(Eng Hardback) JOURNEY TO SOUTHERN THAILAND AND BURMA / Pierre Lefèvre-Pontalis / River Books

Explorer, Oriental scholar and diplomat, Pierre Lefèvre-Pontalis (1864-1938) was very much a man of his time. He grew up imbibing the positive and universal values of the French Third Republic where the colonial consensus rested on a fundamental contradiction – to bring to the colonies the ‘benefits of progress’ while at the same time limiting the principles of equality and freedom justified by so-called scientific racist principles. As a member of the Pavie Mission to Laos in the 1890s, Pontalis participated in drawing up the borders between French Indochina and independent Siam, as well as those which divided French territories from the British Indian empire, which had fully annexed Burma in 1886. Two decades later he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Siam, which was then in the process of transforming into a modern nation state.

Before taking up his ambassadorial duties, Pontalis journeyed in Siam and Burma from October to December 1912, during which time he wrote copious notes recording his ethnographic, historical and geopolitical thoughts covering more than 500 pages in small notebooks. These hitherto unpublished texts contain a wealth of details and first-hand information on Southeast Asia and provide a window to the colonial mindset in the period before the First World War.

The reader will find an introduction, some notes and comments that contextualise Pontalis’ text as well as photographs and maps, which illustrate Pontalis’ narrative.

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JOURNEY TO SOUTHERN THAILAND AND BURMA
AuthorPierre Lefèvre-Pontalis
Edited by Olivier Évrard and Aurore Candier
ISBN 978 616 451 0999
No. of pages 264 pages, 50 b/w photographs / 8 maps
Specification hardback