Preah Vihear nationalists could use a history lesson

Neither has anything to do with history and, in this case, architecture, something for which none of the vociferous parties involved in this matter has shown any appreciation. I can't help but fret over our shortcomings in history and culture as listed below.

1) My father, who spent years in the archives in France back in the 1960s, has the French map, or a microfilm of it, showing the "kink" from the watershed line to exclude Prasat Khao Preah Vihear from Siam. The said map was appendiced to the border agreement between France and Siam. This is something that nobody in Siam knew about when MR Seni Pramoj took the case to the World Court, and he (my father) told me that it was obvious that Siam had to lose the case because of this map.

2) After the World Court's deliberation, Field Marshal Sarit Dhanarajata refused to cede the temple to Cambodia. A higher authority called him in to say that the country was bound by the said verdict and there the matter rested.

3) Thais have never been good at keeping historical records, and we have to go to the archives in Paris, London, The Hague, Cornell, etc, in order to do our doctorates in Thai history!

4) Without the sense of real history, Thais are vehemently nationalistic, which is dangerous. For example, school textbooks still teach Thais that we came from the Altai Mountains and founded the Nanchao Kingdom, which Chinese scholars dismiss as pure nonsense.

5) Few Thais realise that the Khmer Empire used to cover much of present-day Thailand and Laos, as evidenced by Prasat Muang Sing to the West on the Burmese border, and Khmer ruins in Sukhothai in central Siam, and Laos. The Thais, having wrested from the Khmers their outpost town of Sukhothai in the 13th century, took over the Khmer language - the Thai script being a simplified form of Khmer - and in the early Ayutthaya period adopted, with variations or aesthetic licence, Khmer architecture, classical dance and other facets of Khmer civilisation, which were then unwittingly exported back to Kampuchea by the French in the 19th century. (Witness the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, which is a mediocre copy of our Grand Palace).

6) Kampuchea to Siam is like ancient Greece and Rome to the rest of Europe, or third century BC China and T'ang Dynasty to Japan. That much do we owe to the Khmers!

7) In the end, a great monument like Preah Vihear doesn't belong to any particular country. It belongs to the world. Only this or that country has the obligation to look after it on behalf of mankind.

8) History is the future. When people refuse to understand this, with a tinge of humour, they have to start from the beginning again and again.

Sumet Jumsai

Bangkok

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American dream turning into a spending nightmare

Re: "Is the US too big to fail? It seems to think so", Opinion, July 25.

I couldn't agree with Thanong Khanthong more. But I think it goes beyond the banks; it was greed. The funny thing is that when the money was flowing to the investors, not one ever offered to make my house payment. Now that the bubble burst, I fail to see why I should make their house payments. This is not the America I grew up in; basic business practices have faded. But in all honesty, it wasn't just America that got into the game.

In the America I grew up in you might not be born into the best of circumstances, but you could work your way up. I was a farm kid and stopped school before finishing high school; today I am a college-educated person. Hard work and night school got that done. It was not just given to me. I'm for the very first time close to the American dream. But, I moved to Thailand to get that chance.

There is a lot that America could learn from Thailand, like taking care of its own people first as Thailand does. Yes America can learn a lot from Thailand. I'm lucky I came from a different time in America and my retirement years are secured. But my children and their children will pay for this their entire lives. Will they ever achieve what I have? It's doubtful. No I don't think it will fail. But that has nothing to do with banks, corporate America and stock markets. It's the American people who will carry the burden.

Ray Fisher

Bangkok

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