1 See, Nyblade, Benjamin, O'Mahony, Angela and Sinpeng, Aim, ‘Social media data and the dynamics of Thai protests’, Asian Journal of Social Science 43, 5 (2015): 545–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haberkorn, Tyrell, ‘A hyper-royalist parapolitics in Thailand’, Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 172 (2016): 230–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and PLasuka, asoot, ‘Humour in troubling time: Politically satirical graphics in Facebook and the political subjectivity of digital representation’, Journal of Liberal Arts 14, 2 (2014): 14–32Google Scholar.

2 See for example, ‘Digital preservation planning’, National Archives of Australia, http://www.naa.gov.au/information-management/managing-information-and-records/preserving/digi-pres-planning.aspx (last accessed 17 Feb. 2017).

3 Vincent Mosco understands this notion of the ‘end of history’ as being one of the key mythologies that have been constructed around the advent of cyberspace. See Mosco, Vincent, The digital sublime: Myth, power and cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), p. 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See for example, Herzfeld, Michael, ‘The absent presence: Discourses of crypto-colonialism’, South Atlantic Quarterly 101, 4 (2002): 899–926Google Scholar; Streckfuss, David, ‘The mixed colonial legacy in Siam: Origins of Thai racialist thought, 1890–1910’, in Autonomous histories, particular truths: Essays in honor of John R.W. Smail, ed. Sears, Laurie J. (Madison: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993), p. 125Google Scholar; Lysa, Hong, ‘Invisible semicolony: The postcolonial condition and royal national history in Thailand’, Postcolonial Studies 11, 3 (2008): 315–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lysa, Hong, ‘“Stranger within the gates”: Knowing semi-colonial Siam as extraterritorials’, Modern Asian Studies 38, 2 (2004): 327–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Winichakul, Thongchai, ‘Siam's colonial conditions and the birth of Thai history’, in Unravelling myths in Southeast Asian historiography, ed. Grabowsky, Volker (Bangkok: River Books, 2011), pp. 23–45Google Scholar.

5 Winichakul, Thongchai, ‘The others within: Travel and ethno-spatial differentiation of Siamese subjects 1885–1910’, in Civility and savagery: Social identity in Tai states, ed. Turton, Andrew (Surrey: Curzon, 2000), pp. 38–62Google Scholar; and Winichakul, Thongchai, for, ‘The quest “siwilai”: A geographical discourse of civilizational thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Siam’, Journal of Asian Studies 59, 3 (2000): 528–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Loos, Tamara, Subject Siam: Family, law and colonial modernity in Thailand (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2006), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the relevance of postcolonial analysis to studies of Thailand see also Jackson, Peter A., ‘Autonomy and subordination in Thai history: The case for semicolonial analysis’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8, 3 (2007): 329−48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Winichakul, Thongchai, Siam mapped: A history of the geo-body of a nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), pp. 13−17Google Scholar.

8 Winichakul, ‘Siam's colonial conditions’, pp. 23–45.

9 Thongchai Winichakul, ‘Prawattisāt Thai bǣp rāchāchātniyǫm: Čhak yuk ānānikhǫm amphrāng sū rāchāchātniyǫm mai rū latthi sadēt phǭ khǭng kradumphī Thai nai patčhuban’ [Royalist-nationalist history: From the era of crypto-colonialism to the new royalist-nationalism], Sinlapa Wattanatham 23, 1 (2001): 57−65.

10 Thongchai speaks specifically about the Pak Nam crisis of 1893, a military confrontation between Siam and France, which resulted in the loss of portions of Siam's Lao and Cambodian territories (ibid., p. 59). See also Winichakul, ‘Siam's colonial conditions’, p. 31.

11 Many of these texts do not adopt Thongchai's term ‘royalist nationalist’ but address the same historiographical tendencies. See for example, Reynolds, Craig J. and Lysa, Hong, ‘Marxism in Thai historical studies’, Journal of Asian Studies 43, 1 (1983): 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hong, ‘Invisible semicolony’.

12 Jory, Patrick, ‘Problems in contemporary Thai nationalist historiography’, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 3 (2003)Google Scholar, https://kyotoreview.org/issue-3-nations-and-stories/problems-in-contemporary-thai-nationalist-historiography/ (last accessed 15 Jan. 2017).

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 On this methodological approach see, Stoler, Ann Laura, ‘Colonial archives and the arts of governance’, Archival Science 1–2 (2002): 87–109Google Scholar.

16 Ernst, Wolfgang, ‘Dis/continuities: Does the archive become metaphorical in multi-media space?’, in New media, old media, ed. Hui, Wendy Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 108Google Scholar.

17 The way in which notions of ‘common sense’ informed colonial archives in Southeast Asia is examined in Stoler, Ann Laura, Along the archival grain: Epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

18 Reynolds, Craig J., ‘The plot of Thai history: Theory and practice’, in Patterns and illusions in Thai history and thought, ed. Wijeyewardene, Gehan and Chapman, E.C. (Canberra: Richard Davis Fund, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU; Singapore: ISEAS, 1992), p. 318Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., p. 329. This was demonstrated when the brass plaque commemorating the 1932 revolution was mysteriously removed from the Royal Plaza in Bangkok on 14 April 2017. It was replaced with another plaque, which was inscribed with the messages, ‘May Siam prosper forever [with] happy fresh-faced citizens to be the force for the nation’, and ‘Respect and loyalty to the Buddhist Triple Gems, to one's family, and being honest to one's King are the tools for the state's prosperity’. See, ‘1932 democratic revolution plaque disappears’, Prachatai English, 14 Apr. 2017, https://prachatai.com/english/node/7072 (last accessed 16 Apr. 2017).

20 Reynolds, ‘The plot of Thai history’, p. 318.

21 White, Hayden, ‘Historiography and historiophoty’, American Historical Review 93, 5 (1988): 1194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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25 As Reynolds postulates, ‘Modern Thai historiography is, to a large extent a Western import, though it bears some unmistakable features of being a Thai historiography.’ Reynolds, ‘The plot of Thai history’, p. 317.

26 Thongchai, ‘The quest for “siwilai”’.

27 Ibid., p. 531.

28 Kracauer, Siegfried and Levin, Thomas Y., trans., ‘Photography’, Critical Inquiry 19, 3 (1993): 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This idea of photography as a type of ‘likeness’ was also reflected in early writings on the medium in Siam. For example, King Mongkut wrote, in a letter to Pope Pius IX in 1861, that he had included along with it, ‘[a] royal portrait of ourselves made in [sic] photographic camera recently for being [sic] card from us to pay our respect to your Holiness hoping your Holiness will see it as having seen us in person.’ See Nivat, Prince Dhani, ‘King Mongkut's autograph letter to Pius IX’, Journal of the Siam Society 37, 2 (1949): 111–23Google Scholar.

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30 Ibid., p. 435. Italics in the original.

31 Benjamin, Andrew, ‘What, in truth, is photography? Notes after Kracauer’, Oxford Literary Review 32, 2 (2010): 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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33 Chotpradit, Thanavi, ‘From 24th June to 10th December: The political life of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall in 1932’, Na Jua: History of Architecture and Thai Architecture 13 (2016): 20−32Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 24.

35 Haberkorn, Tyrell, ‘The anniversary of a massacre and the death of a monarch’, Journal of Asian Studies 76, 2 (2017): 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similarly, in September 2017, a new online archive was launched, which included photographs of hǫk Tulā. ‘Bantưk 6 tulā [Documentation of 6 October]’, https://doct6.com/ (last accessed 2 Oct. 2017).

36 A. Benjamin, ‘What, in truth, is photography?’, p. 199.

37 Kracauer and Levin, ‘Photography’, p. 427.

38 Mitchell, Iconology, pp. 72–3. On the iconicism of images of the Thai king see Clare Veal, ‘Thainess framed: Photography and identity in Thailand, 1946–2010’ (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2015), pp. 110–64.

39 ‘No matter how artful the photograph, no matter how carefully posed its subject, the beholder feels an irresistible urge to search the picture for the tiny spark of contingency.’ Benjamin, Walter, ‘A little history of photography’, in Walter Benjamin: Selected writings, volume 2, part 2, 1931–1934, trans. Livingstone, R. et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999), p. 510Google Scholar. See also Pinney, Christopher, ‘Seven theses on photography’, Thesis Eleven 113, 1 (2012): 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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41 Appadurai, Arjun, ‘The past as a scarce resource’, Man 16, 2 (1981): 203CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Italics in the original.

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43 Charnvit uses the term ‘progressive traditionalist’ to describe the Damrong school of history. Kasetsiri, ‘Sakun prawattisāt’, p. 51.

44 Breazeale, Kennon, ‘A transition in historical writing: The works of Prince Damrong Rachanuphap’, Journal of the Siam Society 59, 2 (1971): 37Google Scholar.

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46 Jory, Patrick, ‘Books and the nation: The making of Thailand's National Library’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 31, 2 (2000): 356CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 ‘Phrarātchadamrat nai phrarātchathān rāngwan nakrīan thī rōngrīan phratamnak Sūan Kulāp mūa pī rakā phǭ. sǭ. 2427’, as quoted in ibid., p. 356.

48 Ibid., p. 356. Although Jory does not mention visual ways of disseminating knowledge in his text, the didactic function of Buddhist temple murals in Thailand has been recognised. See for example, Thongmitr, Wiyada, Khrua In Khong's Westernized school of Thai painting (Bangkok: Thailand Cultural Data Centre, 1979), p. 122Google Scholar.

49 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘Minority histories, subaltern pasts’, Postcolonial Studies 1, 1 (1998): 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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51 Jory, ‘Problems in contemporary Thai nationalist historiography’. See for example, Nithi Eaowsriwong, ‘Khǭkhit kīeokap wichā prawattisāt’ [Thoughts about the study of history], in Pratchayā prawattisāt [Philosophies of history], ed. Charnvit Kasetsiri and Suchat Sawatsi (Bangkok: Sangkhommasāt Parithat, 1975), pp. 101–33; and Nithi Eaowsriwong, Chāt Thai, mư̄ang Thai, bǣp rīan læ anusāwarī: Wādāi watthanatham rat læ rūpkān čhitsamnưk [The Thai nation, Thai nationhood, textbooks and monuments: On national culture and forms of conscioussness] (Bangkok: Matichon, 1995), pp. 59–71.

52 Dhida Saraya, Tamnān læ tamnān prawattisāt kap kānsưksā prawattisāt thǭngthin [Tamnan and tamnan history: A study of local history], ed. Srisakra Vallibhotam, trans. Maneewan Pewnim (Bangkok: Office of National Culture Commission, Ministry of Education, 1982), pp. 82, 93.

53 Ibid., pp. 119–20. Thongchai similarly observes that local histories do not aim to ‘cause disharmony or disintegration in the country’. Winichakul, Thongchai, ‘The changing landscape of the past: New histories in Thailand since 1973’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 26, 1 (1995): 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A similar argument is presented in Peleggi, Maurizio, The politics of ruins and the business of nostalgia (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2002), p. 34Google Scholar.

54 Hong Lysa, ‘Twenty years of Sinlapa Watthanatham: Cultural politics in Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 31, 1 (2000): 30.

55 Ibid., p. 34.

56 Ibid., p. 35.

57 Winichakul, ‘The changing landscape of the past’, p. 117.

58 Winichakul, Siam mapped.

59 Sathirakoses (Rajadhon, Phraya Anuman), Looking back: Book one (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1992), p. 271Google Scholar.

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65 Ibid.

66 ‘Siamese memories’, Facebook, 12 Jan. 2017, https://www.facebook.com/groups/siamesememories/ (last accessed 30 Mar. 2017).

67 Winichakul, ‘The changing landscape of the past’, pp. 117–18; Hong, ‘Twenty years of Sinlapa Watthanatham’, p. 47; and Peleggi, The politics of ruins, p. 9.

68 Chotpradit, Thanavi, ‘A dark spot on a royal space: The art of the People's Party and the politics of Thai (art) history’, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 1, 1 (2017): 142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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70 Chotpradit, ‘A dark spot on a royal space’, p. 143.

71 ‘Siamese memories’.

72 Haberkorn, ‘A hyper-royalist parapolitics in Thailand’, p. 235.

73 Ibid.

74 ‘Thailand: End harsh punishments for lese majeste offenses’, Human Rights Watch, 2 Dec. 2011, https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/02/thailand-end-harsh-punishments-lese-majeste-offenses (last accessed on 30 Nov. 2016).

75 An example of this was Chiranuch Premchaiporn's conviction under the Computer Crimes Act in 2015 for a number of anti-monarchy comments that were posted to the Prachatai web board, of which she was webmaster.

76 ‘Rūp thi mī nai thuk bān’ [Pictures that are in every home], Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/MissionMajestyKingBhumibol/ (last accessed 15 Dec. 2016).

77 ‘Siamese memories’, 10 Mar. 2017.

78 I am grateful to my colleague Roger Nelson for pointing out that nostalgic Facebook groups focused on Cambodia also exhibit similar xenophobic tendencies, often directed at Thailand.

79 Bonnett, The geography of nostalgia, p. 16.

80 Winichakul, ‘The changing landscape of the past’, p. 118.

81 Chakrabarty, ‘Minority histories’, p. 18.

82 Derrida, Jacques and Prenowitz, Eric, trans., Archive fever: A Freudian impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 2Google Scholar.

83 Ibid., p. 11.

84 In this text, Derrida also pre-empts the ‘juridicial and thus political transformations’ that will occur as a result of changes to the forms and structures of archiving electronic communications such as email. Ibid., pp. 16–17.

85 Stoler, Along the archival grain, p. 24.

86 Jory, ‘Books and the nation’, p. 354.

87 Ibid., pp. 353, 368.

88 Ibid., p. 268.

89 George Coedès, The Vajiranana National Library of Siam (Bangkok: Council of the National Library, 1924), pp. 5–6; and Atthibāi wādūai hǭ Prasamut Wachirayān læ Phiphitthaphan Sathān Samrap Phranakhǫn [Introduction to the Wachirayan Library and the Phra Nakhon Museum] (Bangkok: Rōngphim Sōphǫn Phipat Thanāthǫn, 1926).

90 100 pi Hǭsamut Hǣng Chāt [100 years of the National Library] (Bangkok: Samnak Hō̜samut hǣng Chāt, 2005), p. 205.

91 Ibid.

92 Ibid.

93 Sathirakoses (Phraya Anuman Rajadhon), Looking back, p. 272.

94 Coedès, The Vajiranana National Library of Siam, p. 9.

95 Sathirakoses, Looking back, p. 271.

96 Ibid.

97 Anake Nawigamune, Prawat kānthāirūp yuk rǣk khǭng Thai [History of early photography in Thailand] (Bangkok: Sarakhadī Phāp, 2005), pp. 328–51, 396–403, 485–614.

98 Photographs less than 25 years old are generally not available for public viewing.

99 Maenmat Chawalit, Prawat Hǭsamut Hǣng Chāt [History of the National Library] (Bangkok: Krǫm Silapākōn, 1966), p. 57.

100 Sakda Siripant, Kasat & klǭng: Wiwatthanākān kānthāiphāp nai Prathēt Thai, phǭ. sǭ. 2388–2535 [King and camera: Evolution of photography in Thailand, 1845–1992] (Bangkok: Dansuthā Kānphim, 1992).

101 Nawigamune, Prawat kānthāirūp yuk rǣk khǭng Thai.

102 On the ‘surplus production’ of archives see Stoler, Along the archival grain, p. 14.

103 Power, Nigel, ‘(Un)identified: Détourned photographs from modern Siam’, Visual Communication 14, 4 (2015): 427CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 Morris, Rosalind C., In the place of origins: Modernity and its mediums in Northern Thailand (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 210–12Google Scholar. Italics in the original.

105 See for example essays in Harrison, Rachel V. and Jackson, Peter A., eds., The ambiguous allure of the West: Traces of the colonial in Thailand (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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107 See for example, Morris, Rosalind C., ‘Introduction’, in Photographies East: The camera and its histories in East and Southeast Asia, ed. Morris, Rosalind C. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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109 Smail, John R.W., ‘On the possibility of an autonomous history of modern Southeast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, 2 (1961): 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Ibid., p. 83. A notable exception to this is Rosalind Morris’ study of the political significance of photographs of political conflict during the protests of May 1992, and their violent suppression. However, the significance of these photographs is given relevance in relation to a wider discussion of King Bhumibol's photographic image. Morris, R.C., ‘Surviving pleasure at the periphery: Chiang Mai and the photographies of political trauma in Thailand, 1976–1992’, Public Culture 10, 2 (1998): 341–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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112 ‘NRCT-01: Application form for conducting research in Thailand’. See ‘Available forms for foreign researchers’, National Research Council of Thailand, https://foreignresearcher.nrct.go.th/files/NRCT-01.pdf (last accessed 31 Aug. 2020).

113 ‘Regulations on the permission for foreign researchers to conduct research in Thailand’, National Research Council of Thailand, 2007, https://foreignresearcher.nrct.go.th/index.php?lang=en&mod=forms&op=regulations_en (last accessed 31 Aug. 2020).

114 ‘77PPP’, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/pg/77PPP/about/?ref=page_internal (last accessed 3 Mar. 2017).

115 On this reconfiguration see, Batchen, Geoffrey, Each wild idea: Writing, photography, history (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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117 Batchen, Each wild idea, p. 134. Italics in the original.

118 ‘Siamese memories’.

119 Ernst, Wolfgang, Digital memory and the archive (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), p. 28Google Scholar.

120 On the heterochrony of images see, Moxey, Keith, Visual time: The image in history (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 Ibid.

122 Chakrabarty, ‘Minority histories’, p. 28. Batchen, Each wild idea, pp. 154–5.

123 Chakrabarty, ‘Minority histories’, p. 24.