Shane Strate's The Lost Territories chronologically demonstrates how Thai national rhetoric about “lost territory” emerged and conveyed a sense of injustice, dishonor, and humiliation. This theme resulted from land grabs during the era of Western intervention (p. 3) and ran through the military-led Phibun government of the World War II era. “Lost territory” refers to “episodes of victimization” (p. 2) during the colonial period and in response to “modern conceptions of boundaries” (p. 3). Another rhetorical construct, “never colonized,” emerged out of subsequent anti-imperialist discourse as a means to mobilize the entire nation (p. 4). Strate proposes that the term “national humiliation” developed out of the idea of “lost territory” while not giving up the insistence on “never colonized,” since the military was fully engaged in national politics. The humiliation discourse was not the result of anti-colonial sentiment, but was employed by an irredentist campaign against French Indochina (pp. 6–7),...

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