Ideologically, these developments were well under way during the mid-nineteenth century were made to inculcate among elites a notion of citizen duty to the secular state 2 Likewise, a the revenue base of the state moved towards taxing the population, taxpayers were increasingly seen as part of a newly emergent secularized state 29 Notions of bourgeois individualism were also propa- gated which stressed reason, individual capacity and choice beyond fatalistic conceptions of karma 30 Most importantly, the idea of developing a citizen's morality and knowledge was related to the development of the nation itself 31 During the next two reigns, the idea of the Thai nation was further developed around a mythic history of the Thai race David Streckfuss has pointed to the importance of the colonial encounter for understanding the discourse of 'Thainess' the essence of who we are 32 Streckfuss notes that in struggling to define who would be "Thai when faced with French protectionist claims over Lao "the Thai ruling elite creatively adapted the logic of race in delegitimizing French claims and in formulating a sense of "Thainess 33 While Siam had erst while been a multiethnic entity, imperialist pressures and the Thai attempt to maintain sovereignty generated new designated identities over the peoples contained in its emerging borders. Speaking to a royal commissioner Chulalongkorn suggested caution in the designation of identity you must remember that if you are speaking with a westerner on the one hand and Lao on the other, you must maintain that the westerner is them' and the Lao is Thai. If, however, you are speaking with a Lao on the one hand and a Thai on the other, you must maintain that the Lao is "them' and the Thai is us'.34