Competitive Colonialism: Siam and the Malay Muslim South
Tamara Loos, Associate Professor, Cornell University

Unlike its Southeast Asian neighbors, Siam was never colonized by an imperial power. However, it shared a great deal in common with both colonized states and imperial powers: its own sovereignty was qualified by imperial nations while domestically its leaders pursued European colonial strategies of juridical control in the Muslim south. The creation of family law and courts in that region and in Siam proper most clearly manifests Siam's dualistic position. Siam's leaders conceived of "their" Malay states as sites of competitive colonial modernity-sites where Siam would, in King Chulalongkorn's own words, "catch up with" the British in terms of modernizing the administration. They did this by subjecting Malay Muslims to a colonial style legal system that is maintained to this day. Importantly, Siam's leaders were not naïve imitators or passive victims of imperial pressure, but instead they acquired a sophisticated understanding of British imperial strategies, including its legal systems. The limitations of this comparison of Siam to imperial states are also explored.

Professor Loos began her PhD on Thai history at Cornell University, which she finished in 1999, the same year she began teaching at Cornell in the history department. She is now an associate member of the faculty.

Professor Loos' dissertation, entitled "Gender Adjudicated: Translating Modern Legal Subjects in Siam," was based on two years of research in Bangkok's National Archives and Supreme Court Archives during the mid-1990s, and supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council and Fulbright-Hays. Her first book, Subject Siam: Family, Law and Colonial Modernity in Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), was born out of her interest in the evolution of Thailand's legal codes during the colonial era, and how changes in the law defined the modern rights of Siam's citizens in this critical period. It offers a social and legal history of nineteenth and early twentieth century Siam that focuses on gender, justice, modernity, and national identity through the lenses of family law, the Muslim south, and polygyny. She began learning Malay/Indonesian in 2005 and is researching several new projects, including a continuation of her work in southern Thailand, a history of domestic violence in Thailand, and a non-academic series of stories on running in the tropics.

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