Charoenpacharaporn, Patcharaviral;
(2023)
Circumventing the Cold War Divisions: Indo-Thai Relations c. 1946-1957.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
This dissertation, an international history of India and Thailand from 1946 to 1957, explores the policy of Non-Alignment as Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India sought to pull US-aligned Thailand into his vision of post-war Asia. Grounding Nehru’s policy in a larger genealogy of Indian intellectual thought, it will be argued that Nehru’s vision of Non-Alignment and his policy towards states east of India, Thailand included, revolved around the idea of Greater India and Buddhism – a cultural heritage that not only re-connected independent India with the rest of Asia, but also underlined India’s centrality in this ancient cultural sphere. Thailand, whose self-perception was deeply rooted in view of its ‘success’ in maintaining political independence at the height of colonialism in the nineteenth century, was reluctant to join Non-Aligned Asia. Nevertheless, as the Cold War intensified in Asia, Thailand began to explore an alternative foreign policy to the exclusive alignment with the United States and the West. The Thais’ interactions with India in the South-to-South diplomatic space, such as the Colombo Plan and the Bandung Conference, led to a turning point in the country’s foreign policy. This change was not only manifested in the conventional diplomatic setting, but perhaps and more interestingly in the cultural space where the commemoration of Buddhism became a stage on which the association and solidarity of Non-Alignment was celebrated across Asia. Although this development was short-lived, it was meaningful, and so this thesis investigates the ways in which two states navigated the ideological conflicts imposed by the Superpowers and forged positive relations with one another – the specific phenomenon that I refer to as ‘circumventing the divisions of the Cold War’.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Circumventing the Cold War Divisions: Indo-Thai Relations c. 1946-1957 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > Centre for Languages and Intl Educatn |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10174933 |
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