 Professor
Nidhi Eoseewong is one of the greatest historians that Thailand has ever
produced, and also a leading intellectual of the country. Since he obtained
a teaching position at Chiang Mai University in 1966 until today, except
for a brief interlude of his study in the United States to earn his doctorate,
he has continued to base himself in the ancient capital of Chiang Mai,
writing a series of stimulating and thought-provoking books for the people
in Thailand as well as outside Thailand.
His thinking is always
anchored to local culture and tradition of Chiang Mai, but at the same
time it transcends locality, and hovers over an expansive terrain that
encompasses issues related to the Thai nation-state, issues of cultures
and nations of neighboring countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar,
and Indonesia, and even a more universal world. In his research he addresses
themes that are far more extensive than what a historian is usually expected
to cover, as he freely crosses the boundaries of time, going back and
forth among Thailand of medieval or modern ages, present-day Thailand,
and Thailand in the future.
Since the 1980s, Professor
Nidhi has been energetically publishing volumes of his study on Thai history.
These works, taken as a whole, are pathbreaking in that they drastically
challenge the conventional views and images of Thai history which are
centered around the history of changes in dynasties, and the conventional
historiography which is based on the Western methodologies of historical
study. For instance, in one of his masterpieces, "Pak Kai lae Bai
Rua" (A Pen-point and a sailing boat, 1984), a very original work
which deals with "literature and trade," he tried to corroborate
the Thai society's bourgeois development in the 19th century by reading
between the lines of popular poems and songs, and folklore tales of the
period. His methodology of historical study is characterized by meticulous
and critical reading and interpretation of various historical documents,
including official documents, records kept in temples, and journals and
observations by visitors from the West, but what is most remarkable about
Professor Nidhi as a historian is his rich conceptive and imaginative
faculty which enables him to capture the essential implications contained
in historical documents and build, on the basis of such implications,
a new image of history. His conceptive and imaginative gift is also evident
in his other studies, including the one on the history of the Thonburi
Dynasty of King Taksin, and the one on the history of the Ayudhya Dynasty
of King Narai.
Subsequently, Professor
Nidhi expanded his intellectual activities to the area of comment on current
topics. Freely using his extensive knowledge, he writes witty and sententious
articles for Thailand's leading papers and magazines, commenting on current
developments in culture, politics, society, and economics. Having already
published more than 10 collections of such commentary essays, he has established
himself as the best known opinion leader in Thailand.
He also stands unique
among Thai intellectuals in that he makes it a policy to publish the findings
of his academic research and the fruits of his thinking not in English,
but in Thai. This policy certainly manifests his intellectual determination
to find out to what extent it will be possible to approach a universal
world by means of the Thai language, and as such it has much in common
with his attitude to discuss Thailand's culture, society, and the state,
and the world, by basing himself in Chiang Mai.
Despite the fact that
most of Professor Nidhi's works are written in Thai, his outstanding achievements
and activities are highly appraised not only in Thailand, but also in
Japan, Europe, and the United States. Indeed, Professor Nidhi well deserves
to be awarded the Academic Prize of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prizes.
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