For a Greater Realm

The only country to escape colonialism in Southeast Asia, Thailand on the eve of the Second World War was a kingdom deep in the throes of militarism, led by a charismatic strongman obsessed with questions of national greatness and dreams of empire. In 1940 the Thais took advantage of France’s metropolitan defeat to fulfill revanchist yearnings by demanding the return of ‘lost provinces’ in Laos and Cambodia that had been ceded to Indochina half a century earlier. What followed was a border war w