Shane Strate's The Lost Territories chronologically demonstrates how Thai national rhetoric about “lost territory” emerged and conveyed a sense of injustice, dishonor, and humiliation. This theme resulted from land grabs during the era of Western intervention (p. 3) and ran through the military-led Phibun government of the World War II era. “Lost territory” refers to “episodes of victimization” (p. 2) during the colonial period and in response to “modern conceptions of boundaries” (p. 3). Another rhetorical construct, “never colonized,” emerged out of subsequent anti-imperialist discourse as a means to mobilize the entire nation (p. 4). Strate proposes that the term “national humiliation” developed out of the idea of “lost territory” while not giving up the insistence on “never colonized,” since the military was fully engaged in national politics. The humiliation discourse was not the result of anti-colonial sentiment, but was employed by an irredentist campaign against French Indochina (pp. 6–7), which led to “the birth of such attitudes” (p. 9).
In chapter 1, an account of the Bowring Treaty between Siam and the British underlines Siam's inferior relationship with the West (p. 5). It played a critical role for the Siamese court to abandon traditional trade systems and to enter the world economy (p. 27). Furthermore, the Franco-Thai crisis has been used as a “chosen trauma” (pp. 11, 13–14) to stir up nationalist propaganda.
Chapter 2 focuses on the birth of Thai national humiliation discourse during World War II, when the Phibun administration had to deal with Japan's aggression in Southeast Asia and Japanese opposition to the Allies. The idea of national humiliation in this period appeared to the public through government propaganda such as speeches, maps, and publications showing moments of injustice and defeat from the past (p. 37).
In chapter 3, Strate emphasizes the religious aspect of national humiliation by providing evidence of anti-Catholicism in Thailand. He sheds light on how religious issues were associated with anti-Western movements, especially with French imperialists, as a foreign ideology and a symbol of the old colonial order in Southeast Asia that threatened to destroy “traditional Thai values” (pp. 65, 72).
In chapters 4 and 5, Strate continues to delve into Thailand's national humiliation during the World War II period by referring to Japan's pan-Asianism as a vehicle for the Phibun government to popularize anti-Western attitudes and to expand a sense of victimhood in the history of British-Thai relations (pp. 99, 103). In the postwar period, the complete reversal of Thailand's status and relation to the Allies rested on the US interpretation that Thailand's cooperation with Japan was a result of Japan's “complete political control” (pp. 126–27). This suggests that “national humiliation” and its tropes had more serious political consequences than the results of World War II. Thai leaders were able to nurture this “chosen trauma”—humiliation caused by Western imperialism (pp. 131, 157)—to distance themselves from Japan.
The final chapter and the conclusion highlight how national humiliation made its way to resurface through the International Court of Justice case of Preah Vihear temple in the 1960s. The border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia not only reiterates the discourse of “lost territory” but also points to more recent nationalist movements led by the People's Alliance for Democracy, where symbols of Thailand's national humiliation once again appeared by the late 2000s.
Overall, The Lost Territories effectively draws attention to popular rhetoric that was barely seen in Thai history books. The archival sources—including newspapers, speeches and documents from the National Assembly of Thailand, and a collection of memoirs from the Assumption Cathedral in Bangkok—are the most prominent in this book and stand out, especially for highlighting anti-Catholic incidents in northeast Thailand.
As a Thai national, it is refreshing to see Strate use the term “humiliation” as a narrative construct that mostly elites used to evoke a sense of shared, collective trauma and to explain why they were previously defeated. He portrays and streamlines the concept of “national humiliation” throughout the book, but still the term itself lacks sufficient contextualization or descriptive definition in the beginning. For example, what does “humiliation” mean psychologically? How could “humiliation” collectively shape Thai society as a national propaganda tool? It would have been interesting to see concepts from memory studies such as national “chosen trauma,” “suffering,” or “embarrassment” and the idea of victimization playing interchangeably with “national humiliation” as well. Secondly, the tone of the book refers to national propaganda and how Thai history has been largely written in opposition to Western imperialism in Southeast Asia through the lens of semi-colonialism. This runs up against the other narrative construct, “never colonized,” that has been problematic in Thai studies in conversations about colonialism in a noncolonized country. This is nevertheless a thought-provoking study and could help readers reflect further on how Thai studies might engage ongoing debates on colonialism, anti-colonialism, and decolonization in the twenty-first century.
