History
Pat Thai has been known in Thailand for hundreds of years, the type of noodles having been introduced to Ayuthaya, the former capital, by Vietnamese traders. However, it was made popular by Luang Phibunsongkhram, the prime minister during the late 1930s and 1940s, as part of his campaign to promote Thai nationalism and centralization, seeking to reduce domestic rice consumption. The Thai economy was heavily dependent on rice exports, and the prime minister hoped to increase the amount for available to export by encouraging Thais to make and sell rice noodles from street carts and in small restaurants. Pad Thai has since become one of Thailand's national dishes.
Read more about this topic: Pad Thai
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)