AAS-in-Asia, Seoul

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Modernized Siam, Migrating Subjects, and Nationalization

Sun, June 25, 9:00 to 10:50am, Hyundai Motor Hall, Floor: B2 Level, B206

Abstract

The expansion of western empire in the second half of nineteen century formulated remarkable turn of migrating subjects travelling across the regions. It is the main part of the wealth of western global capitalism and the subjectivity of colonized and colonizers. There are three significances phenomena occurred; 1) The constructing class divisions distinguished groups of people involved “ hierarchies from savagery”. 2) Governmentality created official minds as servants of empire produced trans-imperial forms of governance across colonial empire. 3) Nationalized subjects.
Regarding Siam avoided colonization with the discourse of semi-colony during 1800s-1900s, the treaties settled the privilege of extraterritoriality. To examine archival documents by historical approach focusing arrival and departure migrants found that the mechanism of defining and register subjects initiated rights and identifications. Both subjectivity and governmentality were produced and appeared in several types of documents such as treaties, contracts, certificates, passports, title- deeds and so forth. These documents differentiated hierarchy of subjects under treaty powers. These migrating subjects at that time functioned as a bridgehead of governmental strategizing colonial governmentality assimilation to empire. The arrival official migrants in Siam were missionaries, merchants, advisors or officers. Documents reveal some traces and wait for scrutiny carefully. The aims of the study trying to examine the process of registered and differentiated subjects under the laws and several types of documents, the second is how migrating migrants modernized Siam and the last is how they naturalized in Siam.

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