A Preliminary Studies on the Development of Thai Higher Education in the Cold War Context: The Rise of Thai Academia, Nationalist Scholars and Intellectual Nationalism under the Eagle’s Shadow

Abstract

This article focuses on the developments of Thai higher education and academia especially in the filed of social sciences. It argues that the developments of Thai higher education and academia since the end of World War II to the 1990s were not merely the result of top-down planning and management of Thai government. On the contrary, they were the heritage of American influence and aid during the Cold War. Paradoxically, in the late 1960s, Thai academia started to view American influence and aid as the act of “intellectual imperialism”; it facilitated the rise of “intellectual nationalism” in Thai academia resulting in the production of academic works by nationalist scholars who aimed to liberate Thai academia from being intellectual colony.