The notion of opposing nationalisms begs the question of
whether the two shared a common matrix or had separate intellec-
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four: ideologies
tual genealogies. To answer this question one must start by examining
the language of politics. Different from the colonies, where
nationalism was forged linguistically in the native tongue and in
opposition to the language of the colonial elites that claimed the
monopoly of civilization, in Thailand official and popular nationalism
employed the same language. The lexical material employed to
forge a nationalist discourse originated in the laws and treaties
drawn up at the turn of the century, for which foreign terms had to
be translated into Thai. Some of these terms, such as ratthaban (government)
and banmuang (homeland), were coined by compounding
existing words; other terms were already in use but underwent a
resignification, such as issaraphap (independence; originally, royal
authority) and chat (nation), a Sanskritic word whose original meaning
of ‘stock, family’ was the cognate of natio, the Latin etymon of
‘nation’. Chat, used also to form compounds (e.g., chonchat, national;
sanchat, nationality), invoked an idea of national community as being
identified by common ethnic lineage, an idea that was at odds with
the pre-modern notion of Siam as a racially diverse kingdom