Modern, manufactured things, including shoes and money, as we know it, only started to become familiar in Chiang Mai and north Thailand about 100 years ago. People in the countryside encountered little of the modern until the time of Japanese Aggression (WWII). Rama V, though, was determined to modernize his kingdom, and a century of progress began.

The north was formally integrated into Siam a year before France took Laos (1893). Societies of loose confederations were over, though resistance to cultural standardization remains, here as in Burma and Laos (Burma gained independence right after WWII, Laos in 1954).

Christian missionaries and clergymen began helping plan educational, medical and health matters, construction and town mapping. The most important person in planning the modern Chiang Rai city was an American, Dr. William A. Briggs, founder of Overbrook Hospital. He mapped out official building areas, business areas, residential areas, recreation areas, hospitals, a prison, and a military camp, with a drainage ditch around the town (1900-1918).

Early officials from Bangkok, come to implement the new administrative structures, didn't help much. They imposed harshly excessive taxes; supposedly meant to replace corvee labor. Traditional demands for unpaid labor didn't end, though. Shan ruby miners, teak workers and road builders, nominally British subjects in an area economically dominated by the British, rebelled in July 1902. They seized Chiang Mai, killing over 20 officials there. Others beheaded the Siamese governor at Phrae, sacked the town and murdered all Siamese they could find. With Phrae's hereditary ruler, they marched on Lampang. Shans revolted in Nan and attacked Chiang Rai too, but were defeated by Dr William A. Briggs and companions, barricaded in their hospital with a canon. One successful shot as the rebels crossed a moat-bridge, and they fled.

Those rebels fantasized establishing their own independent state. Whether this was to be a revival of Lanna is unclear; there is a Shan belief in a King Surakhanfa the Great (1291 - 1364) who ruled Ahom, Dali, Keng Tung, Chiang Saen, Luang Prabang, Lampun, Sukhotai, Chiang Mai, Pegu, Ava and even Mergui (way to the south). Shans claim to have ruled the Ava Kingdom (including Assam and Lampun) until 1555. This rendition excludes any idea of Lanna, except as other Shan principalities. At the time of the rebellion, Indian and Chinese money was at least as common as Siamese (similarly as Thai and Chinese money is used in Shan State now). The Siamese and the few remaining Khon Muang (Lanna people), quite equally, saw themselves as distinct. Perhaps the Shan workers expected not only local, but also British support. They didn't get it.

Vengence by Siamese troops under Field Marshall Surasak was ruthless; many innocents were punished. The rebellion lasted barely 14 months. In December 1905, Prince Vajiravudh, who became Rama VI, visited Chiang Rai. Royal authority from Bangkok was becoming solidified. As King, Rama VI required surnames for all - sometimes whole villages were given the same last name!

When the northern rail route reached the Lanna area (Pitsanulok in 1907, Lampang in 1916 and Chiang Mai variously reported as 1919 or 1922), control from Bangkok became quite fully, and firmly, set. King Rama VII came to visit in January 1926. Rice was now produced for sale (cash was necessary for taxes). With expansion of rice cultivation, a new problem of landlessness appeared: in 1930, 27% of northern farming families had no land. Only the area around Chiang Mai had a commercial economy; the rest of the north remained subsistence oriented. Unfortunately, the government didn't help, but only induced local leaders to act as its agents. Cash capitalism came parasitically, imposed from without. In the first Thai economics text, published 1911, Phraya Surinuwat wrote that farmers were "really laboring as if for the benefit of another group of people." When credit came, things got worse; a majority of farmers are now paying heavy interest.

In 1932, largely in response to the worldwide Great Depression, Siamese absolute monarchy came to an end. For 25 years there was little royal influence in affairs of state. It was a time of difficulties, coups, quickly changing international affiliations, and three and a half years of Japanese occupation. But in 1933 Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Phayao became regular provinces of Siam, which in 1939 and again in 1949 changed its name to Thailand. Most foreigners in north Thailand escaped to Burma and on home when Japanese occupation came. During that time, the Japanese built hard-top roads, small airports, and a modern airport in Chiang Mai. Airplanes and trucks became integral to the economy, important to all.

In May 1942 the Thai took control of the Shan region around Keng Tung. These "United Shan States" or "Original Thai States" were recognized by treaty with Japan in August 1943. Sayaburi (Xaignabouri, or Muang Ngoen until taken from Siam in 1903) and Champasak, Laos, and Siem Riep and Battambang provinces, Cambodia, were reattached to the Thai kingdom. On Japan's surrender, August 15, 1945, the Thai government undertook action to restore prewar boundaries. A peace agreement with Britain was signed at the end of December, but not until January 1947 did Thailand return the French colonial provinces.

Resumption of monarchy's importance in Thai politics came in 1957. King Bumipon had snubbed Field Marshall Phibun, the wartime leader who'd welcomed the Japanese and was again in power, by avoiding all celebrations of the 2,500th anniversary of Buddhism. Then, on Sept 13, 1957, Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat and other army officers demanded the government resign, and Major-General Phao Siyanon, Director of Police (the "Butcher of Bangkok"), be dismissed from office. During a public rally supporting these demands, a huge crowd marched to Sarit's house. Phibun and Phao wanted to arrest Sarit, but couldn't. In a brilliant coup involving no deaths, Sarit's supporters elevated him to the highest bureaucratic office while forcing Phibun and Phao to flee and seek asylum in France (Sept. 17, 1957).

Since, the king has had a quite visible public role. Re-securing the monarch's position at the top of the social hierarchy, Sarit justified his regime with an original ideology based on paternalistic, traditional social and political hierarchy. Instead of emphasizing abstract loyalties to country or constitution, Sarit focused on respect for the monarch, with citizen loyalty as the source of legitimacy for government, the worldly part of a sacred monarchy. Social hierarchy, built up from the masses through the lower bureaucracy to higher officials and monarch, was enhanced, but at the cost of egalitarianism. The king, again at the top of moral, social and political orders, resumed service as the highest supporter of the country's dominant religion.

Sarit tried to redefine democracy as a system of government, bureaucracy and king, responsive to people's needs and aspirations. Leaders were to act toward members of society as fathers toward children, concerned for their well being but stern in discipline. A consequent attitude that those in authority need not explain difficult matters to their lessers, brought problems with accountability, consistency and transparency which still hamper Thai efforts to successfully compete in the modern global economy.

Although the Japanese conscripted people of the northern Muang and built roads which penetrate the rough, mountainous Lanna area (roads still used today), they also encouraged opium production, and area didn't really open up until the 80s. Military governments of the 50s, 60s and 70s alienated many free-thinkers, and after student uprisings of 1973 were brutally put down and dictatorship resumed in 1976, many radicals took to the hills of Northern Thailand to join in communist insurgency. When Mao Tse Dung's victory put Mainland China under Communist government, an influx of anti-Communist Chinese had entered the Lanna area, mostly soldiers of Chiang Kai-shek's Koumintang (KMT) army. The area was still sparsely populated and undeveloped into the early 1970s, by which time drug money had become the dominant force and the area called the "Golden Triangle". Communist activity kept the United States interested even after the Vietnam War; such interest increased proportional to American consumption of drugs produced in Tai Yai hills. Communist insurgency in the north wasn't strong, in part due to drug-producing KMT army remnants, but in the early 60s, Thailand's northern border had "unknown areas" and Opium Warlords even issued their own paper currency (until as late as 1984, in Huai Krai, 15 km south of Mae Sai on Highway1)! The various groups (Communists, drug armies and KMT) gave up their weapons during amnesty programs of the 1980s, and the area became amenable for tourism. The King's mother, Princess Mother Sang Wan Sri Nakarin, or colloquially, Mae Fa Luang &/or Somdet Ya, took great interest in the north, and did much to help end illicit drug production in Thailand.

In 1982 the drug-lord Khun Sa was pushed out, and by 1990, a Royal Foundation directed by the King's Mother was successfully containing drug production in northern Thailand. Heroin lords in Shan State (including Khun Sa) increased their output. Chiang Rai was still a small town and in many ways decades out of date (though not so much as Keng Tung remains today); the wife of a USA Drug Enforcement Agency agent's was murdered in an attempt at intimidation &/or retribution, in town in the late 80s.

At the turn to the 21st Century, the Wa became important in the local picture again. Many relocated to areas just north of the Myanmar border, where they produce mass quantities of amphetamines for export to Thailand and elsewhere. Perhaps as many as 150,000 of these Wa are currently in the limbo of displaced people; tens of thousands of these were born in China. Many Lahu people have been evicted to make way for them, but as the government in Yangoon is interested in becoming less isolated, this may not result in a new refugee crisis.

Within the lifetime of some still living, fashions and styles here have changed from going barefoot, chewing betel or smoking cigars, bartering trade and wearing homemade cloth. A few countrywomen still smoke large, hand-made cigars, and skillful weaving is hardly uncommon. In their youth, the elderly of the common folk had very few manufactured things, didn't use sinks, drawers or electricity, and had their maladies treated herbally. Modern changes began mostly at the time of the War of Japanese Aggression (WW II). The Japanese built roads and airports, and insisted on more modern apparel, but changes weren't extreme until the late-60s. The first modern department store opened in the late 1950s (Tantrapanh). U.S. anti-communistic imperialism supplemented changes the Japanese introduced, and a growing availability of money produced more significant changes. Even recently a household with a car or pick-up, and maybe even a computer, for better or for worse, still may not have a western-style toilet. Closets, drawers and kitchen sinks remain significantly new additions to the culture of the Lanna area. Self-sufficiency is now mostly limited to hill people, while the value of such self-reliance seems largely forgotten. The people who retain capacity for it seem generally regarded as backward. Some of those 'backward' self-sufficient repositories of knowledge, Bangkok power-brokers have proposed to exile to hopelessness in Myanmar (Burma). Apparently an insufficient number of people with influence recognize the importance of local wisdom (or perhaps they're only unable to eloquently express how this wisdom can rival the importance of contributing to the cash economy and government revenues).

Yonok, Lanna and the Shan States could not be precisely mapped because clearly delineated geographical boundaries were not an essential part of the old feudal system, not only in Asia but elsewhere too. A person had allegiance and loyalty to a protector, as did a village; princes were under kings who were subservient to emperors. The lines of modern patronage hierarchy may not be mapped, but in T'ai society position and rights are determined more by social factors than by geography. Mapping, surveying and private ownership of land were, after all, introduced only fairly recently. 500 years ago the world had very few well demarcated land boundaries; 150 years ago Thailand but little of Thailand's border was well defined, and even today there remain areas with imprecise delineation. The rulers and decision-makers of the various Lanna tribes and cities formed their own sub-set, a society of its own but without a name. The wealthy and powerful could and did travel; but tended (as is commonly the case) to marry people of their own station. There was, of course, intermarriage between poorer individuals of abutting groups. Tribal realities tend to change after only a few generations; certainly this has been the case during the limited time of which we have documentation. Some local Lanna realities remain hard to express clearly in Western context.

The Thai in the late 19th century picked up notions of race and nationality from encroaching Europeans, and appropriated them in order to facilitate resistance to further encroachments. The "multi-ethnic" ethos had to bend, in order to accommodate, or counter, European dogma. The French excuse for annexing Laos, that it was part of Vietnam for having paid tribute, was, and remains, shockingly irrelevant to anything but bulldog diplomacy. From 1900, tribal groups were discouraged from maintaining separate identities; amalgamation became part of the serious business of national security and sovereignty, imperative even if not entirely successful. But when the tourism boom reached the north in the 1980s, colorful hill-tribes became a more obviously valuable (and marketable!) asset. But there's a lot of local pride, and some things have begun to change back from the recent tendency to material myopia.

Northern homes traditionally were built of teak, with beautiful Galae horns at the peak, and walls sloping gently outward, but cement has replaced wood as the preferred construction material. Forty or more years ago, building materials here were mostly natural. Then cement became an increasingly powerful force in Thai politics and industry, taking a dominant place in construction until the country was overbuilt. Many a never-occupied row of shop-houses remains empty, and many projected housing projects remain noticeable because of their abandoned gateways. Quite recently, however, a renewed reverence for aesthetics and grace seems to be becoming increasingly more in evidence.

Tribal homes are still often of bamboo, with grass roofs. Some traditional style raised houses combining modern convenience with old minimalist technologies alleviate need for air conditioning.

A decade-plus of economic boom (until 1997, then reviving after 2002, while looking as if now headed for another bust) brought a flood of development to the Chiangrai area. Many pleasant vacation homes were built for people who live and work in the Bangkok area. Hotels went up, the city expanded, communication services and other infrastructure were improved, and traffic jams began to appear. The Asian Economic Downturn of the late '90s mostly affected projects perhaps not so well considered anyway. The politics of cement contributed significantly to the economic downturn: politicians with business ties in construction, materials supply and banking encouraged issuance of myriad construction loans which produced some temporary employment but also a lot of wasted effort. In the Lanna/Golden Triangle area there are still drugs, warlords, subversives and corrupt elements, but the biggest of such problems reside across the Burmese and Lao borders. Uncollectable debt may now be the biggest local problem, but development is certainly again in progress, and people happy with better housing, communication and transportation.