Chehabi Writes on Iran/Thailand Parallels in Mizan
Houchang Chehabi, Professor of International Relations and History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, penned an article in Mizan about the parallels between Iran and Thailand.
In the article, Chehabi discusses the surprising historic similarities between Persia/Iran and Siam/Thailand, from the rise and fall of their reigning dynasties to their culture and customs.
An excerpt from the article:
When I said at a conference in early September 2015 that Thailand was just like Iran, most scholars in the audience looked perplexed. We are so used to thinking in regional terms that instinctively we are more at ease with comparisons between adjacent countries. What little I knew of Siamese history came from what I had learned in a year-long survey course on South and Southeast History I took at Sciences Po in 1976-77, and so the two weeks I spent in Thailand in January 2016 were a welcome opportunity to test my hunch.
The full story can be read here.
Houchang Chehabi has taught at Harvard and has been a visiting professor at the University of St. Andrews, UCLA, and the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa. He has published two books, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (1990) and Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (2006). Chehabi has written numerous articles, book reviews, and translations. You can read more about him here.