of our land policy.26 Guyon then examined two central issues in some detail: first, whether aliens should be allowed to acquire land without restrictions; and second, whether the existing legislation in regard to land grants by the government was satisfactory. Guyon’s answers to these questions were intimately connected to his views of Siam’s international relations in general, and of the international treaties in particular. On the first question, Guyon was responding to a proposal that Mongkut’s decree issued in 1856 to carry out the land-related provisions of the Bowring treaty and the Parkes agreement ought to be repealed. Guyon argued that Siam

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should not be the party that raised the question of a liberalization of the land laws. His main concern was that Siam would be giving away a valuable bargaining chip. “It is clear that, in the recent Treaties with foreign Powers, the fact that Siam was granting to their subjects the right to acquire and own land, has been a very valuable consideration in many cases, and has been the counter-part of advantages obtained by the Siamese Government, such as a complete final and juristic independence.” Since other treaties were yet to be concluded, Siam should keep land rights for aliens on the negotiating table. In fact, this applied also to the recently concluded treaties which had been made for ten years, after which they would either be renewed or denounced. In case they were denounced, the general laws of the land would automatically apply. “If Siam has granted a free right to all aliens to acquire lands, the foreign Power who is inclined to denounce the Treaty (perhaps contrary to the Siamese interests) will not be deterred to do so by the consideration that the right of his subjects to acquire and own lands will be cancelled [at] the same time as the Treaty itself.” In addition, “in the negotiations which will have to be reopened for a new Treaty, Siam will have lost the advantage of offering as a precious benefit the right of acquisition of lands. Her position will be impaired.”27 On the second question, whether the law regulating government grants of lands was sufficient, Guyon argued that it was not. The 1909 land law was not suited to the new circumstances, since it contained no provisions that would enable the state to limit the acquisition of land by “big and rich foreign Companies.” “Since they can spend much more money than Siamese private owners for the development of land-concessions, their claims for lands may be more frequent and for much more extensive areas of land than it has been foreseen by the Land Act.” The current legislation therefore risked paving the way for a situation in which all the best lands were held by foreign persons or companies, while “only the bad ones will remain for distribution to Siamese subjects” and the Siamese people would be “compelled to rent it [the land] at high prices” from aliens.28 In conclusion, Guyon argued that “a wise land policy in a country is governed by circumstances, and not by theoretical arguments.” From this relativist position, Guyon deemed that the Mongkut-era land decree—creating the twohundred-sen and twenty-four-hour zones—was useful, “because the present situation of Siam still needs careful protection”; and he argued that the existing land law needed to be supplemented with legislation providing stricter regulation of the granting of unoccupied lands.29 The interventions by Stevens and Guyon in support of a smallholder policy in anticipation of future political problems shows that foreign advisers played a central role in the process of articulating a Siamese “national” interest (in contrast to a merely dynastic interest). Both Stevens and Guyon viewed land primarily as

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a political resource and only secondarily as an economic resource. For Stevens, widespread landownership was to form the social basis of a contented, noncommunist Asian nation. Stevens’s comment indicates that Cold War–style strategizing had begun to influence American thinking about the revolutionary—and counterrevolutionary—potential of human-land relations in Asia already by the late 1920s. This American advice to Siam in the late 1920s may thus be regarded as an early example of what was to become something of an American specialty after World War II—advocacy of land reform in Asia (Ladejinsky 1964, 1977; McCoy 1971)—with the important difference that in the case of Siam, the American adviser sought to prevent the emergence of a conflictridden, politically destabilizing rural society that might be “lost” to communism, rather than to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. For Guyon, land remained an important diplomatic bargaining chip, but it was also a national inheritance rightfully belonging to present and future generations of the “Siamese people.” For both reasons, land needed to be “protected” against capitalist exploitation.30 As noted above, the state’s ability to impose regulations attempting to restrict the ability of foreigners to acquire land was compromised by the fact that, under the treaties, Siam was unable to single out nonnationals for separate treatment. In other words, in its desire to counter the “peaceful penetration danger,” the Siamese state had to take into account the fact that the most likely penetrators enjoyed the same legal rights as Siamese nationals.31 The king thus advised that “in our effort to provide effective discouragement against acquisition by aliens of large tracts of Public land we must always bear in mind the position of the Siamese to whom it is our Paramount object to provide facilities for obtaining same; for whatever law we should cause to be enacted which was calculated to prevent holdings by aliens would necessarily apply to the Siamese also since Siamese and aliens stood on equal footing by Treaty obligations.”32 Nevertheless, the commission sought to limit the land area that the state could alienate through land grants. By only allowing the government to sell small plots of land, the “dangers of sale, especially to foreigners empowered to purchase by the new Treaties, are considerably removed.”33 In addition, the commission sought to establish a new principle, that tra chong (temporary land claim certificates) should no longer be transferable. The Ministry of Justice opposed this on principle, but Stevens voiced the opinion of the majority of the commission’s members when he argued that the conditions under the new Treaties make the old system of transferable Tra Chong more dangerous than before, because foreigners may now purchase lands: if the Tra Chong is transferable at once, instead of

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using leasehold for big areas, foreigners will easily induce people eligible for acquisition of land by Tra Chong to purchase land of 200 rais areas. Five people only are sufficient to make a total acquisition of 1000 rais, which would be retransfered at once to speculators anxious to buy and not to lease land.34 The March draft of the Public Lands Act thus stipulated that homesteaders could acquire a maximum of 50 rai of land. For agricultural land, the limit was set at 200 rai. In addition, a person had to have been born in Siam and been resident continuously for the past fifteen years in order to enjoy the right to apply for such land.35 It would also be possible to acquire public land for commercial, industrial, and residential purposes. Here the maximum was set at 10 rai, and this category of land purchases was not encumbered by citizenship or residency requirements. Finally, the draft law stipulated that “any person” could lease land from the state. The maximum area allowed was 5,000 rai, and leases would be limited to a total of sixty years (in twenty-year increments).36 These limitations on land acquisition were considered onerous by some. In a later draft, the maximum areas for agricultural, residential, industrial, and commercial purposes were doubled, while homesteads remained at 50 rai. This prompted Stevens to argue for the stricter limitations and for homesteads to be reduced to 25 or 30 rai. This would enable a husband and wife wishing to establish a homestead to acquire 50 to 60 rai of land—well above the average landholding of the Siamese farmer at the time.37 At the heart of the debate over the appropriate size of the land areas that could be acquired from the state lay different visions of the central purpose of land policy. Was it to facilitate rapid economic development? Or was it to protect Siam against foreign economic penetration, and, at the same time, to maintain a rural society dominated by smallholders? Ironically, the drawn-out nature of the debate created uncertainty about the purpose and future direction of Thai land policy that in itself served a “protective” role. One frustrated prospective agro-industrialist with plans for a hundred-thousand-rai rubber plantation in Pattani complained that “under present local conditions it is practically impossible for a stranger to come here and select land.”38 In addition, the law-drafting process itself could be used as an excuse for turning away foreign investors. For example, Siam’s consul in Sydney applied in 1927 for a concession covering an area of fifty thousand rai on which to develop a sugarcane plantation.39 The matter was referred to the Board of Commercial Development as well as to the Royal Commission on Land Policy.40 But the request appears to have been neither accepted nor denied; it was put on hold awaiting the final settlement of the government’s land policy and the promulgation of a new land law. Such a law was only enacted in 1936.

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Security Threats and the Limits of Nationalist Ambition Following the overthrow of the absolute monarchy by the People’s Party in 1932, a radical reorientation—indeed a “revolution”—in economic policy in general and land policy in particular was contemplated. The transformative vision was most clearly articulated in an economic plan written by the thirty-three-year-old Pridi Phanomyong. His economic thinking was a curious hybrid of socialism, economic nationalism, and Buddhism. Utopian socialists like Thomas More, Charles Fourier, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon appear to have been important sources of inspiration for Pridi, as was the first Soviet Five Year Plan which had begun in 1928 (Fistié 1969, chap. 1). These intellectual influences were not, however, directly referred to in the plan itself. Pridi sought to distance himself as much as possible from the thought of Karl Marx, while wholeheartedly embracing that of Friedrich List, the leading theoretician of economic nationalism (Thak 1978, 138).41 Pridi’s draft national economic plan contained a section on “love of land,” where Pridi argued that private landownership was based on the principle of egoism while nationalism rested on the opposite principle of altruism. Pridi therefore believed that private property in land was a principle that ran counter to the true spirit of nationalism. He asked: “Is it not obvious that love of self and love of personal possessions is diametrically opposed” to the “love of race?” (Thak 1978, 125). In addition to the moral deficiency of a private property regime, Pridi’s put great faith in the economic superiority of centralized state control of the means of production. In relation to land, the latter point was made most succinctly in a committee meeting, when Pridi argued that “the reason for wishing to nationalize the land is that one great tract will be easier to administer and cultivate with machinery in a scientific manner” (Thak 1978, 170). What exactly Pridi’s proposed “nationalization” would entail in the Thai context, in terms of land policy, was not entirely clear, but one can assume that the nationalization of land, through whatever mechanism it was to be effected, would necessarily require the state bureaucracy to strengthen its administrative capabilities so as to be able to define and enforce property rights in land. The desire to centralize control over the land, and for the state to manage it “scientifically,” would also have transformed the agrarian social structure. In Pridi’s formulation of economic nationalism, peasant smallholders were identified as a major obstacle to progress. The debate surrounding Pridi’s plan came to a sudden halt due to political suppression that temporarily forced him into exile in France.42 The policy debate surrounding his ideas does, however, provide one further illustration of the ways in which the geopolitical context—and the perception of threats associated with

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colonialism—constrained the formulation of economic policy with implications for the administration of land rights. For all practical purposes, radical nationalist or socialist economic visions became unthinkable with the passing of Siam’s first anticommunism law in 1933. The law defined communism as “the economic system or theory which rests upon the total or partial abolition of the right of private property, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the State.” It further defined communist doctrine as “any doctrine which implies the advocation of nationalization of land, or nationalization of industry, or nationalization of capital, or nationalization of labor.” The law then defined the punishment for anyone who “by words or writing or printed documents or by any means whatever advocates communism or any communistic doctrine” to up to ten years’ imprisonment and a fine up to five thousand baht (Thak 1978, 237). The law was not aimed at any “real” communist threat to the state in any straightforward manner; it was directly aimed at Pridi and his followers within the government and the state itself. The law effectively shut down any discussion that questioned the sanctity of private property rights, irrespective of the ideological basis for such questioning, whether nationalist, socialist, or communist. Why was this debate perceived as so dangerous? It is of course true that radical economic nationalism posed a threat to particular class interests. In ideological terms it was incompatible with the conception of the Thai peasantry as “free.” However, it also clearly emerges from the historical record that the fear of “communism” was intimately linked to the fear of colonialism. The anticommunist law makes the rather hyperbolical claim that “any attempt to establish communism in the country would . . . menace the security of the state” (Thak 1978, 236). Why would any such attempt endanger the state? The short answer, as articulated by opponents of Pridi’s economic program, was that it would provoke the neighboring colonial powers to intervene militarily in Siam.43 In a committee meeting discussing Pridi’s draft national economic plan, the prime minister, Phraya Manopakon, expressed general skepticism as to its feasibility. His deepest fear, however, was that publication of the plan, and an adverse public reaction to it—a panic—might provoke the country’s European neighbors to intervene: “We are in a position where both the French and the British can bring pressure to bear upon us. If they wish to take advantage of us . . . we will not be in a position to resist them” (Thak 1978, 181). A similar view was articulated in the so called White Paper, written by Prajadhipok. Should Siam become “the second communist country of the world, after Russia,” the colonial powers would not hesitate, argued the king, to “prevent the fire burning in our country from spreading to theirs” (Thak 1978, 224, 235). The fear of foreign intervention may have been exaggerated, but it was not an entirely fanciful idea,

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given Japanese meddling in China after the republican revolution in 1911, and in light of the military response by, among others, France, Britain, and Japan to the October Revolution in Russia. Closer to Bangkok and more recently, colonial regimes had brutally suppressed “revolutionary” movements in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Burma.44 The colonial powers in Southeast Asia displayed a tendency to perceive “communism” (rather than nationalism) as the root cause of such challenges to their rule, and they cooperated in order to keep Southeast Asia free from “Bolshevism” (Foster 1995). It was not an opportune moment for Siam to challenge—or to risk being perceived as challenging—the strong anticommunist consensus that had emerged as a regional norm. Key British and U.S. officials in Bangkok did, indeed, associate Pridi’s plan with communism (Kobkua 2003, 221 n. 25; Aldrich 1993, 110). Given the geopolitical context, it is not entirely surprising that key members of Bangkok’s political elite believed that state—and regime—security was critically dependent on the continued pursuit of a fundamentally liberal approach to economic policy. While many members of the new government may have had an exaggerated fear of foreign military intervention, Britain, in particular, viewed this as beneficial to its interests and did little to dispel Siamese anxieties (Aldrich 1993, 101, 104). In the end, whether the threat of foreign intervention was “real” is beside the point; what mattered was that “the revolutionary leaders did believe it and successfully convinced many others of the validity of their anxiety” (Thawatt 1972, 109). In his plan, Pridi attempted to assuage what he called the “almost universal fear of foreign intervention” by arguing that Siam, as a member of the League of Nations, would be able to implement his proposed economic reforms without provoking a hostile international reaction. He asked, “When our purpose is not to discriminate against or oppress foreign nationals, but rather to advance the progress of our own nation, what reason is there to believe that foreign nations will try to interfere with us?” (Thak 1978, 146). Seeking to persuade those skeptics who believed there were good reasons to fear intervention, Pridi pointed to the peaceful resolution in 1933 of the dispute between Britain and Persia over the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s concession.45 Pridi also reassured doubters that his economic plan would not put Siam in breach of any of its commitments under its international treaties. Exactly how the goals of the plan were compatible with treaty obligations was not made clear, but Pridi argued that the fact that there would be no discrimination against (nor any special exceptions for) foreigners would be sufficient to secure international acceptance. In addition, Pridi failed to articulate if and how the economic plan’s goal of nationalizing land might contribute to the process of renegotiating the treaties so as to end the extraterritoriality regime. In fact, if the revolutionary government had declared that it planned to nationalize land, it would not have been

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able to use land rights as a bargaining chip in its subsequent negotiations with the treaty powers. Pridi also sought to persuade the skeptics by asserting that his plan rested on fundamental principles that were shared by the leaders of the European great powers, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, and, to boot, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (Thak 1978, 138–39). As regards land nationalization, at least, that was not necessarily a stretch. For instance, in 1932 the British Labour Party had declared that all agricultural land should be transferred “to national ownership as soon as administratively practicable” (Tichelar 2002, 92). The subordination of private property rights to nationalist purposes in Pridi’s plan also echoed the racialist anticapitalism characterizing the agrarian policies of the Nazi Party in Germany (Grill 1982; Gerhard 2005). In the committee meeting itself, however, the supporters of the draft national economic plan provided surprisingly little evidence in support of their contention that the nationalization of land, labor, and capital would be internationally unproblematic. The so-called Red Prince, Sakon Warawan, simply asserted that “if we are united among ourselves, I fail to see that there is any cause for alarm” (Thak 1978, 178). In the struggle over economic policy within the People’s Party, the ability to demonstrate that their preferred economic policy would enjoy international legitimacy may have determined the eventual outcome. In this respect the conservatives had a relatively easy task, as the status quo already enjoyed legitimacy in the international arena. In contrast, the left wing’s conspicuous inability to demonstrate that their radical vision of a socialist economy would be acceptable to the great powers of the region undermined also the domestic legitimacy of their proposed plan. The more risk-averse members of the People’s Party were unwilling to endanger the survival of their successful political revolution by engaging in economic adventurism. Pridi’s expressed fear, as stated in the draft plan, would therefore prove prescient: “if we are so paralyzed by the fear of illegal foreign intervention . . . I suppose we will have to remain supine, attempting nothing new” (Thak 1978, 145). Any major deviations from the laissez-faire path would be possible only in a different geopolitical context, in which Thai political elites could feel secure in the knowledge that nationalist economic policy initiatives would win the stamp of approval of the great powers. While Pridi’s strategy for economic development certainly was nationalist and collectivist, it is debatable whether or not it was communist and Stalinist, as his critics alleged. But what mattered was the possibility that powerful states might perceive it as communist, and this was sufficient to doom it. The fatal flaw of Pridi’s proposed program for economic development was that it paid no serious attention to the geopolitical

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constraints that his country faced. To put it plainly: Pridi failed to persuade that Siam would be allowed to adopt a national identity—at the very least anticapitalist and perhaps even communist—deeply at odds with the values of its immediate regional neighbors. Here, then, we have yet another example where institutional underdevelopment—in terms of the state’s control, management, and development of land— was believed, not without reason, to serve the strategic interest of protecting state sovereignty. Throughout Southeast Asia, political independence was a prerequisite for the launching of nationalist economic development strategies (see Golay 1969). In Siam in the 1930s, however, we see a sovereign state and a member of the League of Nations abort a nationalist economic development plan in great part because of the fear that the embrace of economic nationalism would endanger its very independence.46 Once again, the conventional wisdom on the relationship between external security threats and developmental state impulses is turned on its head in Siam.

The Diplomatic Endgame and the 1936 Land-Titling Law As Siam entered further treaty renegotiations, the issue of land rights was once again an important dimension of the discussions. In 1936, foreign affairs adviser F. R. Dolbeare urged the government to enact a new land law that could be referred to in the negotiations (Sunthari 1990, 18). The new law should regulate the rights of Thai nationals and foreigners, respectively, in regard to landownership in Siam; allow foreigners to acquire land for residential purposes and foreign-owned corporations to acquire land needed in their commercial activities; protect against agricultural land falling into the hands of foreign individuals or corporations; and prevent land from becoming the property of foreigners not resident in Siam (Sunthari 1990, 19). A new land-titling law was actually passed by Parliament in secret session in 1936, but it did not address the issues raised by the foreign affairs adviser. It is possible that the Siamese found the arguments presented by Guyon in his 1927 memorandum—where he argued that any such “clarification” of the rights of foreigners to own land in “modern” national legislation would impair Siam’s international bargaining position—more convincing than Dolbeare’s contentions. While that is speculation, the enactment of the 1936 land law was, indeed, driven by developments in Siam’s international relations. As Siam was within reach of abrogating the last of the unequal treaties, it was (once again) feared that this would pave the way for an influx of foreign capital. In Parliament, the proposed bill was criticized for being impractical and impossible to implement given limited budget and personnel resources. Against this charge, the advocates of the bill

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simply argued that there were already many foreigners who were accumulating large plots of land in Siam, and if nothing were done to stop them, the country would suffer an even greater loss. However, the government was unable to issue land law requirements that applied only to foreigners, and, as a consequence, the land law would have to restrict the rights of Thais, too. Acknowledging that the law’s requirements would impose hardship on Thais, the minister of agriculture pleaded that “we have no other way.” Pridi, who had returned from exile and was now serving as minister of foreign affairs, suggested that the concerns relating to questions of implementation were valid but that the purpose of the new legislation was more important: to ensure that Thai people—including future generations—would enjoy a real opportunity to become landowners. Pridi explained that there were two types of foreigners who accumulated land in Siam, and thereby could prevent the realization of this vision. On the one hand there were moneylenders who accepted land as collateral. On the other hand there were those who claimed land and brought in foreign labor to cultivate the land. Although the new land law did not directly address the danger that foreigners could accumulate land by buying up small plots of land, Pridi was convinced that such piecemeal accumulation was too troublesome and difficult to pose a significant challenge. However, a “huge threat” (phayantarai yang yailuang) was to be found in the ability of foreigners to gain ownership, through land grants, over large swathes of wasteland in one fell swoop (Raingan kanprachum sapha phuthaen ratsadon [wisaman] samai thi 2, pho so 2479, 773, 782, 809–10). That was why the state needed to enact a law limiting land grants to small plots of land. The 1936 land titling law allowed district officers and provincial governors to only approve land grants of less than fifty and one hundred rai, respectively.47 It also required everyone who had claimed landownership, without official permission or without official documentation, to register their properties with the authorities within one year. The law restricted the transferability of tra chong and bai yiap yam (three-year and two-year land claim certificates)—as had been advocated by the prerevolutionary Royal Commission. The land had to be developed within the specified period, and it was only after the land had been developed, and the land document had received an official stamp to that effect, that the land could be sold or transferred (Department of Lands 2001b, 160–61). In all, the effect was to place cumbersome regulatory requirements that would serve as hurdles standing in the way of the creation of “new” (and the recognition of existing) property rights in land. The 1936 land-titling law did not, however, contain any of the more blatantly nationalist requirements that had been included in the land law drafts produced by the prerevolutionary Royal Commission, such as requiring that prospective landowners must have been born in Siam and resident there during the previous

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fifteen years. Neither did the law explicitly articulate a homesteading policy. Why were such provisions omitted by the new regime, which sought to establish nationalist credentials superior to those of the old absolutist regime? While we can only speculate on this, it is likely that Pridi’s framing of the issue provides a clue: in anticipation of the negotiations that would, finally, end the system of extraterritoriality imposed on Siam by the Bowring treaty, Siam could ill afford to jeopardize the diplomatic process by outright devaluing one of its bargaining chips. The 1936 land law did, however, offer something of an insurance policy in case Siam were to be unsuccessful in its effort to make the treaty powers enjoying “national treatment” to accept restrictions on the right of their subjects to acquire “waste” land in Siam. As it turned out, Pridi was able to include in the new treaties the provision that the acquisition of public domain lands would be restricted to Siamese subjects (Sunthari 1990, 21). Thus, article 1 of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, ratified in 1938, stated that Siam had the right “to make the acquisition or leasing of immovable property . . . by foreigners subject to such conditions as are or may be established for reasons of national security or other reasons of public policy” (Treaty of commerce and navigation . . . , November 23, 1937). In an exchange of notes, Pridi made clear that British subjects would “be permitted to acquire in Siam immovable property for residential, commercial, industrial, religious and charitable purposes, as well as for use as cemeteries, but the acquisition of lands of the public domain will be reserved for subjects of Siam” (Luang Pradist Manudharm [Pridi Phanomyong] to Sir J. Crosby, in Treaty of commerce and navigation . . . , November 23, 1937, n. 9). In other words, foreign interests could, by law, acquire private land but not public land. The Siamese state would be unable, however, to limit the ability of foreigners to acquire large plots of land if they purchased that land after it had been claimed by Siamese subjects, thus making it private and available to foreigners. It was therefore easy to imagine a scenario whereby active land markets would cause land to be transferred from Siamese ownership to “alien” capitalists.48 While extraterritoriality came to an end in Siam with the conclusion of the revised treaties in the late 1930s, Siam had not, in fact, regained full legislative independence. The Siamese state remained somewhat constrained by international treaties and agreements in its ability to regulate the acquisition of land by foreigners also after the 1938 treaty revisions. The Siamese state’s interests in property rights regulation had been influenced not only by concerns relating to treaty negotiations and foreign economic penetration. This external factor was complemented by the introduction and articulation of nationalist sentiments that became closely linked to the regulation of property rights in land. Both factors thus influenced the formation of state policy

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in a particular direction: toward obstruction of the commodification and mobilization of land. This legacy of institutional underdevelopment in turn deeply impacted Siamese rural society in the course of the Great Depression.

A Protective Legacy With the onset of the Great Depression, the export price for Siamese rice fell precipitously from the levels fetched in the 1920s, and remained low throughout the 1930s (Sompop 2000, 190). How did the sharp worldwide economic deflation impact rural society, and how did socio-economic and institutional legacies affect the outcome? The central question concerns the extent to which the Depression would change the structure of rural society in Siam. A survey undertaken in 1930 and 1931 is one of our best available sources of information on rural society at the start of the Depression.49 The survey, led by Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman, provides us with a picture of the legacy in terms of rural socio-economic structures created by the state’s agricultural policies from the 1890s onward. The rural survey revealed regional variations in such features as commercialization, land tenure, and indebtedness that reflected variations both in natural conditions and in geopolitical circumstances. Not surprisingly, it was in the central region’s Chaophraya Delta, located within the twenty-four-hour zone and near the capital, that phenomena such as market-oriented production, absentee landlordism, and indebtedness had developed the farthest. In the country’s other main regions—north, south, and northeast—a high degree of self-sufficiency characterized a majority of rural households. Zimmerman was struck by Siam’s untapped agricultural potential: There are vast areas in this country capable of producing excellent wheat, coffee, cotton and tobacco, which are not yet exploited. The rubber industry in Southern Siam is not yet developed as it might be. Great areas of tin-ore are as yet unworked. Practically nothing has been done as yet to improve the quality or productivity of the many varieties of fruits and cocoanuts, which grow practically wild in this country. Siam is truly a country of great natural resources. The sugar industry, other than that of refining the juice of the sugar palm, is practically undeveloped (Zimmerman 1931, 226). In addition, not even in the most commercialized zones had the potential for extensive growth been exhausted: “Only the best lands are being cultivated; the

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margin of agricultural development is not pushed back into the less valuable lands” (Zimmerman 1931, 228). This state of affairs implied not only that Siamese obstructionism motivated by security fears had succeeded in keeping valuable agricultural land out of the hands of foreign—and domestic—capitalists. It also implied that when the effects of the Great Depression began to be felt, Siamese peasants, unlike those in many more developed neighboring areas, enjoyed an enviable standard of living, in important respects, as well as the security of knowing that large areas of good agricultural land remained free for the taking. As a consequence, Siamese peasants in the Chaophraya Delta were further from a subsistence crisis than were their counterparts in the two neighboring Southeast Asian rice baskets, the Irrawaddy and Mekong deltas, where commercialization had proceeded at breakneck speed over the previous few decades, unimpeded by sovereignty and security concerns.50 The paradoxical conclusion one might be tempted to draw is that underdevelopment is better for peasant welfare than development. While that would be an exaggeration, we can certainly conclude that colonial policies and practices in the rice-growing deltas of Southeast Asia created rural economies that were more vulnerable and less resilient than the more “backward” and therefore more robust rural economy of Siam. In addition to this broad perspective, the survey also provided a more finegrained picture of rural society in 1929–30. Of particular interest are the data (summarized in table 4.1) that provide direct measures of socio-economic vulnerability and stress. One important indicator of economic self-sufficiency in rural Siam during the crisis was the considerable extent to which individual farmers, and villages, were self-sufficient in the main staple, rice. Except for the more commercialized central and northern regions, what little rice was sold was frequently bought by neighbors and consumed in the village, rather than transported to more distant markets (Zimmerman 1931, 19). The survey found that landlessness stood at 38 percent in the central plains; 27 percent in the north; 14 percent in the south; and 18 percent in the northeast.51 However, the “landless” identified in the survey did not mainly consist of a rural proletariat: the category included members of the rural petty bourgeoisie (merchants and traders) as well as laborers. The landless were on average “just about the same as the landowners in wealth.” While some lands in the central region had been alienated “into the hands of Chinese and others” the situation as a whole was deemed “not serious” (Zimmerman 1931, 18). High rates of tenancy were found in some districts in the central plains, particularly in Thanyaburi (the location of the Rangsit project), where 84 percent of the peasant households were tenants, mainly of absentee landlords living in Bangkok (Zimmerman 1931, 18). Outside the central region, fragmentation of landholdings was identified as a key concern (Zimmerman 1931, 19).

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TABLE 4.1 Socio-economic profile of rural Siam, 1929–30 REGIONAL AVERAGE CENTRAL

NORTH

SOUTH

NORTHEAST

Land owned (rai/family)

28

10

8

6

Families owning no land (%)

36

27

15

18

8,253

6,583

2,619

3,312

61

43

15

20 14

Rice produced (liters/per family) Rice sold (% of crop) Outstanding debt per family, end of 1930 (baht) Cash income per family (baht) Cash income from crops (% of total)

190

30

10

279

176

125

83

55

39

31

21

Source: Zimmerman 1931.

As regards rural credit markets, the survey found that in the more commercialized areas of the country, the central and northern regions, “the travelling padi buyer or merchant who lends money to cultivators at high interest rates, regardless of security” represented the most developed form of rural credit extension, as “agricultural credit institutions of the banking sort” had yet to be established (Zimmerman 1931, 199). Outside these areas, peasants used credit only rarely, and to the extent that credit was needed (mainly for consumption purposes), relatives and neighbors would lend money, generally on personal security and often without obligation to pay interest (Zimmerman 1931, 206–8). The regional extremes were represented by the central region where family debt averaged 190 baht, and the south where it averaged 10 baht. A second rural survey, led by James M. Andrews, an anthropologist at Harvard University, was conducted in 1933 and 1934. While the Zimmerman report provided a snapshot of rural society prior to the impact of the Great Depression, the Andrews survey depicted rural society in the depth of the crisis. The Andrews report argued that while the Depression had caused cash incomes—and expenditures—to decline, this had had few serious consequences for the living standards of Siam’s rural population. “They grow their own food, make what little clothing they require, and construct their own houses with materials which can be obtained at little if any cost” (Andrews 1935, 1). As a consequence, “the Survey found none of the general suffering and misery which have become commonplace in most other countries the world over” (Andrews 1935, 199). Unlike the Zimmerman survey, the second survey did not inquire into landlessness and many other issues covered in the first survey. Thus we have no direct measures of how the Depression affected landlessness and tenancy conditions, though other information provided in the survey suggests that the impact would have been limited.

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Indeed, the survey revealed that the average peasant household in the commercialized rice-specializing districts of central Siam continued to invest in capital goods such as land, animals, and farming implements. Through comparison of the Zimmerman and Andrews surveys we find that the share of cash expenditure devoted to acquiring new land remained remarkably stable, at around 5 percent of total cash expenditure, from 1929–30 to 1933–34. As Brown concludes: “This is unlikely to have been the expenditure pattern of a rural community experiencing severe economic distress” (1986, 999). The second survey devoted a separate chapter to a detailed investigation of the rural credit market. It found that rural credit remained a matter mainly between relatives and neighbors and friends, and that Chinese moneylenders and middlemen played a minor role in rural credit markets (see table 4.2). One of the most striking conclusions in regard to the credit market was that “the evil agency of Chinese moneylenders has been grossly exaggerated by public opinion” (Andrews 1935, 310). The survey report therefore challenged “the widespread conviction in Bangkok that most of the troubles of the Siamese farmer and debtor are to be ascribed to the baleful influence of Chinese moneylenders and middlemen” (Andrews 1935, 311). This judgment can be interpreted either as an indication that the Siamese state had no reason to worry, or as evidence that the obstructionist policy was working. I would argue that the “conviction in Bangkok” helped produce a rural economy where credit relations were embedded in family and neighborly relations, and where interest demands and obligations were taken “rather lightly” (Andrews 1935, 319). It is indicative of the nonmarket logic governing credit relations that even though more interest payment was demanded than paid in the central region in 1933, unpaid interest was, with a few exceptions, not added to the principal (Andrews 1935, 319). The Andrews report proposed that “we may safely conclude that the Siamese farmer does not suffer seriously from interest TABLE 4.2 Rural credit markets, 1933–34 REGIONAL AVERAGE CENTRAL

NORTH

SOUTH

234

17

10

7

Families with debts (% of total)

62

18

19

20

Debt to relatives (% of total debt)

48

20

84

73

Debt outstanding (% Chinese vs.

9

13

15

0

Average family debt at the end of

NORTHEAST

1933 (baht)

Siamese creditors) Source: Andrews 1935, 308, 312, 343–46.

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demands in any part of the Kingdom” because “there is no way of enforcing payment” (Andrews 1935, 319). A similar conclusion was drawn in regard to the lack of enforcement of payment of land rentals in the agricultural areas close to Bangkok, where tenants “knew that if they didn’t earn the rentals no power on earth could make them pay what they did not have” (Andrews 1935, 322). While foreclosures did take place in the central region, they were few in number and generally for “loans or debts of high amounts which had been long outstanding and on which little if any interest had been paid” (Andrews 1935, 324). Such foreclosures were frequently on pawned gold and silver ornaments, but occasionally also on land. In the latter case, foreclosures likely “took place almost wholly in the case of debtors who had shown no sign of making energetic attempts to make full use of the land involved or to pay off their debts” (Andrews 1935, 324). In the absence of backing by coercive state power, farmers and commercially oriented moneylenders and middlemen would have found it difficult to develop and sustain arm’s-length market relations. As long as “state capacity” in this area was seen as promoting the “evil agency” of the Chinese minority rather than the welfare of the Siamese peasantry, state enforcement of contracts in rural areas would have been incompatible with official nationalism. However, the importance of nationalism in insulating peasants from market outcomes should not be exaggerated. The policy responses by the Siamese state also need to be understood in light of the structural legacies engendered by the pre–Depression-era property rights regime. This becomes evident if we look closer at the notable unwillingness of the state to employ coercive means against farmers in this period of widespread economic hardship. One of the central policies of the Siamese state during and after the Depression period was to significantly reduce rates of taxation levied on farmers. Taxes were cut in two ways. First, the effective tax burden was quickly lowered on an ad hoc basis, in the form of tax remissions and temporary reductions of tax rates. Second, in 1938, land taxes and capitation taxes, which fell heavily on rice farmers, were abolished altogether (Ingram 1971, 78, 184).52 Thus, the state reduced its official demands for taxation and shied away from the use of coercion in the process of collecting taxes. This relatively soft line vis-à-vis the peasantry may have been motivated by nationalist concerns, but there is little evidence to suggest that it was. Rather, experience had shown that coercion yielded few of the intended benefits in the absence of liquid land markets. The coercive tax collection method of attaching land (confiscating it) and auctioning it in order to pay off tax arrears assumed extensive commodification of land. Except for a few areas, this assumption did not hold in Siam in the 1930s. As a consequence, when land (or other property) was put up for sale, no one in the local community

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was willing to buy: “The only possible purchasers mostly live in the same commune and do not desire to further increase the burden of trouble on one who is a neighbour and friend.”53 Thus, the Siamese state’s efforts to significantly limit the commodification of land in the decades leading up to the Great Depression had the unintended consequence of reducing the state to relative impotency in its role as revenue collector in an economic downturn.54 For creditors, the situation was in many respects similar to that of the tax collector. Siamese law governing foreclosure operated along the lines described in the discussion of taxation above. That is to say, land that was foreclosed on would not automatically become the property of the creditor (as would have been the case in British Burma, discussed below). Rather, the land would be auctioned to the highest bidder, and the payment received would go toward paying off the debt. In the absence of liquid land markets, the pool of prospective bidders would effectively have been limited to relatives and neighbors of the defaulting peasant. In regard to land, the debt collector was therefore reduced to the same relative impotency as the state’s revenue collector. A 1932 law that restricted the creditors’ ability to seize more liquid assets—draft animals, agricultural equipment, crops and seeds—from farmers only added to this impotence.55 As an unintended consequence of strategic policy decisions taken by the Siamese state in response to the threat of colonization, the Siamese peasantry was shielded from the ill winds of the Great Depression. The legacy consisted not only in a rural society that had limited exposure to the turmoil in global markets in the first place, and as such was in a position to relatively easily withdraw into self-sufficiency. The legacy was manifested also in structural and institutional constraints that ensured that rural producers would be allowed by the state to withdraw into self-sufficiency: the absence of liquid land markets, and a legal regime that made it exceedingly difficult for creditors to recover debts from farmers. The Depression-era experience reinforced the conviction, already widespread, among Siamese state elites that the operation of “free” land and credit markets could have politically devastating consequences. While the institutional legacy that underpinned the largely uncommercialized agricultural economy had been forged in response to imperial threats, Siam’s experience during the Great Depression proved that this legacy could serve other political functions. The reproduction of this legacy was not only beneficial to regime legitimation by providing an opportunity to turn nationalist (anti-Chinese and anticommunist) feelings into manifest policy, it also helped maintain social and political stability in rural areas to an extent that was rare in the Southeast Asian region. As the treaty regime disappeared from center stage following the 1938 revisions, the analytical spotlight therefore shifts to the dynamics of “institutional conversion”:

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how the reproduction of the property rights regime was harnessed to new political ends. In many societies, including those in Southeast Asia, the Depression era was a critical juncture. In Siam, arguably, it was not. The relatively undramatic Siamese experience during the Great Depression engendered neither a radical nor a conservative reaction sufficient to effect any significant change in the developmental trajectory of the property rights regime. Due to the moderate extent of economic and social dislocation in Siam, the peasantry was neither traumatized nor politically mobilized. The radical economic nationalism of Pridi (which in addition to “nationalizing” land, as discussed above, would have made all citizens, including the peasantry, salaried employees of the state) failed to win broader domestic or international support. But the link between nationalism and landownership was central, in a different way, to the nationalist ideology, known as ratthaniyom, promoted by Phibun’s regime (Kobkua 1995, 145–46, 150). The statist ideology of the Phibun government was elaborated in a number of dialogues between the fictional characters Man Chuchat and Khong Rakthai that were broadcast on national radio. One such broadcast, dated 5 October 1941, on the theme of “self-building and nation-building” exhorted Thais to “build ourselves and our nation on Thai soil” (Thak 1978, 276, 282). The dialogue contained the following exchange: Man:

. . . I would like to tell you that in the very near future the government is going to pass a law requiring every Thai family to have land for earning a livelihood. It would be an offense if someone owns no land. Khong: Oh, if that is the case, we have to hurry to acquire and reserve land for cultivation (Thak 1978, 280, emphasis in original). In the new Thai state ideology, the smallholder was the fundamental building block of the nation. All Thais should, as a matter of national duty, own a piece of the land.

Thailand in Comparative Perspective: Burma A comparison of the impact of the Great Depression in Burma and Siam—two economies dominated by rice cultivation—demonstrates the significance of the legacy of institutional underdevelopment. Unlike their more highly commercialized Burmese counterparts, Siamese farmers did not lose ownership of land en masse during the economic crisis (Adas 1974; Johnston 1975; Scott 1976; Brown 2005). In Burma, the crisis laid waste not only to rural society but also to the idea that an agricultural economy comprised of independent smallholders could be combined with free trade in land and credit.

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Colonization and Commercialization In December 1852 the Burmese province of Pegu was annexed to the British Indian Empire. The conclusion of the Second Anglo-Burmese War thereby brought a fertile rice delta of great productive potential within global capital circuits. Within decades, Burmese farmers financed by Chettiars from Madras, and with the added help of Indian laborers and British, Indian, and Chinese rice millers and trading firms, reclaimed “upwards of ten million acres of waste swamp and jungle” and Lower Burma was “converted into a granary for Asia” (Furnivall 1947, vi). By the early twentieth century, Burma was the world’s leading rice exporter. From the early 1860s to the late 1920s, the land area devoted to rice cultivation in Lower Burma had increased sixfold, and the annual volume of exports had risen twentythree-fold (Brown 2005, 9). In Asian history, there are few if any episodes of economic growth and social change that equal the creation of a capitalist economy in Lower Burma after 1852 (Adas 1974, 38; Pye 1962, 85). Central Siam also emerged as an important source of rice exports in this period, but there were some important differences in the nature and scale of the economic transformation. In Burma, the land frontier closed earlier because British-supplied institutions (including well-defined property rights) and infrastructure facilitated a more rapid extension of rice cultivation in Lower Burma than in central Siam. In contrast to Siam, Burma developed sophisticated rural credit markets. In the Burma rice delta, farmers, with land as collateral, were provided with both short-term and long-term credit by a network of Chettiar firms that penetrated deep into the rural economy, directly by providing loans to farmers, and indirectly by financing local moneylenders. This was made possible, in no small part, by the fact that the British administration in Burma—unlike that in Malaya—placed no restrictions on alienation of land to non-Burmese or nonagriculturists (Brown 2005, 15). In contrast, the expansion of the rice-growing areas in the Chaophraya Delta of Siam from the 1880s onward was not financed by means of mortgaging land to moneylenders. Instead, any capital needed by farmers to bring new land under cultivation was primarily provided by family and friends (Ingram 1971, 65-66; Ammar 1972, 26). The mushrooming of rural credit markets in Lower Burma was made possible by the colonial state’s development of an efficient legal-administrative machinery, which facilitated the transformation of land into commodity and collateral forms at breakneck speed. In 1915 alone, 43,409 instruments of mortgage for immovable property were registered with the government in Burma, the bulk of which were for land in the rice delta of Lower Burma (Registration Department 1916, 5). Only in 1972—almost sixty years later—would the Department of Lands in Thailand handle a larger annual volume of new mortgage registrations.56

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Yet the perhaps most telling contrast between the two countries lies in their long-term trajectories. Siam moved slowly from a low level of commodification and collateralization of land toward a regime where land was extensively commoditized and collateralized. In Burma, rural land and credit markets ballooned but then collapsed, and have yet to recover. In effect, Burma’s rural capitalism was derailed by the Great Depression; Siam’s was not. The British colonial administration professed an ideological commitment to the peasant smallholder in Burma. Nevertheless, the colonial state was unable to stop the emergence of a highly “industrialized” form of rice agriculture. This was accompanied by the rise of perceived social ills in the form of absentee landlordism and the creation of a restless rural proletariat. An official committee reported: As long ago as 1880 the existence of a tenant class in Burma was observed and the problems inherent in this state of affairs were foreseen. The official policy of Government has always been to discourage the growth of a landlord class and to make Burma a country of small landowners. It would however appear that Government has not in the past regarded its declared policy as imposing on it any obligation to action since very little has been done to make the policy effective. The result is that Burma is to-day in large part a country of landlords and tenants and has on its hands an agrarian problem of great complexity. We believe that an agricultural economy based on the ownership of land by the small agriculturalist is the economy best suited to Burma and one which will make for social and political stability since it will rest on the foundations of a comfortable, contented and independent peasantry. (Report of the Land and Agriculture Committee 1949 [1938], 2)57 The only real policy concession the colonial administration in Burma had made to the ideal of a rural society comprised of independent smallholders was to “reject applications by capitalists for the grant or lease of large areas of land” (Report of the Land and Agriculture Committee 1949 [1938], 42). This was not enough to counteract the effects of the operation of volatile market forces.

Crisis The Burmese colonial state provided a stable legal system that facilitated massive land alienation as the Great Depression rendered peasants unable to pay debts that were being recalled by Chettiar (and indigenous) moneylenders. So imposing and efficient was the judicial apparatus that, as the courts became overwhelmed with foreclosure cases, many debtors “surrendered their property

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without awaiting legal proceedings” (Andrus 1946, 263). The crisis produced a society gravely at odds with that preferred and envisioned by the colonial rulers, with landless laborers comprising the bulk of the agriculturist class in 1931, large swathes of fertile delta land owned by absentee alien landlords, tenants with little tenure security, and smallholders severely burdened by indebtedness (Cheng 1968, 231–32). In the wake of the crisis, nearly half the agricultural land in Lower Burma came to be owned by nonagriculturists, many of whom were Chettiar moneylenders. The social dislocation resulting from the Great Depression helped fuel the Saya San Rebellion (1930–32). Peasants in the Burma delta region turned their wrath on the institutions that had made possible first their rapid integration into the world economy as owner-farmers, and then their sudden demotion into members of a propertyless rural proletariat (Adas 1974; Scott 1976).58 An official report from 1938 established the connection between dispossession and rebellion: In regard to the rebellion in the Dedaye Township of the Pyapôn District, it was found that many of the villagers who took part were in the grip of the money-lenders. Much of the land in the neighbourhood had been lost to the Chettyars within a short period preceding the rebellion. The leader of the Dedaye rebellion and one of his principal lieutenants had recently lost land to the Chettyars. It was thought in the circumstances that an important cause of the rebellion in Dedaye was the extensive loss of land by the villagers in that area. (Report of the Land and Agriculture Committee 1949 [1938], 52–53) While Scott (1976) may have somewhat exaggerated the extent of the subsistence crisis in the Burma delta (Brown 2005, chap. 4), he was surely correct in emphasizing the importance of “moral economy,” though this needs to be interpreted in a broader sense than that of a subsistence ethic. Widely shared “expectations and aspirations” related to landownership were shattered by the fall in rice prices and the ensuing credit contraction and wave of foreclosures (Brown 2005, 111). To the social devastation of the moral economy of the rice delta, we must add another factor. In the years prior to the Depression, a rural nationalist movement had succeeded in politicizing and mobilizing the peasantry (Herbert 1982). Already by the early 1920s, village-level wunthanu athin (nationalist associations) had been established throughout rural Burma and peasant discontent was successfully being exploited by political entrepreneurs in advancement of the nationalist cause. These peasant organizations mounted peaceful as well as violent campaigns directed against representatives of the colonial state and the Chettiar moneylenders (Moscotti 1950, chap. 2). The dispossession of the Burmese peasantry and the transfer of land into the hands of absentee and alien landlords

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fueled a virulent economic and nationalist backlash that has characterized Burmese policy since independence. The crisis not only confirmed the worst fears of Burmese nationalists about the detrimental effects of “capitalism,” it also made British officials lose faith in private financial intermediation. The experience during the Depression brought home the message that rural credit was largely unnecessary. Although credit had collapsed in the early 1930s (see figure 4.1), “we do not find any diminution in the production of paddy in the country and the obvious inference is that the cultivator can do with a great deal less credit than he enjoyed in the days when the price of paddy was high” (Report of the Land and Agriculture Committee 1938 [1949], 57). Neither did the credit crunch have any obvious adverse effects on rice exports. While the drop in the world market price of rice reduced the total value of Burma’s rice exports, the volume remained remarkably stable (Brown 2005, 27). This was taken as evidence that the Burmese farmer was squandering the capital he raised on the security of the land rather than using it for productive purposes. The 1938 report by the Land and Agriculture Committee argued that restricting credit to farmers would therefore be a boon. “In many cases,” the committee observed, “it is better that the peasant proprietor should be satisfied with what he can obtain on his personal credit and on the security of his crops than that he should risk the loss of the land from which he obtains his livelihood” (Report of the Land and Agriculture Committee 1949 [1938], 57).

80,000

1,000

Value (100,000 rupees)

Volume 60,000

600 40,000 400 20,000

200 0 1910

0 1915

1920

1925

1930 Year

1935

1940

1945

1950

FIGURE 4.1 Registered mortgage instruments for immovable property in Burma, 1910–51. Report on the administration of the Registration Department in Burma (various years); Report on the Administration of Burma (various years).

Volume (number of transactions)

Value 800

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One of the most interesting aspects of the Land Alienation Act, which was proposed by the committee and enacted in 1939, was that it articulated the principle that “no agriculturist mortgagee can ever lose his agricultural land to a nonagriculturist by the foreclosure of a mortgage.” Fifteen years would be the maximum period of dispossession—after which the land would return to the mortgagor. This would be a “radical departure” from existing arrangements, but “so much land has been lost in Burma through mortgages that we deem it expedient to protect the agriculturist in the manner we have proposed.” In addition, it was thought that “so far as the contraction of his credit will force him [i.e., the Burmese cultivator] to reduce his extravagance, the proposed [Land Alienation] Act will be productive of good” (Report of the Land and Agriculture Committee 1949 [1938], 59, 57). Indeed, what was to become the goal of a succession of governments in independent Burma—the effective elimination of private financial intermediation in the agricultural sector—was articulated by British experts in colonial administration. This is clearly evident in British wartime planning for rural reconstruction in preparation for the reconquest of Burma. On the British side, scholaradministrator J. S. Furnivall was the most prominent advocate of the view that Burma’s problems had a common cause in “the disintegration of social life by economic forces which has resulted from the application in Burma of two basic principles of British policy, the rule of law and economic freedom” (Furnivall 1943, 1).59 Addressing the evils of agrarian distress—landlessness and immiserating debt— would thus require drastic measures: “Indebtedness is merely a symptom of agrarian disease, and can be cured only by some comprehensive scheme for reconstructing the whole agricultural economy on sounder lines providing for control over the economic factors that have directed and governed the course of development in the past.” Credit markets would have to be put on a completely new footing. According to Furnivall, the collateralization of land was at the root of the problem: “Cultivators need capital, and should be given all facilities to obtain from any source such capital as they require. But economic competition impels the money lender to grant loans up to the limit of the security available, and the cultivator tends to borrow as much as he can get instead of no more than he needs. The first principle of agrarian reconstruction is therefore to devise some means to discourage or prevent the creditor from borrowing more than is necessary” (Furnivall 1943, 15, 56). Furnivall proposed that a “public utility service under private management but under State direction and control,” to be called the National Agricultural Development Company (NADC), might be able to get the job done. This company should not merely function as an alternative source of credit. To stop peasants from excessive borrowing, Furnivall wanted to stipulate that “no court should attach land for debt except for money borrowed from or through” NADC

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(Furnivall 1943, 58). As a result, privately negotiated loans with land as security would come under the scrutiny of the NADC, which would have the power to refuse loans it did not agree with. In other words, land could serve as collateral only if the NADC had signed off on the mortgage.60 Furnivall’s was not a voice in the wilderness. In a plan for reconstruction of the Burmese agricultural sector, written in 1943, the former Commissioner of Settlements and Land Records, B. O. Binns, argued that the state would have to take complete charge of credit allocation (1948, 25). Binns did not envision expanding the role of government as an “alternative” or a complement that was to operate alongside a system of private lending to agriculture. He believed that government-run allocation of agricultural credit depended for its success on the government being “the sole lender, i.e., that the loans made by Government to any individual should be sufficient for that individual to be able to avoid recourse to any other borrower.” Thus, “the Government, as a lender, should supply all the individual’s needs for credit—or none” (1948, 29, 111). In the credit system envisioned by Binns, state provision of formal property rights that could serve as collateral was reduced to a nonissue. There was no need for it, and it would, indeed, be detrimental to the state’s ambition of establishing itself as the lone “moneylender” in the country. The Depression had, of course, also provided the political conditions that would facilitate such an expansion of the role of the state. As a result of the Depression crisis—and the ensuing violence, much of which had an anti-Indian component—Chettiar firms lost interest in continuing their prominent role as financial intermediaries in the rice delta. The Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia intervened to further drive a wedge between the Chettiars and Burma. The flight from Burma of Indian moneylenders and landlords “left the Delta cultivator free of their interest and rent burdens” (Walinsky 1962, 57), but also with much impaired access to credit. The 1930s crisis had discredited and delegitimated private financial intermediation in the agricultural sector among a generation of leading colonial administrators in Burma. Lest his readers unfamiliar with the Burmese situation should confuse his proposals with “Communism,” Binns observed that “the machinery has no necessary political bias whatever” (1948, 8, emphasis in original). Indeed, Binns thought there was “nothing political” about his proposed “radical treatment” of “a diseased state of agricultural economy” (1948, 8, 106). Needless to say, leading British officials believed that nothing could to be gained by a return to the status quo ante. Irrespective of who was to govern Burma after the war— and the British still planned on doing so—the conditions that had allowed Indian moneylenders to make hay “in the sunshine of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill” (Binns 1948, 3) were not going to be re-created.

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As a consequence, laissez-faire capitalism met its end in Burma even before independence, and it was to be replaced by a more communitarian and nationalist vision of society in which the central state apparatus played a leading role in the economy. Furnivall’s general analysis of Burma’s postcrisis predicament became conventional wisdom in governing circles in postindependence Burma (Taylor 1995, 45–46).61 The constitution of the newly independent Union of Burma provided an indication of the broad policy direction: “The State is the ultimate owner of all lands” and has “the right to regulate, alter or abolish land tenures or resume possession of any land and distribute the same for collective or cooperative farming or to agricultural tenants.” The constitution also announced that “there can be no large land holdings on any basis whatsoever. The maximum size of private land holding shall, as soon as circumstances permit, be determined by law” (Constituent Assembly of Burma 1948, 7). Laws that sought to give effect to the sentiments expressed in the constitution included the Agriculturalists’ Debt Relief Act (1947), which canceled all pre-1946 debts, and the Land Nationalization Acts (1948 and 1953). The Land Nationalization Act of 1948 was introduced by Minister of Agriculture Thakin Tin as a “one hundred per cent revolutionary” measure that was “to put an end to landlordism in the Union of Burma and to usher in an era whose ultimate objective is collective farming.” The law was also a more or less desperate play for the “hearts and minds” of a rural population that otherwise might be inclined to throw in their lot with groups—such as the Communist Party of Burma or ethnic separatists— who in rapid succession were taking up arms against the Rangoon government. Thakin Tin expressed confidence that “the present political and racial conflicts will disappear with the passage of this Bill” (Ministry of Agriculture and Forests 1948, 1). In postindependence Burma, then, socialist land policies were regarded as tools that could stem the rising tide of armed internal rebellion. This securitization of the rural land rights regime appears to have been spectacularly ineffective in terms of actually realizing Thakin Tin’s hopes: Burma was the world’s most conflict-prone country from 1946 to 2003 (Human Security Centre 2005, 27). Paradoxically, the experiences of the 1930s had exactly opposite consequences in Burma and Thailand. In Burma, the national trauma foreclosed a “capitalist” road to rural development. In Thailand, that road remained open, whereas the “Thai way to socialism” had effectively been foreclosed with the rejection of Pridi’s ambitious scheme. These divergent outcomes can, at least in part, be explained with reference to the different ways in which land was approached in the decades leading up to the Great Depression. In Burma as well as Siam, state officials viewed the peasantry as the “backbone” of the societies over which they ruled. But whereas officials in Burma regarded the dispossession of the peasant

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classes as unfortunate, it does not appear that they ever viewed it as a real threat to the security of the state. In Siam, in contrast, it was regarded in precisely such serious terms. As a consequence, the Siamese state’s enthusiasm for agricultural modernization and raising of revenues was tempered not only by its diplomatic ambitions to abolish the last vestiges of the unequal treaties but also by a desire to preserve a rural society dominated by independent landowning farmers. The regulation of property rights in land continued to be viewed as a matter that impinged on security, relating both to state sovereignty and national identity. This chapter has also highlighted an important issue relating to the conception of “policy practices,” which are an essential component of the process of securitization. We have seen two instances—the proposed Bangkok land tax and Pridi’s land nationalization—where protection of cherished values against threats led public officials to reject policies and plans that, in a different context, might very well have been adopted. In certain situations, the relevant policy practices may be nonpractices.

5 COMBATING SPECTERS AND COMMUNISTS

Following the enactment of a Land Code in 1954, land titling expanded dramatically in Thailand. Under this reformed legal regime—which constituted a consolidation and rationalization of the existing somewhat disparate body of land law—the area under the two kinds of title deeds that provided sufficiently strong formal property rights in land for them to be accepted as collateral by financial institutions (NS3 and NS4) increased from 12.8 million rai in 1955 to 126 million rai in 2000 (see figure 5.1). The expansion of formal property rights occurred in two waves. In the first wave, beginning from a very low base in the mid-1950s, the expansion of the area under NS3 title (i.e., land utilization certificates) accounted for the bulk of the increase.1 In the second wave, from the 1980s onward, it was the area under NS4 title (i.e., full land title, also known as chanot) that expanded at a remarkable rate. The expansion of the area under NS4 title is due, in part, to the conversion of existing NS3 titles into higher-quality NS4 titles (which explains the reduction in the area under NS3 title that is evident after 1995). The massive expansion of formal property rights in land is mainly a response by the Thai state to the threat of communism. This caused the state to switch from a policy of relative neglect of formalized property rights in land to one of active developmentalism, because stronger property rights in land would, it was believed, strengthen the agrarian “backbone” of Thai society and boost resistance to the lure of communist ideas. This represents a significant departure—indeed a complete reversal—in terms of how formal land rights are understood to relate to national security. 108

COMBATING SPECTERS AND COMMUNISTS

109

140

Rai (in millions)

120 NS3

100

NS4

80 60 40 20 0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975 1980 Year

1985

1990

1995

2000

FIGURE 5.1 Area under title in Thailand, 1955–2000 (million rai). Department of Lands various years-a, various years-b.

The switch was contingent on complementary institutional reforms that helped mitigate the “traditional” security concerns that had disposed Thai state elites to view rural land and credit markets with great suspicion. At the same time, and paradoxically, other institutional reforms—related to the protection of forests— created a context where, once again, the definition and enforcement of formal property rights ran counter to security interests. The response to the threat of communism thus produced a bifurcated property rights regime, characterized by uneven state capacities.

The Communist Threat The “threat of communism” is a variable rather than a constant. The period covered in this chapter can be divided into three relatively distinct phases characterized by differing threat perceptions. In the first period, from 1950 to 1965, the communist threat was perceived by Thai state elites—and their international allies—more as a potential one and as an ideological and psychological challenge, than as an immediate, existential, and military danger. In the second period, from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, the communist threat was perceived as an increasingly alarming internal and external military challenge. In the third and last period, beginning in the early 1980s, communism gradually faded away as both an internal and an external security threat.

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It was in the first period that the patterns of amity and enmity that were to shape the Cold War in Southeast Asia for the next three decades first emerged. The United States played a central role in persuading key segments of Bangkok’s state elite to abandon more “traditional” modes of geopolitical analysis and to begin thinking and acting on the basis of the “domino theory” (Ninkovich 1994). Thai state elites joined U.S. state elites in what Morgenthau (1977, 8) called a “demonological pattern of thought and action” in relation to communism. The Thai state’s anticommunist identity was institutionalized through legislation against communist activities,2 the formation of a military alliance with the United States, and the headquartering of the “free world’s” Asian military alliance, SEATO, in Bangkok. These were manifestations of a pro-American “foreign policy revolution” engineered in the early 1950s by Phibun, a former ally of Japan and occasional supporter of Communist-led Indochinese liberation movements (Fineman 1997, 114).3 Bangkok’s strategic reorientation in the early Cold War period was to a considerable degree beholden to U.S. strategic thinking on how to contain and eventually “roll back” communism in Asia. United States strategists assigned Thailand an extremely flattering role in the global geopolitical drama. A study produced by the U.S. Psychological Strategy Board, known as PSB D-23 and dated 2 July 1953, identified Thailand as “the logical—in fact the only possible—focus of the integrated, offensively-defensive U.S. strategy needed to defeat the communists in Southeast Asia” (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 6). It is worth making particular note of the perceived nature of the communist threat, as articulated in PSB D-23. In January 1953, a “Thai autonomous area” had been set up in Yunnan province in southern China. According to PSB D-23, “This move almost certainly indicates on the part of communist strategists an intent to manipulate and subvert—and perhaps a hope ultimately to dominate— all of the Thai peoples” (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 1). Thus, what to some observers appeared to be a “normal” change in the internal administration of the Chinese state—where many minority populations have been given “autonomous” status at different administrative levels since 1949—was interpreted as evidence of an aggressively expansionist scheme aimed at the “Thai peoples” of Southeast Asia.4 Imagining and fearing the existence of a “communist Pan-Thai strategy,” U.S. strategists formulated their own “Pan-Thai” counterstrategy, with Bangkok and Thailand as an alternative—anticommunist—center of gravity for the “Thai peoples” of Southeast Asia. The United States would first “consolidate Thailand as a secure base by increasing its strength and making its frontiers more defensible” and then extend “beyond the Thai boundaries,” eventually creating a “climate of victory throughout the whole area” (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 1, 6).

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Fineman has argued that the Psychological Strategy Board “sorely misunderstood the relationships among the various Thai-related groups” by presuming “a greater affinity than actually existed between central Thais and Thai-related groups in China who had never had close contacts with modern Thailand” (1997, 172). While this may have been a mistaken understanding, it was a misunderstanding with considerable political utility. The assumptions underlying PSB D-23 resonated perfectly with the pan-Thai nationalist aspirations that had been articulated by Phibun and other ultranationalists in the 1930s and 1940s.5 In effect, the United States offered Phibun’s government an opportunity to revive its external ambitions—placing Bangkok once again at the core of a “Greater Thailand”—under the new banner of anticommunism. One of the distinct advantages that Thailand offered to the Western cause of anticommunism was that the country had been able to retain its political independence. Thailand was thus perceived as presenting an opportunity for the United States (and other Western countries) to promote the anticommunist cause in Southeast Asia while avoiding the “taint of imperialism” (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 7), which was one of the perceived weaknesses of efforts to suppress communism by the French in Indochina, the British in Malaya, and the United States in the Philippines. Whereas 1948 had seen the eruption of armed communist revolts in Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, and the Philippines, all had remained quiet on the Thai front. Associating Thai nationalism with anticommunism and vice versa would cause Thailand’s position in the Cold War struggle to be more readily perceived as an authentic “indigenous” political expression, setting an example for “Thai” ethnic brethren in China, Indochina, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.6 Neither before nor since has Thailand occupied such a pivotal place in the geopolitical imagination of any of the world’s great powers. The mid-1950s psychological warfare strategy is of particular relevance here for two reasons. First, it highlights the significance of ideational processes in the construction of security threats and policy responses thereto. As emphasized by Glassman (2004, 57), the United States helped the Bangkok government to initiate what we might think of as a counterinsurgency strategy more than a decade before the appearance of an actual insurgency.7 Some have even argued that Thai political leaders, beginning with Phibun, opportunistically engaged in what Kasian (2001, 159) has called “willful manufacture and maintenance of visible and manageable Thai communist specters.” This “willful manufacture” rested, in turn, on a particular set of understandings of the nature of the conflict and the ways in which it might be won. The preventive strategy was based on the assumed existence and political pertinence of a collective identity uniting “the Thai peoples of Southeast Asia.” This assumption had the effect of magnifying the perceived threat emanating from China and Indochina, and also the perceived geopolitical potential associated

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with the creation of an “authentic” nationalist culture of popular anticommunism centered on Bangkok. While the psywar effort came to encompass a variety of programs—ranging from the military to the economic—the “politico-psychological field” was given priority, since that was the area where the communist threat was perceived to be the gravest and most imminent (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 4). What needed strengthening was not, foremost, military or economic capabilities, but, primarily, the political will to oppose the advance of communism. The joint U.S. and Thai psychological warfare strategy was therefore intended to “prepare the minds and emotions of the people to collaborate in the effort” to contain communism (Psychological Strategy Board 1953b, 25–26). The prioritization of the psychological battlefield did not, of course, preclude military initiatives. But the psywar-centered strategy shaped the design of military programs. Strengthening Thailand’s conventional military forces was downplayed for the benefit of programs that more directly penetrated and militarized rural society. Prominent U.S.-backed programs in the 1950s included the creation and massive expansion of the Border Patrol Police (BPP) and the Volunteer Defense Corps (Lobe and Morell 1978). The continuing “weakness” of Thailand’s conventional armed forces in the 1950s should not necessarily be interpreted as an indication of the “mild” nature of the perceived security threats facing Thailand. Significant military capabilities were created alongside the country’s conventional armed forces, primarily in the regular police force and the BPP, but also in the form of Kuomintang forces that were allowed to take up positions in northern Thailand following their defeat in China.8 Interestingly, the Bangkok government’s choice to minimize the army’s role in ensuring border security, and instead seeking creative alternatives, was, at least in part, motivated by constraints imposed by treaties with France (Lobe and Morell 1978, 158, 175 n. 2). The Franco-Siamese treaties of 1893 and 1926 had obliged Siam to demilitarize a twenty-five-kilometer-wide zone along the country’s border with French Indochina (Flood 1969; Hirschfield 1968).9 Not only land policy, but also defense and security policies were in the early Cold War years formulated in the shadow of the quasi-colonial legacies created in Siam’s encounter with Western imperialism. Second, rural development was identified as an important component of the prophylactic anticommunist strategy. One of the central goals of the United States was to “increase the belief that U.S. support in Southeast Asia will facilitate the solution of major political and economic problems in the area—including rural development and land reform—in a manner satisfactory both to Asian and Western interests, without any taint of disguised U.S. colonial aspirations” (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 27–28). The U.S. government went to great lengths in its efforts to promote such beliefs, in Thailand and elsewhere. In several

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Asian countries—most notably Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Vietnam—U.S. policymakers expended considerable energy on the design and implementation of land tenure reform in order to steal the thunder of communist agitators (McCoy 1971; Monk 1990; Ladejinsky 1964, 1977). Not so in Thailand. Foreign advisers and foreign aid played a very limited role in the Thai state’s early efforts to accelerate land titling. Muscat’s (1990, 259–60) comprehensive listing of Thai government agencies that became the focus of U.S.-supported efforts at “institutional capacity-building” does not even include the government agency responsible for the formalization of land rights, the Department of Lands (DOL). This lack of interest can in part be explained by the fact that Thailand’s rural class structure—with its “conspicuous lack of any group of rural landlord gentry” (Wilson 1959, 63)—was generally perceived, at least by foreigners, as being politically unproblematic. Thailand’s agricultural economy was regarded as “basically sound,” largely free from the “hunger and other forms of misery” that were associated with the growth of communism (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a,11). According to a report from the United States Operations Mission in Thailand (USOM), farms were “largely owner-occupied” and Thailand, as a consequence, faced “no major land reform problem.” And while it was recognized that a “primitive credit system impedes the flow of private funds into farm production,” formalization of land rights (or the lack thereof) was not identified as a binding constraint on economic development (Scoville and Thieme 1964, 6). In short, class relations found in rural Thailand were not generally perceived as being of the potentially explosive kind. As a consequence, U.S.-backed rural development efforts in Thailand largely ignored the question of land reform. That did not, however, mean that Thai political elites neglected to take the threat of communism into account when formulating land law and building property rights institutions. The “real” threat of communism increased dramatically after 1965. In the early 1960s, the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) began preparing for a war of liberation aimed at the Thai state,10 and the first shots were exchanged between communist and government forces in 1965. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the communist insurgency expanded from a few hundred activists to a major political force with influence in over six thousand villages. Following a right-wing crackdown in 1976, several thousand urban radicals, many of whom were university students, joined the insurgency. By 1979, the number of communist insurgents was estimated at ten thousand (Chai-anan, Kusuma, and Suchit 1990, 143). The overall trajectory of the insurgency—a slow but steady rise in the 1960s and early 1970s, a slight lull during the democratic interlude 1973–76, intensification in the second half of the 1970s, and finally, collapse in the early 1980s—is reflected in the number of recorded clashes between communist insurgents and Thai security forces (see figure 5.2).

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1,200

Number of clashes

1,000 800 600 400 200

19

65

/66 19 67 19 68 19 69 19 70 19 71 19 72 19 73 19 74 19 75 19 76 19 77 19 78 19 79 19 80 19 81 19 82 19 83 19 84 19 85

0 Year

FIGURE 5.2 Clashes between insurgents and Thai security forces, 1965/66– 85. Redrawn from Saiyud 1986, 204.

Over most of this same period, the United States gradually disengaged from Indochina and its commitment to Thailand’s security lost much of its credibility, thereby increasing Bangkok’s sense of vulnerability. Within communist Asia, however, developments were contradictory. The effect of U.S. disengagement was mitigated by rapprochement between Bangkok and Beijing (Chambers 2005). But the fall of Saigon, Phnom Penh, and Vientiane to communist forces in 1975, and Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978–79, ensured that the communist specter was kept very much alive. The close Vietnamese alliance with the Soviet Union exacerbated the perception of a serious strategic threat on Thailand’s eastern flank, where Vietnam, which had stationed troops in both Laos and Cambodia, was thought to have “designs on the seventeen northeastern provinces and in due course on the political identity and external affiliation of Thailand” (Alagappa 1987, 61).11 Thai elites thus had some reason to be “fearful of Vietnam’s ability to take advantage of Thailand’s internal weaknesses” (Morrison and Suhrke 1978, 141). For a few years in the late 1970s, it looked as if Thailand might become the next Southeast Asian “domino” to fall (Somchai 1978, 300). It is not entirely surprising, then, that Weinstein’s interviews of political elites in the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand revealed that only to the Thais “did invasion even seem conceivable” (1978, 20). To the extent that military expenditure data provide a quantitative indication of threat perceptions, it is significant that Thailand’s military spending, as a percentage of total government expenditure, was higher during the 1970s and early 1980s than

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in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines (Denoon 1987, 60). From an internal perspective the communist threat was exacerbated in the wake of the October 1976 military coup, which resulted in an exodus of educated members of the urban middle classes to the jungle where they joined the insurgency, and in a marked deterioration of the prestige of the Thai king (Weinstein 1978, 24). The fear was that the hitherto predominantly rural insurgency would now be able to infiltrate urban areas. International developments intervened and helped the supposed domino to remain standing. As part of Sino-Thai rapprochement, China withdrew its support of the CPT. Having aligned with China in the Sino-Soviet split, the CPT simultaneously lost access to its bases in Laos and Cambodia (which were controlled by Soviet-backed Vietnam). By 1984, communism, in its external and domestic manifestations, was no longer perceived as a serious threat to Thai national security (Chambers 2005; Gill 1991). The threat posed by the Vietnamese military juggernaut was further reduced after 1989, when Vietnam withdrew its troops stationed in Cambodia and initiated the diplomatic process that would lead to its admission to the (formerly anticommunist) Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995.12 With the end of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, Thailand no longer faced any significant internal or external challenges to its national security. Based on an understanding of security that prioritizes the external and the material aspects, it is fair to argue that Thailand only faced mild external security threats during most of the Cold War period, except perhaps for a few years in the late 1970s (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005, 337, 351). Similarly, the communist insurgency has been considered “far too remote and rural” to be considered a serious security threat (Slater 2010, 247). Thus, one would not expect the threat of communism to have compelled or stimulated Thai state elites to undertake serious institutional reforms, except, perhaps, in connection with the crisis of the late 1970s. As we shall see, however, Thai policies followed a slightly different logic, based on the “domino theory,” which emphasized prevention and prioritized the psychological and cultural dimensions of the defense against communism. Rather than episodic spurts of activity, caused by temporary shifts in political pressures and economic constraints, the expansion of formal land rights in Thailand was characterized by a slow but steady building of institutional capacity.

Securing the Land As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Royal Commission on Land Policy of the 1920s had already taken to heart the “lesson” taught by the Russian revolution, namely that an agriculturalist class made up of smallholders was central to

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the stability and viability of an anticommunist political order, such as that found in the absolute monarchy of Siam. Land policy was therefore formulated with an eye toward preserving social conditions that were considered resistant to any effort to foment social revolution. Although the country was no longer an absolute monarchy, this impulse was reinforced in the 1950s in conjunction with the perceived need to promote an anticommunist ideology. Although a consensus that the political aim of property rights policy was to both signal and safeguard the country’s anticommunist identity quickly emerged, the details of land law proved rather more controversial. As a corollary to the communist specter, the Bangkok government was haunted by visions of the specter of landlordism. If left unchecked, it was believed that the excesses of primitive accumulation and rural financial capitalism would create the social conditions in which communism thrived. During the first years in which the U.S.-supported psychological strategy was being implemented, the Thai government not only ramped up communist repression and anticommunist rhetoric, it also took unprecedented legislative and judicial actions that targeted the specters of landlordism and “feudalism” that haunted agrarian society.13 These specters were embodied by two high-profile targets of official disproval. The first, Luang Sitthepkan (Kim Liang Wangtan), was an ethnic Chinese businessman and moneylender who had acquired huge tracts of agricultural land, and who became known in the press as the country’s racha thidin (“landlord king”) (“4,000 accusing ‘landlord king’ ” 1954). Following complaints from farmers, Luang Sitthepkan was arrested and brought to court on charges ranging from tax evasion to murder (Chat 1954; “Thuk yang tham tam kotmai” 1954; “Landlord held in murder case” 1954), and in November 1955 he was sentenced to over six years in jail for ordering the killing of a landowner who had been reluctant to sell his land (“San sang cham khuk” 1955; “Man says hired to be murderer” 1954). As the public furor over Luang Sitthepkan died down, a new “landlord king” spectacle hit the headlines. The second target was a retired senior government official, Phra Klaklangsamon, who was brought to court after farmers had accused him of “snatching” their land through the use of trickery and coercion (“Ex-governor held on several charges” 1955; “ ‘Chopped man with axe, shot, beat others’ alleged” 1955; Bunsong 1955). As a consequence of these repressive practices, “some people”—including Luang Sitthepkan—suddenly realized that their land was ill-gotten and decided to give the land to the government for redistribution to farmers (Department of Lands 2001a, 214–16). It is significant that both “landlord kings” had titles, luang and phra, that signaled their membership in the bureaucratic nobility of the pre-1932 era. The crackdown on these landlords would thereby strengthen the Thai state’s claim to antifeudal credentials.

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On the legislative front, the land-titling law was amended in 1953, establishing a special committee with extensive powers. The committee’s task was to investigate conflicts over land such as those referred to above, that involved greater and lesser “landlord kings” who had used illegal or unfair means to accumulate land. The committee was given the authority to invalidate land titles that had been issued “unjustly,” as well as the power to order new and “fair” land titles to be issued. In 1954, furthermore, Parliament enacted a land law embodying the principle of social justice, in part because of “some people’s” decision to give land back to the government for redistribution to deserving farmers (Department of Lands 2001a, 199–200, 214–16). The law established yet another special committee with extensive powers, very similar to those of the first committee. In addition, the committee, which was chaired by the prime minister, had the power to distribute land in the interest of “social justice.” Thailand’s first land code was also enacted in 1954, consolidating the many disparate pieces of land-related legislation that had proliferated since 1901. In addition to providing a more unified body of legislation relating to property rights in land, the new land code introduced a number of novel policy measures. The most radical of these was the imposition of a land ceiling. The maximum allowable land holding was fifty rai per person for agricultural use; ten rai for industrial use; five rai for commercial use; and five rai for residential use. The ceiling did not apply retroactively, so that persons who owned land in excess of the ceiling would be allowed to keep it (Department of Lands 2001b, 17). A separate—and lower—land ceiling was imposed on foreigners who, by treaty, enjoyed the right to own land in Thailand. For agricultural uses, for instance, only ten rai of land were allowed to a family of treaty subjects. The land code can be regarded as an effort at land reform in disguise, and as such it encountered considerable domestic opposition. A comment from the British embassy in Bangkok noted that even otherwise progovernment members of parliament were strongly opposed to the land code, as was the king: Vigorous opposition in the Legislative Study Commission induced the Government to make the land legislation non-retroactive and also to reduce the holdings of land permitted to aliens (a sop to anti-Chinese feeling). After the amended bill had been passed by the National Assembly, the King, probably acting on the advice of the conservatively-inclined Privy Council, signified his own personal dislike of the bill by refusing to sign it for sixty days—the maximum time permitted to him without provoking a constitutional crisis—and is reported to have asked for a promise that the bill would be revised if it did not work satisfactorily.14 Handley (2006, 126–27) claims that the reason for the king’s opposition was to be found in the redistributive measures provided for in the land reform law.

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According to this view, the king’s resistance would have been motivated by a provision that compelled all large landowners—including members of the royal family—to dispose of landholdings exceeding fifty rai of farmland per person within seven years of the law’s enactment. As noted above, the law’s land ceiling was in fact without retroactive effect, so that it posed no direct threat to owners of large plots of land. According to sources quoted by the Bangkok Post, the king’s opposition was rooted in concern for the “protection of small land holders, who under the bill would not be able to mortgage their land or use it in other ways to obtain capital” (“Urgent gov’t meeting over king’s refusal” 1954). The intent of the drafters of the new land laws, and the understanding of contemporaneous outside observers, indicate that the wave of new land laws— including the neutral-sounding “land code”—that were enacted in the period 1953 to 1955 were legal manifestations of a political desire to “conserve” peasant society, and to prevent the dispossession of this class, whether through market mechanisms, coercive means, or combinations of the two. According to Phibun, the rice fields would turn into sanam rop (battlefields) unless the state intervened to protect the interests of poor farmers (Department of Lands 2001a, 201). Landlords were urged to sell any “excess” land so that the government could implement “land reform,” which, in turn, was necessary to prevent farmers from “falling victims to communist propaganda” (“ ‘Sell unused land,’ owners being urged” 1954). One of the most concrete manifestations of the state’s desire to “capture” the enforcement and regulation of land rights was the expanded physical presence of land offices and land officers in rural areas. In 1951, half a century after modern title deeds had first been introduced, provincial land offices had yet to be established in more than half of the country’s provinces, with the consequence that title deeds could not yet be issued there. In addition, provincial land offices often operated only in a small number of the districts in any given province, typically the more urban ones. The mid-1950s witnessed a massive push to open land offices in all the country’s provinces. As a result, fourteen new provincial land offices were established in 1955; fifteen were opened in 1956; and the last six provinces saw their land offices opening their doors in 1957 (“Kamnot poet samnakngan thidin changwat” 1956). In order to be able to staff these offices with qualified officials, the state established a surveying school, so as to produce surveyors who could expand the cadastre to the country’s vast unsurveyed areas (“Survey of land titles planned” 1954). The DOL also experienced a significant expansion of the number of its employees (see figure 5.3). The staff more than doubled between 1955 and 1967, and more than doubled again by 1976. The state’s expansion of land administration in the 1950s was grounded in the perceived need to tame the “wild” and often coercive practices that threatened

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15,000

Number of employees

12,500 10,000 7,500 5,000 2,500

00 20

95 19

90 19

85 19

80 19

75 19

70 19

65 19

60 19

19

55

0

Year FIGURE 5.3 Number of employees in the Department of Lands, 1955–2000. Department of Lands n.d., various years-a.

to dispossess small-scale farmers and create a new class of capitalist landlords. By formalizing rural land rights, the state intended to create a paper trail that would, in turn, enable it to better prevent and resolve disputes over land, ensure justice for small farmers, stabilize rural society—and ensure that the peasantry would not be “misled” by communist agitators. Even though the new laws contained loopholes and the state’s administrative capacity remained relatively weak, high-profile prosecutions of socially prominent landlords—in response to public complaints by social inferiors—must also have had a chilling effect on, in particular, larger absentee landlords. By providing land documents to small farmers (see figure 5.4), the state sought not to reduce but to raise transaction costs. That is to say, the emphasis was not on turning land rights into a more liquid commodity, but to use formalization of property rights as an instrument for ensuring that landownership remained in the hands of independent farmers. One of the key tensions in Cold War (and post–Cold War) land policy in Thailand concerned the proper role of the market as a mechanism for allocating land and capital in rural areas. On this score, Phibun’s anticommunism was combined with a strong streak of anticapitalism. His view is clearly articulated in response to a parliamentary interpellation from December 1953, concerning the government’s plans for land reform (Raingan kanprachum sapha phuthaen ratsadon samai saman [khrang thi 2] pho so 2496, 411–24). MP Phadet Chiraphan from the province of Phichit had asked if it was true that the government’s committee

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FIGURE 5.4 Phibun Songkhram officiates at a title deed distribution ceremony, September 1953. Courtesy of the National Archives of Thailand.

drafting a land reform law had become the target of public opposition rather than public support. He also alleged that public discussion of the impending enactment of a land reform law was having an adverse impact on land values and on the agricultural economy in general. Because of uncertainty about the law, capitalists were no longer willing to accept land as security for loans, making it more difficult for farmers to get access to credit. The prime minister’s response to the first question was that the committee had received both criticism and support, but that the landless farmers he had met during his travels to more than twenty provinces were strongly behind land reform. In response to the second question, the prime minister first observed that it was the government’s policy to ensure that all Thais became landowners. And then he made a fascinating rhetorical move, linking decommodification of land to the decommodification of man. Phibun pointed out that the abolition of slavery by Chulalongkorn had met with much opposition but that today everyone accepted that it was not right to trade people as if they were commodities.15 He continued, “The government regards land in the same way. Land is a nest, a home, a field for cultivation, and where we are buried when we die. We therefore shouldn’t mortgage or sell it.” So, the prime minister turned the concern that the very act of drafting a land reform law had caused rural land and credit markets to freeze up into a nonissue, by arguing that trading and mortgaging land were immoral and unsound practices that were not supported by the government. Indeed, falling land prices were a good and healthy thing, argued Phibun, since it would enable poor people to buy land.16 As

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an alternative to the commodification of land, the state was going to become the main source of rural capital, replacing the role of private capitalists, by channeling funds through the cooperative societies and the Ministry of Interior (Raingan kanprachum sapha phuthaen ratsadon samai saman [khrang thi 2] pho so 2496, 413, 417, 421). This is a reminder of the prominent position of property rights in discourses of civilization, nationalism, and modernity. The question raised by Phibun was whether “free” land and credit markets were “modern” institutions or if they were as “barbarian” as the system of bondage and slavery that King Chulalongkorn had abolished as part of Siam’s effort to meet the standard of civilization (Gong 1984, 222–25). These high-profile legislative and prosecutorial initiatives resonated with a central theme of the U.S.-led psychological warfare strategy against communism: opposition to landlordism. The Phibun government’s activities in relation to land in the early 1950s made a contribution to the “worldwide effort to improve the holding and working of the land” that had been initiated by the Truman administration.17 Perhaps as a reward for Phibun’s leadership in the anticommunist cause, a UN center for land reform in the Asian region was established in Bangkok in 1954 (National Seminar on Land Problems and Policies in Thailand, Held at FAO Regional Office, Bangkok, Thailand, 9–13 February, 1970, 4). It is also significant that the impending constitutional crisis surrounding the enactment of the 1954 land reform law was resolved in favor of the government, with the king finally signing the bill, in the midst of a three-week-long international land policy seminar arranged in Bangkok by the FAO-sponsored Center on Land Problems in Asia and the Far East (“Land seminar ends session, voted success” 1954). Ironically, whereas Pridi’s vision of an anticapitalist and statist approach to rural economic development had been aborted twenty years earlier because its “communist” tendencies were believed to jeopardize national security, Phibun was able to revive a modified but still profoundly anticapitalist approach to rural economic development at the onset of the Asian Cold War. In contrast to Pridi, however, Phibun thought the state apparatus should be used to preserve the Thai peasantry, rather than to dispatch it to the dustbin of history. Although the Phibun regime managed to win parliamentary support for a number of legislative land reform initiatives, it was, ultimately, unable to make all of them stick. The 1954 land law with its social justice provisions was declared unconstitutional in 1958, as the extensive powers with which it endowed the committee encroached on prerogatives properly belonging to the judiciary (Department of Lands 2001b, 216). As a consequence, the 1953 land-titling law— which endowed the land-titling committee with similar powers—became a dead letter (Suthi 1961, 73–74). The land ceiling for Thais (but not for foreigners) was lifted by decree in 1959, after a military coup led by Marshal Sarit Thanarat

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had ousted the Phibun regime (Department of Lands 2001b, 16). Although Sarit thereby signaled that he was prepared to impose fewer constraints on the operation of market forces in the agrarian economy, at least in this particular respect, he and his successors continued in Phibun’s footsteps by strengthening the state’s administrative capabilities and expanding its territorial reach. The effort to modernize and formalize land tenure had not been well served by the method of implementation that had remained in place since the beginning of land titling in 1901. According to the 1901 land-titling law (and its successors) full title could only be issued in areas for which a full cadastral survey had been undertaken. After half a century of implementation, such cadastral surveys had been produced mainly for cities and towns and areas immediately surrounding them. Thus, the great majority of landowners in Thailand, could not be issued full title deeds within the existing legal framework (in the absence of a massive expansion of cadastral surveying). In the early 1960s, however, the government began experimenting with legal and technical innovations that enabled the Department of Lands to begin issuing title deeds in areas that had previously remained beyond its reach. The first such innovation was the introduction, in 1960, of a system of issuing title deeds based on local cadastral surveys.18 The second innovation was the introduction in 1962 of aerial surveying as a method for speeding up the process. As a consequence of these two reforms, the state’s ability to provide formal property rights was dramatically improved. In 1957, the state issued title deeds covering less than 15,000 rai based on ground surveys. In 1966, title deeds were issued for an area covering more than 160,000 rai. This dramatic increase in the pace of land titling can be attributed to the introduction of the new survey methods (see tables 5.1 and 5.2). Local surveys

TABLE 5.1 Area of title deeds issued, by survey method (rai) YEAR

GROUND SURVEY

AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY

LOCAL SURVEY

1957

14,863

0

0

1958

16,290

0

0

1959

4,653

0

0

1960

0

0

49,317

1961

0

0

75,293

1962

0

23,396

62,393

1963

0

2,936

46,277

1964

3,830

88,535

35,070

1965

5,150

130,584

30,187

1966

10,581

99,138

51,508

Source: Department of Lands n.d., 86.

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TABLE 5.2 Numbers of provinces in which different types of survey were undertaken YEAR

GROUND SURVEY

AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY

LOCAL SURVEY

1957

28

0

0

1958

20

0

0

1959

7

0

0

1960

0

0

49

1961

0

0

45

1962

0

1

35

1963

0

1

30

1964

2

2

26

1965

3

2

29

1966

7

2

26

Source: Department of Lands n.d., 86.

were particularly effective in expanding land titling in areas outside the urban enclaves, thereby enabling the state to provide formal property rights in large swathes of the countryside. While aerial surveys had been introduced already in the early 1960s, the use of aerial surveys was further expanded with the adoption, in 1972, of unrectified aerial photos as the basis for issuing NS3 land utilization certificates (Burns 1985, 11, 28–30). This enabled the state to further accelerate the issuance of title deeds. In parallel with the expansion of the bureaucracy, considerable efforts were directed toward changing the culture of Thai officialdom so as to ensure good relations with villagers (Muscat 1990, 171–78; USOM Research Division and ADA Ubol 1967; Connors 2003, 65). These were reflected, for example, at a meeting of provincial land officials in the northeastern province of Sisaket, where the chief official passed on to his local subordinates a message from the minister of interior: “Don’t make trouble for the people. Don’t oppress, bully, and exploit. Absolutely don’t consider the benefit of the state more important than the suffering of the people” He concluded his speech with a reminder of the French Revolution and a warning to his staff that they must avoid behaving in ways that inspired hatred, such as eating, drinking, and laughing in restaurants, where people could see them. “The state admonishes us to stop behavior which could make the people hate us. For example, [displays of] excessive cheerfulness, wastefulness and luxury; oppression and exploitation; and not taking care of the affairs that the people bring to us.” Only through this change in attitude would the state, through its officials, be able to enter the hearts of the people.”19

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Land surveyors sent out from the central administration in Bangkok to the provinces often did not dare enter areas under the influence of the “terrorists”; and if they did, they frequently found that villagers were unwilling to cooperate “because the opposite side is creating dissension and they do not understand the government’s good intentions.”20 In addition to the expansion of the regular DOL staff, the government therefore started to use persons with strong local connections, such as municipal schoolteachers, village headmen, kamnan, district officials, and students, “to clear up a backlog of 50,000 land certificates to be issued to the public prompted by the shortage of land officials” (“Students to aid Land Department” 1971).21 Saiyud Kerdphol, who at the time was heading up the counterinsurgency effort as head of the Communist Suppression Operations Command, had convinced the Ministry of Interior to reconsider its heavily centralized and bureaucratic approach toward land titling: The state was unable to issue land documents to the farmers. There was only one land officer per district plus a clerk. The only work they did was for factories and other large establishments that were able to pay them. There was no way the land officers could keep up with demand. I told the Ministry of Interior that they had to speed up land titling and I arranged for them to get a budget for aerial surveys that could be used to issue title deeds more quickly. The Ministry of Interior was afraid of sending in survey teams to these areas, so I told them to start using local people. That’s when the Ministry of Interior began using teachers, students, etc, to help issue land documents. I pushed for it and provided them with a budget.22 Increasingly, Thai government officials had come to regard the lack of formal property rights in rural areas as one of the causes of the persistent poverty that, in turn, had created the social conditions in which the communist insurgency found nourishment. By not providing farmers expeditiously with formal title to the land, the Thai bureaucracy essentially forced farmers to borrow money at high interest rates on the informal credit market. Thus, the lack of effective property rights contributed to the politically fateful impoverishment of Thai farmers (At 1973). A third great push to formalize land rights began in the 1980s. In conjunction with the preparation of the fifth Five Year Plan, which ran from 1982 to 1986, and discussions concerning a structural adjustment loan, Thai government and World Bank officials also informally discussed rationalizing the property rights regime (Rattanabirabongse et al. 1998, 5). In 1981, a “high priority” land-titling project was fleshed out in consultation between the World Bank, the Australian Development Assistance Bureau, Thailand’s National Economic Social and

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Development Board, and the DOL. A December 1981 project brief outlined the central tasks of the project: accelerated cadastral mapping “designed to cover all unmapped public and private occupied lands within a 15-year time frame”; an accelerated program of title deed issuance; construction of additional land offices in support of a move toward decentralization of land registration; and establishment of a Central Land Valuation Office (World Bank 1981, 3). The Thai Cabinet resolved on 3 April 1984 to implement the Thailand Land Titling Project (TLTP) over a period of twenty years, divided into four phases (1985–89; 1990–94; 1995–99; 2000–2004). By 2001, the World Bank project had resulted in a significant strengthening of the Thai state’s administrative capacity on a wide range of indicators. From 1985 to 2001 the TLTP produced 90,438 cadastral maps and issued 8,488,505 title deeds,23 resulting in an unprecedented ability to penetrate rural society with the state’s cartographic and legal gaze. The political concerns underlying the project were reflected in the regional pattern of implementation. In the first seven years of the project, land deeds were issued only in politically sensitive northern and northeastern provinces: Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phayao, Nan, Phrae, Mae Hong Son, Lampang, Lamphun, Nakhon Ratchasima, Buriram, Surin, and Sisaket. In effect, some of the country’s least valuable land—in economic terms—was given top priority. In addition, 198 new subprovincial land offices were opened across the country,24 so as to reduce the costs to the population associated with the use of the formal legal system for conducting land-related transactions. The Land Code was overhauled and authority over land rights administration decentralized.25 The reform of the administrative and legal infrastructure was intended to ensure that the land-titling effort would provide the state with a continual “moving picture” rather than a “snapshot” of the property landscape.26 The World Bank project was initiated at time when the Thai government had come to view the insurgency less as an evil foreign-sponsored plot and more as a rational political reaction against the state’s own inadequacies in addressing social problems and inequities. Prime Ministerial Order No. 66/2523 of 1980 had outlined a political strategy for defeating communism. It declared that “to achieve a quick victory means to take political offensive and to instill in the people’s mind a recognition that this land is theirs to protect and preserve and that it is partly they who are the owners, rulers and beneficiaries.” And it continued: “Social injustice must be eliminated at every level, from local to national levels. Corruption and malfeasance in the bureaucracy must be decisively prevented and suppressed. And all exploitation must be done away with and the security of the people’s life and property provided” (cited in Suchit 1987, 91, emphasis added). The World Bank’s decision to fund the land-titling project was somewhat surprising, for two reasons. First, the bank had limited experience with institutional

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projects of this kind—having focused, in the past, on financing the construction of physical infrastructure. Indeed, the Thailand project was the first of its kind for the bank. Second, there were no clear indications that this type of project had high economic priority in Thailand. In an internal evaluation of the project, it was noted that The findings of a 1980 sector strategy review might suggest that land administration was not a priority area for Bank intervention. First, land tenure in Thailand was relatively secure, based on a homesteading tradition that allows any citizen to claim up to four hectares for his family. Second, landholdings were relatively equal, with many small and few large landholders, and no apparent trend toward increasing property concentration. Third, the country did not have a large landless population. And fourth, farmers’ access to credit was relatively good and getting better. Thus, based on the sector review, there was little scope or justification for the Bank to give priority to land administration (World Bank 1999, 2). While the 1980 sector review may not have considered land administration a top economic priority, neither did it ignore the matter: “Any programs designed to increase farmers’ incomes will be faced with the immediate problem that many households, especially in the outlying areas of the Northeast and Upper North, have no title to their land” (World Bank 1980, 91). The report also observed that many farmers, particularly in the north and northeast of the country, were frequently forced to abandon cash crop production and return to subsistence farming due to their inability to obtain credit at reasonable rates. The World Bank’s proposed solution, however, was to redirect the operations of the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), the state agricultural bank (World Bank 1980, 94). The counterinsurgency theme was again invoked in a DOL report of 1984 that explained the decision to go ahead with the World Bank–financed land-titling program. The report listed “political stability” as the most important benefit that would result from the TLTP. “When the people feel secure in their landownership, they will love and treasure their own land and the nation (prathet chat).” In addition, the land-titling project would reduce competition and conflict over land and thus “bring peace and order to the country” (tham hai koet khwam sangop riaproi nai banmüang) (Department of Lands 1984, 5). The economic arguments for the land-titling project drew on straightforward neoclassical economics: giving farmers secure property rights and access to capital markets would allow them to invest in their farms, thus increasing productivity and incomes. In short, the discourse surrounding the land-titling project drew on well-established causal beliefs linking rural land rights, poverty, and insurgency.

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Implementation of the TLTP was, in many ways, uneventful. While many other development initiatives became embroiled in drawn-out struggles between the state, on the one hand, and local communities and a flourishing NGO movement, on the other hand, the land-titling project attracted little negative attention.27

Complementary Institutional Reforms The acceleration of land titling did not proceed in an institutional vacuum. Two aspects of the institutional context are of particular interest, as changes in these areas helped create the conditions under which market-facilitating land titling could be conceived of as an appropriate response to the threat to national security. The traditional link between land and national security was centered on the questions of foreign ownership of land and of the emergence of landlordism as a result of moneylending activities. These two issues were often linked conceptually and tended to be embodied in the officially vilified Chinese moneylender and merchant. Unless these threats to the “backbone” of the nation could be assuaged, formal land titling and registration were unlikely to proceed in ways that facilitated the operation of rural land and credit markets. Parallel institutional changes addressed these traditional security fears, however, thus paving the way for the further acceleration of land titling and development of markets.

Revocation of Treaty-Based Land Rights For much of the twentieth century, fear of land alienation had provided a political justification for official neglect of formalization of landownership. The question of foreign landownership acquired new political salience as the U.S. presence in Thailand grew, and the Bangkok regime became increasingly vulnerable to the CPT charge that it was “selling the people and the country” to foreign imperialists. The expansion of land titling was thus accompanied by increasing official concern about the inability to limit foreign acquisition of land. Sak Thaiwat, the spirited director general of the DOL, observed that “Thai farmers are already being exploited by persons of Chinese ancestry” (“Phaendin ni pen khong khon thai” 1968, 115)—and that this contained a lesson that ought to be remembered. What was this lesson? In effect, that the communist rhetoric probably had it right: Thailand once again had to worry about the dangers associated with the penetration of Western capital. As Thailand liberalized its economy and strove for accelerated economic growth, some argued that it was time to remove restrictions on the operations of large-scale, foreign-owned agro-industrial

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corporations. But Sak Thaiwat explained that this sort of neocolonialism would not stand, and would be opposed by the Ministry of Interior: “If aliens apply to establish a palm oil factory they will need at least 10,000 rai. If there are 100 applications, we will lose 1 million rai. This will affect the safety of the country (sawatdiphap khong banmüang)” (“Athibodi thidin phoey korani tangdao cha hup thi tham kin” 1967–68, 129).28 Because of the continued sensitivity regarding foreign landholdings, Thailand sought to renegotiate the international treaties that still gave foreigners rights to acquire land in Thailand. The first treaty embodying such a revision was the Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations between Thailand and the United States, signed in 1966. At the same time that the U.S. presence is Thailand was peaking—because of the presence of military bases and the inflow of foreign aid—U.S. nationals were being restricted in their ability to acquire land. The previous treaty, signed in 1937, had allowed U.S. nationals resident in those U.S. states that allowed foreigners to acquire land to benefit from most favored nation treatment in regard to land acquisition in Siam. The 1966 Thai-U.S. treaty contained no wording on land rights whatsoever (Somchit 1969, 14). As a consequence, citizens of the United States lost their treaty-based MFN privileges. At the signing ceremony, Thailand’s foreign minister, Thanat Khoman, remarked that the new treaty, which was to be the first of a series, would “go a long way to remove the final vestiges of unequal treatment and the remnants of anachronisms” (Thanat 1966). The following year the Thai government denounced the Franco-Thai Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation of 1937. As a consequence, French subjects soon also lost their remaining treaty-based privileges.29 Within the next few years, treaty provisions that had given citizens of a further seventeen different countries the right to acquire land in Thailand were finally revoked, thereby putting an end to the system of bilateral treaties that since 1855 had regulated the rights of foreigners to acquire land in Thailand (Ministry of Interior 1971).30 A final revision of the treaty regime thus abolished the last remaining aspects of the nineteenth-century system of unequal treaties, and provided the Thai state with reassurance that foreign land acquisitions would be left entirely to its discretion. For the United States and other Western powers, the loss of the treaty-based privileges did not necessarily jeopardize any significant economic interests.31 It did, however, comport with a political strategy toward the containment of communism that sought to awaken nationalist sentiments in the anticommunist cause. In that regard, the nationalist rhetoric of Sak Thaiwat and others hit exactly the right note. Following the abolition of treaty privileges, the government would be fully empowered to mitigate the potentially negative externalities resulting from

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foreign land acquisitions, irrespective of whether those externalities were understood in terms of real security concerns or in terms of nationalist sentiment.

Establishment of a State-Owned Agricultural Bank In the void created by the absence of institutional sources of capital, the Thai rural credit market had become dominated by informal lending. From a political perspective, the informal credit market contained two kinds of relations: those that were regarded as politically safe (borrowing within family and kinship groups, and among neighbors), and those that were perceived as potentially dangerous (indebtedness to “middlemen”). The latter form was expected to lead to land alienation, lack of investment in land, impoverishment, and rural instability. To improve the living conditions of farmers, “middlemen” would therefore have to be eliminated (Sawaeng 1969). Again, as with the case of the alien “invasion,” there was relatively little empirical support for the notion that “middlemen” played an important role in the impoverishment of the Thai peasantry. Other factors, such as a regressive taxation system, the burden of which fell most heavily on rice farmers, probably played a more significant role.32 “The belief that farmers are deeply in debt due to vicious middlemen, has continued to hold sway in governmental circles although the evidence suggests that the middleman theory is largely a myth” (Ingle 1972, 85). Historically, the state’s main vehicle of competition with the informal credit market had been the cooperative movement, first established in 1916, with the main objective of preventing the dispossession of farmers by their creditors (Pantum, Wirat, and Long 1965, 56–57). However, after fifty years the cooperatives had reached only around 10 percent of farmers, and played a marginal role in the extension of rural credit. “Almost all of Thai cooperative societies are small, insufficiently financed, inefficiently guided, loosely organized, poorly managed, and at best, appear only as a farmers’ group that plagues itself with rigid rules and excessive paperwork” (Supachai 1972, 155). The fact that some farmers were getting handouts from the state (which is what the cooperatives in effect amounted to) while others did not exacerbated rural income inequalities (Meyer, Baker, and Tongroj 1979, 76) and caused irritation and discontent. The government was perceived to be playing favorites in rural society (lüak thi rakmak thi chang) (Sawaeng 1970, 61). Proposals to establish a more effective and encompassing rural credit program to replace the ineffective cooperative system had initially been shot down by the World Bank. In the 1959 study, the authors argued that “in view of the high risks and the administrative hurdles which exist, it would not appear justified to make any substantial financial outlay on a rural credit program in the near future”

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(World Bank 1959, 207). A few years later, however, the BAAC was established, as was the Committee for Farmers’ Assistance to address the issue of peasant poverty (Office of the Prime Minister 1966, 1). The BAAC was urged to expand lending in order to “stem the turnover in land titles” and stop the rise in tenancy in the central region (“Cabinet approves aid for farmers” 1969). The creation and expansion of a state-run agricultural bank made land titling on a massive scale a less politically risky proposition than it otherwise would have been. The state’s greatest fear was that formalizing property rights in land would lead to the gradual dispossession of the farming class and a massive transfer of land to the ubiquitous “middlemen” who provided farmers with capital and access to produce and input markets. When farmers borrowed money from the state bank, in contrast, it would be up to the state’s discretion—and political judgment—to what degree delinquent lenders should lose their collateral (land) through strict enforcement of contractual obligations. Thus, what made the “property revolution” politically possible was not the existence of capital markets per se—but rather the existence of a rapidly expanding state-run organization that was capable of channeling private capital into the hands of farmers.

Democratization as an Alternative Explanation My explanation for the formalization of rural land rights has emphasized the role of the threat of communism in motivating the state to strengthen its capacity to define and enforce land rights. The security threat is not, however, the only possible explanation for this change in the Thai state’s attitude. Democratization constitutes a plausible alternative explanation. A rapidly growing literature has established theoretical and empirical links between democratic political competition and growth-promoting and welfare-enhancing public policy outputs.33 As a country moves from authoritarian rule toward more inclusive political arrangements, one would expect an increase in political competition to alter the incentives for the country’s political leaders in such a way that they would be motivated to channel more resources toward the provision of public goods and “public services” (i.e., quasi-public and private goods with large externalities). Even though Thailand underwent a fitful process of democratization in the period covered in this chapter,34 there are two fundamental reasons to doubt that the change in regime type as such was a major force driving the formalization of rural land rights. First, the timing is not quite right, as the “big push”—improvements in the regulatory framework, adoption of new technologies, the expansion of DOL offices and staff, and other measures—was under way already in the 1950s and 1960s,

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well before democratic competition would have been able to shape the logic of political life. Some of the many twists and turns in Thailand’s political development are captured graphically in figure 5.5. Apart from the dramatic volatility evidenced, it is clear that that the country’s political system had to be placed at the autocratic end of the regime spectrum before the 1970s, and that the consolidation of democratic institutions and practices was a product of the 1980s and, especially, the 1990s. Second, the process of democratization was by no means unrelated to the communist challenge. The Red scare engendered efforts by the Thai state to strengthen “democracy” alongside more “traditional” Thai institutions such as the monarchy and the Buddhist monastic order, the Sangha. The advancement of democratic ideals—and the process of democratization—were significant components of the psychological warfare strategy of the counterinsurgency state in Thailand. It was believed that democratization, at least in the long term, was a means by which the communist insurgency could be contained. As a consequence, the state took upon itself the task of “developing the population such that it was fit for democracy” (Connors 2003, 63). As the insurgency dragged on, the slow pace of democratization was identified as part of the problem. In the 1980s, accelerated political democratization was explicitly framed as a counterinsurgency policy, and as such led and managed by Prem Tinasulanond (Kanok 1983, 18ff.; Alagappa 1987, 177–78). 10 8 6 2 2000

1995

1990

1985

1980

1975

1970

1965

1960

−2

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0 1950

Polity2 score

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FIGURE 5.5 Thailand’s Polity2 score, 1950–2000. The Polity2 variable ranges from 10 (strongly democratic) to −10 (strongly autocratic). The standard Polity variable assigns a score of −88 to years of “transition,” but the Polity2 variable prorates the transition across the period in question. Based on Marshall and Jaggers 2010.

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In effect, the specter of communism acted as a catalyst for both the formalization of rural land rights and the democratization of political life. In addition, the formalization of rural land rights was in some respects a precondition for democratization. As Connors (2003) has reminded us, impoverished, subsistence-oriented peasants provided, in the view of Thai elites, poor material out of which to construct a working democracy. Thailand’s farmers were not Jeffersonian yeomen—yet. Before Thai elites would let democracy go ahead, the Thai peasantry first had to undergo a process of petit-embourgeoisement and middleclassification. This implied that the state had to provide support to the farmers, so that they could reach the desired level of socio-economic development, where they would be able to effectively participate in democratic governance (Ministry of Interior 1973, 17; 1977, 35). In the official democracy discourse, rural poverty was identified as the main economic obstacle to democracy. A population that was preoccupied with making a livelihood was unlikely to develop an acceptable level of political consciousness and concern for the public weal (Connors 2003, 78). Rural poverty was, in turn, partly to be blamed on low levels of farm investment and the inability of farmers to access credit at reasonable rates of interest (Ministry of Interior 1977, 28; 1973, 11). The formalization of rural land rights and other rural development initiatives by the state were therefore intended not only to promote economic development—but also to create the socio-economic preconditions for democracy. That this was how formalization of rural land rights was understood is occasionally revealed in the rhetoric surrounding state ceremonies. Inaugurating the provincial land office in the northeastern province of Sakon Nakhon in 1966, Praphat Charusathian, a member of the ruling troika, observed that “when the people have security in their landownership, they will of course be satisfied with the security in their property and know the value of democracy” (“Phithi poet tük mai salaklang changwat sakon nakhon lae samnakngan thidin changwat sakon nakhon” 1966). The director general of the Social Welfare Department, officiating at a title deed distribution ceremony in 1971, used the occasion to educate the villagers about the link between private property rights, formalized by the state, and liberal democracy: “To receive these title deeds is a good thing not only for the recipients themselves. It is also a reflection of the stability and progress of the entire nation both socially and economically, because ownership rights in land are of course a symbol of the people’s freedom, in accordance with the liberal democratic form of government. This is in contrast with the communist ideology which aims to abolish private property rights in land and assets” (“Chaek chanot thidin thi rayong” 1971). In short, the formalization of land rights was not merely a technocratic solution to the socio-economic problem of low productivity in Thai agriculture and

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the resulting impoverishment of Thai farmers. Neither was it merely a public relations campaign by a rightist military dictatorship threatened by the advance of communism in Asia. The formalization of rural land rights was also part of the political education of the peasantry, a way of raising their political consciousness and ensuring their loyalty to the Thai state and its official values, in preparation for political democratization. The two explanations—threat-induced versus democracy-driven change— are not mutually exclusive. The communist threat and democratization could both serve as mechanisms for improving the quality of government. The communist insurgency provided Thai citizens with an “exit” option, and the prospect of exit can serve to discipline leaders. Similarly, “voice” may compel leaders to provide public goods. In the 1950s and 1960s, the lack of “voice” in the Thai political system was, to a certain extent, compensated for by an increasingly serious threat of “exit,” which acted as a catalyst for the first serious push to formalize rural land rights. Figure 5.6 provides a graphic illustration of how the threat of communism acted as a catalyst that sparked a self-reinforcing political economy dynamic that sustained the land rights formalization effort. By granting greater recognition of farmers’ landownership, the state effectively expanded their (economic) citizenship. In the Thai case, the threat of communist subversion and aggression served as a catalyst for such an expansion. This was, in turn, related to the expansion of the political citizenship of the rural population. Three principal dynamics were at work here. First, through its positive impact on economic growth, the formalization of rural land rights helped overcome (real or imagined) socio-economic obstacles to democratization. Second, even in the absence of any real economic effect, land titling was imagined to serve as a hands-on civics lesson, part of the

Catalyst

Self-reinforcing dynamic

Threat of communism

Expansion of economic citizenship

Expansion of political citizenship

Economic growth FIGURE 5.6 A model of institutional change.

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allegedly necessary “political education” of the citizenry. The most important effect in both these regards may well have been to reduce elite anxieties about democratization.35 Third, the subsequent expansion of the scope for “voice” in Thailand’s political system enabled voters who had not yet benefited from the formalization of rural land rights to demand equal treatment. Whether elected or unelected, representatives of the state were unable to legitimate a regime in which only some farmers—those who had benefited from the early land-titling initiatives—enjoyed formal rights to the land, while less lucky farmers were denied such rights. The formalization of rural land rights is an endeavor of great scope and complexity. The start-up costs were high and the benefits—economic and political—long-term rather than short-term. The implementation of nationwide land titling in Thailand stretched over several decades. The success of such an ambitious endeavor is predicated on sustained political commitment. Given the extent of political instability in Thai politics in this period, this is in many ways a surprising outcome. The literature is rife with (plausible) arguments about the inability of Thai governments to make their political commitments to “good governance” and other developmental initiatives credible and sustainable, especially since the country’s democratization process has become associated with the adoption of short time horizons, rampant cronyism, and a general undermining of state capacity (MacIntyre 2003; Hutchcroft 1999; Mutebi 2008). This is a generally inhospitable environment for sustained institutional strengthening. The sustainability of the land-titling effort is striking also when compared with some other, more ephemeral, attempts to “win the hearts and minds” of the Thai peasantry. The Village Scouts, for example, was a “quasi-fascist, quasifarcical right-wing movement” that had been founded by the state in 1971. The movement peaked in 1976 and had lost its relevance by 1981 (Bowie 1997, 5, 22–23). The appeal of the Village Scouts was based entirely on emotion. In contrast, land titling fused emotional and functional appeals. The land title distribution ceremonies (phithi chaek chanot thidin or phithi mop chanot thidin) fit into the Thai cultural framework of benevolent, gift-bringing state officials. In addition, the ceremonies were often held in Buddhist temple areas, and sometimes included chanting monks, devotional acts such as incense burning, speeches by local and regional bureaucratic dignitaries, and visiting VIPs from Bangkok who handed out the deeds, one by one, to the assembled villagers.36 Then the deeds could be taken to the bank and used as security for a loan. The expansion of institutional rural credit was similarly linked to Buddhist notions of royal virtue. Bangkok Bank sought to portray its provision of rural credit as “king-like acts, as almsgiving or benevolent renunciation on behalf of the nation’s poor farmers, rather than as usury or economics, acts of worldly attachment” (Gray 1992, 57).

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The royal family provided support for this symbolism “by allowing this and a few other select banks to perform kathin [alms-giving ceremonies] at royal temples, thus momentarily freeing the banks and their owners from habitual semantic linkages equating Chinese merchants with greed and worldly attachment” (Gray 1992, 57). Irrespective of regime type, these powerful associations—benevolence of the powerful, the creation of wealth, religious morality—has, through land titling, been harnessed by unelected and elected representatives of the state alike. Like the Village Scouts, land titling was a way for the state to demonstrate its presence in otherwise neglected villages. Unlike the Village Scouts, this link was more than symbolic and transitory. Land titling facilitated the emergence of a more permanent relationship of mutual dependency—with farmers using their title deeds as security for capital from BAAC and commercial banks.

The Collapse of the Insurgency and the Bifurcated Property Rights Regime One of the observable implications of the securitization-centered explanation for the strengthening of rural property rights is that the collapse of the communist insurgency by the mid-1980s would be expected to lead the state to lose enthusiasm not only for the Village Scouts but perhaps also for land titling. Such a tendency cannot be readily discerned as regards the DOL’s land-titling initiatives. On the contrary, with the (temporary) advent of “full” democracy, and in response to popular pressure channeled through Parliament, the DOL, which was already implementing one of the largest land-titling projects in the world, initiated a second project to speed up the process in provinces that were not yet scheduled to be reached by TLTP (Department of Lands 1990, 52; Raingan kanprachum sapha phuthaen ratsadon khrang thi 12 thüng khrang thi 15 samai saman lem 5 pho so 2532, 614–21). This illustrates that democracy and “voice” kicked in as new drivers of government policy in regard to rural land rights at a time when security concerns and the threat of “exit” gradually lost their political potency. In addition, continued acceleration of land titling became linked to a “new” security threat: that of environmental degradation in the form of deforestation. In truth this was not an entirely novel issue. Sarit had pioneered this securitizing move: “Forests are significant natural resources for the lives of Thai people and the existence of Thailand. Those who destroy the forests are the enemy who destroy the nation’s security” (quoted in Pinkaew 2002). Sarit’s rhetoric was perhaps less reflective of genuinely felt fears and more a mirror of a U.S. desire to engage in conservation so as to soften its image as a coldly capitalistic nation. Caring for the national patrimony was another symbolic weapon against

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communist ideology. As a consequence, a dramatic expansion of protected forests in Thailand received enthusiastic support from the U.S. government (Usher 2009, 168). Indeed, it is striking that Thailand received more U.S. support for what effectively amounted to the nationalization of large swathes of the country’s territory than for efforts to provide individual farmers with good formal title. In some ways this push mirrored developments relating to private land—for example, legal and regulatory reforms aimed at strengthening the governmental framework for defining and enforcing property rights. The legal framework for the protection of nature was elaborated in the first half of the 1960s, with the enactment of the Wildlife Conservation Act of 1960, the National Park Act of 1961, and the National Forest Reserve Act of 1964. Prior to the enactment of these laws, “forest,” as a legal category, had, in effect, been defined in negative terms, as all that land that no one had yet legally claimed. “Forest” was now defined in positive terms: all that land that the Ministry of Agriculture said was “forest,” and it soon began declaring ever larger areas as “forests.” It was even decided that 40 percent of the country’s total land area was to remain “forest.” The area of land classified as “forest reserve” increased dramatically over the following decades, and by the 1980s the Royal Forestry Department (RFD) had won jurisdiction over almost half the country’s total land area (Vandergeest 1996a, 167). In theory at least, farmers were thus excluded from appropriating the land by bringing it under cultivation (Vandergeest 1996a, 166). In reality, the new policies were poorly implemented. A key reason for this was that the goal of “securing” forests conflicted with the goal of preventing the farmers from joining or supporting the communist insurgency. The new legal conception of “forest” ran counter to the prevailing norms and understandings in rural Thai society, and the sudden imposition of humanly devised limitations on exploitation of the land frontier violated what we might call the “moral economy” of the Thai peasant (Lohmann 1993, 187; Scott 1976). The RFD and other government agencies therefore tacitly allowed large numbers of Thai farmers to settle on—or continue to occupy (Fujita 2003)—land that had been classified as “forest” and therefore formally belonged to the state. In the context of an ongoing communist insurgency, however, Thai governments were “reluctant to move settlers off their land owing to the fear of alienating those who are among the poorest of Thailand’s rural poor and in areas until recently only under limited central government control” (Hirsch 1990, 169). In fact, the Ministry of Interior would follow farmers into the newly deforested areas and organize the population into proper administrative villages, and made sure that these, in time, came to sport all the government services usually found in Thai villages: police, schools, health stations, agricultural extension services, Buddhist temples—and collection of land taxes (but not, notably, the issuance of title deeds).

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While cognizant of the importance of forest conservation, state elites no doubt viewed communism as a more urgent threat. Through logging followed by agricultural settlement, forested “rebel zones” could be minimized (Hunsaker 1996, 20) and the state and nation secured. As a result of this laissez-faire approach, Thailand experienced one of the fastest rates of deforestation seen anywhere in the world in the late twentieth century. Forested areas, that before World War II had covered 70 percent of the country’s territory, had fallen to less than 30 percent by the mid-1980s—well below the official target of 40 percent (Trébuil 1995, 69). Before the mid-1980s, there were few indications that farmers perceived their property rights in land as particularly insecure, even if they had settled in forest areas where they were unable to claim de jure property rights to the land that they de facto controlled. The threat of eviction by the state was so limited that farmers cultivating forest land without any land title “regard it as their own in much the same way as do those farmers with legal title” (Hirsch 1990, 169). Surveys of farmers who had settled in protected forest areas revealed that they had limited past experience of eviction, and few fears for the future in that regard. The main benefit associated with titled land in comparison with untitled land lay not in reduced threat of eviction but rather in improved access to long-term credit from institutional sources such as commercial banks (Feder 1987, 21). The fact that there was “no obvious resistance by local people to the institution of national forest reserve” during the height of the Cold War—including during the democratic interlude 1973–76 when farmer activism flourished—is analytically significant (Fujita 2003, 208–9). It is an indication that farmers did not feel particularly vulnerable as cultivators of state-owned land. One reason for this perhaps surprising sense of security is that many farmers remained unaware that the land they cultivated had been classified as forest reserve. The classification of land as “forest” was initially a largely cartographic affair: protected forest areas could be seen on maps published in the Royal Gazette, but they would not necessarily be demarcated on the ground. Thus, the security threat that had induced the Thai state to strengthen its ability to administer formalized private land rights simultaneously induced it to overlook illegal encroachment on what was, officially, state land. The threat of communism thus served as a constraint on the state’s ability to enforce its own claims to land. During the height of the Cold War, the efforts to strengthen state capacity to formalize private property rights in land was therefore not mirrored in parallel efforts to build state capacity to enforce increasingly extravagant—but largely theoretical—state claims to landownership, particularly as regards forests. Policies that could win the hearts and minds of farmers would be seriously undermined by policies designed to protect forests. As a consequence, the more serious

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and immediate threat (communism) came to influence the more substantive securitized policy practices, whereas the threat deemed to be less imminent (environmental destruction) became the target of more symbolic interventions, decoupled from actual policy practices. However, once the threat of communism had become much less urgent in the mid-1980s, the “communist constraint” on the formulation and implementation of government policy in relation to property rights in land gradually loosened. Suddenly, it thus became possible to elevate the presence of millions of small farmers on what was officially categorized as protected forests to the status of an environmental “problem” and, indeed, a matter of national security. Newfound political determination to close the land frontier not only in theory but also in practice was signaled by the enactment of the National Forestry Policy of 1985, which envisioned that degraded forest reserves would be transformed into commercial eucalyptus plantations that would supply pulp and paper mills with raw materials (Christensen and Akin 1994, 648–49). The Thai army threw its support behind this ostensibly environmental ambition, and launched initiatives such as Isaan Khiaw (The Green Northeast) and Harapan Baru (New Hope for the South), in which military men and villagers would join forces to reforest the land (Hunsaker 1996, 21). While these initiatives largely failed to take root, the trend gained new momentum in the wake of a natural disaster. In 1988, heavy rains, floods, and mudslides hit parts of southern Thailand, killing hundreds of people and causing significant material damage. This was interpreted as evidence of the negative consequences associated with a lax attitude toward loggers and “squatters.” The apparently catastrophic incompetence of the Thai state in the area of environmental protection was deemed to warrant further securitization of forest conservation and reforestation (Boonchong 2003; Delang 2005; Lang 2002).37 A complete ban on commercial logging was enacted in 1989. Thailand’s royal family threw its considerable symbolic capital behind forests and other green causes, with Princess Chulabhorn leading Thailand’s delegation to the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (England 1998, 244). The postinsurgency effort to securitize forest policy took the form of a high-modernist, military-led scheme aimed at evicting six million farmers in order to make way for corporate tree plantations. Some of these were, ironically, supposed to be developed by the erstwhile enemy—China. The military resettlement scheme which became known as Khor Jor Kho (its Thai acronym) eventually had to be scuppered in the face of intense opposition from affected farmers and NGO activists who viewed it is a threat to the “backbone of the nation” (Pye 2005; Kurashima and Monton 2005, 83–85). In addition, industrial-scale tree plantations were blocked by a cabinet resolution passed in 1992; as a consequence

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commercial tree planting has had to expand on land that is still controlled by small-scale farmers (Barney 2004). Early attempts to translate the discursive move of declaring “forests” a referent object of securitization into actual security practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s were therefore not entirely successful—mainly because of countermobilization and lobbying for countersecuritization—by small-scale farmers occupying state land who demanded official recognition and formalization of their claims to land (Baker 2000; Missingham 2003; Lohmann 1993, 189–90).38 As a consequence of conflicting securitization processes, Thailand developed a bifurcated property rights regime in the course of the Cold War. Simply put, farmers occupying private land (the majority) came to enjoy much stronger property rights than rural “squatters” on public land (a significant minority). This has led some scholarly studies of property rights in Thailand to somewhat misleading assessments. Christensen and Akin (1994), as well as Doner (2009, 113), argue that the Thai state has created a particularly problematic muddle in regard to the rural property rights regime, characterized by government agencies unable to define and enforce property rights of farmers with any clarity or certainty. This captures an important dimension of the Thai property rights regime, but it does not apply to land that is classified as belonging to the private domain. Doner (2009, 113) further argues that the sorry state of property rights arrangements in rural Thailand can be accounted for by the availability, until fairly recently, of a large and open land frontier, moderate external security threats, and the absence of any “politically powerful group interested in promoting . . . the establishment of comprehensive rural property rights.” In contrast, my argument is that the Thai state responded to the threat of communism and the imperative to win hearts and minds partly by significantly strengthening administrative capacities to enforce private land rights, and also by ignoring and even encouraging encroachment on state land. This split is ultimately grounded in a conceptual distinction—between private and public domain—that is found in property rights regimes all over the world. In Cold War–era Thailand, this divide served as the basis for the development of what at one level appears to be divergent security practices—strengthen formal property rights here, but not there—but on closer inspection is driven by a single political logic. The state sought to provide farmers with access to land, capital, and other requirements for prosperity in order to avoid alienating them and, at best, to engender loyalty to itself. During the Cold War period, this bifurcation of the land regime had limited meaning at the level of lived experience. Efforts to articulate and pursue a “new” security agenda have been met with considerable resistance, in no small part because it has become associated with policy

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instruments deemed inimical in relation to an older conception of security: the welfare of the “backbone of the nation.”

Thailand in Comparative Perspective: The Philippines The Philippines has largely failed, despite many attempts, to create an administrative machinery capable of defining and enforcing property rights in land. Unfavorable colonial legacies lie at the heart of this failure. However, subtle differences in the geopolitical context and perceptions of the communist threat also explain variation in the degree to which and the ways in which human-land relations were treated as security-related in Thailand and the Philippines. There are good reasons to expect the Philippines to have developed institutions of property rights in land that are stronger than in Thailand. In 1960, the population-land ratio was higher in the Philippines than in Thailand, and the difference in the level of demographic pressure on the land has, furthermore, become more pronounced over the past four decades (see figure 5.7). A simple functionalist model of institutional change would thus predict that the Philippines would lead Thailand in terms of the development of a sophisticated

7 6

Philippines

Thailand

Persons per ha

5 4 3 2 1

1 200

6 199

1 199

6 198

1 198

6 197

1 197

6 196

196

1

0 Year FIGURE 5.7 Population-agricultural land ratios in Thailand and the Philippines, 1961–2001. Calculated based on estimates of each country’s total population and total agricultural area. Agricultural land includes arable land, land under permanent crops, and permanent pasture. FAOSTAT 2006.

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rural land rights regime. Because of higher demographic pressure on the land, the Philippine state would have more to gain (compared to the Thai state) from defining property rights and reducing transaction costs, so as to facilitate the more productive utilization of land as a (scarce) factor of production. Furthermore, the Philippines’ long experience with democratic politics, interrupted only by Marcos’s dictatorship from 1972 to 1986, suggests that if democracy—the exercise of “voice”—is the driver of public goods provision, then it is here and not in Thailand that we should see early and sustained efforts by the state to create a solid institutional order underpinning economic development. In addition, the Philippines has faced serious threats from domestic insurgents. The Hukbalahap Rebellion peaked in 1950–51 with 8 Huks per 10,000 people, and the armed struggle by the Maoist New People’s Army (NAP) peaked in 1989 with 6 guerillas per 10,000. In Thailand, by contrast, the communist insurgency peaked at the more modest ratio of 3 guerillas per 10,000 (Linantud 2008, 652). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Philippines was the only country in East and Southeast Asia in which an active, large-scale communist insurgency constituted a major threat to national security (Hedman 2006, 189–90; Hutchcroft and Rocamora 2003, 260–61). In official rhetoric, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the NAP are still depicted as the leading political force undermining the building of a “Strong Republic” in the Philippines (PIA 2004, passim). One would be justified in thinking that Filipino state elites would be likely to strengthen rural institutions in the face of such considerable and durable domestic security threats—especially so given the fact that the United States took an early interest in reforming land tenure institutions in the Philippines. The so-called Bell Mission report of 1950 resulted in American support for a number of smaller projects in the area. The famous Hardie report of 1952, which advocated redistributive land reform on the Japanese and South Korean model as a means by which to shore up Philippine society against the threat of communism, recommended that land-titling and registration procedures be overhauled so as to provide for “expeditious handling of the great number of land title transfers and registrations which will be involved in a thoroughgoing tenure reform program” (Hardie report cited on page 37 in annex to Monk 1990). Financially backed by U.S. aid, land was titled at an unprecedented rate in the course of the 1950s.39 Nevertheless, the formal property rights regime has remained exceedingly weak in the Philippines. Whatever quantitative improvements were made in the 1950s, U.S. aid had limited lasting effect on the efficiency and integrity of Philippine land administration. The decrepit state of the formal property rights regime in the Philippines was reflected in a World Bank project document that pointed out that not all privately owned land is titled; many titles have been lost

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or destroyed; there are few cadastral maps and those that exist are not integrated with the Registry of Deeds. The legal-bureaucratic backbone of the formal property rights regime is so weak, according to the report, that it has “eroded public confidence and trust in the titling and registration system as a whole” (World Bank 2000, 1). The inability of the state to establish its writ over the land is also reflected in the proliferation of counterfeit title deeds (Cruz 2003). Contrasting the Philippine and Thai cases thus reminds us that quantitative changes in the formalization of land rights mean very little if the titling and registration system falls apart in the process. Why, then, is it that the Philippines has such a low level of state capacity in respect to the definition and enforcement of formal property rights in land? Most studies of the political economy of the Philippines emphasize the importance of the country’s landowning oligarchy. Students of the process of land reform in the Philippines have frequently argued that the political prominence of this elite accounts for the failure of redistributive land reform. This fact can also account for the failure of land rights formalization. Modern land administration based on the Torrens system of land titling was established in the Philippines by the U.S. colonial administration in 1902—one year after a similar law had been enacted in Siam—alongside a system of homesteading for peasants. But the colonial land administration remained tenuous, as neither smallholders nor large landowners made much use of the official landtitling system. Homesteaders often tried to make use of the system, but saw their claims rejected and canceled by a bureaucracy that was dominated by rural elites, and the land they had cleared subsequently appropriated by landlords (Wolters 1999, 123). At the same time, large landowners apparently “feared the tax implications” of registering their properties with the state, and they were not compelled to do so since registration was voluntary (Putzel 1992, 53). This early failure of the colonial state to capture the regulation of property rights in land in rural areas points to what was to become characteristic of twentieth-century Philippine state making: the extent to which the writ of the central state extended into rural areas was conditioned by the extent to which it served the interests of the landed elite. Why has it not served such interests? One likely answer is that the issue has been linked too closely to taxation and—as in the Hardie Report—to plans and demands for redistributive land reform. In the Philippines, a highly inegalitarian distribution of land assets means that redistributive land reform has had a prominent position on the political agenda for several decades. It is generally accepted that it has failed to be implemented in a way that comports with the stated goals of land reform laws and programs. This failure can be explained, in part, by the absence of the necessary bureaucratic machinery in general and the

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lack of a functioning property register in particular (Bello 2005, 39–40, 46–47, 51). A government policy of redistributive land reform presupposes the existence of a fairly advanced system of land administration, which links owners to plots of land, monitors and regulates subsequent land transactions, and is able to deploy coercive capacity in order to enforce state law. None of these things existed (and still do not exist) in the Philippines. But this merely begs the question: why do they not exist? Putzel offers a compelling answer: “The absence of a bureaucratic machinery capable of carrying out reform and the lack of adequate land records was the consequence of a particular balance of power: since the colonial period, landowning interests have shackled the bureaucracy and blocked every attempt at comprehensive land registration” (1992, 374). In the Philippines it thus seems that land registration became associated with matters for which the landed elite had a rather limited amount of enthusiasm: land taxes and redistributive land reform. With much to lose and little to gain from land registration, large landowners could mobilize political resources to thwart efforts aimed at strengthening state capacity in areas that potentially posed a threat to their wealth and power. Consistent with this argument, Philippine elites have made significant investments in private protection of property rights—for example by keeping private armies—rather than allowing the protection of private property rights to become a matter for the state. The property rights regime in the Philippines has been structured as if the definition and enforcement of rural land rights were a private good rather that a public good. In addition to their vested interest, state elites in the Philippines had good reason to be comparatively complacent as regards national security. First, the Philippine Islands were protected by water from Asia’s main communist states. Unlike Thailand, they did not share any land borders with potentially falling or actually fallen dominoes (Linantud 2008). Second, there was no Filipino equivalent to the pan-Thai nationalist imagination that magnified both the threat of communism and the opportunity associated with a successful projection of anticommunist nationalism into Thailand’s periphery—and to the imagined ethnic brethren beyond its borders. In comparison, the indigenous profile of the Philippine revolution “had a soothing effect,” which may explain the lack of alarm displayed by state officials (Jones 1989, 9).40 The geographic context goes some way toward explaining the relative absence of a sense of urgency in the Philippines about land titling. Timing is another significant contextual factor. The so-called Huk Rebellion had been defeated by 1954, breaking the back of the country’s communist movement. It was only in the 1970s that a new communist insurgency arose, under the leadership of the CPP which had been founded only in 1968. As a consequence, during the most intense phase of Cold War conflict in Asia, the Philippines experienced a period of relative calm.

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In part because of their early success in marginalizing the revolutionary left, Philippine state elites became early adopters of a more sanguine view of communism. Notably, after his election to the presidency in 1965, Ferdinand Marcos reoriented the country’s foreign policy in pursuit of rapprochement with communist and socialist states, and even started to make noises about closure of the U.S. military bases. As a consequence, when a more serious Communist-led rural insurrection reemerged in the 1970s, the geopolitical context had shifted in a distinctly unfavorable direction for the revolutionaries. The Soviet Union supported Marcos’s dictatorship, viewing it as a bulwark against Maoism (Morris 1994), and after Peking normalized relations with Manila in 1975, the CPP became an “international orphan” with only “flimsy ties with such inconsequential organizations as the Communist Party of North Kalimantan and some Belgian and Dutch Maoist sects” (Abinales 2000, 156). As a consequence of unfortunate world-historical timing, then, the reincarnated Philippine communist movement was unable to garner meaningful support from fraternal movements in other parts of the world—and as such also unable to strike fear into the minds of Philippine state elites. For these very reasons, rhetorical attempts at “threat inflation”—such as Marcos’s justification for imposing martial law in 1972—fooled few. The developmental response in Thailand was contingent on links—potential as well as actual—between domestic and external threats. In the Philippines, comparatively weak linkages between the international and the domestic dimensions of the threat of communism provided the permissive condition under which an “antidevelopment state” could be reproduced (Bello 2005). The contrasting development paths in Thailand and the Philippines go some way toward explaining the reversal of fortune that the two countries have experienced in the past decades. In 1950, the average Thai was considerably poorer than the average Filipino. Since then, however, the level of poverty has been dramatically reduced in Thailand, but progress in the Philippines has been slow overall, and particularly so in rural areas (Warr 2000b). One of the key reasons for these divergent trajectories is that agricultural growth has been comparatively high in Thailand while it has been low in the Philippines (Mundlak, Larson, and Butzer 2004). What is more, sluggish agricultural growth has failed to “trickle down” in the Philippines (Balisacan and Pernia 2002; Borras 2007). If one accepts the argument that the rural class structure is an important explanation for the enduring state weakness in Philippine land administration, then the political and economic origins of the rural class structure naturally become a matter of some interest. In this regard the Philippine experience offers illuminating contrasts with the developments in Siam that were described in chapter 3. The contrasting agrarian structures in Thailand and the Philippines trace their roots back to the nineteenth century, when both Siam and the Philippines

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first became incorporated into world markets as producers of bulk agricultural commodities. In the land rush that ensued, landownership in the Philippines become concentrated in the hands of the few, while in Siam it became more widely dispersed. Why? According to one interpretation, the answer is to be found in “differences in land [and land taxation] policies between the Philippines and Thailand” which, in turn, “stemmed from the different cultures or value systems of the Spanish colonial rulers and the rulers of the independent kingdom” (Hayami 2004, 35). My answer would be that the differences in policies stemmed less from general cultural differences and more from differences in the geopolitical context and associated perceptions of security threat. In several respects, the Philippines and Siam manifested important similarities. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Western agro-industrial concerns were able to engage in both commerce and production on a large scale, and to ensure that colonial authorities formulated laws and regulations that served their interests (Legarda 1999, 288). The authorities in both Manila and Bangkok resisted penetration by Western firms and did not generally rewrite the statute book just to serve Western capitalist interests. In both instances, we also find that 1855 is a pivotal year. Less than two weeks after King Mongkut and John Bowring had signed their treaty, the Spanish colonial government of the Philippines decreed that three provincial ports would be open for international commerce.41 According to Aguilar, this represented “a fundamental reversal of an ancient policy of keeping ‘foreigners,’ specifically citizens of rival Western powers, away from the interior” (1994, 71). This policy had been grounded, in part, in fear of the “perceived pernicious religious and political influences of Westerners” (Aguilar 1994, 71). However, when the policy was reversed the Spanish decision makers were focused entirely on the financial benefits expected to flow from expanded trade, while completely ignoring the question of the security of the colony that originally had served as its justification (Aguilar 1994, 82). While we can only speculate on the reason for this, it is probably significant that the Spanish colonial state’s sovereignty or territorial integrity was never threatened. The Spanish colonial state as well as its American successor remained free to impose restrictions on the ability of foreigners to acquire land as and when they pleased, which they also did (Aguilar 1998, 25, 91, 118, 198–99). As a consequence, the colonial state had no compelling strategic need to limit the growth of a plantation-based agrarian economy on the Philippine Islands—quite the contrary, given the sorry financial state of the crumbling Spanish empire. In both Siam and the Philippines developments that flowed from the pivotal events of 1855 reorganized political power. In the Philippines, regional power centers emerged with independent linkages to world markets and world powers, leading to a fragmentation of power (Riedinger 1995, 19). The entrenched

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landowning provincial elite in the Philippines came to constitute a “block” that was to obstruct—successfully—future attempts to strengthen the central state, not least in regard to land administration (Riedinger 1995, 21), through their domination of electoral politics (Anderson 1996; Hutchcroft and Rocamora 2003). In Siam, vested interests did not stand in the way of such efforts. In a review of the literature on property rights and development, Evans concludes that “political institutions which discourage elites from grabbing a disproportionate share of national assets for themselves are the first key to developmentally effective private property rights” (Evans 2007, 48). In the case of Thailand, however, a quasi-colonial legacy in the form of widespread landownership was the first key, and the communist threat the second key. The communist specter introduced—for the second time—a meaningful element of political competition into the Thai polity. As was the case with the threat of colonialism, there were both internal and external dimensions to the new threat. In response, existing political and economic institutions were scrutinized, oftentimes found wanting, and reformed. The new threat also triggered a resecuritization process in relation to land. The linkages between perceived security threats and the policies and practices deemed effective in countering them were redrawn. Protecting the “backbone of the nation” from the evils of capitalism was no longer satisfactory. Property rights institutions had to serve the developmental goal of raising living standards and the political goal of immunizing rural society against communism. Ironically, the communist threat therefore did not so much threaten private property rights as serve as a catalyst for the Thai state to formalize them in the private domain and informally extend them into the public domain. In Thailand, there were few landlords to alienate, and the peasant smallholder with informal land tenure and no ability to access formal credit markets welcomed rather than opposed the state’s penetration into rural society. In comparison, history weighed more heavily on the Philippines. Since the Philippines had a highly inequitable land distribution and a large number of landless peasants, simply formalizing land holdings was never a plausible strategy by which to seek to win the hearts and minds of the rural population. More radical and redistributive instruments, such as state-driven land reform, would have to be used, but these would likely fall victim to the “political impossibility theorem of agrarian reform” (Herring 2003): land is power, and those who have wealth and power are unlikely to transfer it to the poor, except in exceptional historical circumstances.

6 OLD SOLUTIONS, NEW CHALLENGES

Where do “good” property rights institutions come from? Answering this question requires us to address the fundamental question of politics (Lasswell 1936): Who gets what, when, how? This book has sought to demonstrate that the interplay between processes of securitization and the contexts in which they operate have shaped the trajectory of institutional development in Thailand, and thereby determining, in broad terms, who gets land and access to capital, when they get it, and how they get it. In a nutshell, Thai farmers can thank the imperialists for getting land, and the communists for getting access to capital. Without these security threats to the central Thai state, very different political and economic logics could easily have become the drivers of resource allocation and institutional development, as illustrated through the experiences of Japan, Burma, and the Philippines. To what extent, then, does the Thai experience challenge conventional wisdom about institutional origins and development and in particular the role of security threats as drivers of institutional change? The experience confirms that strong and secure property rights tend to rest on a social foundation of widespread (land)ownership (Evans 2007; Lamoreaux 2011). But it downplays the significance of domestic political institutions in creating and maintaining such a social order—instead highlighting how international political factors can impact domestic social structures even in the absence of direct colonization, occupation, or immediate military pressures facilitating social revolution (Gourevitch 1978; Skocpol 1979). In the case of Thailand the geopolitical factors were much more subtle than this, but no less formative.

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Thailand’s experience also confirms the idea that security threats are causally related to institutional outcomes, and it adds to our understanding of how this works. Most importantly, how land and land policy has been understood to be connected to security has varied considerably depending on the context. This is most clearly illustrated by the contrasting responses by the Thai state to the threat of colonialism (institutional underdevelopment) and the threat of communism (institutional development). It is also evident in the way in which the response to the threat of communism diverged along the conceptual divide between private and public domains, with institutional strengthening being seen as an appropriate response in regard to the former but not the latter. Moreover, we have seen that land policy was often implemented in an essentially preventive fashion, in order to reduce the dangers associated with “peaceful economic penetration” and communist agitation and subversion. These observations add up to a methodological lesson. Researchers who seek to assess the impact of security threats on institutional development need to make serious efforts to understand how threats are actually perceived by historical protagonists. It is particularly important to strive to avoid hindsight bias. Today we of course know that Siam’s geostrategic positioning in the nineteenth century was “fortuitous.” The country did, after all, remain independent, while none of its neighbors did. But it is risky to draw conclusions based on this fact unless we can find historical evidence that this good fortune was apparent at the time and that state policies were, indeed, formulated and implemented accordingly. Developmental passivity should not be interpreted as a prima facie indication of security (based on the assumption that an intense threat surely would have inspired developmental responses). Instead of responding in a developmental fashion to security threats, ruling elites can adopt what might be called a state equivalent to “everyday forms of peasant resistance,” centered on negotiation and obstruction but falling short of open resistance or symbolic confrontation with overwhelmingly strong powers (Scott 1985, xv–xvi, 29). Open mobilization by the Thai state against imminent colonial threats would, in all likelihood, have been suicidal. On the other hand, if it had facilitated the expansion of foreign landholdings this would have created, at best, a thoroughly “semicolonial” economy and, at worst, paved the way for full colonization as experienced by the Pacific Ocean kingdom of Hawaii (Banner 2005; Merry 2000). My pursuit of explanation based on a close study of the interaction between securitization and context also has a more philosophical implication. It challenges the “pessimistic” view of the possibilities for institutional change that is characteristic of much comparative historical work, where path dependence often “weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” (Marx 1963, 15). In my analysis the living have operated within serious constraints of various kinds but

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they have not been dispossessed of all meaningful agency. Institutional change does not derive from massive exogenous shocks but rather from constant and frequently creative interactions between state elites and the social environments within which they operate. The pessimist might of course respond that this applies only in Thailand and not elsewhere, and that the comparisons with Burma and the Philippines suggest as much. And it may indeed be that the period covered in this book constitutes an unusually open and fluid period in Thai history. Perhaps institutional change from now on will be more heavily path dependent. For example, the unwillingness of past generations to levy meaningful land taxes may very well remain a nightmare for ambitious Thai finance ministers for many years to come. Throughout the book I have approached the evolution of property rights institutions in land in Thailand as a product of sequential securitization, with landrelated policies intended to “solve” security problems as they arise (Haydu 1998). The end of the Cold War does not mean that there are no more security problems in which policies relating to land may be implicated. As a shift in the geopolitical context, 9/11 has focused attention on predominantly Buddhist Thailand as a potential “second front” in the war on terror (Gershman 2002). Since 2004, violence has flared up in three Muslim-majority provinces in the country’s south, claiming more than forty-three hundred lives in the following seven years. In light of the argument of this book, it is perhaps not surprising that conflicts over land and other natural resources are conspicuous by their absence in analyses of the “root causes” of the conflict (McCargo 2008; Askew 2007). This represents a stark contrast with our understanding of the material grievances that fuel other Muslim separatist movements in Southeast Asia (Vellema, Borras, and Lara 2011; Ross 2005). In Mindanao and Aceh, concern over linkages between what has traditionally been viewed as localized and contained troubles and the new threat of global jihad has indeed led to a search for ways in which land reform and clarification of property rights can promote peace and development (Fan 2006; Coletta 2011). Even though there is little evidence to suggest that grievances in southern Thailand are related to questions of land or access to credit markets, Thai state officials have nevertheless taken a page from the old anticommunist playbook in response to the violence. In early 2004, the Bangkok Post reported that the country’s deputy interior minister had urged the Department of Lands “to speed up the issuing of land ownership papers to residents of the three southernmost provinces as a first step to rebuilding their trust.” The deputy minister argued that “If the people have a land of their own, they would love the country” (Temsak and Wassayos 2004). As part of this effort to win Malay-Muslim hearts and minds, the state has also returned to villagers land that it had earlier claimed as part of a national park (Sanitsuda 2008). The conflict may have provided an

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added impetus for the Thai state to strengthen private property rights in land, but in effect it is only continuing to do what it has already been doing. The insurgency—if that is indeed the right term, since it lacks identifiable leadership— is unlikely to spark a more creative response from the Thai state in terms of institutional transformation, because this is a security threat that, in contrast to the threat of colonization and communism, is perceived as an entirely homegrown movement confined to a few border provinces and lacking powerful supporters in the international system. But more important than new threats is the decline in threat perceptions. The other major change since the end of the Cold War is the rise of economic globalization both as a phenomenon and as a policy goal. This has been accompanied by a shift in causal beliefs regarding national security: the traditional fear of foreign ownership of land is abating. As a consequence, foreign landownership has been desecuritized in many countries in order to advance regional integration and globalization. The process is most clearly in evidence in the European Union, where new member states, in spite of some initial fears for their national security, have accepted the condition for admission that they liberalize their land markets and improve their land administration so as to facilitate foreign direct investment (Tesser 2004). In a similar vein, desecuritization is a logical corollary of the EU-inspired political project to create a Southeast Asian “economic community,” characterized by free flow of goods, services, investment, and labor, and freer flow of capital, by 2015 (ASEAN 2008). This process of desecuritization is being furthered also through the negotiation of free trade agreements, between the United States and developing countries, that require an opening of land markets on a reciprocal basis (McAuslan 2010, 199). In light of the historical experience described in this book, it is not unexpected that Thailand has been reluctant to join this particular bandwagon (Supanida 2009). Thai policymakers have so far insisted that while they will open many areas of the country’s economy as part of their commitment to globalization and regional economic integration, “national security” continues to demand restriction on the ability of foreigners, including citizens of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to own land there (Sasithorn 2010). In institutionally weaker countries, the globalization of land markets could give rise to perverse incentives for institutional development, but not mainly because of fears associated with foreign economic penetration (although that is also a possibility). The spike in agricultural commodity prices in 2007–8 has unleashed a new “great land rush” (Deininger and Byerlee 2011). According to functionalist property rights theory, this shift in relative prices and the extension—indeed globalization—of the land market should induce states to

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improve the definition and enforcement of property rights in land. But the more plausible scenario, at least in institutionally enfeebled countries, is that this sudden windfall will lead to a weakening if not a complete breakdown of property rights administration through a process of “rent-seizing,” in which public officials allocate land rights on a discretionary basis.1 Instead of strengthening property rights regimes, the new land bonanza may induce the type of “privatization” of sovereignty that Reno (2000) has described in relation to natural resource– abundant, warlord-ruled African states. A good illustration of such tendencies is provided by Thailand’s neighbor Cambodia, where the World Bank in 2002 initiated a land-titling program inspired by the one undertaken so successfully across the border. However, in September 2009 Prime Minister Hun Sen decided to end his government’s cooperation with the World Bank in this policy area, because the bank was insisting on better protection of the interests of the poor (Rith and O’Toole 2009). This is something the Cambodian government has failed to ensure in the process of formalizing land rights and granting commercial concessions for land, leading to a rapid increase in landlessness and endemic conflicts over land. So (2010) argues that institution-building has stalled because Cambodian state elites are simply not convinced that their interests—economic and political—would be well served by “good” property rights institutions. Unfortunately, the sticks and carrots available to foreign donors in Cambodia—and in many other weak states where elite and foreign “land grabs” are allowed to go unchallenged—appear to be poor substitutes for the communist specter that unnerved, and disciplined, Thai public officials during a similar phase of institutional development. The lesson is that even though the policies adopted and implemented may look the same from a technical perspective—such as cadastral surveying and land titling—they are likely to be associated with different social mechanisms operating in different contexts, and as a consequence one should not expect them to lead to comparable economic and political outcomes. Securitization is one social process. Primitive accumulation is another. The formalization of land rights may be a component part of either, or, indeed, of both at the same time. That is why the consequences of such policies are so unpredictable. In the absence of communist specters, are there other social forces that could serve a similar function? The closest contemporary corollary is probably the transnational social movement that goes under the name La Via Campesina, which under the banners of “rights to land” and “food sovereignty” argues that global capitalism and the privatization and commodification of agricultural land pose existential threats to “peasants” (Watson 2011; Martínez-Torres and Rosset 2010; Borras and Franco 2009). Intriguingly, this countermovement is

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framed not primarily in nationalist terms—as it would have been in an earlier era—but rather in terms of universal human rights. La Via Campesina’s (2009) “Declaration of Peasant Rights” asserts that “ongoing violations of peasants’ rights threaten human life.”2 It asks states to, in effect, resecuritize land policy but to do so with a previously unthinkable referent object—the individual peasant.

Notes

1. SECURITIZATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

1. As the World Bank’s major statement on land policy points out, “For most of the poor in developing countries, land is the primary means for generating a livelihood and a main vehicle for investing, accumulating wealth, and transferring it between generations” (Deininger 2003, xix). Important arguments about the significance of institutions are advanced by North 1981; Rodrik, Subramanian, and Trebbi 2004; Acemoglu 2003; and Evans 2007. For an overview of recent experiences with land rights formalization, see Sjaastad and Cousins 2009. 2. See also Williamson 1995, 187–88; North 2005, 109–10. 3. Also in contrast with the Copenhagen School’s analytical framework, the conceptualization of securitization as a causal mechanism downplays the significance of the “target audience” that securitizing “speech acts” are directed at. Here, securitization does not require a broader public to be persuaded about the existence of dangers and the appropriateness of the responses. The minimal requirement is that the agents of the securitizing agent—state officials—are able to persuade themselves of this. This also implies that securitization is a process that can take place in secret. 4. Throughout I will refer to Siam and Siamese when referring to the period prior to 1939, when the government changed the names for the country and its population to Thailand and Thai, respectively. On the link between British finance and imperial expansion, see Cain and Hopkins 2001. Thai state elites took pride in the fact that “alone among the civilized countries, Siam had no [public] debt” in the 1890s (Damrong 1968, 40), and they remained extremely reluctant to take on public debt in the following decades. This association of debt with geopolitical vulnerability explains, at least in part, the relative failure of the state to engage in infrastructure development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Ingram 1971; Feeny 1982; Holm 1991), as well as the institutionalization of a deeply conservative orientation toward fiscal and monetary policies (Warr and Bhanupong 1996, 9; Doner and Unger 1993, 97). 5. Land titling is defined as “the generic term used to describe programs sponsored by the state to enable the state and individuals to efficiently trade in rights in land and property” (Burns 2001, 2). 6. Of course, China, North Korea, and many other communist states instituted different rural property rights reforms, including collectivization, in response to security threats perceived to be emanating from their capitalist rivals, with rather different longterm effects. 7. To be included in this group of thirteen, a country had to achieve annual growth rates averaging 7 percent or more for at least twenty-five years. 8. This is not to deny Thailand’s significant problems related both to urban squatter settlements and to the large number of farm households settled in forest reserves. The latter question is addressed in chapter 5. 9. The state’s interest in property rights is often assumed to derive from a different imperative: that of revenue maximization, which often will run at cross purposes with that of engendering loyalty, as Scott has so forcefully brought home in his work on Southeast Asian peasant rebellions (Scott 1976, 1985a). In Thailand, unlike many of its colonized 153

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neighbors, the state’s desire for loyalty has tended to trump its desire for revenues, at least as far as taxation of land is concerned. 10. The pairing of Thailand and these countries as comparative cases is not entirely idiosyncratic. On Thailand and Japan, see Anderson 1978, Feeny 1998, and Herzfeld 2002; on Thailand and Burma, see Ammar 1972 and Lissak 1976; on Thailand and the Philippines, see Kunio 1994, Chira and Medhi 1981, Oshima 1987, chap. 7, and Wallensteen 1988. 11. On Siam’s quasi-colonial legacies more broadly conceived, see Dixon and Parnwell 1991, Thongchai 1994, and Loos 2006. 2. CAPITALIZING THAILAND

1. This represents an increase from roughly 4 to 40 percent of the country’s total land area. 2. In figure 2.1, poverty incidence is based on a headcount measure, expressed as the percentage of the rural, urban, and total population, respectively, whose incomes fall below the poverty line. Over the years, the method by which poverty incidence is calculated has been revised. Such adjustments have raised the poverty line in terms of real income levels. To produce a consistent time series, Warr (2003) has “backcast” the methodology used by the National Economic and Social Development Board since 1988 onto earlier survey data. This has the effect of raising the estimates of the “initial” incidence of poverty (see the discussion in Warr 2003, 162–63). 3. For a discussion of the different surveys, see Medhi 1993. 4. On financial development and economic growth, see Levine 1997. 5. Those with a taste for revolt may of course also give direct or indirect support to a rival state in the hope that the outside power will help bring about “regime change.” In a favorable geopolitical environment it may not be necessary for those with a taste for revolt to overcome their collective action problems. The withdrawal of active support may weaken the regime to such a degree that it collapses in the face of the external threat. 6. But the incentives to devote resources for “defensive” purposes do of course increase. 7. In Fielding’s studies of the Israeli economy during the Palestinian Intifada we see such a vicious circle at work (2003a, 2003b, 2004). 8. I make no assumptions about how this “trickling down” of the fruits of economic growth will or ought to happen. The process may be driven largely by market mechanisms, as would be the case with land titling. But directly or indirectly redistributive policies can also ensure that the benefits of economic development will be widely shared. Acemoglu and Robinson (2000, 2002) argue that democratization and expansion of the franchise are one way elites who seek to prevent unrest and revolution can make the promise of future redistribution credible. 9. Yaron, Benjamin, and Piprek (1997) lay out the case for rural financial markets in developing countries, as well as the challenges involved. 10. The so called Townsend survey was conducted in April and May 1997 in four provinces, two in the central region (Chachoengsao and Lopburi) and two in the lower northeastern region (Buriram and Sisaket) and covered a sample of 2,880 households. In Giné’s (2005) study, the source of the summary data presented here, those households not reporting an expected income are dropped, reducing the sample to 2,612 households. The survey is part of a large study of socio-economic and institutional aspects of development in Thailand, financed by the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation of the United States. For further details, see Townsend 2005. 11. This wide range was reflected in the Townsend (2005) survey sample. The median annual net income of the households surveyed, calculated on a village basis, ranged from

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10,200 baht (one village in Sisaket) to 265,800 baht (one village in Lopburi). The value of total assets (consumer durables) per household ranged from an average of 41,296 baht in Sisaket to 139,605 baht in Chachoengsao (Seiler and Townsend 1998, 4). 12. Giné’s model of the impact of alternative policy interventions designed to improve access to rural credit finds that land titling generates by far the greatest gross positive effect on household investment and income. He also finds that the benefits are greatest to those who own some land, while the wealthy have nothing to gain, since they tend to self-finance (2005, 28). The alternative policy interventions considered were state subsidization of credit in the form of a cut in the formal interest rate; and the establishment of village-level credit institutions. 13. The agricultural sector—which would be the primary direct beneficiary of rural land-titling schemes—has been found to be an important driver of economic growth in developing countries (see, for example, Tiffin and Irz 2006). By improving farmers’ investment incentives and access to credit, land titling would obviously be expected to have a direct effect on the agricultural sector. It would, however, be myopic to think that the effects of (rural) land titling are limited to the agricultural sector. As argued by Byamugisha (1999a, 1999b), formal property rights in land can also be conceptually linked to improved economic performance through their effects on financial development. 14. The activities undertaken under TLTP are discussed in greater detail in chapter 5. 15. Financial deepening has, in turn, been found to account for 70 percent of aggregate total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the Thai economy between 1976 and 1996 (Jeong and Townsend 2005, 23). TFP growth averaged 2.42 percent per year in this period. 16. This study was based on the previously cited 1997 survey (Townsend 2005). 17. The structure of Thailand’s financial markets is such that collateral-based lending from commercial banks plays an unusually large role in the economy. Markets for corporate stocks and bonds play a relatively limited role as sources of capital. See Piti and Don 2003. 18. Jonathan Rigg, personal communication, 2 July 2006. 3. WEAPON OF A WEAK STATE

1. See Low 1847, Lingat 1940, and Sunthari 2001 for introductions to the premodern system of property rights in land. 2. See National Archives Kh 4/2, “Rang khobangkhap nai kan thi huangham thidin” [Draft regulation regarding the reservation of land]. 3. Also, National Archives Kh 0301.1.2/3, “Notes on the land law.” Feeny makes reference to the phraratchabanyat thidin (land law) dated 30 October 1892 in National Archives R5 K 4.1/3. Another copy of the law can be found in the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (National Archives R5 T 2/32). The latter copy is accompanied by a letter from the minister of agriculture to the minister of foreign affairs, dated 10 November 1892, that makes clear that it is, indeed, a draft law that is being sent over for consideration in preparation for deliberations, scheduled for 1 December, in the Ongkhamontri Sapha (Privy Council). 4. Similarly erroneous references, which treat the draft as if it had been enacted, are found in Feeny 1979, 123; 1988a, 186; 1988b, 284, 286; 2002, 185, 186; Feder et al. 1988, 11; and Molle 2002, 534. 5. See National Archives Kh 0301.1.2/1, R. W. Giblin, “Notes on the proposed system of Land Taxation,” 1904; National Archives Kh 0301.1.2/5, P. R. Kemp, “Draft scheme for a resettlement of the agricultural districts of Siam on modern principles,” 1922; National Archives R6 K 7/4, letter from the Minister of Agriculture to His Majesty the King, 10 May 1912; Graham 1912, 287.

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6. On the importance of shifting relative prices for domestic politics, see Frieden and Rogowski 1996. For a critique of this approach, see Garrett and Lange 1996. The argument presented here is sympathetic to the latter view, but the utility of the Garrett and Lange model to explain the puzzles motivating this investigation is limited because it takes state sovereignty for granted, and because it reduces the international context to price signals, thus discounting the importance of the signals communicated by foreign diplomats and gunboats. 7. National Archives Kh 0301.1.2/3, “Notes on the land law.” 8. The Burmese kingdom was colonized by the British in three steps. The wars of 1824–26, 1852, and 1885 gradually reduced and eventually brought to an end the Burmese empire as a security concern to the Siamese. South of Siam, a similarly gradual expansion of British power occurred on the Malay Peninsula, where some of the traditional polities were vassals of Siam. The British annexation of Burma and acquisition of Malay territories also meant that Siam beginning in the 1820s became a neighbor of an expanding European imperial power. A few decades later, a similar process of colonization occurred to the east of Siam, as the Vietnamese empire, and then the Cambodian and Laotian kingdoms, were brought under French control either through annexation or the extension of protectorate status. 9. SarDesai calculates that Britain acquired 70 percent of its imperial possessions in Southeast Asia in the four decades following 1874 (1977, 274). 10. The Bowring treaty became a model for subsequent treaties with foreign powers. Thus, the benefits enjoyed by Britain subsequently came to be enjoyed also by the United States and France (1856), Denmark (1858), Portugal (1859), the Netherlands (1860), Germany (1862), Italy, Belgium, Sweden, and Norway (1868), Austria-Hungary (1869), Spain (1870), Japan (1898), and Russia (1899) (Ingram 1971, 35). 11. The document is not dated, but Wilson (1970, 392–93) has suggested that it was written by Mongkut around 1857. 12. As a historical counterfactual, it is possible to imagine that reversing the sequence of the negotiations—with Japan negotiating ahead of Siam—would have affected the outcome. Japan’s diplomats could and did learn by observing the Siamese negotiations with the West (Auslin 2004); Siamese diplomats might have done the same, given the opportunity. 13. On this point, see also Thornely 1923. 14. In the case of Siam it was therefore not true that “the [extraterritorial] protection afforded to ‘foreigners’ was limited to citizens of ‘civilized’ states—that is, Europeans” (Bowden 2004, 52). Neither was it limited to that subset of the native population that had converted to Christianity. 15. See Sayre (1928, 73) on the uses and abuses to which the system of extraterritoriality gave rise. 16. Strobel, professor of international law at Harvard Law School, succeeded Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns as general adviser and served from 1903 to his death in 1908. Strobel was the first in a series of American nationals, most of whom were also Harvard law professors, who served as general/foreign advisers to the Siamese government. Strobel was succeeded by Jens I. Westengard, who served to 1915. He was in turn succeeded by Wolcott Pitkin (1915–17) and Eldon James (1917–23). James was followed by Francis B. Sayre (1923–25), the son-in-law of President Wilson, who played an instrumental role in the diplomatic negotiations leading to an amelioration of the system of extraterritoriality in Siam (see Sayre 1957). Sayre was followed by Courtney Crocker (1925), Raymond Stevens (1926–35), Frederick Dolbeare (1936–46), and, finally, Kenneth Patton (1946–49) (Loos 2006, 53 n. 70). 17. Reliable data on the total number of foreign subjects is scant. One report from April 1899 reports that France claimed to have fourteen thousand persons under its

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protection as so-called protégés in Siam (an increase of eight thousand since 1897). The number of British subjects in Siam stood at nine thousand at the same time (Foreign Office 1900a). More important than the absolute number of actually registered foreign subjects, however, was the immense potential for continued growth: French imperial anthropology identified the “Siamese” as a minority ethnic group, comprising, according to one 1903 estimate, only a third of the population of the kingdom (Streckfuss 1993, 130). 18. This “total revolution” was not, however, a “modernizing” one. As Wilson (1970, 621) has emphasized, Mongkut made only minor changes in the fiscal administration, and the state continued to rely on tax farmers for much of its cash income. The opium, gambling, and liquor farms became the most important sources of cash revenue. While the tax administration was overhauled in the reign of Mongkut’s son, Chulalongkorn, the fiscal structure as such proved to be more difficult to change. In the financial year 1901–2, land revenue accounted for no more than 8.41 percent of total revenues. Opium, liquor, and gambling farms accounted for 39.56 percent. The kingdom’s first published government budget promised that “in a very few years the Revenue derived from the land will take its proper place as the mainstay of the fiscal administration of the Country” (Ministry of Finance 1901, 5). Fifteen years later, land revenue had increased in both absolute and relative terms, but had not yet found its “proper place.” In the financial year 1914–15, opium and gambling together accounted for 30.98 percent of total state revenue; land taxes accounted for a mere 11.65 percent (Ministry of Finance 1916). 19. For example, the regulations stipulated that rice would be subject to an export duty at the rate of four ticals per koyan (approx. $2.40 per 2,400 kilos), while sugar would be subject to an inland duty of two salung per pecul (approx. $0.30 per 60 kilos) and exempt from export duty (dollar equivalents calculated based on Bradley 1861, 42). Goods not included in the regulation would be free of export duty and subject only to inland or transit duty in force at the time of the signing of the treaty. 20. Brown (1992, 18–19 n. 3) argues that while the treaty restrictions did not formally apply to Siamese subjects, the government “was unwilling to make a distinction between Siamese and European: therefore, in effect, the treaty restrictions on the levying of taxes applied also to the Siamese population.” As the phenomenon of “alien Asiatics” suggests, the distinction between “Siamese” and “European” was less straightforward than Brown implies. Moreover, the unwillingness to make a distinction between Siamese and European subjects in matters of taxation was not absolute: the government did levy taxes— such as the capitation tax (which replaced corvée) and a “shop tax”—which were applied to Siamese subjects only. So the reluctance to impose differential rates of land taxation must have been rooted in a desire not to further raise the cost of Siamese subjecthood to the rural population. 21. In fact, most of the “land” taxes were conceived of as taxes on trees. The assessment was to a large extent based on the number and size of fruit trees that grew on any particular plot of land. As for annual crops such as rice, the tax rate depended on the class of land it belonged to. Thus, “trenched or raised lands” were assessed a tax at the annual rate of one salung and one fuang ($0.225) per rai (0.16 hectares). On trenched land for which “an official title or certificate of tenure” had been issued, the owner also had to pay an annual fee of three salung and one fuang. Untrenched or low lands paid a land tax of one salung and one fuang per rai—calculated on the basis of the area actually cultivated (as opposed to the area of possession claimed). 22. While the revenue potential in real terms declined over time, the costs to the state associated with the definition and enforcement of land rights would not have experienced a corresponding decline (in the absence of cost-saving technological changes). As a consequence, it is likely that investment in the formalization of property rights would over time have become an increasingly unattractive proposition, if based solely on a fiscal cost-benefit analysis.

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23. For a recent comparative study of the international treaties and state formation in Siam, China, and the Ottoman Empire, see Horowitz 2004. 24. Since Siam was unwilling to contract public debt for fear that this would weaken its defense posture, infrastructure projects had to be financed by direct revenues. As a consequence, by the end of 1910, Siam had a mere 932 kilometers of railway lines (Ingram 1971, 86), and had yet to undertake any irrigation works (Ingram 1971, 82–83). 25. The taxation clauses in the Parkes agreement were renegotiated in 1900, limits remained, and the increase in land taxes was intended to make up for losses of revenue caused by the gradual abolition of gambling farms and opium sales. 26. The government did experiment with private concessions for infrastructure development. The Rangsit scheme north of Bangkok was developed as a twenty-five-year concession to the Siam Canals, Lands and Irrigation Company. The concession was granted in 1889 and expired in 1915. Although it was deemed a financial success, “no privately financed project was further undertaken in the field of irrigation.” The 240,000-hectare scheme was thus very much the exception rather than the rule in Thai economic history, as were the high levels of tenancy that emerged in the concession area (see Ammar 1972, 27ff.). 27. See Prakat farang tham nangsü sanya [Proclamation concerning treaty Westerners] in Department of Lands 2001b, 9. 28. In response to the rapid influx of settlers, the government in 1896 initiated a census in northern Siam, to collect information on the jurisdictions that the people fell under. In order to do so, the government first had to ask the British and French for permission to survey its subjects (National Archives R5 M 58/66, Damrong to Krommün Sommotamonphan, 9 January 1896). 29. It is important to make clear that the restrictions on the ability of “foreigners” to own land were not based on origin or ethnicity but on jurisdiction. Subjects of states that did not have treaties with Siam—most notably China, but also Latin American and some European countries—were freely given the right to own land also outside the twenty-fourhour zone. Persons falling under Siamese jurisdiction became “Siamese” in light of the law, while persons with extraterritorial rights were defined as foreigners. 30. An English translation of the contract can be found in Chatthip and Suthy (1977, 26–30). On social aspects of the Rangsit project, see Johnston 1975 and Sunthari 1987. 31. In 1901, a British gentleman petitioned King Chulalongkorn to be accepted as a Siamese subject, so that he could acquire land and put his plantation skills to use in Siam. The petition was rejected because Siam did not have a nationality law and there was no guarantee that the subject would not return to British jurisdiction after having acquired the land (National Archives R5 M 2.21.Kh/4, “Mistoe dabliw cassoen thoenoe kho plian chat pen thai” [Mr. W. Castle-Turner petitions to change his nationality to Thai]). 32. National Archives R6 K 5/5, appendix 15, “Peaceful penetration,” 165. 33. National Archives R6 K 5/6, “Rüang borisat khut khlong lae khuna sayam” [On the Siam Canals, Lands, and Irrigation Company], 66. 34. National Archives R6 K 5/2, statement of James Young, 21 August 1917. 35. It should be noted that one of the “defects” of the treaty was that it did not include an expiration day or a termination clause (Vikrom 1972, 59). 36. Prisdang and the other signatories belonged to the first generation of Siamese to gain extensive exposure to European politics and culture, through education abroad and diplomatic postings in Europe’s most powerful capitals. See Sumet 2004. On the petition’s seminal role in the formulation of official Thai nationalism, see Murashima (1986, 11–18). 37. This is an echo of Mongkut’s thinking, as expressed in an 1866 letter to the Siamese ambassador in Paris: “It is sufficient for us to keep ourselves within our house and home; it may be necessary for us to forgo some of our former power and influence. Being, as we are

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now, surrounded on two or three sides by powerful nations, what can a small nation like us do? Supposing we were to discover a gold mine in our country, from which we could obtain many million catis [sic] weight of gold, enough to pay for the cost of a hundred warships; even with this we would still be unable to fight against them, because we would have to buy those very same warships and all the armaments from their countries. We are as yet unable to manufacture these things, and even if we have enough money to buy them, they can always stop the sale of them whenever they feel that we are arming ourselves beyond our station. The only weapons that will be of real use to us in the future will be our mouths and our hearts, constituted so as to be full of sense and wisdom for the better protection of ourselves” (Seni and Kukrit 1958, 192). 38. Comparisons with Japan and Burma are instructive. In Upper Burma, efforts to reform the military failed in part because the British could deny King Mindon access to modern arms. King Thibaw’s subsequent efforts to gain access to modern arms through France contributed to the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Burmese War, which ended in the annexation of Upper Burma and the abolition of the Burmese monarchy. In Japan, the arrival of modern weaponry had set off an internal arms race. That was not the case in Siam, where Bangkok faced no serious domestic rivals. In addition, Bangkok was able to restrict potential rivals’ access to modern Western weaponry. This was in part made possible by the fact that article 1 of the 1826 Anglo-Siamese treaty had prohibited British merchants from selling firearms, ammunition, and gunpowder to anyone but the Siamese government. This restriction on the trade in weaponry was retained in the subsequent agreements negotiated with Bowring and Parkes (Battye 1974, 76ff.; Bowring 1969 [1857], 2:232). In the Thai case, neither the external nor the internal security dynamics stimulated the state to engage in economic and military developmentalism. 39. At the time, the British consul Ernest Satow reported to London in regard to Franco-Siamese conflict over Cambodia that “there can be no question that the public in Bangkok, & perh[aps] elsewhere, has made up its mind that France intends to take poss[essi]on of Siam sooner or later, and the fact that HMG have not announced any purpose of opposing its annexation produces the belief in their acquiescence. Of resistance on the part of Siam there can of course be no question” (Brailey 1997, 182, emphasis added). 40. The crisis was provoked by the French decision in March 1893 to claim all territories to the east of the Mekong River. In the next few months, this led to minor fights between Siamese and French forces. Two French gunboats forced their way up the Chaophraya River and proceeded to impose a blockade on Bangkok. Siam immediately ceased fighting and soon agreed to all French demands. In the subsequent 1893 Franco-Siamese Treaty, Siam not only ceded the disputed territories (in what is today Laos and Cambodia), but also agreed to demilitarize a twenty-five-kilometer zone along the Mekong River, in which Bangkok was only permitted to station small numbers of police (Likhit 1975, 50–54; Tips 1996). The military humiliation took the additional and long-lasting form of French occupation of the Siamese coastal district of Chantabun (which was only evacuated in 1905), as a guarantee that Siam would abide by the treaty. 41. It is true, as Battye shows, that military reform and strengthening—“the policy of the cudgel”—gained a higher priority on the national reform agenda after 1901 (Battye 1974, 398ff.). However, even though Chulalongkorn professed to have lost faith in the ability of nonmilitary means alone to guarantee Siam’s independence and territorial integrity, he never used the strengthened army to assert Siamese authority vis-à-vis the Western powers. He could have, unilaterally and directly challenged Siam’s semisovereign status, by, for example, imposing taxes in breach of international treaties, but he never did so. Instead, he continued to pursue the on wan strategy of diplomacy, negotiation, and strategic concession.

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42. National Archives R5 O 1/6, “Note on the situation of the Kingdom of Siam in August 1894.” 43. The National Archives in Bangkok does not allow researchers to access the files covering the treaty negotiations with Britain and France. They are considered too sensitive. The discussion here is therefore mainly based on British sources, which often include copies of the correspondence produced by the government of Siam. 44. National Archives K 6/24, “Memorendam rüang thidin mai khuan anuyat hai khon sabyek” [Memorandum on restrictions regarding land for foreign subjects]. The author, Phraya Mahayotha, at the time held the office of kha luang ok tra chong, responsible for the issuance of land ownership documents (see Noppharat 1977, 204). 45. The attenuated nature of Siamese authority due to extraterritoriality is nicely illustrated in a report on the activities of the Royal Survey Department in the city of Bangkok in 1906: “Some trouble was experienced at first by the objections raised by foreign subjects to entry by survey officers into their premises, but when the nature of the survey and the benefits of it were explained to Foreign Representatives, letters were obtained from them which smoothed all difficulties” (Giblin 1908). 46. The Siamese strategy was in part articulated in Ministry of Interior correspondence in regard to a request in early 1898 from the British consul in Chiang Mai to allow two British subjects to purchase land. The Siamese commissioner in Chiang Mai replied that he could not easily allow that, since it would constitute a breach of the twentyfour-hour clause of the Bowring treaty (National Archives R5 Kh 4.5k/7, Ratchapalat of Ministry of Interior to King, 27 February 1898). 47. See also Ramsay (1971, 217) and Tej (1981, 46). 48. In support of this more restrictive policy, a modern map of the twenty-four-hour zone was produced in 1906 in order to assist the officers issuing title deeds (National Archives R5 Kh 4/6, Gibson to Sisunthonwohan, 1 October 1906). The boundary of the twenty-four-hour zone enclosed an area from the towns of Suphanburi, Singburi, and Lopburi in the north, to Chachoengsao and Chonburi in the east, to Ratchaburi and Sichang Island in the south, to Samut Songkhram and Ratchaburi in the west. In some parts the boundary followed natural borders such as the Mae Klong and Bang Pakong Rivers, which flow into the Gulf of Siam. The zone’s land area was approximately the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut and corresponded to approximately 3% of Thailand’s total land area today. See figure 3.1. 49. It is interesting to note that the expansion of extraterritorial jurisdiction in Siam in the 1890s ran directly counter to the modern conception of state territoriality, which was simultaneously taking hold there (Thongchai 1994). 50. Also, National Archives Kh 2/99, Thewetwongwiwat to King, 1 December 1903. 51. National Archives, SR 0201.28.2/1, “Description of the existing judicial system of Siam,” 20 November 1909. 52. For a contemporaneous critique, see National Archives R6 K 7/4, letter from the Minister of Agriculture to His Majesty the King, 10 May 1912. 53. The British were afraid that they would be seen in a “bad light” if they insisted on a Siamese concession in return. Two factors were of relevance. First, the stated objective of fiscal reform in Siam was a praiseworthy one: abolition of gambling. Second, Germany had accepted Siam’s desire to revise the tariffs without asking for compensation, and Britain thought this might enhance German prestige and influence in Siam unless Britain responded in a similarly “generous” spirit (Foreign Office 1907). See also Foreign Office 1908a, 1908b. 54. On 21 July 1909 the minister of agriculture announced that British subjects would enjoy the right to full land ownership on equal footing with the Siamese (National Archives K 1/724, “Prakat phoemtoem phraratchabanyat thidin wa duai khon nai bangkhap

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angkrit kho thü kammasit thidin” [Additional declaration regarding land law on British subjects requesting land ownership]). 55. This was the last of Siam’s territorial concessions. Wyatt has calculated that Siam lost 456,000 square kilometers of territory—“nearly half the area that had been under Bangkok’s suzerainty” in 1850 (1984, 208). 56. It was noted at the time that the secret convention could be judged as a success only if it had been the desire of its drafters “almost wholly to exclude foreigners and foreign enterprise from the Siamese Malay States” (Foreign Office 1909c). 57. National Archives R5 Kh 4.4/10, Colombet to Chulalongkorn, 15 August 1909. 58. National Archives R6 T 2/4, Kalayan to Rabi, 26 June 1912. 59. National Archives SR 0201.28/4, Damrong to Devawongse, 11 May 1910. 60. The data on which figure 3.2 is based give an imperfect picture of government expenditure on formalization of land rights because of the high level of aggregation at which expenditure is reported, and changes in the bureaucratic structure over time. The expenditure by the Department of Land Records and Mines includes, as the name suggests, mining-related government expenditure. In 1911–12, the Topographical Survey Department was detached from the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture and transferred to the Ministry of War. This left only the Cadastral Survey Branch in the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture. On the graph, the drop in the Cadastral Survey Branch’s budget after 1909 appears more dramatic than it actually was, since it is attributable to two causes: a real reduction in spending, and the transfer of a part of the survey operation to another ministry. The inclusion in the graph of data for the Topographical Survey Department corrects for the latter effect. 61. Damrong was understood to have suffered a setback to his political standing with the king and fellow Cabinet members following the conclusion of the 1909 treaty. The obstructionist policy in regard to foreign capital penetrating southern Siam was thus fueled by the “desire to dispel the impression that he was sacrificing national to foreign interests” (Peel, Beckett, and Crosby 1912, 284–85). 62. National Archives R5 Kh/3, Minister of Agriculture to King, 25 May 1910. 63. Ibid., Minister of Agriculture to King, 18 May 1910. The official Siamese understanding of what constituted a “large” plot of land did not necessarily conform to international expectations of what would be the proper size of a plantation. The draft law contained a ceiling: no person and no company would be allowed to lease an area exceeding 5,000 rai (800 hectares). In contrast, consider that an American sugar syndicate bought 18,000 hectares of land in the Philippines in 1909 (Larkin 1993, 58). 64. Siam had issued a land law in 1909. So why was a new land law/regulation suddenly felt to be needed? Kitahara observes that the 1909 law (like its 1901 predecessor) “put emphasis on issuing title deeds for already established land tenure in the developed area in the Chaophraya delta” (2003, 49). The law did not provide much guidance on how tenure could be established on uncleared land. In effect, traditional laws and customs continued to regulate the process of chap chong (temporary reservation; literally “grab and reserve”) by which Siamese peasants expanded the area under cultivation. The “modern” land laws thus served an essentially conservative purpose, rather than a dynamic one: they sought to clarify existing rights, but did not address how new rights could be created, such as would be needed in case of the establishment of industrial-scale agricultural enterprises on waste land (Kitahara 2003). Given the abundance of such land in Siam, this curious omission is yet another indicator of the essentially nondevelopmental response by the state in the post-Bowring era. 65. The draft therefore reads “No limited company is allowed to acquire in Siam lands, houses or other immovable properties otherwise than for the purpose of managing, conducting and carrying on the business of the company. No lands, houses or other buildings

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may be acquired or owned for the purposes of trade or speculation” (National Archives K 1/721, Padoux to Rabi, 26 May 1910). 66. National Archives K 1/721, Padoux to Rabi, 26 May 1910. 67. Ibid., Padoux to Rabi, 22 June 1910. 68. Ibid. The company law introduced in 1911 did not include any restrictions on land acquisitions by corporations. 69. Ibid., Graham to Under Secretary, Ministry of Lands and Agriculture, 24 April 1910. 70. National Archives Kh 0301.1.30/13, F. H. Giles, “Note on labour question.” 71. The two principal unequal treaties were the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and Japan (1858) and the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty (1858). For an introduction to the politics surrounding the creation of the treaty regime, see Beasley 1989 and Auslin 2004. Following four decades of modernization of the Japanese state and economy, Japan received recognition as a full-fledged member of “international society” by 1900 (see Gong 1984). 72. This section draws heavily on Nakamura (1966, appendix A) and Brown 1987. 73. The land tax reform of 1873 has been blamed for the subsequent rise of indebtedness, landlordism, and rural protest movements (Bowen 1980, 90–93; Hayami 1975, 47–48). For a revisionist view, emphasizing the positive effects of the new order on the lives of Japanese farmers and tenants, see Smethurst (1986, 57–73). 74. National Archives K 1/42, “An act to declare the law relating to interests in land in Siam.” 4. CONSERVING SMALLHOLDER SOCIETY

1. On the history of the Chinese in Thailand, see the classic study by Skinner (1957). On the connection between Chinese immigrants, communism, and state formulations of an “ethno-ideology” of Thainess, see Kasian 2001. 2. On Thai economic nationalism more broadly, see Ayal 1969 and Suehiro (1989, chap. 4). 3. The nationality law of 1913 established the jus soli principle of nationality, according to which every person born on Siamese territory automatically became a Siamese citizen. In a letter forwarding the draft law, the general foreign adviser explained that this was really a law of naturalization rather than a law of nationality. He continued: “In most instances in most countries, these two subjects are covered by one and the same law, because it is more orderly to state, first, who are the Siamese; and then, secondly, how can other persons (who are not Siamese) become Siamese?” The adviser explained that the tradition of treating the Chinese as “Siamese subjects” was a central source of the difficulties associated with defining, in law, who the Siamese were: “When does a Chinaman, or his descendants, become a ‘Siamese subject’? In a general way we are accustomed to speak and think about all Chinese as Siamese subjects. This is due to the fact that until recently the expressions ‘Siamese subjects’ and ‘persons under Siamese jurisdiction’ were almost equivalent. But times are changing, and we must soon make distinctions between these two terms” (National Archives R6 T 2/1, Kalayan to Devawongse, 26 February 1911). 4. National Archives (UK) FO 371/84410, “Report on the present state of Thai legislation affecting the right of aliens to own and acquire land,” 5 June 1950. While British interests were not directly affected by these laws, because they were superseded by the treaty rights, the British embassy noted that “the two Acts make it possible for the Government to delay indefinitely and obstruct the acquisition of land by aliens [including British subjects], if they have a mind to do so” (ibid.). 5. See Barmé 1993, Goscha (1999, chap. 3), and Murashima 2005, 2006.

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6. For an excellent discussion of “farmers are the backbone of the nation” rhetoric in Thailand, see Haberkorn (2011, chap. 1). On the centrality of the “land question” to nationalist movements throughout Southeast Asia, including Thailand, see Jacoby (1949, chap. 8). See also the discussion of the “privileged” political position of “core peasants” in postcolonial Southeast Asia in Tsing (2003, 145). 7. National Archives M 5.15/1, Governor of Samutprakan to Samuha Phranakhonban, 14 July 1930. 8. Ibid., Minister of Interior to Minister of Agriculture, 19 August 1930. 9. National Archives Kh 0301.1.2/3, “Memorandum on the drafting of the Decree for the Collection of a Tax on Land in Bangkok,” January 1917, emphasis added. 10. Ibid., minutes of the thirteenth sitting of the Royal Commission to draft a land tax law, 12 May 1915. 11. National Archives Kh 0301.1.30/15, memorandum by Minister of Finance on H.E. Chao Phya Yomaraj’s letter of 1 March 1916 to H.M. the King on the Chinese question. 12. Ibid., Chao Phraya Yomarat to King, 1 March 1916. 13. Ibid. 14. Kritsadika 0012/2473, “Memorandum,” 71027. 15. Ibid., 71029. 16. The case is briefly described in Sak (1968, 7–8), and discussed by Kitahara (2003, 46). 17. Prince Charoon, as reported in National Archives T 77/83, Sayre to Traidos Prabandh, 20 February 1924. 18. That does not mean that they necessarily exploited this advantage to any greater extent. In his autobiography, the Japanese politician Miyazaki To¯ten (1982) described his participation in a failed scheme to settle Japanese farmers on Siamese soil. The autobiography reproduces what is presented as a “travel permit” issued in 1897 by the French consul in Bangkok. In fact, the document is a registration certificate that would have placed Miyazaki under French protection during his stay in Siam. This shows that Japanese settlers were able to place themselves under foreign consular protection, even in the absence of a Siamese-Japanese treaty extending extraterritorial privileges to Japanese subjects. 19. In 1910, Japan relaxed its land laws, for the first time allowing foreigners to acquire land—at least on paper. In fact, the law became “a dead measure” and was never put into force (Reischauer 1936, 122–23). Foreigners were finally allowed to own land in Japan only in 1926. The 1910 law caused a stir in Siamese government circles, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs forwarded a report from the embassy in Tokyo (accompanied by forty-five newspaper clippings). In the report, the acting Siamese ambassador warned that Japanese settlers would soon flood into Siam, and suggested that “it would be very good if the Siamese government could prevent the Japanese from acquiring land rights.” But how to prevent that? The ambassador noted that the Japanese law was based on the principle of reciprocity. Foreigners were allowed to acquire land if Japanese were allowed to acquire land in the formers’ homelands. This provided the Siamese with a good opportunity to bitphliw likliang (evade) Japanese demands for rights to acquire land in Siam: there were so few Siamese who could even contemplate settling in crowded Japan, he argued, while large numbers of Japanese could be expected to settle on Siam’s sparsely populated, fertile lands (National Archives R5 K 1/884, Wisanphotchankit to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 12 March 1910). 20. National Archives T 77/83, James to Devawongse, 21 February 1923. 21. Ibid., Sayre to Traidos Prabandh, 20 February 1924. 22. For an excellent treatment of the question of Japanese landownership in Siam, see Sunthari 1990. 23. National Archives K 20/8, Prajadhipok to Minister of Agriculture, 26 June 1927. Treaties that mitigated the system of extraterritoriality in operation in Siam had been

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concluded with United States (1921), Japan (1924), France, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, and Italy (1926), and Belgium and Norway (1927). The year in parenthesis is that of ratification. See Sayre 1928. 24. National Archives K 20/6, Mahidol to Phonlathep, 31 October 1928. 25. Kritsadika 0012/2473, minutes of the third meeting of the Royal Commission on land policy, 23 August 1927, 71094–95. 26. Kritsadika 0012/2473, R. Guyon, “Memorandum on the land law of Siam and the rights of aliens to acquire land,” 14 July 1927, 71044–45. Loos (2006, 63) provides valuable information on the career of this influential legal adviser. Guyon, a Frenchman, served the Siamese government from 1908 to 1963 in various legal positions, including supreme court judge and foreign legal adviser. He became a Siamese citizen in 1942, taking the name Pichan Bunyong. In the West, he is perhaps most well-known as an advocate of sexual emancipation: he authored the book La liberté sexuelle, which was published in English as Sexual freedom. 27. Kritsadika 0012/2473, “Memorandum on the land law of Siam and the rights of aliens to acquire land,” 14 July 1927, 71047–48, 71050. 28. Ibid., 71054-55. 29. Ibid., 71057–58. 30. Logically, the impulse to grant foreigners the right to acquire and own land as part of the diplomatic negotiations must at some point clash with the impulse to reserve “Siam for the Siamese.” However, with the abundance of land available in Siam in the 1920s, this remained a “tension” in the Siamese strategy rather than a serious “contradiction.” 31. Kritsadika 0012/2473, minutes of the third meeting of the Royal Commission on land policy, 23 August 1927, 71092–93. 32. National Archives K 20/6, minutes from the meeting held on 28 February 1929 at the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture. 33. National Archives K 20/5, minutes from the meeting held on 9 March 1929 at the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture. 34. Ibid., emphasis in original 35. The Ministry of Justice warned that these requirements were discriminatory against foreigners and might be incompatible with the international treaties Siam had signed with Britain, France, and other Western countries. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that they would not cause conflict with the treaty powers (National Archives K 20/1, Minister of Justice to Minister of Agriculture, 7 June 1930). 36. National Archives K 20/5, minutes from the meeting held on 9 March 1929 at the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture. 37. Ibid., Stevens to Craig, 18 November 1929. 38. Ibid., Gordon Dawson, Yala Consolidated Limited, to Governor of Pattani, 7 December 1927. 39. National Archives K 20/4, Gordon Macleod to Minister of Agriculture, 15 December 1927. 40. National Archives K 20/4, Minister of Agriculture to Chaophraya Mahithon, 22 December 1927. In the same file, see also the draft letter from the Minister of Agriculture to Chaophraya Mahithon dated June 1927. This date is surely incorrect, because it predates Macleod’s request, and because it responds to a letter dated 28 December 1927. 41. On the doctrine and practice of economic nationalism, see List 1991, Abdelal 2001, and Helleiner and Pickel 2005. 42. For details on the domestic political turmoil triggered by Pridi’s effort to effect an economic and social revolution, see Batson 1984, Brailey 1986, and Thawatt 1972. 43. As far as we know, “communism” was identified as a political threat in Thai political discourse for the first time in 1881, when Chulalongkorn, following the shooting of U.S. President James A. Garfield, reportedly expressed the hope that “the time would come

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when Providence will open a measure to secure all rulers in this world from the hands of those based classes Socialist, Nihilist, Communist etc.” (Batson 1974, 60). His successors went further, by associating all “scientific” approaches to the study of economic life with socialism and the threat of revolution. In 1913, Vajiravudh banned the first extended work on economics ever produced in Thailand, and in 1927 Prajadhipok banned the teaching of economics. On early economic thought in Thailand, see Chatthip 1978 and Brown 1991. 44. On British perceptions of a connection between the Saya San Rebellion in British Burma and the Bengal Revolutionary Party, see Aung-Thwin 2001. 45. However, in hindsight it would appear that the case of Persian oil—with its long history of foreign intervention (see Elm 1992)—rather proved the point that Pridi’s opponents were making. The great powers would not let colonial or ex-colonial nationalists assert, as a matter of course, their right to nationalize natural resources unopposed until much later in the twentieth century. For broader discussion of this question, see Moran 1973, Krasner 1978, and Lipson 1985. 46. Fistié (1968) makes a similar point, but with emphasis on the relationship between communism and state sovereignty. 47. Kitahara (2003, 54) interprets the 1936 law as reflecting a renewed commitment to agriculture based on smallholding peasants. However, the drafts debated in the late 1920s had contained more substantial provisions that would have put a ceiling on the total amount of land that individuals and corporations would be allowed to claim. In contrast, the 1936 law is completely silent on the question of land ceilings. The only restrictions that were imposed were on state officials, who could approve land claims and issue ownership documentation only for plots up to a certain size, commensurate with their rank. 48. This was acknowledged in the treaty negotiations with Japan, when the Japanese negotiator asked about the opportunities for Japanese farmers to cultivate cotton in Siam, for supply to the Japanese textile industry. The Siamese negotiator had to acknowledge that while the Siamese government was averse to making land grants directly for such endeavors, because of MFN provisions Japanese subjects would enjoy the same rights as British and French subjects, who were allowed to accumulate land through market operations (Sunthari 1990, 22). 49. The survey covered “a fairly normal income year, before the slump in prices made itself felt all over Siam” (Zimmerman 1931, 4). As a consequence, it can be used as a baseline against which to measure the impact of the Great Depression. 50. See Ammar (1972) for a comparison of agricultural developments in the three deltas. Scott (1976) links subsistence crises associated with the Great Depression to the outbreak of peasant revolts in Burma and Indochina. Brown (1986) challenges the conventional wisdom by arguing that the decline in peasant welfare in export-oriented agricultural districts in Southeast Asia in the early 1930s has been exaggerated in much of the literature, but he echoes the conventional view that the deterioration in peasant welfare was less severe in Siam than in Burma and Indochina. 51. Landownership included informally held land. 52. It may be noted that many agricultural taxes, including the rice field tax, did not apply to large areas of the country. The rice field tax was extended across the countryside on a district-by-district basis, with the level of development and the ability to pay taxes being the key determinants of whether or not the peasants of a particular district would be compelled to pay the tax. This attitude of flexibility that characterized the traditional Siamese approach to rural taxation was conducive to a flexible response to the Depression. The Siamese state had not insisted on any universal abstract “right” to revenue from those who used the land before the Depression, and did not start doing so during it. 53. National Archives Kh 0301.1.1/15, “Operation of the revenue laws connected with the activities of the Revenue Department.”

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54. It is perhaps not surprising that the Siamese state sought to devise other means of mobilizing resources, notably by resurrecting the premodern practice of corvée labor in modern guises, such as the use of “gifts” to coerce villagers to “cooperate” on state-led development projects of various kinds (Vandergeest 1991). Coerced labor extraction as an alternative to monetary taxation remains a prevalent state-building strategy in rural areas of authoritarian Southeast Asian states where land and labor markets continue to be poorly developed, such as Burma and Laos, albeit with considerable variation in the degree of direct coercion (Wilson 2010; High 2006). 55. One of the first laws enacted by the postabsolutist regime protected certain forms of property belonging to agriculturalists from being foreclosed on. The law sought to provide protection for the agriculturalist profession (achip) by ensuring that farmers would be able to keep the assets necessary for agriculture—such as water buffaloes, plows, and seeds (Sathian 1935, vol. 45, 299–300). The ability of creditors to recover loans from defaulting farmers through legal coercion was significantly reduced. Landownership was not defined as essential to the preservation of the agriculturalist’s profession, and thus not covered as a “protected” asset. Two attempts to expand the coverage of the law to include land failed to win approval in the Parliament. The proposed amendments would have guaranteed defaulting peasants continued ownership of a subsistence-size plot of land in case of foreclosure on their property. These attempts were framed by their proponents as designed to prevent the emergence of banditry and communism in the rural areas. One of the reasons these legislative initiatives failed was that the results produced by the 1932 law were ambiguous at best: the opponents of the amendment argued that the existing law had actually hurt peasant welfare by making it more difficult for them to borrow money. In addition, it was argued that the proposals threatened the viability of other government initiatives designed to assist peasants—such as public funding for cooperative societies, the members of which pledged their land as security. (Raingan kanprachum sapha phuthaen ratsadon samai thi 2 saman lem 1 pho so 2478, 354, 362, 357, 370; Raingan kanprachum sapha phuthaen ratsadon samai thi 2 chut thi 2 [saman] pho so 2480 [lem 3], 1214–15, 1243, 1246.) While the opponents of the bills won majorities in Parliament, it is important to note that they did not seek to revoke the 1932 law limiting the ability of creditors to recover debt from farmers. In the 1950s, the idea of limiting the rights of creditors to foreclose on farmers was revived, as rural society suffered another stressful economic downturn and political society was preoccupied by a perceived communist threat (“Bill protects against taking land for debts” 1955). 56. Under the provisions of the Bowring treaty, Chettiars would, as British subjects, have enjoyed the right to acquire land within the twenty-four-hour zone. It would thus have been legally possible for Chettiars to finance the expansion of rice cultivation in Siam. That they chose not to do so may perhaps be explained by the comparatively high transaction costs involved. For example, acquiring land through foreclosure would have required royal approval. In contrast, Burma’s swift legal-administrative machinery provided a more favorable environment for high-volume moneylending than Siam’s legaladministrative machinery that had been deliberately designed for a slow grind so as to resist “peaceful penetration.” Ironically, Siam probably posed challenges similar to those that the Chettiars faced in their native Tamilnad, where the authorities resisted demands that “the machinery for registering land titles” be improved, because the government “believed that such registration would make it possible for outsiders to buy up village land” (Baker 1984, 322). 57. The nine-member committee included, among others, the minister of agriculture (U Pu), the minister of finance (U Htoon Aung Gyaw), the financial adviser (James Baxter), and the commissioner of settlements and land records (B. O. Binns). 58. Adas and Scott interpret the underlying causes of the revolt slightly differently. Scott (1976) viewed the rebellion as a response to a subsistence crisis caused by oppressive

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taxation and land laws, while Adas (1974, 202–3) argued that “the Saya San rebellion was a product of frustrated hopes rather than hopeless oppression.” 59. Furnivall’s thoughts on these matters were elaborated in his seminal study, Colonial policy and practice (1948). 60. To give further effect to this repression of the rural credit market, Furnivall proposed that laws be passed also to restrict the use of other types of peasant properties as collateral. Since “loans on the security of cattle and produce often lead to the bankruptcy of the cultivator and the loss of his land, if any, or of the means of cultivation of a tenant,” Furnivall argued, “it would seem expedient to provide that no Court should proceed against cattle, agricultural implements or produce in settlement of debt exceeding a certain figure” unless the loan transaction had received prior blessing from the NADC (Furnivall 1943, 59). As noted above, legislation to that effect had been passed in Siam already in 1932. 61. Furnivall served as a colonial administrator in Burma from 1902 to 1925. During World War II, with Japan in control of Burma, he helped the colonial government plan for the country’s future reconstruction. His services were retained by the government of Burma upon independence in 1948, and he served as planning adviser until he was dismissed from his post by the Ne Win government in 1960. For recent critical engagement with Furnivall’s scholar-activism, inspired by Fabian socialism and Burmese nationalism, see Pham 2004, 2005, and Englehart 2011. 5. COMBATING SPECTERS AND COMMUNISTS

1. Whereas NS3 titles were issued following a rather simple local survey, NS4 demanded a more exacting survey that located the property on the national cadastral map and clearly demarcated the property through official boundary stones. Both NS3 and NS4 titles allowed the owner to sell, mortgage, and transfer the land freely and legally. This is in contrast with lower-quality land rights documents, such as NS2 and SK1. These provide more limited official recognition of private claims to land, not including the right of sale or mortgage. NS3 title here refers to both NS3 and NS3K documents. While NS3 documents (introduced in 1954) based on aerial photographs had been introduced already in 1972, it was only in 1975 that the NS3K category was introduced, making a clearer distinction between the different survey methods on which, in other respects, equivalent documents were based. 2. As discussed in the previous chapter, a severe anticommunist law had been promulgated in 1933. This law was revoked in the aftermath of World War II, in order to ensure that the Soviet Union would not veto Thailand’s application to join the United Nations. In 1952, however, the Phibun government enacted an Anti–Communist Activities Act. In the intervening years, the CPT had operated and communist media were published and circulated openly (Kasian 2001). 3. On Phibun’s support for Indochinese liberation movements in the 1940s, see Goscha 1999. 4. See Fineman 1997, 171. One of the curious things about this interpretation is that it overlooked the fact that the largest “Thai” minority in China, the Zhuang, had been constituted an autonomous region already in 1949. On the position and role of minority peoples in Chinese state-building, see Fiskesjö 2006. 5. The great extent to which the Psychological Strategy Board simply echoed Thai nationalist ideology is indicated by the fanciful inclusion of the inhabitants of Cambodia as belonging to the “Thai peoples” (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 3). 6. Enlisting Thai nationalism in the anticommunist cause was not without potential pitfalls: it could give rise, warned the authors of PSB D-23, to “expectations on the part of some indigenous elements, particularly the Pan-Thai enthusiasts in Thailand, that the

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U.S. can be induced to support extreme, unreasonable or premature nationalist ambitions detrimental to the legitimate interests of our Allies or of other friendly nations” (Psychological Strategy Board 1953a, 9). 7. Naturally, this makes the use of the label “counterinsurgency” somewhat premature. 8. Thailand’s welcoming of the Kuomintang stands in stark contrast to Burma’s hostile reaction to the incursion of the CIA-backed Chinese nationalists into northern Burma. See Callahan 2003, 154–59. 9. Lobe and Morell (1978) dismiss this explanation for the adoption of the strategy, but they do so in obvious ignorance of the existence of these treaties. 10. Prior to that, the communist movement in Thailand had primarily engaged ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese, whose energies were mainly directed toward the “liberation” of China and Vietnam (Alagappa 1987, 149; Thompson and Adloff 1950, 51). 11. For contemporary examples of the serious fears for the security of northeastern Thailand to which Vietnam’s victories gave rise, see Mount 1979; Thanat 1983, 20; and Sarasin 1983. 12. Laos and Cambodia were admitted in 1997 and 1999, respectively. 13. On the notion of “feudalism” in the Thai context, see Reynolds 1987. 14. National Archives (UK) FO 371/117358, Berkeley Gage to Anthony Eden, 2 April 1955. 15. On human bondage and slavery in Siam, see, for instance, Feeny 1989, Wichai 1966, and Terwiel 1983. 16. Phibun was reported to have expressed similar sentiments in a radio address in 1954, calling for an end to all speculative land transactions, since they constituted a threat to “domestic peace and order” (“Premier in broadcast hits profiteers” 1954). 17. National Archives (UK) CO 537/7124, Oliver Franks to Anthony Eden, 31 October 1951. 18. This reform came about following a visit to Australia and New Zeeland in 1959 by DOL’s chief survey officer, Khun Prachakphumiphiphat, who found that title deeds could be issued there based on local cadastral surveys that used natural landmarks—including roads and railroads—as reference points. This was not possible under the Thai land law, which required that cadastral maps must be coordinated with the geodetic control network. Since such reference points could not be found in many areas, no deeds could be issued in large parts of the country. The DOL therefore proposed a change in the law, so that the process of land titling could be accelerated (Udom 1976, 21). 19. National Archives (2) M 0601.6.2/1, “Raingan kanprachum phanakngan thidin ampoe lae kharatchakan nai samnakngan thidin changwat sisaket, 18 phrütsachikayon 2512,” 2, 7. 20. National Archives (2) M 0601.3.1/12, Sinchai Chantri to Director General of Department of Lands, 1970. 21. The kamnan is the head of a tambon, which comprises a group of villages. 22. Interview with Saiyud Kerdphol, 11 November 2004. 23. Department of Lands 2001c. 24. Ibid. 25. The Land Code underwent a major overhaul in 1985. Additional amendments were passed in 1991, 1992, 1998, 1999, and 2000 (Department of Lands 2001c, 10). 26. A formal land administration system will accurately reflect property rights relations only to the extent that land titles are actually utilized by the population. If transactions are made but not officially registered, the official record rapidly becomes out of date, as has been the case in a number of African countries (Platteau 1996, 47). 27. In the 1980s and 1990s, Thai NGOs, with the help of allies in local academia, the relatively free Thai press, and transnational activist networks, helped highlight the

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negative social consequences of many development policies and projects. The umbrella organization Assembly of the Poor has been particularly effective in channeling rural discontent into results-producing protests (Praphat 1998; Missingham 2003; Baker 2000). For a general introduction to the Thai NGO movement, see Amara 1995. The ability of Thai farmers to successfully mobilize against unpopular state initiatives is illustrated by the derailing of plans to establish large-scale eucalyptus plantations (Barney 2004). 28. Generally, official Thai discourse warned of “aliens” (khon tangdaw) rather than identifying a particular ethnicity or nationality. The ambiguity of the term “alien” was, however, useful in that it could apply to anyone, without pointing an accusatory finger at any particular group. Indeed, it could even be manipulated so that foreign capitalists were replaced by foreign communists (who could, of course, conceivably penetrate Thai society by becoming landowners) as the source of the threat. 29. See the exchanges of notes between Thailand and France “concerning the prolongation of the validity of the Treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation” from 1968 and 1969, available online at the website of the Department of Treaties and Legal Affairs of Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (at http://122.0.0.22/treaty/). 30. The countries were: Belgium, Burma, Denmark, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. 31. The treaty-based rights to acquire land were not the only legal avenue available for foreigners to come into possession of land in Thailand. The Promotion of Industrial Investment Act (1960) and its successors also provided such an avenue; and it was possible for foreign companies to lease land. 32. As observed by one of the “fathers” of modern Thai agriculture, Sidhiporn Krisdakara: “To assert that the middlemen are a big burden on the farmers could be right. But the heaviest burden on the rice farmers is the premium collection” (Montri 1969). The distributive and other effects of the rice premium, a tax on rice exports, have been extensively analyzed by Thai economists (see Rangsan 1987; Ammar 1979). 33. See, for instance, Acemoglu and Robinson 2006, Baum and Lake 2003, Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, Lake and Baum 2001, McGuire and Olson 1996, Morrow et al. 2008, and Stasavage 2005. 34. From 1947 to 1973, Thailand was ruled by military oligarchies. An interlude of turbulent democratic openness lasted from the toppling of the junta by popular protests on 14 October 1973 until a conservative backlash reinstated military rule on 6 October 1976. Over the next two decades, the Thai military gradually relinquished some of its powers. Parliament was reopened in 1979. A compromise regime, with General Prem Tinasulanond, a respected counterinsurgency officer, as unelected prime minister leading a cabinet answering to an elected parliament, lasted from 1980 to 1988. In 1988, “full” democracy was reintroduced, this time under the helm of another general, Chatichai Choonhavan. A military coup in 1991 put a temporary end to civilian rule. The army was, however, unsuccessful in its attempts to chart a return to the “semidemocracy” of the 1980s. In 1992, the military junta clashed with prodemocracy demonstrators. The generals then retreated to the barracks, paving the way for the emergence of a system of electoral democracy dominated by business elites. On democratization in Thailand covering this period, see, for instance, Anek 1996, Suchit 1996, and Surin 1997. 35. The process of de-democratization (Tilly 2007) initiated by the September 2006 military coup in Thailand indicates that key segments of the country’s elites continue to harbor deep anxieties about the power of the ballot box. See Connors 2008, Thongchai 2008, Walker 2008, and Montesano 2009. 36. See the annual reports from the DOL (e.g. Department of Lands 1962, unnumbered pages between pages 56 and 57) and various issues of Warasan thidin (e.g., Department of Lands 1967).

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37. Thai security agencies were of course not alone in securitizing the environment as the Cold War wound down, as is made clear by Deudney 1990 and Matthew 2000. 38. State responses to these demands have included “land reform,” which in the Thai context means that considerable areas classified as forest lands have been reclassified and transferred from the jurisdiction of the RFD to the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO). ALRO in turn has issued farmers with documents that guaranteed partial land rights, namely usufruct rights but not the right to lease out or to sell the land (so called SPK 4-01 certificates). By 2008, more than 1.8 million families had been issued ALRO land certificates covering a total of almost thirty million rai (Agricultural Land Reform Office 2008). A related popular demand has centered on the creation of a formal legal basis for so-called community forests. But here the state has been much less forthcoming (for details, see Johnson and Forsyth 2002; Vandergeest 1996b; “Three bills passed by NLA not legal” 2008; Walker 2004). 39. From 1904 to 1951, 515,204 applications for title deeds (or patents, as they are known in the Philippines) were filed with the Bureau of Lands. The bureau was able to issue only 115,000, which corresponds to 22 percent of the applications. Under the aegis of a U.S.-supported aid project, the Bureau of Lands “expanded the number of owners of land by 118,842” between 1952 and 1956 (Davis 1957, 4, 8) and the total number of patents issued more than doubled. Many of these titles were issued in support of a homesteading policy, under which, in the same period, “about 1,455,000 hectares of public lands were subdivided into about 275,000 small farms, ten hectares or less in area” (Davis 1957, 25). 40. Kang has suggested that the Philippine rulers did not have to face up to external threats as the country, the site of significant U.S. bases, was “ensconced in a cocoon of U.S. protection” (2002, 30). However, it is not clear that Thailand was less ensconced in a similar U.S. cocoon. Thailand was also the site of U.S. bases and at their peak U.S. troop deployments in Thailand were larger than they ever were in the Philippines. 41. The three ports were Iloilo, Zamboanga, and Sual. Additional ports were opened in 1860 (Cebu) and 1873 (Legaspi and Tacloban). Manila had been officially opened already in 1834. See Aguilar (1994, 70–71). 6. OLD SOLUTIONS, NEW CHALLENGES

1. The theory of rent-seizing and institutional breakdown is developed in Ross 2001. 2. See United Nations General Assembly 2011 for an indication of progress in terms of winning broader international recognition for “peasant rights.”

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and tables. absolute monarchy, overthrow of, 73, 86 Aceh, 149 Acemoglu, Daron, 154n8 Adas, Michael, 167n58 aerial surveys, 122, 122 – 123, 123 Africa, postcolonial, 2 agricultural commodity prices, spike in, 150 – 151 Agriculturalists’ Debt Relief Act (Burma, 1947), 106 Agricultural Land Reform Office partial land rights, issuance of, 170n36 agricultural productivity land-titling link, 24 agricultural sector Bowring Treaty and, 39 driver of economic growth, 155n13 Aguilar, Filomeno V., 145 Akin Rabibhadana, 139 Albright, Madeleine K., 1 “alien Asiatics,” 42 state efforts to control expansion of, 52 – 56, 58 Alien Land Act (1943), 75 Anan Ganjanapan, 33 Anderson, Benedict, 10, 66 Andrews, James M., 95 – 97, 96 Anglo-Siamese Chiang Mai Treaty (1883), 58 Anglo-Siamese Secret Convention (1897), 50 – 51 Anglo-Siamese Treaty (1826) arms trade restrictions, 159n38 Anglo-Siamese Treaty (1909), 52, 57 – 59 state obstructionism to implementation of, 60 – 64 Anglo-Siamese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation (1938), 92 anti-communism legislation against, 87, 167n2 Royal Commission on Land Policy, 115 – 116 Thai nationalism and, 167 – 168n6 U.S. counter strategies in Southeast Asia, 110 – 111, 112 – 113

anti-communism law (1933), 87, 167n2 Anti-Communist Activities Act (1952), 167n2 Asian economic “miracle,” 20 Assembly of the Poor, 169n25 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 115 Australian Development Assistance Bureau, 124 Austria-Hungary, 156n10 bai yiap yam (temporary reservation certificates), 31 Bangkok Bank, 134 Bangkok Post, 149 Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, 21, 23, 126, 130 Battye, Noel Alfred, 159n41 Beckett, W. R. D., 58 Belgium, 156n10, 164n23 Bell Mission report (1950), 141 “Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk” (Olson), 28 Binns, B. O., 105 Border Patrol Police, 112 Bowring, Sir John, 9, 34 Bowring Treaty (1855), 9, 34 – 44, 156n10, 158n35 extraterritoriality provisions, 36 – 38 Mongkut’s dissatisfaction with terms of, 35 – 36 property rights and limitations on foreign economic penetration, 35, 39 – 40, 41, 42 – 44 taxation restrictions, 38 – 39, 157nn19 – 21 British Labour Party, 89 Brown, Ian, 66, 96, 157n20, 165n50 Brummelhuis, Han ten, 31 Burma, 12, 99 – 107, 111, 156n8, 159n38, 168n8 agricultural sector, reconstruction of, 104 – 105 colonial administration, 100, 101, 103 – 104 communist threat, response to, 5 demilitarization of, 66 dispossession of peasant classes, 106 – 107

201

202

INDEX

Burma (continued) Great Depression effects, 99, 101 – 103, 105 independent constitution, 106 legal system, 101 – 102, 166n56 nationalism, 102 – 103 rice exports, 65, 100 rubber industry, 65 rural credit markets, 100, 103, 103, 105 Saya San Rebellion, 102, 166 – 167n58 Byamugisha, Frank F. K., 17 – 18, 25, 155n13, 155n15 Cambodia, 114, 151, 156n8 Campos, Jose Edgardo L., 20 Catholic mission, 59 causal mechanism, defined, 3 Centeno, Miguel Angelo, 4 Central Land Valuation Office, 125 chao phaendin (lord of the land), 31 Chaophraya Delta, 93 Chaophraya Surasakmontri, 48 chap chong (temporary reservation), 161n64 Chatichai Choonhavan, 169n32 Chettiar moneylenders, 100, 101, 102, 105, 166n56 China, 47, 66, 153n6 withdrawal of support for Communist Party of Thailand, 115 Chinese settlers Siamese preference for, 78 Choem Saeng-Chuto, 48 Christensen, Scott R., 139 Chulabhorn (Princess), 138 Chulalongkorn (King of Siam), 45 civilized nation status, claims to, 31, 56 communism as security threat, 164 – 165n43 fiscal structure under, 157n18 foreign land acquisition, efforts to prevent, 43 – 44 nationality and, 37, 158n31 reform program, 48 – 49 on wan strategy, 159n41 Civil and Commercial Code (1924), 64, 79 corporate land acquisition, restrictions on, 64, 161 – 162n65 Cold War. See communist threat colonialist threat institutional underdevelopment as securitization against, 10, 87 – 90 Japan, 65 – 67 Siam, 45 – 50, 66 – 67 Committee for Farmers’ Assistance, 130

communism threat of colonialism, link to, 87 – 89 See also Pridi Phanomyong communist insurgencies, 111 Philippines, 111, 141, 143 – 144 Thailand, 113, 114, 115, 141, 168n10 Communist Party of Burma, 106 Communist Party of Thailand, 113, 127, 167n2 China’s withdrawal of support for, 115 Communist Party of the Philippines, 141, 143, 144 communist threat, 109 – 116, 164 – 165n43 as catalyst to democratization, 131 – 132, 133, 133 – 134 deforestation and, 135 – 138 diminishment of, 109, 115 as existential and military danger, 109, 113–115 expansion of formal property rights as response to, 108 – 109 formalization of rural property rights, impetus for, 10, 133, 133 – 134 as ideological and psychological challenge, 109, 110 – 113 land policy to thwart, 115 – 116 military initiatives against, 112, 114 – 115 psychological warfare strategies against, 111 – 112, 131 – 132 U.S. and, 110 – 111, 112, 114, 135 – 136 from Vietnam, 114, 115 Connors, Michael Kelly, 132 cooperative credit societies, 77 – 78 credit expansion land-titling and, 20 – 21, 21, 22, 24 – 25 rural households, 23 “crédit foncier hypothécaire,” ban on, 79 Crocker, Courtney, 156n16 Damrong (Interior Minister), 62, 64, 161n61 Danish East Asiatic Company, 59 deforestation, 135 – 138 democratization, 130 – 134 communist threat as catalyst to, 131 – 132, 133, 133 – 134 formalization of property rights as precondition for, 132 – 133 Philippines, 141 Thailand, 169n32 Denmark, 59, 156n10, 164n23 Department of Lands, 125 bureaucratic efficiency, 8 – 9 land surveying innovations, 122, 122 – 123, 123

INDEX

staff expansion, 118, 119 See also land administration; Thailand Land Titling Project Devawongse (Prince), 55, 56, 57 Dolbeare, F. R., 90, 156n16 “domino theory,” 115 Doner, Richard F., 9, 66, 139 economic development, causes of, 1 economic growth agricultural sector as driver of, 155n13 inequality and, 18 – 19 land-titling and, 17 – 19, 19, 24 Thailand, 16, 28, 71, 155n15 economic nationalism, radical, 86 – 90 entrepreneurship land ownership, link to, 25, 25 – 26 environmental degradation. See deforestation European Union, 150 Evans, Peter, 146 extraterritoriality, 92 foreigners in Siam, 80–81, 156n14, 163–164n23 Japanese immigrants, 80 – 81 land disputes and, 53 – 54 See also Bowring Treaty Falleti, Tulia G., 6 Feder, Gershon, 17, 24, 26, 27 Feeny, David, 32, 56 – 57, 60 Fineman, Daniel, 111 Fofack, Hippolyte, 26 foreclosure, 97, 98 protection of farmers, 98, 166n55 foreign land ownership global desecuritization of, 150 forest conservation, 135 – 139 France, 46, 156n10, 164n23 neutralization of Siamese lands, 50, 51 Southeast Asia, colonization in, 156n8 subjects in Siam, 156 – 157n17 Franco-Siamese crisis (1893), 49, 159n40 Franco-Siamese treaties (1893, 1926) demilitarization requirements, 112 Franco-Siamese Treaty (1907), 52, 58 Franco-Thai Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation (1937), 128 French Indochina, 111, 112 See also Cambodia; Laos; Vietnam Furnivall, J. S., 10, 104 – 105, 167nn60 – 61 gambling, 157n18 Garfield, James A., 164n43

203

Garrett, Geoffrey, 156n6 Geary-Khamis method, 28 geography, 7 – 8 Germany, 156n10, 160n53 Giné, Xavier, 155n12 Glassman, Jim, 111 Graham, W. A., 62 – 63 Grassi, Joachim, 42 – 43 Great Britain, 31, 164n23 colonial administration of Burma, 100, 101, 103 – 104 neutralization of Siamese lands, 50 – 51 property rights negotiations with Siam, 160n53 Southeast Asia, colonization in, 156n8 subjects in Siam, 157n17 See also Anglo-Siamese treaties; Bowring Treaty Great Depression Burma, 99, 101 – 103, 105 institutional underdevelopment as protection from, 93 – 94, 95, 98 Siam, 99, 101 taxation and, 97 – 98 Guyon, René, 82 – 83, 84, 90, 164n26 Handley, Paul, 117 Hanks, Lucien M., 10 – 11 Harapan Baru (New Hope for the South) initiative, 138 Hardie report (1952), 141, 142 Hawaii, 148 Herring, Ronald J., 4 High Level Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, 1 Hirschman, Albert O., 11 Hukbalahap Rebellion (Philippines), 141, 143 Hun Sen, 151 Hutchcroft, Paul D., 10 income inequality, 16 – 17, 18 – 19, 19 land-titling and, 26 political stability and, 18 – 19, 19 poverty and, 26 – 27 Indonesia, 8, 72, 88, 111 Innes, Mitchell, 38 institutional underdevelopment as protection from Great Depression, 93 – 94, 95, 98 as securitization against colonization, 10, 87 – 90 Irrawaddy Delta, 94 irredentism, 75 – 76

204

INDEX

Isaan Khiaw (The Green Northeast) initiative, 138 Italy, 156n10, 164n23 James, Eldon, 156n16 Japan, 12, 20, 47, 65 – 70, 75, 156n10, 164n23 economic growth, 71 economic modernization, 67 – 68 extraterritoriality of migrants in Siam, 80 – 81 foreign property restrictions, 67, 69 – 70, 163n19 imperial ambitions, 80 invasion threats and, 65 – 67 land tax reforms of Meiji Restoration, 68 – 69, 162n73 modern arms and, 159n38 Kang, David C., 170n38 kanthidin lae chamnong (land and mortgages), 79 Kasian Tejapira, 111 kathin (alms-giving ceremonies), 135 Keefer, Philip, 18 Khor Jor Kho (military resettlement scheme), 138 Khun Prachakphumiphiphat, 168n18 khwam songsan (engendering pity) strategy, 46 Kim Liang Wangtan, 116 Kitahara, Atsushi, 161n64, 165n47 Knack, Stephen, 18 Kuomintang forces, 112, 168n8 labor mobility, 18 land administration bureaucratic efficiency, 8 – 9 culture change, 123 expansion of, 118 – 119, 119, 122, 122 – 123, 123 Siam, 60, 60 – 61, 61 See also Department of Lands Land Alienation Act (Burma, 1939), 104 Land and Agriculture Committee (Burma) 1938 report, 103 Land Code of 1954, 108, 117, 125, 168n23 domestic opposition to, 117 – 118 drafters’ intent, 118 land ceiling, 117, 121 land disputes extraterritoriality as factor in, 53 – 54 Siam, 32, 53 – 54 land inequality, 18 – 19 landlordism, targeted efforts against, 116 – 117, 119

Land Nationalization Acts (Burma, 1948 and 1953), 106 land ownership entrepreneurship, link to, 25, 25 – 26 land policy, Siam 1892 draft land law, 32 – 33 1909 land law, 83, 161n64 traditional land law, 46 land policy, Thailand anti-communist ideology of, 115 – 116 land law of 1954, 117, 119 – 121 See also Land Code of 1954; property rights, formalization of land rights. See property rights land title distribution ceremonies, 134 land-titling, 15, 108 defined, 153n5 Cambodia, 151 credit expansion resulting from, 20 – 21, 21, 22, 24 – 25 economic growth, link to, 17 – 19, 19, 24 income inequality, effect on, 26 Philippines, 170n37 poverty alleviation and, 23 – 28 regional economic disparities, reduction of, 27 – 28 state authority, bolstering of, 52 – 57 See also Thailand Land Titling Project land-titling law of 1901, 122 land-titling law of 1936, 90 – 93, 165n47 land-titling law of 1953, 117, 121 Lange, Matthew, 1, 156n6 Laos, 114, 156n8 Latin America, 4 La Via Campesina (transnational social movement), 151 – 152 lebensraum, 76 lending. See credit expansion List, Friedrich, 86 Lobe, Thomas, 168n9 local cadastral surveys, 122, 122 – 123, 123, 124 logging, ban, 138 Loos, Tamara, 164n26 Lower Burma, 12 Luang Sitthepkan, 116 Lynch, Julia F., 6 Lysa, Hong, 37 Magindanao (Sultan), 5 Malaysia, 8, 72 Malay territories, 111, 156n8 Maoist New People’s Army, 141 Marcos, Ferdinand, 141, 144

INDEX

Mekong Delta, 94 “Memorandum on the land law of Siam and the rights of aliens to acquire land” (Guyon), 82 – 83 Mindanao, 149 Mindon (King of Upper Burma), 159n38 Ministry of Interior deforestation, complicity in, 136 Miyazaki T ten, 163n18 Mohamed Billeh, 53 – 54 Mongkut (King of Siam), 158 – 159n37 Bowring Treaty and, 9, 35 – 36 fiscal structure under, 157n18 Western-Siamese interactions, concern over, 40, 42 Montesano, Michael, 27 Morell, David, 168n9 Morgenthau, Hans J., 110 Muscat, Robert J., 113 Muslim separatist movements, 149 – 150 Myanmar. See Burma Nakamura, James I., 69 National Agricultural Development Company, 104 – 105 National Economic Social and Development Board, 124 – 125 National Forest Reserve Act (1964), 136 National Forestry Policy (1985), 138 nationalism Burma, 102 – 103 Siam, 162n3 See also Thai nationalism nationality law of 1913, 162n3 National Park Act (1961), 136 national security dangers. See colonialist threat; communist threat; deforestation Nazi Party, 89 Netherlands, 156n10, 164n23 Ne Win (General), 5 Nishio, Akihiko, 26 Noppharat Nutsatham, 43 North, Douglass, 1 – 2 North Korea, 153n6 Norway, 156n10, 164n23 NS3K land title (land utilization certificates), 167n1 NS3 land title (land utilization certificates), 108, 109, 123, 167n1 NS4 title (full land title), 108, 109, 167n1 Olson, Mancur, Jr., 28 “On Thailand, a small country in frightening peril” (Mongkut), 36

205

on wan (gentleness) strategy, 46, 50, 159n41 opium, 157n18 Parkes, Harry, 35 – 36, 38, 40 Parkes agreement (1856), 36, 39, 158n25 Patton, Kenneth, 156n16 Paulson, Anna L., 25 Peluso, Nancy Lee, 57 People’s Party, 86, 89 Phadet Chirapan, 119 – 120 Phibun Songkhram, 110, 120, 167n2, 168n16 1954 land law, defense of, 119 – 121 military overthrow of, 121 – 122 pan-Thai nationalist aspirations, 75 – 76, 99, 111 peasant society, desire to conserve, 118 Philippines, 5, 8, 12, 20, 140 – 146 communist insurgency, 111, 141, 143 – 144 democratization, 141 formal property rights regime, 141 – 142, 143 landowning oligarchy, 142 – 143, 145 – 146 land-titling, 170n37 population-land ratio, 140, 140 – 141 Spanish colonial administration, 145 U.S. and, 141, 142, 170n38 Phra Klaklangsamon, 116 Phraya Manopakon, 87 Pichan Bunyong, 164n26 See also Guyon, René Pitkin, Wolcott, 156n16 political stability inequality and, 18 – 19, 19 Portugal, 156n10, 164n23 poverty, income inequality and, 26 – 27 poverty alleviation land-titling and, 23 – 28 poverty incidence, 16, 16 Prajadhipok (King of Siam), 81, 84, 87, 165n43 Praphat Charusathian, 132 Prem Tinasulanond, 131, 169n32 Pridi Phanamyong 1936 land-titling law and, 91, 92 nationalist economic plan, 86 – 90, 99 Prisdang (Prince), 45, 158n36 Promotion of Industrial Investment Act (1960), 169n29 property rights economic development, cause of, 1 institutional layers of regulation, 7 multidimensional nature of, 6 – 7 Siam, 31 – 34 Thai revocation of foreigners’, 128 – 129

206

INDEX

property rights, formalization of communist threat as impetus for, 10, 133, 133 – 134 democratization, precondition for, 132 – 133 economic performance and, 1, 155n13 expansion as response to communist threat, 108 – 109 state loyalty and, 11, 153 – 154n9 See also Thailand Land Titling Project provincial land offices, 118 PSB D-23, 110 – 111, 167 – 168n6, 167n5 Public Lands Act (1936), 81, 85 Putzel, James, 143 Rabi (Prince), 43 Rama III, 35 Rama IV. See Mongkut Rama V. See Chulalongkorn Rama VI. See Vajiravudh Rama VII. See Prajadhipok Rangsit scheme, 158n26 ratthaniyom (nationalist ideology), 99 Red Prince, 89 reforestation, 138 – 139 Reno, William, 151 rent-seizing, 151 rice farming Siamese exports, 65, 100 Thai nationalism and, 81 Rigg, Jonathan, 27 Ritchie, Bryan K., 66 Robinson, James A., 154n8 Rolin-Jaequemyns, Gustave, 50, 156n16 Root, Hilton L., 20 Royal Commission on Land Policy, 81, 84 – 85, 115 – 116 Royal Forestry Department, 136 Royal Gazette, 137 rubber boom, 78 rural credit markets, 95, 96, 96 – 97 Buddhist notions of royal virtue, link to, 134 – 135 Burma, 100, 103, 103, 105 cooperative system, 129 “middlemen,” 129, 130 Russia, 66, 156n10 Saiyud Kerdphol, 124 sakdina (system of social stratification), 31 Sakon Warawan, 89 Sak Thaiwat, 127 – 128 SarDesai, D. R., 156n9 Sarit Thanarat, Marshal, 121 – 122, 135

Satow, Ernest, 43, 159n39 Saya San Rebellion (Burma,1932), 102, 166 – 167n58 Sayre, Francis B., 81, 156n16 Scott, James C., 102, 165n50, 166 – 167n58 securitization defined, 3 – 4 as causal mechanism, 4 – 5, 153n3 context, importance of, 6 – 8 security, defined, 2 – 3 sequencing, 6 Shan Rebellion (1902), 55 Siam, 7, 67, 72 absolute monarchy, overthrow of, 73, 86 “alien Asiatics,” state efforts to control expansion of, 52 – 56, 58 anti-colonization strategies, 30, 33, 44 – 45, 46, 50 anti-communist legislation, 87, 167n2 Chinese settlers, preference for, 78 colonialist threat, 45 – 50, 66 – 67 debt, aversion to, 4, 153n4 extraterritoriality of foreigners, 80 – 81, 156n14, 163 – 164n23 foreign landownership, definition of, 158n29 foreign subjects, extent of, 156 – 157n17 Great Depression effects, 99, 101 infrastructure development, 158n24, 158n26 international image enhancement reforms, 46, 47 land administration expenditures, 60, 60 – 61, 61 land disputes, 32, 53 – 54 legal obstacles to mobilization of land by large-scale capital, 69, 78 – 79 nationality law of 1913, 162n3 property rights, evolution of, 31 – 34 “quasi-colonial” state, 12 – 13 rice exports, 65, 100 rubber industry, 65 rural socio-economic profile (1931), 95 sakdina (system of social stratification), 31 territorial concessions, 59, 159n40, 161n55 trade restrictions on modern arms, 159n38 Western powers and, 50 – 51, 66, 67, 160n53 (See also France; Great Britain) See also Anglo-Siamese treaties; Bowring Treaty; Civil and Commercial Code; Franco-Siamese treaties; land policy, Siam; taxation, Siam; Thailand

INDEX

Siam Canals, Lands and Irrigation Company, 43, 158n26 Siam Kasikon (agro-industrial corporation), 76 Sidhiporn Krisdakara, 169n30 Slater, Dan, 9, 66 So, Sokbunthoen, 151 Soto, Hernando de, 1 South Korea, 5, 20 South Vietnam, 20 Soviet Union, 114, 144, 167n2 Spain, 156n10, 164n23 SPK 4 – 01 certificates, 170n36 state-financed agricultural cooperatives, 76 – 77 state formation, 7 Stevens, Raymond B., 81 – 82, 83 – 84, 84 – 85, 156n16 Stifel, Laurence D., 27, 65 Streckfuss, David, 72 Strobel, Edward, 37, 156n16 Stubbs, Richard, 7 – 8 subprovincial land offices, 125 Sweden, 156n10, 164n23 Taiwan, 5, 20 taxation land tax reforms of Meiji Restoration, 68 – 69 taxation, Siam, 67, 157nn18 – 21, 158n25 Bowring Treaty restrictions on, 38 – 39, 157nn19 – 21 coerced labor extraction as alternative, 166n54 Great Depression and, 97 – 98 taxation, Thailand rice farming, 129, 165n52 Thai nationalism and, 77 “Thai” identity, 72 ambiguous conception of, 75 – 76 Chinese factor, 76 – 80 peasantry as core of, 76 See also Thai nationalism Thailand anti-communist legislation, 167n2 communist insurgency, 113, 114, 115, 141, 168n10 communist threat, response to, 5 conservative orientation to fiscal policy, 153n4 democratization, 169n32 economic growth, 16, 28, 71, 155n15 financial markets, structure of, 155n17 loyalty, state desire for, 11, 153 – 154n9 military coups, 115, 169nn32 – 33

207

Muslim separatist movements, 149 – 150 population-land ratio, 11, 140, 140 – 141 property rights, bifurcated character of, 13 – 14, 139 taxation, 77, 129, 165n52 U.S. protection, 170n38 See also Department of Lands; land administration; Land Code of 1954; land policy, Thailand; Siam Thailand Land Titling Project (TLTP), 124 – 127 socio-economic impacts of, 24 – 25 Thai nationalism anti-Chinese sentiments, 74 – 75 anti-communism and, 167 – 168n6 Pridi Phanomyong, 86 – 90 as protection for peasants from market outcomes, 97 rice farming and, 81 rise of, 73, 74 taxation and, 77 See also Siamese nationalism; “Thai” identity Thanat Khoman, 128 Thanyaburi (central plains district), 94 Thibaw (King of Upper Burma), 159n38 Tilly, Charles, 5 1901 title deed law, 54 Torrens system, 32, 56 – 57, 142 Townshend, Robert M., 23, 25 Townshend survey, 154 – 155nn10 – 11 tra chong (temporary reservation certificates), 31 transferability debate, 84 – 85 tra daeng (title deeds), 31 Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations (1966), 128 tree plantations, commercial, 138 – 139 Truman, Harry S, 121 twenty-four-hour zone, 41, 42, 54, 158n29, 160n48 United Kingdom. See Great Britain United States Operations Mission (Thailand), 113 U.S., 156n10, 164n23, 170n38 anti-communist strategies in Southeast Asia, 110 – 111, 112 – 113 communist threat and, 110 – 111, 112, 114, 135 – 136 economic globalization and, 150 Philippines and, 141, 142, 170n38 Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations, 128

208

INDEX

U.S. Psychological Strategy Board (PSB D-23), 110 – 111, 167 – 168n6, 167n5 Vajiravudh (King of Siam), 75, 80, 165n43 Vandergeest, Peter, 57 Vella, Walter F., 35 La Via Campesina (transnational social movement), 151 – 152 Vietnam, 66, 88, 114, 115, 156n8 Village Scouts, 134 Volunteer Defense Corps, 112 war, state formation and, 2 Warr, Peter G., 154n2 Weinstein, Franklin B., 114

Westengard, Jens I., 56, 156n16 White Paper (Prajadhipok), 87 Wildlife Conservation Act (1960), 136 Wilson, Constance M., 157n18 World Bank, 129 – 130 Cambodian land-titling program, 151 land policy, 153n1 Philippines and, 141 – 142 TLTP and, 124 – 126 Wyatt, David K., 161n55 Yada, C., 80 – 81 Zeufack, Albert, 26 Zhuang (Thai minority in China), 167n3 Zimmerman, Carle C., 93 – 94, 95, 95