This chapter introduces the history of manners in Thailand, linking it to the sociological concept of habitus or 'second nature': how historical experience leaves its imprint on the way people speak, act, and think. It surveys the sociological literature about habitus, discussing in particular detail the work of Norbert Elias, including his famous study of the history of manners in Western Europe, The Civilizing Process. The chapter argues that Elias’s concept of a civilizing process may be adapted to the Thai context to better understand how manners in Thailand have evolved. It proposes that the history of manners in Thailand may be divided into four periods: the age of colonialism and absolutism (the second half of the nineteenth century); the age of revolution (the first half of the twentieth century); the age of reaction (the post-World War II period); and the age of democracy and development (since roughly the 1970s). The chapter also discusses the related concepts of civility and civilization.

This chapter examines debates about manners and civility in the first half of the twentieth century. Tensions between aristocrats and Western-educated civil and military government officials culminated in the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932. This period saw an outpouring of works about politeness and manners targeting the bureaucratic elite and the emerging middle class. Thai statesmen devoted a remarkable amount of attention to what they perceived to be the problem of manners and morals. Leading political figures on all sides of politics wrote about the subject. The model of ideal conduct that the absolute monarchy had developed for bureaucrats in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a hybrid between the palace courtier and the English gentleman, began to be challenged by new and more diverse conceptualizations of social relations, pushed by supporters of a more progressive political order. Yet the new rules for how to behave were resisted by supporters of the old aristocratic order. Some of them attempted to salvage what was left of the old courtly ways in books and novels and their own etiquette manuals.

The control and sublimation of violence is a story that is essential to the idea of modernity and the rise of the West. The ability to control one’s emotions is fundamental to the notion of aristocracy and its right to rule over others. Sixteenth-century Europe saw an intense effort to control social intercourse through civility. It is axiomatic to notions of the civilising process that the new civility progressively tamed and controlled violence during the early modern period. But this is not what happened. There was a significant increase in homicide rates from the mid sixteenth century which peaked in the mid seventeenth century. There was a notable increase in elite violence in particular, as gentlemen transgressed codes of etiquette in order to provoke rivals and demonstrate their social superiority. The invention of civil society at the end of the seventeenth century was a response to the problem of violence. The knowledge that European society had undergone a pacification process over the previous half a century was crucial to the invention of ‘civilisation’, a word first coined in the 1750s. This word and its cognates were crucial to legitimising the European colonial project. The language of civilisation was employed as a euphemism for violence, justifying ethnic cleansing and enslavement, and enabling the perpetrators of violence to distance themselves from their victims.