Hey everyone, Lhasla Montgomery here. Welcome back. First CHP episode of 2021.

I'm going to try and finish up this little general survey of the history of the Thai Chinese.

It's been a few episodes and I haven't begged you

in a while but if you'd like to subscribe to my Patreon and keep this long

running family program going another couple weeks, Patreon.com slash China History Podcast.

That's Patreon.com slash China History Podcast, not backslash.

Thanks for that, Lou.

We left off last time with the government of Thailand

after the name change from Siam in 1939. With the pedal to the medal with the promotion of Thai nationalism.

And if the ethnic Chinese minority didn't exhibit enough enthusiasm for the whole idea,

well they were considered unpatriotic and all the baggage that went

with that accusation. Sounds familiar in our day. And during the 1930s, as we saw last episode in part six, the leadership inside the Thai government, led by PLEC Phibbonne-Songkram, and I didn't mention him last time, but Priahoon was no less a player in 1930s, 40s politics

than Phibun and was totally in on the whole lineup on Japan's side idea. They and their People's Party, they knew how to play to the home crowd and many of Thailand's ethnic Chinese, had to go through some hard times.

In leaders in the Chinese community who spoke out against Japan

or did community organizing to resist the Japanese

and their efforts to subjugate China.

They were silenced using all the well-worn ways of intimidation,

including, as I mentioned last episode,

assassination, an extreme form of coercion, if there ever was one. And the government ended up being quite

effective in tamping down on Chinese efforts to carry out anti-Japanese demonstrations of

civil disobedience on the streets of Bangkok and elsewhere during these

early years of this shotgun marriage between the Empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Thailand.

...