Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T11:14:05.866Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Biography and Borderlands: Chao Sone Bouttarobol, a Champassak Royal, and Thailand, Laos and Cambodia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2017

Ian G. Baird
Ian G. Baird*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison; [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although biographical and life history approaches are potentially important tools for historical geographers, biographical methodologies have rarely been used to specifically investigate borderland dynamics. In this article, I argue that biography can be useful for understanding the ways in which borders have been recognised and negotiated historically. As a case study, I examine the life of Chao Sone Bouttarobol, a member of the Champassak Royal House, who was born in 1895 and died in 1979. As his life story illustrates, the emergence of new national borders had a significant impact on Sone, although family ties and relationships allowed him to cross the national administrative borders that now exist between Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, often with relative ease. Studying one individual makes it possible to explore the ways in which he interacted and negotiated with borders that cut across the Champassak Royal House's traditional space of influence.

Keywords

LaosThailandCambodiaBordersBorderlands
Type
Articles
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 269 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrucki, Max J., and Jen, Dickinson. 2015. “Rethinking centers and margins in geography: Bodies, life course, and the performance of transnational space.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105(5): 203–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria E. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.Google Scholar
Archaimbault, Charles. 1961. “L'histoire de Campasak.” Journal Asiatique 294(4): 519–595.Google Scholar
Baird, Ian G. 2007. “Contested history, ethnicity and remembering the past: The case of the Ay Sa rebellion in southern Laos.” Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 18(2): 119–159.Google Scholar
Baird, Ian G. 2009. “From Champasak to Cambodia: Chao Thammatheva, a wily and influential ethnic Lao leader.” Aséanie 23: 31–62.Google Scholar
Baird, Ian G. 2010a. “Different views of history: Shades of irredentism along the Laos-Cambodia border.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 41(2): 187–213.Google Scholar
Baird, Ian G. 2010b. “Making space: The ethnic Brao and the international border between Laos and Cambodia.” Geoforum 41(2): 271–281.Google Scholar
Baird, Ian G. 2012. “Lao Buddhist monks and their involvement in political and militant resistance to the Lao People's Democratic Republic government since 1975.” Journal of Asian Studies 71(3): 655–677.Google Scholar
Baird, Ian G. 2013. “Millenarian movements in southern Laos and northeastern Siam (Thailand) at the turn of the twentieth century: Reconsidering the involvement of the Champassak Royal House.” South East Asia Research 21(2): 257–279.Google Scholar
Barnes, Trevor J., and Abrahamsson, Christian. 2015. “Tangled complicities and moral struggles: the Haushofers, father and son, and the spaces of Nazi geopolitics.” Journal of Historical Geography 47: 64–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Morag. 1995. “Citizenship Not Charity: Violet Markham on Nature Society and State in Britain and South Africa.” In Geography and Imperialism 1820–1940, edited by Bell, Morag, Butlin, Robin, and Heffernan, Michael, 189–220. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Blunt, Alison. 1994. Travel, Gender and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Clausen, Eric. 2015. “Exploring the geography of William Morris Davis' Pennsylvania roots.” Pennsylvania Geographer 53(1): 44–65.Google Scholar
Daniels, Stephen, and Nash, Catherine. 2004. “Lifepaths: geography and biography.” Journal of Historical Geography 30: 449–458.Google Scholar
Driver, Felix. 1995. “Sub-merged identities: familiar and unfamiliar histories.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20(4): 410–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Grant. 2009. The Last Century of Lao Royalty: A Documentary History. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.Google Scholar
Evans, Grant. 2010. “When brother-sister marriages become incest.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 21: 228–245.Google Scholar
Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz. 2004. “Loving America and longing for home: Isma'il al-Faruqi and the emergence of the Muslim diaspora in North America.” International Migration 42(2): 61–86.Google Scholar
Gunn, Geoffrey C. 1990. Rebellion in Laos: Peasant and Politics in a Colonial Backwater. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Holt, John Clifford. 2009. Spirits of the Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ishikawa, Noboru. 2010. Between Frontiers: Nation and Identity in a Southeast Asian Borderland. Singapore: NUS Press; Copenhagen: NIAS Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, David B. 1980. “Bandit, Nakleng, and peasant in rural Thai society.” Contributions to Asian Studies XV, Special Issue, Royalty and commoners: Essays in Thai administrative, economic, and social history, 90–101. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Google Scholar
Jones, Rhys. 2004. “Medieval biographies and the geography of power: the Historia Gruffud vab Kenan.” Journal of Historical Geography 30: 459–469.Google Scholar
Keyes, Charles F. 1977. “Millennialism, Theravāda Buddhism, and Thai society.” Journal of Asian Studies, 36(2): 283–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khamphanh, Thammakhanty. 2004. Get to the Trunk, Destroy the Roots: The Fall from Monarchy to Socialism. Portland, Oregon: self-published.Google Scholar
Kind-Kovács, Friederike. 2014. “Memories of ethnic cleansing and the local Iron Curtain in the Czech–German borderlands.” Nationalities Papers 43(2): 199–222.Google Scholar
Kremmer, Christopher. 2003. Bamboo Palace: Discovering the Lost Dynasty of Laos. Sydney: Flamingo.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Camille. 2011. “We have tailored Africa: French colonialism and the ‘artificiality’ of Africa's borders in the interwar period.” Journal of Historical Geography 37: 191–202.Google Scholar
McDaniel, Justin Thomas. 2011. The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magic Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonagh, Briony. 2013. “Fragments from a medieval archive: the life and death of Sir Robert Constable.” Journal of Historical Geography 42: 50–61.Google Scholar
Murdoch, John B. 1974. “The 1901–1902 ‘holy man's’ rebellion.” Journal of the Siam Society 62(1): 47–66.Google Scholar
Ni’ Laoire, Caitrıona. 2008. “‘Settling back’? A biographical and life-course perspective on Ireland's recent return migration.” Irish Geography 41(2): 195–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norindr, Chou. 1994. Histoire Contemporaine du Laos: 1860–1975. San Diego: Connaitre le Laos Society.Google Scholar
Oun, Sananikone. 1975. Lao Issara: The Memoirs of Oun Sananikone. Data Paper #100, Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Pattana, Kitiarsa. 2013. Of men and monks: The boxing-Buddhism nexus and the production of national manhood in contemporary Thailand. New Mandala Blog, 2 October. Available at: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2013/10/02/pattana-kitiarsa-on-thai-boxing/ Google Scholar
Peeraya, Koowattanasiri. “The Political Thought and the Political Role of Thong-In Phuriphat” (in Thai). MA diss., Department of History, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 1990.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Craig J. 2011. “Rural male leadership, religion and the environment in Thailand's mid-south, 1920s–1960s.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 42(1): 39–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanprasith, Na Champassak. 1995. Pavat Nakhonekalachampak Nakhabouri Sisattanakhanahout (Nakhone Champasak) [The History of Champasak] (in Lao). Paris, 144 pp. +; including “Classification des planches des arbres genealogiques,” Champasak (in French), sixteen plates.Google Scholar
Sinnott, Megan. 2014. “Baby ghosts: Child spirits and contemporary conceptions of childhood in Thailand.” TRaNS: Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia 2(2): 293–317.Google Scholar
Steedman, Carolyn. 1995. “Difficult stories: feminist auto/biography.” Gender and History 7(2): 321–326.Google Scholar
Terweil, Barend. 2012. Monks and Magic: Revisiting a Classic Study of Religious Ceremonies in Thailand. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Nicola. 2004. “Exploring the boundaries of biography: the family and friendship networks of Lady Curzon, Vicereine of India 1898–1905.” Journal of Historical Geography 30: 496–519.Google Scholar
Thongchai, Winichakul. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Sarah, Christine, Bonnin, and Jean, Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Andrew. 1999. The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Andrew. 2014. “Seditious state-making in the Mekong borders.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 29(3): 554–590.Google Scholar
Wilson, Constance M. “Champassak in the nineteenth century: The survival of southern Lao culture.” Paper presented at a seminar Cultural Crossroads of Asia, Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, 24–26 July 1992.Google Scholar
Wilson, Constance M. 1997. “The holy man in the history of Thailand and Laos.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 28(2): 345–364.Google Scholar
Wimon, Wiriyawit. 1997. Free Thai: Personal Recollections and Official Documents. Bangkok: White Lotus Press.Google Scholar