Marxist scholarship on Thailand the work of E. Thadeus flood (1932–1977)

Abstract

Thadeus Flood died of cancer on December 11, 1977. The last ten years of his life were devoted to promoting revolutionary change and resisting American imperialism in Thailand. His life and work reveal the contradictions of American education and imperialist policy. This is not only because of what he wrote about, but because his life and scholarship transcended his conservative and “apolitical” education, moving him from academic scholarship to political commitment, forcing him beyond the functions within the university for which he had been intended. American imperialism in Southeast Asia gave him a political awareness which his education had consistently denied him. In this brief article I would like to indicate the important lessons which Asian scholars and others can learn from his transformation, and to attempt to assess his seminal contribution to the study of Thailand. I seek to draw, from his life and work, political lessons which can further our common struggles.     

America,capitalism, and the interstate system

Peter Gowan responds to published criticisms of his article “Triumphing toward International Disaster: The Impasse in American Grand Strategy” (Critical Asian Studies 36, no. 1 [March 2004]: 3-36) by Kristen Nordhaug, Ravi Arvind Palat, Vijay Prashad, Marika Vicziany, Mark T. Berger, and Heloise Weber (see Critical Asian Studies 37, no. 1 [March 2005]: 75-140).