Thai Legal History: From Traditional to Modern Law

"The starting point for much research and speculation on Thai law is that the framing and understanding of contemporary issues is so much rooted in the past. This much should be true of legal history, or even for that matter of history in general, anywhere. As we see from the contributions to this volume, however, it seems truer of Thai law than one might expect, given the enormous changes over the last one and a half centuries. But why exactly do we study legal history? Is it in order to gain a more complete understanding of law in the past, which contributes to our understanding of history and how we got where we are; or a more complete and intelligent understanding of law in the present? In the implicit view of the contributors to this volume, each of these reasons appears to be both adequate and compelling"--