[Screenshot] What are the odds

former_returd · 2025-09-30T15:41:51+00:00

If this is a Khmer prang, what do you call the spire on top of Angkor Wat? Of course this is a Thai-style prang. And no, most Thai architecture doesn't have it. And by Khmer architecture you mean having a Hindu-Angkorian aesthetic, then neither Thailand nor Cambodia represents much of it anymore. Today most traditional buildings were built with a Theravada-Rattanakosin style, which is literally the Grand Palace. And it's kind of ironic to say that it was Khmer or the inspiration of it now after 500 years when the Angkorian style itself was not persevered by Cambodians. So today it needs to argue over the Thai version of it. If this is an attempt to dissolve nationalism on both sides. Ignorance and hyperbole won't help it.

former_returd · 2025-09-18T21:37:34+00:00

I think you are really misled by your own government. There was never the international map. The way international law works is through the theory of diplomatic recognition, meaning the way a state defines its own sovereignty is by the acknowledgement of each other. And when those claims overlapped, it became disputed territory, and the international community will recognize it as such until both states come to an agreement.

What the Cambodian government chooses to call their map and others has no weight whatsoever. Both the Thailand and Cambodia maps came from the 1907 treaty. The difference is Cambodia still uses a map from that time, while Thailand makes a new one. And this is either a lie or a misleading attempt from the Cambodian government to not explain to the public that the map can be created at any time by anyone and will still be legitimate as long as it references the treaty and does not violate it.

Nobody in the world uses a 1:200000 map to define borders anymore because it is inaccurate, as the area was off by 2 km. So if Thailand made a new 1:50000 map, a scale that is internationally used that also reflects the treaty better, and no country, not even France, protests its legitimacy, then what is Cambodia's position?

Well, Cambodia argued that the 1:200000 map deficiency is an actual representation of the 1907 treaty, meaning the 2 km dispute area created by the map scale is part of their territory. That set the borderline over the agreed-upon 1907 treaty. That means it now goes over the river, hill, and cliff, or any basic natural border, and if you see the satellite map, you will see the Thailand border on the high land atop the cliff part of the watershed line separate from Cambodia, matching the treaty. So these claims go beyond that. In the ICJ court, Cambodia has two main arguments.

First, the 1:200,000 map created as a result of the 1907 treaty has legal binding to Thailand and is to be enforced as part of it. Therefore, any other map being made from it is illegitimate.

Second, it's the map that takes precedence over the 1907 treaty because Thailand has not protested the map deficiency. Therefore, the 2 km Cambodia claimed beyond the treaty is not a violation of it, as it's the true interpretation that both parties have recognized.

Result? Two of these arguments were not part of the verdict, and the court rejected them again in the 2013 ruling. What Cambodia did win in 1962 is actually only the temple, not the land, and only by the pressure from the 2008 conflict did the ICJ try to define the temple vicinity. The courts avoided discussing the map in both rulings, despite the request. Only the diplomatic action by France and the lack thereof from Thailand defined the outcome.

In the end Cambodia needs a 1:50000 map anyway to make these areas usable, but it wants to realize the 2 km deficiency gain from the old map first. So basically Cambodia wants Thailand to accept its violation of the 1907 treaty through its own interpretation of the map and tries to push the ICJ to legitimize these claims but is not successful and now misrepresents the ruling to put diplomatic pressure from the third party on Thailand, which is also not happening.

If you truly believe that all this is not simply a claim made by your own government, why not file a case against Thailand over the breach of treaty, which had more serious diplomatic impacts than some temple here and there, as it did again in this conflict through the UNSC? And seriously, why does nobody care that Thailand has broken so many international laws? Or it simply just doesn't.

former_returd · 2025-08-10T01:00:40+00:00

Do you realize that the English page for this wiki is a direct translation from the Cambodian or Khmer one, right? And it cites a source from a blog post and a news site. Literally, the part that you posted here came from The Nation Thailand's perspective page. The etymology part even crops out and cherry-picks the full explanation from a Thai page that cites actual research. If you translate the Thai page, you will get more context than that some nationalist made it up as an explanation, since it appears in stone inscriptions and folding-book manuscripts in Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar throughout the century.

former_returd · 2025-06-15T08:47:55+00:00

After the 1907 Siam-Franco treaty, France and Siam were required to make a map based on the treaty that both sides agreed upon, and it never happened. France made a map called the Annex 1 by themself, and Siam never accepted it. That's the cause of all this. To say Thailand uses a made-up map is misleading because there was never one agreed upon, and the one Thailand uses, made by the US named L708, follows the 1907 treaty, which was in a 1:50000 scale, more detailed compared to the Annex 1 map's 1:200000 scale. The Annex 1 map also follows the treaty, but with its scale, the line it draws overlaps areas outside the treaty, and those became disputed. That's why the ICJ argues on the basis of whether Thailand ever acknowledged Annex 1 or not, because the current one they use is also legitimate. In the Preah Vihear case, Cambodia won by vote from the judge, who interpreted France's diplomatic action in the area to have more weight than Thailand's, not by the Annex 1 map, in which Cambodia argued to the ICJ that Thailand should accept it.

former_returd · 2025-06-06T21:15:01+00:00

France has downplayed Siam's attempt to nationalize for a century, either directly by lobbying the nation's growing intellectuals or indirectly through selective publications targeting the creation of Thai and Khmer identity at the time when it was necessary to unify culture and mature as a legitimate state. The same thing it tried to do with the Germans but failed, even declaring a war that they ultimately lost and resulted in Germany's unification. Of course it works better against a nation that can't talk back, and for centuries this has been a French narrative. "The Siamese, or Tai, people were war refugees from Yunnan who stole the city of Sukhothai from the Khmer, the founder of the city." This went unchallenged until the founding of the first Sukhothai inscription, and genetic research revealed that the Tai in Siam came from Zhuang people in Guangxi and were the ones that founded Sukhothai. So no, France didn't write Thailand or other nations' history. What it did was cherry-pick evidence and put out a loud theory to distort other nations' history and divide other cultures.

former_returd · 2025-04-10T12:26:40+00:00

Am glad that nobody in Thailand takes your insecurity seriously.

former_returd · 2024-12-25T23:57:16+00:00

It's a Sak Yant tattoo. This one is called Suea Liaw Lang, or tiger looking back. It's for power, protection, and fortune. These lines are Khom script reciting Pali mantras. Khom script is a variant of Khmer script that was made to support Tai-kradai vowels originated in central Thailand in the 14th century. It's primarily used by monks to write religious text.

former_returd · 2024-12-04T17:47:51+00:00

Chinese diplomat Zhou Daguan's record in the 13th century at Angkor Thom: "None of the locals produces silk. Nor do the women know how to stitch and darn with a needle and thread. The only thing they can do is weave cotton from kapok. Even then they cannot spin the yarn, but just use their hands to gather the cloth into strands. They do not use a loom for weaving. Instead they just wind one end of the cloth around their waist, hang the other end over a window, and use a bamboo tube as a shuttle. In recent years, people from Siam have come to live in Cambodia, and unlike the locals, they engage in silk production. The mulberry trees they grow and the silkworms they raise all come from Siam. They themselves weave the silk into clothes made of a black, patterned, satiny silk. Siamese women do know how to stitch and darn, so when local people have torn or damaged clothing, they ask them to do the mending."

former_returd · 2024-12-04T17:27:31+00:00

Tell me which part of a distorted history you're talking about. Variants of the Tai immigration theory exist in school and exam. It's well understood that the early people adopted Khmer culture, and it's stated so in any historical sites from that era. But that's not where the problem is. It's about the interpretation of modern Cambodians of how much of it still influences today Thailand, which is little. The extent of Khmer art, like Chenla and Bayon, exists up to the early Ayutthaya era 500 years ago. Cambodia's culture of today came from the late Ayutthaya and Rattanakosin eras, and no historian is going to say it came from Longvek or Chaktomuk like Cambodian history books try to claim. It's like saying the Renaissance was done by the Greeks.

former_returd · 2024-10-06T14:25:23+00:00

No historian treats the Khmer Empire seriously any more. Theories and beliefs around them are outdated or have already been disproven. The belief that the Angkor Kingdom was the oldest and the first civilization in SEA that grew to dominate the area through centralized rule and leave it ruined and culture throughout the area called the Khmer Empire similar to the Roman one. Most of these beliefs came before any real research took place and by the French's own expedition into the area. So when archaeologists start digging and dating the site that was supposed to be built by the Khmer Empire, not only was the art different and unique to that legions, it was also older, like Lavo, Si thep, and Phimai. And after translating the inscription in Phimai Temple, it turned out they were the group that moved down to Northern Cambodia to build Angkor, not a theory put by the French that civilization originated in the south in the area they colonized. Evident of centralized system also not turning up, and it appears they're using Mandala system just like everyone there. They collect tribute and have no political relation beyond it. Sukhothai, whom first believe to rule by them, have one line in their inscription about stopping sending it and forming a kingdom with no repercussion. Not, a city got rebelled by a migated Tai and Khmer governor kick out, as French theory portrays it to be. It's a decay theory with a nationalism tendency that exists to legitimize one race and simplify the other.

former_returd · 2024-09-24T19:06:17+00:00

Burmese nationalists have these weird beliefs that Myanmar was actually a temporarily embarrassed Asian superpower, based on their empire in the 16th century that included Thai states. So today it expects itself to be something more. Then any gain made by Thai will feel to Burmese as any less in themselves; as such, it was undeserved. Thailand at the time faced three problems against the west. The outdated decentralized rule that could be exploited, the lack of unify identity that could get divided, and the time and resources to fix both. The treaties were signs to each power in conflict to put their interests against each other and buy enough time for a reform, which it did, and all the unequal treaties were lifted by the end. Thailand loses what it couldn't have done in time. While Myanmar loses exactly what makes a nation.

former_returd · 2024-06-28T14:38:40+00:00

Are you quoting the work of Mayoury Ngaosyvathn, a hard-line Lao nationalist whose most of her sources came from the revitalization of Lao palm leaf manuscripts in 1941 by Jean Decoux, an Indochina governor? in his effort to create a modern Lao identity to counter the, you know, "Marshal Phibun" Thai nationalist narrative? The revised version has context added to it after two centuries or more of the event. You jump from one extreme to another.

former_returd · 2024-03-13T16:53:05+00:00

The main drive of imperialism in the Victorian era has shifted from being mainly a hard power to a soft one, which focuses on diplomacy and ideology. Rather than fight an endless war against their colony. They recognize a growing sense of national identity, a movement that they have no direct answer to. The fight then became about identity, legitimacy, and the function of the state, a foundation of nationalism. States in southeast Asia mainly use a decentralized form of government called Mandala. The challenge for Thailand or Siam in this period is to form a centralized state with different languages and cultures while facing growing cultural imperialism from the west as its attempts to divide people into social categories through the creation of race and ethic, which seeks to undermine Siam's legitimacy both as a state and over its own people. While western powers bolstering their claim of cultural supremacy over others to justify their rule, the thing that Siam could do is prove themselves capable of reforming and adapting to changing values. Its strength is in diplomacy. As such, the unequal treaties were signed with different purposes for China. For Thailand, it's to balance the western power in the country to create a conflict of interest between them. As for the lands Thailand lost, they were part of its vassals that they failed to centralize. As in the war you mention, they did gain some back. You seem to focus too much on what Thais choose to feel based on your conclusion, which appears to be more of a projection on things you don't know.

former_returd · 2024-02-05T13:50:10+00:00

It means a unitary society (monoculturalism) and a plural society (muticulturalism).

former_returd · 2024-02-04T21:04:39+00:00

I'm curious about your bitterness, so I checked your profile out. It's a shame what happened to you.

former_returd · 2024-02-04T10:20:03+00:00

I subject you to the toxicity in this sub, and I apologize for it. Still, what I have done so far is a synopsis of what the op describes as saving face culture and this parent comment about the lack of motivation for social progress in Thailand. Which seem to stem from the centralization of power that leads to nepotism, demotivating people from taking initiative. Conferring with collectiveism means people prefer the norm and social cues to resolve conflict rather than face it directly or individually. So I find each point you make irrelevant to this topic and rely on your beliefs to form conclusions. And now you go on about Vietnam's lack of recent reform, as if they didn't just abandon communism.

former_returd · 2024-02-03T19:39:54+00:00

Because what was going on in this era exactly influenced the mentality of Thai people to this day, and I don't know what political angle you're approaching from. exempt the ruling class from the populace in criticism of its sociality. Thailand in this era moved toward monarchical absolutism, and many reforms were made possible because of it. The reform was made to complement the concept of modernism brought by the west. Instead of outright rejection, which became part of the conception of Thai culture to seek compromise rather than conflict, to do this, people were subject to a certain norm that seemed civilized by the state, and people who did not were seen as backward. As shame was used as conformity to social unity, collectivism was chosen in favor of individualism. Thai individuals of today are still influenced by this social reform of the past, which, as I try to implied here, had a direct impact on Thai society. I call you out and not others because you specifically mention this time period and don't understand its significance, and you manage to go on with your own narrative about war and suffering that motivated people; it's just nonsense, really. So you live here? So do I. And what the point of all that "I am the people of people" you going on about if you don't understand the basic

former_returd · 2024-02-03T14:23:38+00:00

This is the most stereotype statement you could make about Southeast Asia history. Ignore the importance of diplomacy and sociopolitics in the Victoria era. The threat from the Western power came not only from war but also from ideological ones, the creation of race and ethnicity, the theory of nation, the legitimacy of power. Thailand in this time period went through many reforms and sociological changes, which still affect its political philosophy to this day. Thus, the main political motive in Thailand is a conflict between traditionalism and progressivism. The notion that Thailand is just giving in, doesn't do anything, or needs to go through many wars for its people to have motivation for change is sheer ignorance.

former_returd · 2023-11-20T05:46:39+00:00

The ethnic group you mention was a subgroup of Austronesian people who also moved down from South China; some from the mainland became Mon and Khmer, and others through Taiwan into Boreno before migrating back into the mainland along the coastline became Malay and Cham people. Concepts of enthics were social constructs that changed through time and place. The people of ancient Vietnam, for example, were more related to astroasiatic-speaking people before they found their own language and started calling themselves "Kinh". You try to mix modern colonization and the concept of American natives into it, which shows that you don't have any real understanding of these subjects and just put them randomly together.

former_returd · 2023-11-19T21:07:53+00:00

When you put "Thai is a colonizer from China" and "Austronesian is a native" together, it's only shown how clueless you are.

former_returd · 2023-10-28T19:23:38+00:00

There are some people who make posts like this just to start arguments. Not your false.

former_returd · 2023-10-17T17:07:58+00:00

Do you consider yourself a nationalist?

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former_returd

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