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understood to represent the timeless existence and time-tested endurance of
core ethnies, whether Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, or Vietnamese, or even
Karen, Mon, Chin, or Shan. Mainland Southeast Asians, it appears, are “perennialists,” fully paid-up subscribers to Anthony Smith’s account of The Ethnic
Origins of Nations.10 Thailand is especially emblematic of this pattern: “In
Thailand today there is a widespread assumption that there is such a thing as
common Thai nature or identity: khwampenthai (Thainess). It is believed to
have existed for a long time, and all Thai are supposed to be well aware of
its virtue. The essence of Thainess has been well preserved up to the present
time despite the fact that Siam has been transformed greatly toward modernization in the past hundred years.”11