The Pridi Banomyong Library Rare Book Room, Thammasat University, Tha Prachan campus, owns a number of rare and useful items of potential interest to students and researchers, especially those interested in history, literature, education, political science, Asian studies, and related subjects.

Among them is the book The Impact of the West on Government in Thailand by Walter F. Vella.

The TU Library collection also includes other research about the West and Thailand.

The American historian Walter Francis Vella was born in San Francisco, California, the United States of America.

In 1980, an article appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies:

Walter Francis Vella (1924-1980)

Walter Vella was struck and killed by a bus in Bangkok, Thailand, on December 30, 1980. He had arrived in Bangkok a few days earlier to participate in the ceremonies for the 100th anniversary of the birth of King Rama VI on January 1.

Vella’s most recent book, Chaiyo! The Role of King Vajiravudh in the Development of Thai Nationalism (Honolulu, 1978) was to be presented to the King of Thailand on that occasion.

A native of San Francisco, Vella entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1942 but was soon drawn into military service. Placed in an ASTP program, he began his study of Thai language and was then assigned to serve with the OSS in the China, Burma, India Theatre of operations.

Taking a discharge in Asia, he stayed on for a year in Thailand working as a code clerk in the U.S. Embassy. He returned to Berkeley and finished his B.A. degree in 1948. He then went to work for the State Department as a political analyst on Thailand. A year later he was back in Berkeley where he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, concentrating on Thai language and history.

While a Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley he wrote The Impact of the West on Government in Thailand (Berkeley, 1955), an insightful survey of the effects of Western institutions and ideas in Thailand.

His doctorate was awarded in 1954 on a dissertation, which later appeared in book form under the title Siam under Rama III, 1824-1851 (Locust Valley, N.Y.: The Association for Asian Studies, 1957). This book made extensive use of Thai language sources, integrating these into the information contained in basic Western-language histories of Thailand. […]

During these years he wrote chapters on Thailand for edited composite volumes and contributed pieces on Thailand to various encyclopaedias. […] In 1962, Vella was appointed Associate Professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Hawaii. In 1965 he was promoted to Professor and held this position until his death.

While at the University of Hawaii he taught courses in the history of Southeast Asia and the history of modern Thailand and Burma and conducted graduate seminars in Thai history. Under his guidance a number of graduate students have received their M.A. and Ph.D. degrees.

Among other activities in Hawaii, he was involved in the training of Peace Corps volunteers for Thailand, was a member of the Advisory Council for International Relations, served as chairman of the History Department from 1967 to 1969, was chairman of the Southeast Asian Studies Program from 1970 to 1975, a position he reassumed shortly before his death. […]

In Hawaii Vella assumed an active role in the promotion of various publications. Best known of these is the English translation of G. Coedes’s classic study The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (Honolulu, 1968).

He edited a volume in the Asian Studies at Hawaii series on Aspects of Vietnamese History (Honolulu, 1973). He was also the promoter and editor of the Hawaii Southeast Asian Studies Working Papers, begun in 1973; this series now numbers over twenty titles. Most recently, since the publication of the Chaiyo! book, he had been working on a study of the nineteenth century Thai poet and man of affairs, Sunthon Phu.

The death of Walter Vella in mid-career is a loss to the scholarly world, especially in the area of Thai studies. His colleagues and students at the University of Hawaii and elsewhere will miss his active support, generous assistance, and warm concern in the areas of scholarly activity.

It was with students and for students that he spent much of his days in the History Department and the Southeast Asian Studies Program of the University of Hawaii; for them his death will be a great loss. For his colleagues his departure robs them of an active and concerned participant in both scholarly and university affairs.

Professor Vella’s Open Access book Chaiyo! King Vajiravudh and the Development of Thai Nationalism is available for free download on the website of the University of Hawaii Press.

The book begins:

Chaiyo means victory, it means hurrah. It is a cheer, a rallying cry, coined by a king whose overall program of nationalism is the subject of the following pages. This book is devoted to one basic aim: to examine Siamese nationalism during the reign of King Vajiravudh as thoroughly and completely as my talents and the sources—the Thai archives, printed works in Thai and Western languages, and the memories of Thai friends—permit.

I have resisted temptations to digress into an overall history of the reign or an examination of theories of nationalism. Yet I hope, of course, that the work will contribute to the general understanding of this period of Thai history and also provide information for political theorists on the nationalistic process.

The biases of an author who is not a polemicist are apt to be what he is least aware of and least likely to admit. I have tried to examine my biases in two areas of vulnerability: my views on nationalism and my feelings toward Thailand.

I regard nationalism as far from an unalloyed blessing. Like any system of loyalty, it has its virtues and its faults. Its good lies in its power to unite; its bad lies in its power to divide.

Perhaps the history of mankind is the story of the search for larger and larger loyalties. Just as King Vajiravudh saw the development of a family spirit, a team spirit, a school spirit as the stepping stones to a national spirit perhaps the development of a national spirit is the necessary prelude to an international spirit.

On Thailand my views are less ambiguous and, for that very reason, more likely to be subjective. In one of the most stimulating talks given at the Association for Asian Studies in recent years, Professor Herbert Phillips surveyed American research on Thailand and concluded, with respect to the researchers, that, despite their vast differences in field, background, and methodology, all shared one attitude.

That attitude was love for Thailand and the Thai. Even writers “critical” of Thai institutions wrote their criticisms in a spirit of affection. I write, then, as objectively as I can, write truths as I see them, but the affection is there.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)