(Wright 1991: 193); yet, this high level of illiteracy was not shared by the
native intelligentsia. Cherry points out that three of the speakers at a confer-
ence held in Hanoi by the EFEO in 1901 were native scholars: Nguyen Van To,
Tran Van Giap, and Do Xuan Hop. TheWrst wrote about motifs in traditional
Vietnamese art; Tran Van Giap’s presentations included a discussion on
Vietnamese Buddhism, another on the stelae at the Temple of Literature in
Hanoi, and a third on a sixteenth-century funerary stela of a mandarin;
Wnally, Do Xuan Hop dealt with paleontology (Cherry 2004a). They were all
members of the EFEO. The participation of native scholars increased after
the First World War. However, these three names are not usually included in
histories of archaeology, and on the whole it seems that there was a lesser
degree of native contribution in archaeology compared with their European
colleagues. This contrasts with the involvement, albeit limited, of natives
in British India, a diVerence that became more apparent after the First
World War. This disparity could be interpreted as an outcome of the diVerent
models of imperialism followed by France as opposed to Britain and
Holland. The French emphasized direct rule and attempted to enforce
cultural assimilation. In contrast, the British and Dutch imposed a more
‘indirect’ management, and this, or perhaps the length of time each colonial
power had stayed in the area, may well be related to the involvement of
natives in the study of the past.
CREATING THE THAI NATIONThe only country successful in maintaining political independence in South-
east Asia was Siam, present-day Thailand. Historiography was not unknown
in Siam. In theWfteenth century it took the form of the Tamnan—stories,
legends, and myths concerning the history of Buddhism. This historiograph-
ical tradition was substituted by the Phongsawadan, consisting of chrono-
logical records of major events in each reign, centred on the ruling elites or
members of a dynasty or kingdom (Shoocongdej forthcoming). In the early
nineteenth century the reigning monarchy under King Mongkut (Rama IV,
gov. 1851–68) attempted some early modernization of the Buddhist insti-
tutions. This included the slow appearance of an understanding of linear
time as an alternative to the cyclical timeframe of Buddhist cosmology,
maintaining, but also changing, the Phongsawadan historical ideology.
This allowed the development of an interest in history and ancient objects
which could illuminate the antiquity of the Thai presence in Siam. One of
these objects was the Ramkhamhaeng inscription—also called the Sukhothai
South and South East Asia 237