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

398 REVIEWS
informal relations. The latter reflected the impact of economic change,
apparent for some time but especially marked from the middle of the
nineteenth century. The vast expansion of international trade, the
influx of Cbine~e immigrants (who both provided a more convenient form
of labour than the traditional peasant corvee and who came to dominate
internal trade by the 1850s), the commercialisation of rice farming and
reforms of the tax system transformed the character of the Thai economy.
Economic changes brought about concomitant changes in patron-client
relations. First, as a result of the increasing opportunities to share,
directly or indirectly, in the new wealth being generated and to seek
advancement in the expanding bureaucracy, members of the nai class
began to compete vigorously among themselves by means of informal
clientship. Secondly, wealthy Chinese traders, bidding to farm taxes,
were seen as desirable clients because they could afford large gifts.
Finally, within the administration, the chain of command was increasingly
disrupted as informal clients of powerful patrons tended to disregard or
disobey their own formal superiors. An informal client could even build
up his own clientele, rivalling the formal clientele of his direct superior,
because of the status be had acquired as informal client of a phuyai.
Thus power stemmed, not merely from clients as in the old days, but
also from wealth.
Steven Piker, in "The Post-Peasant Village in Central Plain Thai
Society", also investigates the effect of economic and demographic
changes on traditional values and social arrangements, in this case the
continuance of "kindred associations" of two or three closely related
village families. These associations, based on the regular exchange of
goods and services (at harvest time, building a house) provide the major
source of village stability and security. But during the present century,
with virtually an end to cultivable land in the Central Plain, because of
the growth of population and consequent fragmentation of holdings as
land is distributed ever more sparsely among family members, the
problem of insufficient holdings or actual landlessness bas become
acute. In the village near Ayuthaya studied by Piker in the 1960s, just
over half the families were without land. These landless, poorer
families simply have not the means--either in income from farming or in