Bringing the Railway to Daming

Knowing that the Ming Dynasty's next major expansion target was the Indochina Peninsula, and now that the video was about the southwest, Zhu Yuanzhang, Xu Da, Mu Ying, and others naturally paid even more attention, especially Mu Ying.

After all, he is now in charge of guarding the southwest.

The video begins with scenes of ethnic minorities in southwestern China celebrating by splashing water.

Mu Yingjiu, who was stationed in the southwest, knew a lot about the culture and customs of the ethnic minorities in the southwest. Upon seeing this, he couldn't help but think: Isn't this Songkran Festival, also known as the "Buddha Bathing Festival", which is popular among many ethnic minorities in the southwest?

Sure enough, a man's voice came through the video.

"The Water Splashing Festival, which just passed in April this year, is one of the most well-known ethnic festivals in my country."

"When people mention the Water Splashing Festival, many think of the Dai ethnic group. However, many people don't know that the name Dai actually has a lot of history."

"In the 20s, the new dynasty established names for a number of ethnic minorities in the southwest, and many of them changed their names at that time. Most of the name changes were to remove the derogatory connotations from the traditional names. For example, 'Yi' was changed to 'Yi ethnic group', 'Zhuang' to 'Zhuang ethnic group', 'Yao' to 'Yao ethnic group', and 'Luohei' to 'Lahu ethnic group', etc."

“The Dai people are an exception. They were previously called Tai people, which was not derogatory. However, the new dynasty added a single-person radical to the character ‘Tai’ and created the new character ‘Dai’.”

"Why did the new dynasty design it this way? Changing Thailand to Dai was actually to guard against the ambitions of Thailand in Southeast Asia."

After watching only the beginning of the video, Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Biao, and others became even more engrossed, feeling that the video might be of great use to the Ming Dynasty.

After all, this involves the governance policies of the later Xin Dynasty towards the ethnic minorities in the southwest, and there must be many aspects that the Ming Dynasty could learn from it.

Putting aside everything else, the very act of changing the names of the ethnic minorities in the southwest and establishing new tribal names at the beginning made Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Biao feel that it was very meaningful and worth learning from.

However, Zhu Yuanzhang and others were somewhat puzzled when they saw that the new dynasty had changed the ethnic group of Thai to Dai in order to prevent Thailand's ambitions.

Having watched several movies set in Southeast Asian countries, such as "Operation Mekong," and some related videos, and having access to maps from later periods, Lao Zhu and Zhu Biao knew that Thailand was the present-day Siam.

To be honest, they didn't think Siam had any power that could threaten China, either now or in the future.

Why did the new dynasty counter Thailand's ambitions by changing the ethnic groups of Thai to Dai?
The video quickly provided the answer.

“In the 20th century, a ‘Pan-Thai’ ideology was popular in Thailand, which claimed that Thais in Southeast Asian countries should join the same country, namely Thailand.”

"As the most fervent nationalist movement in Southeast Asia in the 20th century, Pan-Thai nationalism has developed a complete historical narrative and contemporary propositions."

"For example, Pan-Thaiism believes that the Thai people are the 'elder brothers' of the Han people, and that the Zhuang people and Khmer people are all Thai people in a broad sense, while Yunnan and Guangxi are the homeland of the Thai people."

"During World War II, the Thai military government turned these fantasies into real actions. It allied with Japan to invade neighboring regions and even coveted territories such as Xishuangbanna in Yunnan."

"After the establishment of the new dynasty, Pan-Thaiism still had a great influence in Southeast Asia. It was precisely to guard against this Pan-Thaiism that the Thai people in the country were renamed the Dai people."

This concludes the first chapter of the video, "A Difference of Half a Word," which leads to the main content of the video: how "Pan-Thailandism" originated and developed.

Zhu Yuanzhang and others also gained a preliminary understanding of Pan-Thaiism and learned about the ambitions of the later Siamese Kingdom.

Lan Yu whispered, "I never imagined that tiny Siam would dare to attempt to invade the Ming Dynasty from the north. They're really courting death."

No one responded to him because the video entered its second sub-section—the Dai and Thai regions of North and South.

"If we could travel back to Xishuangbanna 500 years ago and ask the locals where Thailand is, they would probably say, 'If you're looking for Thailand, this is right here.'"

"What? You mean Siam to the south? Sorry, I'm not familiar with those people, and they're not authentic enough to represent the Thai people."

"Because in ancient times, the Tai people were a group with great internal differences—the Tai Tai people are a branch of the Zhuang-Dong language group, and the predecessor of the Zhuang-Dong language group was the Baiyue people in the pre-Qin medieval period, including today's Zhuang, Dong, Shui, Buyi and other ethnic groups."

"From the 7th to the 12th centuries AD, the Han-Tibetan speaking groups in southwestern China successively established regional powers such as Nanzhao, Dali, Pyu, and Burma, while the Tai-Thai people did not yet have a mature political system and were in a relatively primitive agricultural village community stage." "Some of them were subjects of the state, while others were outside the state system. Over these hundreds of years, the Tai-Thai people gradually migrated and spread to the southeastern peninsula, mixed and integrated with the local people, and assimilated a large number of local residents in terms of language."

"Generally speaking, based on the depth of their southward migration, the Tai people can be divided into two groups."

“A portion of them penetrated deep into the Chao Phraya River and Mekong River basins, eventually occupying the rich river valleys in the south and establishing the Southeast Asian kingdoms of Siam, Laos, etc., which are collectively known as the Twelve Chao Phraya.”

"The other part remained in the northern mountainous region of Southeast Asia, where they established a large number of small kingdoms of the Tai people, among which the most representative are known as the 'Nineteen Chao Fa'."

"In terms of national strength, the twelve Chao Thais in the south are clearly stronger than the nineteen Chao Phrayas in the north. This is because the river valleys occupied by the Tai Thais in the south are more suitable for national development, and they have absorbed a great deal of the political and cultural achievements of the Mon and Burmese people, and established their own kingdom on the basis of ancient kingdoms such as the Khmer Empire."

"In the 13th century, the Sukhothai Kingdom in the south developed into a regional power. Under the leadership of King Ramkhamhaeng, the Sukhothai people created the Thai script based on the Khmer script, fully embraced Theravada Buddhism, and built a typical Indo-Khmer-style state..."

The second segment of the video, "North and South of Tai and Thailand," mainly discusses the development of the major countries in the Twelve Chao Thai and Nineteen Chao Fa kingdoms, as well as their historical evolution, such as the Sukhothai Kingdom and the Siam Kingdom.

It wasn't until the third sub-section that the core content of the video, "From Siam to Thailand," was discussed.

As the name suggests, it refers to how the Kingdom of Siam became the later Thailand.

The Western culture brought by the French invasion had a significant impact on this.

Because of the tremendous changes that occurred after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in China, King Rama VI of Siam developed great vigilance and even hostility towards China.

Furthermore, influenced by Western cultures such as France, they began to construct "Pan-Thailandism".

Just as Western countries smear enemy countries and glorify themselves by fabricating myths, stories, and even so-called "history," Siam, under the leadership of Rama VI, also began to fabricate history, distorting the identities of Thais, Han Chinese, and related countries in various ways, ultimately giving rise to the "Pan-Thai" ideology.

After the third section ends, the fourth section, "The Hidden War in the Southwest," tells the story of the turbulent situation faced by the Southwest after the establishment of the new dynasty, and how the new dynasty court resolved it through open strategies such as "changing Tai to Dai."

The final chapter of the video is called "Echoes of the Century," and its content was found very interesting by Zhu Yuanzhang and others.

As the 21st century progressed, the regions inhabited by ethnic minorities such as the Dai people in Guangxi and Yunnan under the new dynasty developed better and better, and the new dynasty's voice became stronger and stronger. As a result, conservatives in Siam worried that the new dynasty would use "Pan-Thaiism" to claim itself as the "mother country of Zhuang and Dong peoples" and in turn infiltrate and influence Siam.

Thus, the "Pan-Thailandism" that Siam cultivated over a century ago became a boomerang, backfiring on them...

This video is also twenty minutes long.

However, because there were so many aspects of the content that were worth referencing and learning from for the Ming Dynasty, neither Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Biao, Zhu Xiong Ying, nor Mu Ying and others felt that the video was over in no time.

After pondering for a while, Zhu Yuanzhang said, "This video is more useful to our Ming Dynasty than the previous two—Biao'er, what are your thoughts?"

Upon hearing this, Zhu Biao said, "Your subject believes that the new dynasty's policies toward the ethnic minorities in the southwest are worth our Great Ming Dynasty's reference and learning."

"For example, as mentioned at the beginning of the video, the ambiguous customary names of various ethnic minorities in Southwest China have been changed to unambiguous formal names."

“In the past, both our Central Plains dynasty and the southwestern ethnic minorities were in the era of cold weapons, and the difference in strength was not that great. It is understandable that we were wary of the southwestern ethnic minorities.”

"But now, our Great Ming Dynasty is incredibly powerful. Not only were we the first to equip ourselves with firearms, but we have also been constantly developing and iterating. The strength of our army is now qualitatively different from that of the ethnic minorities in the southwest."

"Since they can no longer be a threat to the Central Plains dynasty, they have been influenced by Han culture for many years and have become the people we can unite with. Therefore, the court should treat the ethnic minorities in the southwest in a more friendly manner so that they can truly win over the hearts of the ethnic minorities and even be completely used by the court."

Upon hearing Zhu Biao's words, Zhu Yuanzhang smiled with satisfaction.

Zhu Xiong Ying nodded slightly, clearly in agreement.

Mu Ying and Lan Yu seemed to be deep in thought. (End of Chapter)