Sam Rainsy with David Whitehouse We Didn't Start the Fire: My Struggle for Democracy in Cambodia Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books 210 pp., $25.00 paperback ISBN: 978-6162150630 Publication Date: June 2013

Abstract

though Keyes admits that Thai democracy has a “checkered history,” he points out that it allowed elected politicians from Isan to represent constituents (60). Suspicious that they were mostly Communist-leaning, the state repressed many of them. According to Keyes, such repression was perceived by northeasterners as symptomatic of central Thai discrimination. In Chapter 5, Keyes examines the period 1957–1973, during which the military administered Thailand with support from monarchy. For Keyes, Isan people recognized the Thai king as their leader but felt that the then-military regime prevented them from redressing their grievances. Some thus supported Communist revolution. However, as Keyes shows in Chapter 6, insurgency had faltered by 1983 partly due to new state decrees allowing amnesty and assistance for surrendering rebels and permitting the establishment of non-governmental organizations. In Chapter 7, Keyes illustrates how northeasterners, having experienced more upward mobility and interconnectedness with the world, have become increasingly involved in organizations to safeguard the environment, community rights and other regionally based interests. Lastly, in Chapter 8, Keyes argues that northeasterners have, since 2001, finally come to make their voices heard through supporting populist political parties of Thaksin Shinawatra and participating in the Red Shirts protest movement. As for strengths, this book, based upon Keyes’s extensive research, offers an elaborately detailed history of Isan, which elucidates the growing political role of Thai northeasterners. Though the book is meant primarily for academics and policymakers engaged with Asia, Keyes’s straightforward writing makes it accessible to the general audience. Yet the book does have weaknesses. First, Keyes sometimes tends to overgeneralize about Isan from work he has done over the years in Nong Tuan village. Second, there is much more diversity within Isan’s identity and history than Keyes acknowledges. Third, to emphasize northeasterners’ growing political participation, Keyes overemphasizes Red Shirts’ support from Isan, lessening the importance of its backing from northern and central regions. Fourth, Keyes never acknowledges that some northeasterners, including farmers comprising NGO “PMove” and politician Newin Chidchob, are anti-Thaksin. Finally, though this book was written before the 2014 antiShinawatra coup, one wonders why Keyes’ “cosmopolitan peasants” only slightly resisted it. Ultimately, however, as a book revealing crucial sociopolitical transformations in Thailand, this book is one of the better studies available—aside from works on Isan written in Thai by Thai authors.