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For the article Thai cuisine

David Thompson identifies nam phrik as the ‘most ancient style of Thai dish’, with basic ingredients combined by using ‘the primitive crucible’ of pestle and mortar. Thompson, Thai Food, p.188.

During his time in Ayutthaya, la Loubère not only observed that the basic diet of the Siamese was rice and fish, but he also provided a recipe for nam phrik. la Loubère, The Kingdom of SIam, p.35

Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), the British Ambassador to the court of Rama IV in 1855 also observed the Siamese ‘popular’ diet of rice and nam phrik. Sir John Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam; With a Narrative of the Mission to that Country in 1855, Volume II, London: John W. Parker and Son, 1857, p.108-111.

Travelers to Siam in the nineteenth century all observed the Siamese basic diet composed of rice and fish: "kin khao kin pla"

la Loubère not only observed that the basic diet of the Siamese was rice and fish, but he also provided a recipe for nam phrik

Anna Leonowens (1831-1915) observed: "The stream is rich in fish of excellent quality and flavour, such as is found in most of the great rivers of Asia; and is especially noted for its plathu, a kind of sardine, so abundant and cheap that it forms a common seasoning to the labourer’s bowl of rice."

http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/features/fishcult.html

Ahan chan diao Thai: อาหารจานเดียว lit. "Single dish food" often translated to "fast food"

Ahan Phak Tai Thai: อาหารภาคใต้ southern region food

Ahan Thai Thai: อาหารไทย (central) Thai food; Ahan Phak Klang Thai: อาหารภาคกลาง central region food

Ahan Isan Thai: อาหารอีสาน Isan food

Ahan Lanna Thai: อาหารลานนา Lanna food

Khanom wan Thai: ขนมหวาน sweets/desserts/cakes/cookies

Khrueang duem Thai: เครื่องดื่ม beverages

Suan phasom Thai: ส่วนผสม ingredients

Khua Thai: คั่ว Thai style of stir-frying/stir-fry where the chili or curry paste is first fried before other ingredients are added, and a type of curry dish

tadpoles in Lanna aep i-huak

For the article Akha people

"Another tale of conflict is recorded by the Akha, a Tibeto-Burman people who preserve their history through oral tradition in great detail (Alting 2000). From around the third century AD, the Akha lived in southern Yunnan on the Red and Black rivers where they grew rice in the lowlands and became subjects of the Nanchao kingdom. The Tai arrived in the area only around the thirteenth century. The Akha briefly founded a kingdom at Mojiang to resist both Tai and Chinese inroads. But Tai warriors besieged the capital, cut off water supplies, and forced them to flee. The Akha first retreated south-westwards and crossed the Mekong around Chiang Rung. But the Tai continued to press them, and the Akha broke into groups and scattered into the hills. The Akha are now found as mid-level swidden farmers in scattered areas across the hills. Their songs and oral texts record how they lost the irrigated lowlands to the Tai who came “upstream” from the south. They say that “the Tai invented war” (Alting 2000, 137)."

For the article Lawa people

In the Suwanna Khamdaeng story from Lanna, the Tai pioneer who is led to the new city by a golden deer announces, "it is necessary to obey the people who were born and live at that place". He raises the Lawa chief to a high official rank and marries two of his daughters. The ranking Lawa chief then teaches the Tai people how to live without theft, lying, adultery, drunkenness, or drugs. Both Lawa and Tai are happy. The rains are good. One year of cultivation yields seven harvests. People multiply and new settlements proliferate (Notton 1926, Yonok, 7-11).

In several of the Tai legends, the Lawa are portrayed as yak (monsters) who terrorise the local people until the Tai come. Then the yak are either subdued or chased away, but their role is not totally erased; often the yak are then incorporated into the spirit pantheon as protective deities. At Chiang Mai for example, the yak are transformed into Pu Sae and Na Sae, the ancestor spirits of the Lawa and protector spirits of the city (Tanabe 2000, 297).

Some of the legends suggest that Mangrai, the greatest Tai chief of all, is descended from the Chiang Saen lineage whose names suggest strongly they are Lawa. He may have “become Tai” through marriage to the daughter of the Tai Lu ruler of Chiang Rung.

Thai people/culture

Along the middle Mekong, major annual fertility festivals are focused around boat races and processions. Further south, rocket festivals are popular.

Many Tai foundation legends stress that the migrants are searching for a particular kind of landscape - a flat plain between mountain and river ideal for growing rice with water from hill streams. This landscape echoes that of the mountain valleys in the area of language origin. It is echoed too in most of the Tai settlements across the spread zone

Lanna

The stiffest competition came from Sipsongpanna and its powerful overlord, Chiangmai. Mongol armies first invaded Sipsongpanna as early as 1282, but controlling the upper Mekong proved to be too much, even for the mighty Mongols. Sinsongpanna rose numerous times over the next few decades, and Mongol reprisals were countered by Chiangmai troops under Mangrai, the great Tai leader whose mother allegedly hailed from Chiang Hung. When a 1292 uprising provoked a Mongol attack, Mangrai drove the Mongols out of Sipsongpanna. By 1309, Tai soldiers were raiding northwards, apparently pushing the mighty Mongol back. The two sides finally concluded an agreement that ended the chronic conflicts and established the Tai as tributaries.

The Chronicles of Chiang Mai relate that Meng Rai, setting off with his army for P'akham-Angva (i.e. Pagan-Ava), returned from Burma with five hundred families of metal workers and jewelers.24 Skilled workers from anywhere were in demand.

Between 1300 and 1500, notably during the second half of the fifteenth century, in large parts of Lan Na land under agricultural cultivation increased and human settlements expanded.

The census which was conducted at the beginning of Si Còm Tham’s reign showed that in the core region of the principality of Phayao there were slightly over 100 villages, which were distributed in ten (real) panna. If a village had an average of 150 to 250 inhabitants, the population of the region, where almost one seventh of today’s Northern Thai population live, ought to have been between 15,000 and 25,000 inhabitants.111 Even if it is problematic to project the size of the population in the other regions of Lan Na, because of considerable demographic changes over the centuries, it is probably not unrealistic to argue that the total population in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries lay in the range between 100,000 to 200,000 people. The population of Sukhothai was small as well. In the core region of the kingdom that extended in the south to Nakhòn Sawan, the fourteenth century population did not exceed 300,000 people.112

During the fourtheenth to sixteenth centuries the population of Lan Na increased considerably (see the discussion below), though we do not know on what scale.

(...)

As to Lan Na, the first, though only partly, reliable census statistics are from the nineteenth century. We have calculated the probable population of Lan Na (without the adjacent Shan areas) at roughly 400,000 in the 1830s.116

(...)

As to the plain of the Ping River, where at present almost one quarter of the five million inhabitants of Northern Thailand live, the Japanese historian Yoneo Ishii estimates the population at the end of the thirteenth century at probably over 100,000.

Chiang Saen

As already mentioned, an important centre of regional inland trade was Chiang Saen. The huge rice market in Chiang Saen supplied rice to Nan, Chiang Tung, and even to Chiang Rung and Luang Prabang.39

Tilokrat

But Tilokarat also created an integrated cult of relic worship in order to put himself in a superior position, like that of the Buddha whose relics were enshrined. He sought to express his political power through this integrated belief system comprising the indigenous cult and Buddhism, and so his power was affirmed and legitimised. Through the practice of land and labour endowments, the king and the Sangha became interdependent, which helped to secure his throne

Misc.

Shan Rocket Festival in Mae Hong Son http://www.siamese-heritage.org/jsspdf/1981/JSS_071_0h_Durrenberger_ShanRocketFestival.pdf

Mon people http://www.siamese-heritage.org/jsspdf/1991/JSS_079_1d_NaiPanHla_MajorRoleOfMonsInSEA.pdf