Monday, May 20, 2013

The Hundredth Anniversary of Thai Nationality

Back on the 10th of April we celebrated 100 years since the invention of Thai nationality, which appeared for the first time in the Nationality Act B.E. 2456, enacted by King Rama VI on 10 April 1913.  

Next year we will be celebrating the centennial of British nationality,  introduced by the The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act in 1914. Although we tend to think of nationality as well as citizenship, traditions and such associated with it as something steeped in time, in reality, they all were created and normalised about a century or so ago. 

Good sources to learn about the complex history of such mainstays of the modern mass conscious are: Ben Anderson's Imagined Communities and The Invention of Tradition edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger.