Print-capitalism and maps changed Thai political vocabulary from sacred centers to bounded territory.
Evidence
In 1874 appeared the first geographical textbook, by the American missionary J.W. Van Dyke – an early product of the print-capitalism that was by then sweeping into Siam. In 1882, Rama V established a special mapping school in Bangkok. In 1892, Minister of Education Prince Damrong Rajanuphab, inaugurating a modern-style school system for the country, made geography a compulsory subject at the junior secondary level. In 1900, or thereabouts, was published Phumisat Sayam [Geography of Siam] by W.G. Johnson, the model for all printed geographies of the country from that time onwards. Thongchai notes that the vectoral convergence of print-capitalism with the new conception of spatial reality presented by these maps had an immediate impact on the vocabulary of Thai politics. Between 1900 and 1915, the traditional words krung and muang largely disappeared, because they imaged dominion in terms of sacred capitals and visible, discontinuous population centres. In their place came prathet, ‘country,’ which imaged it in the invisible terms of bounded territorial space. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 658
Categorization
- XREF: The krung/muang to prathet shift parallels how Orientalist vocabulary retrofits colonized societies into Western categories — the lexicon change is a mechanism of the imagined community. — connects to: Precolonial Thai maps encoded cosmology and locality, not abstract territory — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 655; Capitalism’s search for monoglot mass markets drove print vernacularization — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 175; Colonial states invented historical maps fabricating ancient territorial identities. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 663
- ADDENDUM: The replacement of sacred-center imagery with bounded territorial space echoes the core argument of ‘Grafting & Growth’ about how spatial/territorial metaphors reorder political imagination, and parallels how tamarisk-trees-style infrastructure reshapes perceived geography.
Related
- Precolonial Thai maps encoded cosmology and locality, not abstract territory (similarity 0.87)
- Maps can precede and shape territorial reality rather than merely reflect it. (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Capitalism’s search for monoglot mass markets drove print vernacularization
#corroborates(0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 175 - Colonial states invented historical maps fabricating ancient territorial identities.
#exemplifies(0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 663