Thaification

Thaification, or Thai-ization is the process by which people of different cultural and ethnic origins living in Thailand become assimilated to the dominant culture of Thailand, or more precisely, to the culture of the Central Thais.

Thaification was a step in the creation in the 20th century of the Thai nation state where Thai people occupy a dominant position, away from the historically multicultural kingdom of Siam. A related term, "Thainess", is held to describe a characteristic that persons and things possess when they are Thai.

Thaification is a byproduct of the nationalist policies consistently followed by the Thai state after the Siamese coup d'état of 1933. The coup leaders, often said to be inspired by Western ideas of an exclusive nation state, acted more in accordance with their close German nationalist and anti-democratic counterparts (pre-Nazi) to effect kingdom-wide dominance by the central Thais. The businesses of interspersed minorities, like the traditionally merchant Thai Chinese, were aggressively acquired by the state, which gave preferential contracts to ethnic Thais as well as cooperative ethnic Chinese.

Thai identity was mandated and reinforced both in the heartlands and in rural areas. Central Thailand became economically and politically dominant, and central Thai (differentiated from multi-lingual Siamese) became the state-mandated language of the media, business, education, and all state agencies. Central Thai values were successfully inculcated into being perceived as the desirable national values, with increasing proportions of the population identified as Thai. Central Thai culture, being the culture of wealth and status, made it hugely attractive to a once-diverse population seeking to be identified with nationalist unity.

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