Intellectual History of the Dawn of the Study of Thailand’s Foreign Relations: The Somchai Tradition and the Historical Approach
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Abstract
This research article aims to apply the intellectual history approach to examine the beginning of the study of Thailand’s foreign relations in the early Thai universities in the early period. The article starts by tracing back to the context of state reformation during the Reign of King Rama V, which required the establishment of a school responsible for teaching foreign services and diplomacy in the nascent phase of Thai higher education before establishing itself as one of the main elements in the study of political sciences during the 1950s. The article also argues that the beginning of the study and teaching rested mainly on the historical approach or what might be called the “Somchai tradition” as the foundation for studying and narrating the pattern of Thailand’s foreign relations. Although the explanatory power of the tradition has been in question and under criticism, it remains influential through the searching for patterns in Thai foreign affairs these days since the tradition can be regarded as the bedrock that both academics and diplomats could use as a heuristic model to search or evaluate the pattern of Thai foreign policy in the present. In conclusion, historia leads to prudentia in the worlds of theorists and pragmatists as their ventures in studying Thailand’s foreign relations.
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