The development of capitalist and the local business networks in Southern Thailand from the past to the present

Abstract

The purpose of the research entitled “The development of capitalist and the local business networks in Southern Thailand, from the past to the present” is to study 1) background and development of capitalist and local business networks in southern Thailand 2) analyze the factors behind the success and failure of some capitalist and local business in Southern Thailand using qualitative method in historical by collecting data from document and field data. The findings revealed that Southern Thailand was a location of ancient communities which was open areas with abundant natural resources and suitable for settle down and trading. For these reasons, Southern Thailand area became the ancient communities with commercial interacting between local people and people from outside. With the abundance of natural resources and commercial that made the local governors become very rich, therefore, central government tried to manage intervention and centralization. The first group of capitalists who played an important role in Southern Thailand was local governors and noblemen. Later, Siam had turned into new economic system after the Bowring treaty was signed and southern economic power was changed to Western capitalist, central nobleman capitalist and Chinese capitalist who played an important role consecutively. After the World War II, nobleman capitalist and Western capitalist left the business, only Chinese capitalist developed business network together with local entrepreneurs under the government policy to support the economic growth and that made the increasing numbers of new entrepreneurs in local southern including agricultural business, retailing and wholesaling, financial and tourism. The procedure of capital accumulation and expansion of business network in southern part had been on a continued growth and beyond expectation. In 1996-2000, there was economic crisis in Thailand and that affected many groups of capitalist bankrupt and shut down their businesses, excluding the capitalists who had business adaptation or strong network. Therefore, they could strive for stronger business growth and became identity local business in Southern Thailand.