The hall fell silent as the 87-year-old anthropologist began to speak. His voice was weak, punctuated by pauses to catch his breath, yet every word carried the weight of decades of scholarship.
Srisakra Vallibhotama had devoted his life to studying the lands and peoples of what is now Thailand, and he was determined to set the record straight.
“The textbook Thai history is deeply flawed,” he said, his voice steady despite his frailty. “It needs to change.”
For generations, official narratives have narrowed Thai history to past kings, dynasties, and wars. They present Thailand as a land of one race — the “Thai” — said to have migrated from the Altai Mountains in China, founded Sukhothai as the first Thai kingdom, and triumphed over others.
“This is false,” he said flatly. “It creates the illusion of a pure Thai race, which doesn’t exist. It bypasses the cultural and ethnic diversity of the land. And it makes local histories invisible.”
That myth, promoted under Field Marshal Plaek Pibunsongkram’s fascist regime along Hitler’s racial schemes, still poisons the present. It fuels ultra-nationalism, oppresses other ethnic groups, deepens divisions, and inflames the Thai-Cambodian conflict.
“We need a new way of looking at our history,” Mr Srisakra stressed.
Instead of dynasties and wars, he urged us to read Thai history and understand past developments through geography and trade routes that shaped natural wealth, settlement, and economic prosperity.
His rare public talk on Ayutthaya, at the recent launch of his new book The Origin of Siam, edited by Walailak Songsiri of the Sit Srisakra Publishing House, was also a chance to dismantle the myths that distort how Thais see themselves.
“To understand Ayutthaya, we need to look at what came before,” he began.
Archaeology shows that people had settled and farmed in the Chao Phraya basin since prehistoric times. The pre-Sukhothai world was also dynamic, shaped by shifting centres of power and cultural exchange.
From the 6th to 10th centuries, the Dvaravati civilisation spread Mon Buddhist culture across the Central Plain through maritime and inland trade. The city-states were independent but interconnected through trade, religion, marriage, and kinship. There were no unified kingdoms yet.
In the Northeast, thriving iron and salt industries supported dryland city-states closely linked to Khmer power. At the height of Angkor power, its influence reached Siam, with Khmer-style still dotting many places in Thailand today.
But, Mr Srisakra stressed, that did not mean old Siam was directly ruled by Angkor in the Western colonial sense. Power in Southeast Asia worked differently. City-states remained autonomous, allied to great centres like Angkor through marriage, kinship, and cultural exchange. The temples show artistic influence, not subjugation.
To the south, cross-peninsular maritime trade with India and China carried goods, arts, and people from faraway lands — adding more strands to the region’s cultural fabric.
This trade shaped Siam more deeply than Khmer power ever did. It spread Theravada Buddhism across the land. The relic worship that arrived in ancient times remains at the heart of the faith today.
“Siam is the name of the land,” he stressed. “Foreign seafarers had known this place since ancient times as part of Suvarnabhumi, the Golden Land. Rich in resources, anyone who came here became wealthy.”
Suvarnabhumi, mentioned in records since Ashoka’s time in the 3rd century BCE, covered the peninsula, mainland, and archipelagos. When seafarers arrived, they found thriving city-states rich in resources and a convenient passage east. “They called the people Siamese, after the land.”
“Thanks to maritime trade, this land was alive, this land was alive with diverse communities long before Tai-speaking people arrived,” he added.
But the Pibun regime needed an origin myth. To fuel ultranationalism, it changed the country’s name from Siam to Thailand in 1939, turning Tai into Thai, and claimed the Thai race migrated here from Altai to found the nation.
“This is also false,” he declared.
Tai is a language, not a race. The ethnic groups that speak Tai are concentrated in southern China. Some later migrated south into Vietnam, Laos and northern Siam, bringing rice-growing know-how, water management, the Sky God belief, the bronze drum, and most importantly, the Tai language. It later became the common tongue linking diverse ethnic groups together, creating a bond of being Siamese.
When Sukhothai was founded in the mid-13th century, it was just one city-state among many. Lavo (Lopburi) was shaped by Khmer culture, while Suphanburi was shaped by Mon Buddhist Dvaravati roots.
By starting Thailand’s story with Sukhothai, the state erased other centres of civilisation, stripping locals of their ancient cultural roots and pride.
Worse still, declaring the Thai race the sole owner of the land has bred discrimination and oppression against other ethnic groups, although many had lived here long before the Tai-speakers arrived.
“The Tais were just one among diverse ethnic groups in Siam,” Mr Srisakra said. “We can’t overlook the others who had long existed in this land.”
Like much of Southeast Asia, power in Siam shifted between loosely connected city-states bound by kinship and marriage rather than outright conquest.
So what explains Ayutthaya’s rise?
“Maritime trade,” he replied. As river silt built up and the coastline shifted, old ports declined while Ayutthaya surged.
“Its location and the new trade routes gave Ayutthaya its power. It became an international port city, open to outsiders. Old records speak of 40,000 floating houses, rivers flowing to the new centre from every direction.”
Geography, river systems, and trade dynamics — these were the forces that shaped Siam’s towns and their growth, he stressed.
Ayutthaya was cosmopolitan. Its kings hired foreigners not just in trade and administration. After conquering Angkor and annexing Lavo and Suphanburi, Ayutthaya absorbed their peoples and cultures, becoming the new powerhouse.
At its peak, some records say Ayutthaya was more populous than London, he said. A city of waterways, migration and commerce, its strength lay not in blood or race, but in geography, diversity and economy.
Even its legends show this. The popular Soi Dok Mak folktale of a local girl and a Chinese prince reflects how Ayutthaya grew through encounters between outsiders and locals, through marriages between merchants and townswomen. Since the dok mak flower is tied to Cham culture, Mr Srisakra suggested the heroine may have been Cham, not Chinese — another sign of the land’s deep pluralism.
This is not the story told in classrooms. Schools still drill dynasties and wars, pushing the myth of Thai supremacy. That myth fuels toxic nationalism, a handy tool for politicians eager to tighten control.
Some scholars counter with DNA studies, showing so-called “Thais” share ancestry with Mons, Khmers and others. But Mr Srisakra brushed that aside.
“The Mons, the Khmer and other ethnicities have long lived in this land. That’s a historical fact. There were no borders. People intermingled, intermarried, became relatives. There’s no need to look at DNA.”
Besides, he warned, DNA risks dividing more than uniting.
At 87, his conviction does not falter. After a lifetime of studying this land and its peoples, his message is clear: debunk the lies of textbook history. Thailand’s strength lies not in false purity, but in enduring diversity.
National identity, he said, is not biology. “It’s not race. It’s not DNA. It’s the shared consciousness and collective memory of diverse peoples living on the same land.
“We need to remember Siam as it was — plural, open, alive with exchanges. If we do, our hearts will open, no longer trapped by prejudice and hate. Only then can we be free from toxic nationalism.”