Cultivating identities and capitalism: Scandinavians and the Siamese royal elite in-between empires.
This collaborative research project studies connections between Scandinavia and Siam (Thailand) from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Through a unique compilation and analyses of source materials including memoirs, letters, and diplomatic records from Thailand, Sweden, and Denmark, the team will produce original research contributing to colonial, social and global history. We will study the roles of Scandinavian entrepreneurs in the development of capitalism in Siam and their relationships to the Siamese royal elites. Through the financial and social encounters between Scandinavians and Siam we will analyze the royal elite’s perception and understanding of capitalism, capitalist business culture and their selves in a changing society. The project will be developing the framework of colonial studies by focusing on positions “in-between” – that is, the Scandinavian “small colonisers” in between the great European empires and Siam, the “non-colony”, in between the colonized Southeast Asian countries. Another part of the study will focus on the Siamese in Scandinavia, and how those encounters shaped and reshaped the Siamese perceptions on colonialism. Through this focus the project will contribute to the history of Scandinavian colonialism in general and Thai modern history more specifically. With a focus on local encounters, this research will contribute to current discussions about micro- and macro levels of historical analysis in global social history.
Final report
The purpose of the project and its development.
The purpose was to advance both empirical and theoretical knowledge about the role of nations ‘inbetween’ empires: The so-called ‘non-colony’, Siam, and the so-called ‘small’ colonizers, Denmark and Sweden. We wanted to understand how Siamese-Scandinavian encounters during the turn of the 20th century, contributed to the development of capitalism in Siam and to a process of ‘embourgeoisement’ of the Siamese royal elite. We have contributed to the study of Scandinavian colonial history in general and have worked towards filling identified gaps in the existing historical studies of the role of Scandinavian powers. The study of Siamese royals in Scandinavia has contributed to a reconceptualization of Siam-Scandinavian relations by advancing a revisionist theoretical framework for understanding colonialism in Thailand: It foregrounds Siam as an internal colonizer, drawing comparisons between the Siamese colonial experience and Swedish expansion into the north and Sápmi.
We found early in the research a much stronger presence of Danish entrepreneurs than Swedish in Siam. This was suspected given the limited research previously done, and we have been able to confirm this via the archival materials and thus the scope and focus regarding the role of the Scandinavians has become more an investigation into Danish entrepreneurs and their networks. Later we found contributions by Swedish scientists (geologists and zoologists) to the knowledge production about Siam together with Danish ethnographers, and these findings strengthened the conceptual framework, thinking about the Scandinavian actors as part of a global bourgeoise.
A brief overview of the implementation
We have assembled archival resources from national and private repositories in Thailand, Denmark and Sweden – aiming for a transnational historiography of individuals, events, companies, journeys and scientific endeavors. This has allowed us to both revise previous accounts that were based on a singular state’s archives, as well as to unearth previously overlooked accounts. Some of the archival sources have hitherto been unused, such as parts of the Swedish Bangkok consular archive, and the collection of papers in Rigsarkivet (The Danish National Archive) of the prominent Danish entrepreneur and investor Aage Westenholz. We are also the first historians to gain access to the business archive of The Siam Cement Company – one of the companies central to infrastructural development in the beginning of the 20th century, and in which individual Danish and Swedish actors played key roles. This collection enabled us to create a network analysis of foreign entrepreneurs and Siamese investors.
Methodologically we had to adjust to the accessibility to materials at the different archives. When the team began the archival research at the National Archive in Thailand, the major repository for the project, in October-November 2022, the one machine for making copies of microfilm was out of order. This resulted in a major challenge for the research planning and affected the publication plan.
The project’s three most important findings.
1. Reconceptualization of Siam-Scandinavian relations at the turn of the twentieth century.
Prevailing representations emphasize tropes of friendship and modernization, portraying Scandinavians not as a colonial threat but co-producers of a modern and independent Siam. This narrative – implicit in both dominant Thai and Scandinavian historiography – reproduces a dominant royalist narrative in Thailand, in which the absolute monarchy appears as a disinterested elite that initiated reforms to modernize Siam and protect it from foreign encroachment. Drawing on revisionist Thai historical writing, we show that Siam-Scandinavian should instead be situated within the Siamese royal elite’s project of internal colonialism. This reconceptualization is illustrated through a critical re-examination of a Thai royal visit to Scandinavia, an analysis of the role Danish officers in the Danish-led Royal Siamese Gendarmerie in creating new forms of transnational and economic order, and a study of how ethnographic knowledge produced by a Danish officer reproduced existing Siamese colonial epistemologies.
2. Capitalism as a historically situated and culturally mediated process.
We develop a broader understanding of capitalism by conceptualizing it as a historically situated and culturally meditated process. Building on assemblage thinking, we introduce capitalist assemblage as an analytical strategy for capturing the spatiotemporally contingent processes through which capitalism – and specific ways of organizing business, labor, and everyday life – emerge and evolve in particular contexts. As an example, we apply this approach to the Danish/registered Bangkok Tramway Company, Limited, an early and highly visible instance of capitalist enterprise in Siam. Treating the company not as an assemblage of agents, practices, and discourses, we show that the naturalization of the joint-stock company form emerged through public debate, conflict, and improvisation within a semi-colonial legal and economic environment, rather than unfolding as a linear process of institutional consolidation.
3. Swedish actors in Siam
We have mapped the presence of Swedes in Siam from circa 1900 to 1940 and have found explanations for the low Swedish export to and lack of investment in Siam, which correlates to why Swedish-Siamese relationships during this time has been overlooked in historiography. These empirical findings show a close relationship between business interests and scientific endeavors – for instance the geologist and industrialist Bertil Högbom’s journey to Siam 1911, on a ship with Prince Wilhelm, and zoologist Count Nils Gyldenstolpe. The journey was sponsored by Axel Johnsson with the primary purpose of prospecting, yet Högbom contributed to the geological surveying of Siam. The Swedish cases contribute to the theoretical understanding of colonial actors: While the Siamese royal elite was representatives and actors for the absolutist monarchy state, the Scandinavian actors had no financial support from the states.
New research questions
The project has generated new questions about internal colonialism and the application of that theoretical framework to the Swedish historical experience: Asking questions about what a Scandinavian historiography can learn from theory and intellectual history elsewhere (namely Thailand). Questions regarding the relationship between “small actors” in the colonial world and their home nation-states – including extraterritoriality and citizenship – and how those relationships can (re)define the states in the colonial era. In relation to this, the archival material has also provoked questions about the qualitative differences between Sweden-Norway and Denmark in Siam.
Regarding global social history, the project generated sub-questions that largely reconsidered the modern Siamese/Thai-Scandinavian relations, through a critical examination of the historiography of king Chulalongkorn's visit to Sweden in 1897, as well as the erection of a Thai pavilion in Ragunda in the 1990s, and the role of Buddhism and kingship, asking how these have shaped the history of Thailand’s relationship to small European actors.
Research dissemination and collaboration
2022 12th conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies. Paris, 28 June–1 July. Paper presentation by Preedee Hongsaton: “’More like a Republic’: The Contestations of Images of the West in King Chulalongkorn’s 1897 trip to Sweden and Denmark”
2023 Svenska historikermötet. Umeå 14–16 juni.
Panel title: “Siamese-Scandinavian encounters in the age of empire: Going beyond the trope of friendship”; Presenters and convenors: Karin Zackari, Preedee Hongsaton, Søren Ivarsson.
2024 13th conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies. Amsterdam, 23–25 July.
Convenor: Preedee Hongsaton; Panel title: “Movements at the Liminals: Reconsidering European Colonialism in Southeast Asia”; Presenters: Karin Zackari, Maarten Manse (Linneus University), Mohammed Effendy (National University of Singapore)
2025 8th European Congress on World and Global History. Växjö, 10-12 September.
Convenor: Preedee Hongsaton; Chair and discussant: Mikko Toivanen (Freie Universität Berlin); Panel title: “Liminal Actors, Global Entanglements and the Development of Capitalism in the Global South”; Presenters: Karin Zackari, Søren Ivarsson and Kristoffer Edelgaard Christensen (Lund University).
Workshops
2022 19–20 March, Capitalist and colonial histories, part 1, at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
2023, 18–19 Feb., Capitalist and colonial histories, part 2, at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
2024, 14 Jan., at Thammasat University, Thailand.
Above workshops engaged researchers from Naresuan, Chiang Mai, Lampang, Srinakarin Wirot, Nakhon Srithamarat, and Ramkamhaeng University.
Lectures and seminars
2022, 6 Dec. Hongsaton and Ivarsson, project presentation at Linneaus University.
2023, 4 May. Hongsaton, seminar: “A study of Scandinavian archives”, Tammasat University, Bangkok.
2023, 15 March. Ivarsson, seminar: “New Perspectives on Siamese-Scandinavian History”, Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
2024, 8 April. Zackari, project presentation at Lund University.
2025, 12 March. Zackari, public lecture: “Den lilla svenska kolonin i Siam”, Lund University.
Collaboration
Throughout the project we have had a cooperation with the Foundation for Advanced Studies on Asian Societies (FORASIA) in Thailand.
We have ongoing conversations with staff at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm about categorization and contextualization of objects from Siam in the museum’s collection.
Collaborations with Kristoffer Edelgaard Christensen resulted in a post-doc project at Lund University, funded by Craaford foundation, with Zackari as PI: “Assemblages of Business and Empire– The Danish East Asiatic Company in Southeast Asia, c. 1895-1940.”
The purpose was to advance both empirical and theoretical knowledge about the role of nations ‘inbetween’ empires: The so-called ‘non-colony’, Siam, and the so-called ‘small’ colonizers, Denmark and Sweden. We wanted to understand how Siamese-Scandinavian encounters during the turn of the 20th century, contributed to the development of capitalism in Siam and to a process of ‘embourgeoisement’ of the Siamese royal elite. We have contributed to the study of Scandinavian colonial history in general and have worked towards filling identified gaps in the existing historical studies of the role of Scandinavian powers. The study of Siamese royals in Scandinavia has contributed to a reconceptualization of Siam-Scandinavian relations by advancing a revisionist theoretical framework for understanding colonialism in Thailand: It foregrounds Siam as an internal colonizer, drawing comparisons between the Siamese colonial experience and Swedish expansion into the north and Sápmi.
We found early in the research a much stronger presence of Danish entrepreneurs than Swedish in Siam. This was suspected given the limited research previously done, and we have been able to confirm this via the archival materials and thus the scope and focus regarding the role of the Scandinavians has become more an investigation into Danish entrepreneurs and their networks. Later we found contributions by Swedish scientists (geologists and zoologists) to the knowledge production about Siam together with Danish ethnographers, and these findings strengthened the conceptual framework, thinking about the Scandinavian actors as part of a global bourgeoise.
A brief overview of the implementation
We have assembled archival resources from national and private repositories in Thailand, Denmark and Sweden – aiming for a transnational historiography of individuals, events, companies, journeys and scientific endeavors. This has allowed us to both revise previous accounts that were based on a singular state’s archives, as well as to unearth previously overlooked accounts. Some of the archival sources have hitherto been unused, such as parts of the Swedish Bangkok consular archive, and the collection of papers in Rigsarkivet (The Danish National Archive) of the prominent Danish entrepreneur and investor Aage Westenholz. We are also the first historians to gain access to the business archive of The Siam Cement Company – one of the companies central to infrastructural development in the beginning of the 20th century, and in which individual Danish and Swedish actors played key roles. This collection enabled us to create a network analysis of foreign entrepreneurs and Siamese investors.
Methodologically we had to adjust to the accessibility to materials at the different archives. When the team began the archival research at the National Archive in Thailand, the major repository for the project, in October-November 2022, the one machine for making copies of microfilm was out of order. This resulted in a major challenge for the research planning and affected the publication plan.
The project’s three most important findings.
1. Reconceptualization of Siam-Scandinavian relations at the turn of the twentieth century.
Prevailing representations emphasize tropes of friendship and modernization, portraying Scandinavians not as a colonial threat but co-producers of a modern and independent Siam. This narrative – implicit in both dominant Thai and Scandinavian historiography – reproduces a dominant royalist narrative in Thailand, in which the absolute monarchy appears as a disinterested elite that initiated reforms to modernize Siam and protect it from foreign encroachment. Drawing on revisionist Thai historical writing, we show that Siam-Scandinavian should instead be situated within the Siamese royal elite’s project of internal colonialism. This reconceptualization is illustrated through a critical re-examination of a Thai royal visit to Scandinavia, an analysis of the role Danish officers in the Danish-led Royal Siamese Gendarmerie in creating new forms of transnational and economic order, and a study of how ethnographic knowledge produced by a Danish officer reproduced existing Siamese colonial epistemologies.
2. Capitalism as a historically situated and culturally mediated process.
We develop a broader understanding of capitalism by conceptualizing it as a historically situated and culturally meditated process. Building on assemblage thinking, we introduce capitalist assemblage as an analytical strategy for capturing the spatiotemporally contingent processes through which capitalism – and specific ways of organizing business, labor, and everyday life – emerge and evolve in particular contexts. As an example, we apply this approach to the Danish/registered Bangkok Tramway Company, Limited, an early and highly visible instance of capitalist enterprise in Siam. Treating the company not as an assemblage of agents, practices, and discourses, we show that the naturalization of the joint-stock company form emerged through public debate, conflict, and improvisation within a semi-colonial legal and economic environment, rather than unfolding as a linear process of institutional consolidation.
3. Swedish actors in Siam
We have mapped the presence of Swedes in Siam from circa 1900 to 1940 and have found explanations for the low Swedish export to and lack of investment in Siam, which correlates to why Swedish-Siamese relationships during this time has been overlooked in historiography. These empirical findings show a close relationship between business interests and scientific endeavors – for instance the geologist and industrialist Bertil Högbom’s journey to Siam 1911, on a ship with Prince Wilhelm, and zoologist Count Nils Gyldenstolpe. The journey was sponsored by Axel Johnsson with the primary purpose of prospecting, yet Högbom contributed to the geological surveying of Siam. The Swedish cases contribute to the theoretical understanding of colonial actors: While the Siamese royal elite was representatives and actors for the absolutist monarchy state, the Scandinavian actors had no financial support from the states.
New research questions
The project has generated new questions about internal colonialism and the application of that theoretical framework to the Swedish historical experience: Asking questions about what a Scandinavian historiography can learn from theory and intellectual history elsewhere (namely Thailand). Questions regarding the relationship between “small actors” in the colonial world and their home nation-states – including extraterritoriality and citizenship – and how those relationships can (re)define the states in the colonial era. In relation to this, the archival material has also provoked questions about the qualitative differences between Sweden-Norway and Denmark in Siam.
Regarding global social history, the project generated sub-questions that largely reconsidered the modern Siamese/Thai-Scandinavian relations, through a critical examination of the historiography of king Chulalongkorn's visit to Sweden in 1897, as well as the erection of a Thai pavilion in Ragunda in the 1990s, and the role of Buddhism and kingship, asking how these have shaped the history of Thailand’s relationship to small European actors.
Research dissemination and collaboration
2022 12th conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies. Paris, 28 June–1 July. Paper presentation by Preedee Hongsaton: “’More like a Republic’: The Contestations of Images of the West in King Chulalongkorn’s 1897 trip to Sweden and Denmark”
2023 Svenska historikermötet. Umeå 14–16 juni.
Panel title: “Siamese-Scandinavian encounters in the age of empire: Going beyond the trope of friendship”; Presenters and convenors: Karin Zackari, Preedee Hongsaton, Søren Ivarsson.
2024 13th conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies. Amsterdam, 23–25 July.
Convenor: Preedee Hongsaton; Panel title: “Movements at the Liminals: Reconsidering European Colonialism in Southeast Asia”; Presenters: Karin Zackari, Maarten Manse (Linneus University), Mohammed Effendy (National University of Singapore)
2025 8th European Congress on World and Global History. Växjö, 10-12 September.
Convenor: Preedee Hongsaton; Chair and discussant: Mikko Toivanen (Freie Universität Berlin); Panel title: “Liminal Actors, Global Entanglements and the Development of Capitalism in the Global South”; Presenters: Karin Zackari, Søren Ivarsson and Kristoffer Edelgaard Christensen (Lund University).
Workshops
2022 19–20 March, Capitalist and colonial histories, part 1, at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
2023, 18–19 Feb., Capitalist and colonial histories, part 2, at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
2024, 14 Jan., at Thammasat University, Thailand.
Above workshops engaged researchers from Naresuan, Chiang Mai, Lampang, Srinakarin Wirot, Nakhon Srithamarat, and Ramkamhaeng University.
Lectures and seminars
2022, 6 Dec. Hongsaton and Ivarsson, project presentation at Linneaus University.
2023, 4 May. Hongsaton, seminar: “A study of Scandinavian archives”, Tammasat University, Bangkok.
2023, 15 March. Ivarsson, seminar: “New Perspectives on Siamese-Scandinavian History”, Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
2024, 8 April. Zackari, project presentation at Lund University.
2025, 12 March. Zackari, public lecture: “Den lilla svenska kolonin i Siam”, Lund University.
Collaboration
Throughout the project we have had a cooperation with the Foundation for Advanced Studies on Asian Societies (FORASIA) in Thailand.
We have ongoing conversations with staff at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm about categorization and contextualization of objects from Siam in the museum’s collection.
Collaborations with Kristoffer Edelgaard Christensen resulted in a post-doc project at Lund University, funded by Craaford foundation, with Zackari as PI: “Assemblages of Business and Empire– The Danish East Asiatic Company in Southeast Asia, c. 1895-1940.”