King's Man power Constructed: Writing the History of the Conscription of Labour in Siam

Abstract

This article concerns an intimate interplay of history and nation-state making. Taking the Siamese corvée/military conscription system as its focus, it examines how the pre-modern history of Siam was written and framed by modern concepts of nation and subject. It is commonly understood that, from the Ayutthaya period until the beginning of the twentieth century, all able-bodied men were considered as royal commoners (phrai luang) and were obliged to render corvée/military service to the king for a certain period each year. However, a closer examination of the source materials used in existing studies reveals that the evidence is too vague to uphold such accounts. By contrast, other evidence suggests that many of the accounts of ancient corvée/military service were constructed as ‘historical fact’ during the Chakri Reform by the Siamese élite to legitimize the administrative reforms they wished to introduce. And this historical construction, to fit the new idea of state and the subject that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, has in turn restricted the perspectives of later historians.