From the Bangkok Post:
The Journal Of The Siam Society, the oldest and most prestigious academic publication in Southeast Asia, has taken a major step by making all of its contents available online.
A total of 99 volumes with more than 2,000 articles running to over 30,000 pages of scholarship can now be perused, free of charge, by ordinary members of the public.
JSS, as it is often known, first appeared in 1904 and is still going strong. The current issue and all back issues, published over a period of 108 years, can now be accessed [here].
I had just found this yesterday. To claim that “The Journal Of The Siam Society, the oldest and most prestigious academic publication in Southeast Asia” is probably false on both counts.
At least the “Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society” was first published in 1878 and continues today as the “Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society”. It did cease publishing from late 1941 to June 1947 as a result of the Japanese invasion. Not sure if there are any older journals than this.
As to “most prestigious”, that might be debated for some time, and yet I think what is meant is “most royal”. The story of the royal connection to JSS and how it was used to develop some of the royalist ideology would be an interesting one.
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Ralph Kramden, I don’t think the royal connections to JSS are any big secret. Personally I think it is fantastic that this huge archive as well as contemporary research is now available on-line for all. What more could you ask for? I just don’t know how I’ll find the time to keep up with all the reading.
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Pete: No claim was made that the connection was secret.
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Very nice. I like it. I don’t read the Journal regularly, at least in part because of the incompleteness of the archive online. So it is good to have this resource. Maybe it will help make JSS once again more of a magnet for high quality papers on Thailand.
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