Southern Thailand
Southern Thailand ( Thai : ภาค ใต้ , pronounced: [ Pak Taj ] Südthai : ปักษ์ ใต้ , [Pak Taj] ) is a region in Thailand , all provinces ( Changwat ) in the area of the Isthmus of Kra and south of it on the Malay Peninsula includes .
Southern Thailand is a relatively arbitrarily delineated region that has been defined for geographic, statistical, and administrative purposes. However, it does not represent a historically grown, culturally homogeneous unit. Based on the population structure, culture and language, three quite different sub-regions can be distinguished.
The densely populated provinces on the east coast closest to central Thailand are predominantly inhabited by Thai-speaking Buddhists. They belonged to the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya as early as the 14th century . The sparsely populated west coast had a mixed Thai-Malay population for a long time, and since the 19th century it has also been shaped by Chinese who have migrated here . The province of Satun occupies a special position, as it is inhabited by a majority of Muslims, but they speak a southern Thai dialect.
Finally, the three southernmost provinces are predominantly populated by Muslim Malay people. They were only finally integrated into the Thai state at the beginning of the 20th century and there are separatist tendencies and an ethnic-religious conflict to this day.
geography
In the west, steeper coasts drop into the Indian Ocean , while the east coast is flatter and has low plains crossed by rivers . The largest river in southern Thailand is the Tapi , which together with the Phum Duang drains more than 8000 km², i.e. a little more than 10% of the total area of southern Thailand. Other rivers are the Pattani , the Saiburi and the Trang . The largest lake is Songkhla Lake with an area of 1040 km².
The foothills of the Himalayas extend through the middle of the peninsula in a north-south direction . The highest point is the Khao Luang in the Nakhon Si Thammarat province . From the Isthmus of Kra to the south goes the Phuket Mountain Range , which is connected to the Tanao Si Range to the north . About 100 kilometers east of the Phuket Mountains, the Nakhon Si Thammarat or Banthat Mountains run almost parallel . It starts at about the level of Ko Samui and ends on the archipelago of Ko Tarutao on the border with Malaysia .
The border with Malaysia in the south is formed by the Sankarakhiri chain.
The south of Thailand is a narrow piece of land on the Malay Peninsula , which, unlike the other regions of the country, has no influence from the continental climate. Here the monsoon comes into its own and brings abundant rainfall all year round: from May to October on the west coast and from October to December on the east coast.
administration
The regions of Thailand do not have local authority status , but are defined for geographical or statistical purposes only. Usually 14 provinces are assigned to the southern region:
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population
The most populous provinces are Nakhon Si Thammarat and Songkhla . The largest city in southern Thailand is Hat Yai in the Songkhla province, together with Songkhla 30 kilometers away and other suburbs, the Greater Hatyai-Songkhla Metropolitan Area alone has a population of over 800,000, making it the largest urban center in Thailand outside of the greater Bangkok area.
Almost 70% of the residents of southern Thailand are Buddhists, around 30% are Muslims. Islam is predominant among the Malays , but there are also a larger number of Muslim Thais and Thai-speaking Sam-Sam . In the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala as well as parts of Songkhla, the Malay language dominates, but only Thai is officially permitted.
In the four southernmost provinces Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala and Satun, Muslims make up the majority of the population (68-82%), in Krabi 35%, in Songkhla and Phang-nga over 23%, in Phuket 17%, in Trang over 13% , in Phatthalung and Ranong about 11%, in Nakhon Si Thammarat a little over 6%. Most of the people in Chumphon and Surat Thani are Buddhists (around 98%).
In parts of southern Thailand, especially the provinces of Phuket, Ranong, Songkhla and Trang and the larger cities like Hat Yai, the legacy of the Chinese-born Thais is quite present. Although these are largely integrated or even assimilated and today primarily speak Thai, more recently there has been a return to their own cultural traditions. This can be seen, for example, in the celebration of Chinese festivals such as the festival of the nine emperor gods ("Vegetarian Festival") and the erection of statues of the Bodhisattva Guanyin .
economy
Southern Thailand has relatively little rice cultivation . The plantation of coconuts , bananas and rubber trees is more developed . The mining of tin is also economically interesting, while precious wood , unlike in the past, is rarely felled today. The long coastline also leads to an extensive fishing industry, in recent times mainly shrimp farming in aquaculture .
Phuket , Krabi and Khao Lak (Phang-nga Province) on the Andaman Sea and Ko Samui and Ko Pha-ngan (Surat Thani Province) in the Gulf of Thailand are among the most important destinations for international beach tourism in Thailand.
history
Indian states
In the 7th to 13th centuries, a large part of the Malay Peninsula, including what is now southern Thailand, together with parts of Sumatra and western Java, belonged to the area of influence of the Indianized , Buddhist marine empire Srivijaya . One of the most important cities in this domain is believed to be Chaiya (Surat Thani Province). The kingdom of Poling is known from Chinese chronicles, which was probably called Tambralinga in Sanskrit and whose center is located in what is now the province of Nakhon Si Thammarat . Tambralinga was - at least temporarily - just as dependent on Srivijaya as the Hindu-Buddhist Langkasuka, which also existed in the Pattani area .
Siam and Patani
In the 13th century, states of the Tai (ancestors of the Thai ) were formed in the area of southern Thailand, the southernmost of which was the kingdom of Nakhon Si Thammarat . It was in close contact with and also dependent on the Thai states of the central Thai level and belonged to the kingdom of Sukhothai at the end of the 13th century under King Ramkhamhaeng . From Nakhon Si Thammarat, Theravada Buddhism with Sri Lankan characteristics spread throughout Thailand, and it is still the dominant religion today. After Ramkhamhaeng's death, Nakhon Si Thammarat became independent again and exercised supremacy over several vassal states on the Malay Peninsula (including the west coast). In the 15th century it became a vassal of the central Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya , in the 16th century even its province, but retained its own dynasty and extensive autonomy.
To the south of this, from around 1400 onwards, the Malay sultanate of Patani should be emphasized, whose formative religion was Islam. It had to pay a symbolic tribute to Ayutthaya as early as the 15th century, but in fact it remained independent. Both Nakhon Si Thammarat and Patani became important centers of overseas trade. Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Persian, Arab and Portuguese merchants founded branches, later also Dutch and British. Both states achieved considerable prosperity as a result. In the 17th century Patani lost its importance, the influence of Ayutthaya (or later Bangkok) increased, also in the neighboring Malay sultanates of Kedah , Kelantan and Terengganu (today states of Malaysia).
In Singora (now Songkhla) there was a separate sultanate from around 1605 to 1680, which was under the rule of a family who had immigrated from Persia. At times it even declared the independence of Ayutthaya, but was again subjugated and destroyed by this. Episodic attempts to shake off Siamese supremacy were also suppressed in other parts of southern Thailand: in 1688 and 1769 in Nakhon Si Thammarat, 1781 in Terengganu, 1786 in Pattani, 1812 in Kelantan and 1821 and 1831/32 in Kedah.
Plans for a Kra Canal through the isthmus to shorten the sea route around the Malay Peninsula, which have been repeatedly raised and planned since the 17th century, have not yet been implemented.
After 1800, tin mining developed into an important economic factor on the previously less important west coast, for example on Phuket and in Ranong. This attracted migrant workers from southern China, who settled here and started families with local women. This resulted in a Thai-Chinese population and culture. The administration of the Songkhla province had already been transferred to a merchant family of Chinese descent in 1777.
Despite the advance of the British (Malacca and Burma) and French (Laos and Cambodia), Siam was able to maintain its independence as a buffer state between the two rival colonial powers in the 19th and 20th centuries . However, in 1896 Paris and London signed a treaty delimiting their zones of interest in this buffer state, which declared the whole of southern Thailand to be British territory, and eastern and northeastern Thailand to French territory.
20th and 21st centuries
In 1905 Pattani was integrated into the centralized administrative structure of Siam and the sultans lost their power. For this, however, Siam had to cede sovereignty over the sultanates of Perlis , Kelantan, Kedah and Terengganu to British Malaya in 1909 . These four sultanates form (after a renewed Thai occupation in the Second World War 1943-45) since 1946 the four northernmost states of the since 1963 independent Malaysia. The area of the former Sultanate of Patani is today divided into the three Thai provinces Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala.
Since 1976, a separatist organization (the Pattani United Liberation Organization ) (split in 1992) has been fighting for autonomy or even separation from Thailand. Instead of using military force, the government of Prem Tinsulanonda tried to counteract the discontent in the 1980s with political accommodation and economic development programs. In 1981 it set up a special administrative center for the southern border provinces to serve as a link between the central government and local Muslim leaders, as well as a joint task force made up of the military, police and civilians. It also granted the Islamic population cultural rights and under the aegis of the Thai army, the infrastructure was expanded as part of the Khwam Wang Mai (“New Hope”) program. The considerable differences in prosperity and the feeling of foreign domination by central Thai elites (sometimes described with the catchphrase internal colonialism ) persisted.
The conflict, which had meanwhile almost fallen asleep, escalated from 2004 , after Thai soldiers shot 32 mostly young rebels in the Krue-Se Mosque and 86 demonstrators died in Tak Bai because they suffocated on overcrowded trucks after they were arrested. In bomb attacks and armed clashes between government forces and rebels between 2004 and 2014, 5,352 people died and around 10,000 were injured. The ethnic-national liberation movement has been replaced by radical Islamic jihadists who not only fight the Thai army, but also specifically kill Buddhist civilians and Muslims who cooperate with the Thai government, as well as carry out bomb attacks on schools.
literature
- Michael K. Jerryson: Buddhist Fury. Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2011.
- Michael J. Montesano, Patrick Jory (Eds.): Thai South and Malay North. Ethnic Interactions on the Plural Peninsula. NUS Press, Singapore 2008.
Web links
Wikinews: Crisis Region Southern Thailand - In The NewsIndividual evidence
- ↑ สรุป ผล การ สํา ร ว จ การ เข้า ร่วม กิจกรรม ทาง วัฒนธรรม พ.ศ. 2548 [Summary of Survey on Participation in Cultural Activities 2005], National Bureau of Statistics of Thailand, August 2005.
- ^ Marc Askew: Materializing merit. The symbolic economy of religious monuments and tourist pilgrimage in contemporary Thailand. In: Religious Commodifications in Asia. Marketing Gods. Routledge, Abingdon / New York 2008, pp. 115-116.
- ↑ Jerryson: Buddhist Fury. 2011, p. 47.
- ^ Jovan Maud: Fire and Water. Ritual Innovation, Tourism and Spontaneous Religiosity in Hat Yai, Southern Thailand. In: Faith in the Future. Understanding the Revitalization of Religions and Cultural Traditions in Asia. Brill, Leiden 2013, pp. 269-296.
- ^ Wan Kadir Che Man: Muslim Separatism: The Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 1990. Quoted from Jerryson: Buddhist Fury. 2011, p. 223 (fn. 27).
- ↑ Thanet Aphornsuvan: Rebellion in Southern Thailand. Contending Histories. East-West Center, Washington DC 2007, p. 29.
- ^ Duncan McCargo : Southern Thailand. The Trouble with Autonomy. In: Autonomy and Armed Separatism in South and Southeast Asia. ISEAS Publishing, Singapore 2012, pp. 217-234, at pp. 217-218.