The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

PATTEHNS OF LAND OWNEHS!lll' IN CENTHAL THAILAND 257
While the recent decline in the rate of land loss provides a direct
refutation of the conventional wisdom, the degree of losses during the
depression reflects earlier conditions of rural distress which are
generally ignored or misunderstood in contemporary economic analysis
of Thailand. The Burmo-Malthusian model of inevitable and progressive
deterioration does not easily accommodate the Thai case of severe land
dislocations during the depression and subsequent decades of recovery.
To permit more detailed examination, the annual data and the most
comparable Burmese data are presented in TableS for the period between
the two World Wars.
Although data on the loss of land because of mortgage forclosure
are not directly available for Burma, data on the increase of absentee
landlords (non-resident, non-agricultural ownership) may serve as a
substitute. English officials generally agreed that the foreclosure of
mortgages caused most of the land alienation in Lower Burma during this
period.l4 The increase in absentee-landlord holdings in Lower Burma,
shown in Table 5, includes some land acquisition outside of the mortgage
process but excludes a small amount ofland lost by mortgage foreclosures
to resident landlords. On balance, the growth of absentee landlordism
may be a reasonable proxy for land losses due to mortgages. The losses
in Burma started immediately after World War I when prices declined,
but Thailand did not experience persistent losses until the 1919-20
drought and the onset of the depression. During the next two decades
land losses as a percentage of total area under title, particularly in
Ayuthia, approached Burma in severity:
Lower
Nakhon
Burma Ayuthia Pat hom
1920-29 5.6% 4.8% 1.6%
1930-39 19.7 12.0 5.7
25.3 16.8 7.3
The worldwide depression transmitted its effects directly into the
rice exporting deltas of Southeast Asia. Paddy prices in Siam dropped
50 percent from 1929 to 1931 and the market for paddy land collapsed.
14) Adas, p. 392,