Pre-World War II History
Until the 1960s, rice planting in Thailand consisted mainly of peasants farming small areas and produced modest amounts of rice (subsistence agriculture). The Chao Phraya River delta was the hub of rice production. Agriculture constituted a large portion of the total production of Thailand and most Thais worked on farms. The extreme focus on agriculture arose for two main reasons, the vast amount of land available for farming and the government's policies to clear more land and protect peasants' rights. The government helped peasants gain access to land and protected them from aristocratic landlords. Due to the government's stance, urban merchants were unable to gain much control over the Thai rice industry. The government concerned itself with protecting farmers and not with overall production. As a result, Thailand was relatively self-sufficient, resistant to government invention, mobile, and egalitarian. Most rice farmers owned their own land and exchange labor between farmers was common. Rice production normally was not much more than the farmers needed to survive on.
Read more about this topic: Rice Production In Thailand
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or history:
“There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom—against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)