3 - Language Teachers, Missionaries, and the Role of Hybrid Colonial Networks in the Production of an Early Thai Dictionary

In 1855, Dan Beach Bradley, an American protestant missionary who had served in Bangkok for nearly twenty years, announced the completion of his voluminous Thai-Thai dictionary. It quickly became a model for subsequent Thai dictionaries after its eventual publication in 1873. Today, it is often viewed as a quintessential “missionary dictionary,” produced by and for the Orientalist gaze. In this paper, I re-examine this interpretation and offer three qualifications. First, I point out that it was not Bradley himself who wrote the dictionary, but, rather, several of his Thai language teachers, including a former monk. This was normal: all early “missionary dictionaries” and wordlists were “co-productions.” That is, they were produced by, or alongside, native Thai speakers. Second, I demonstrate that the definitions were crafted from the perspective of an urban Thai intellectual, not a Western Orientalist. Third, I show that the production of Bradley’s dictionary nevertheless relied on a semi-colonial network. Ironically, it was Bradley’s first Thai language teacher, more than Bradley himself, who was the product of this network. For Bradley’s teacher had previously assisted Scottish company officer John Leyden in the production of a comparative wordlist. This teacher then served the British administration in Singapore as a Thai language expert, and taught Thai to Bradley during the latter’s long sojourn in Singapore. I conclude by suggesting that because colonial networks were traversed by unexpected figures like American missionaries and their Thai language teachers, they are better characterized as “hybrid” than “European.”