@Amphoe 3/2060 available

The 3rd issue of the @Amphoe magazine was just published online earlier today, right on time that I will be able to pick the paper version this one together with the other issues from the past 12 months when I will be traveling to Thailand next month.

The English language content features an interview with Boonlue Thamtaranurak (บุญลือ ธรรมรานุรักษ์), the chief district office of Galyani Vadhana district in Chiang Mai. Another part is on a new division within the Department of Provincial Administration responsible for the Hajj Affairs of the Thai Muslims, following the 3rd amendment of the Hajj Affairs Advancement Act (พระราชบัญญัติส่งเสริมกิจการฮัจย์ (ฉบับที่ ๓) พ.ศ. ๒๕๕๙) which took effect December last year.

Also, as in every issue, one province with its touristic highlights is features, this time Chanthaburi in the east of Thailand - hence the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on the title page of the magazine - one of the few beautiful Roman Catholic churches in Thailand.

Number of Tambon in 1947

Table A15 - Population for Urban
and rural size group, 1947

Another interesting table found in the 1952 Statistical Yearbook are A15 and A16, which list the number of Tambon for each province, including a grouping by the population number. According to that table, in 1947 there were 3650 subdistricts, split into several categories according to the population number.

Class	Number	Population	Percent
All	3650	17442689	100.00
Urban	2695	15845125	90.85
>20,000	29	838726	4.81
10,000-19,999	250	3125378	17.92
5,000-9,999	960	6582320	37.74
2,500-4,999	1456	5298701	30.38
Rural	955	1597564	9.15
1,000-2,499	818	1507934	8.64
<1,000	137	89,630	0.51

Table A16 then gives the number of Tambon for each province, split into the urban and rural Tambon. While these numbers arer interesting by themselves - though would be even better if have numbers to compare from other censuses - for me the most important one is the absolute number, as I intend to have a complete overview when which subdistrict was created. Calculating back from the current number of subdistrict and all the subdistrict creations published in the Royal Gazette, I get to a number of 4581 in 1950 - or maybe a few more as my algorithm doesn't handle the abolished entities correctly yet. This leaves about 1000 Tambon missing - though there is the strange 1947 Royal Gazette announcement on the creation of 674 Tambon.

I have two other very old Tambon numbers, the 1964 Statistical Yearbook lists 4893 for the reference date February 17 (my algorithm says 4889 for January 1st), and more interesting the 1917 Yearbook gives a number of 5052. Thus it seems it were not just the Monthon and some provinces which were abolished in the 1930s, but also many subdistricts, and these unlike the higher administrative units were never announced in the Royal Gazette.

It seems the only way to find more information to resolve these number issues will be old issues of the Loyal Directory book (ทำเนียบท้องที่), something which can only be done in a few libraries in Thailand. The Pridi Banomyong Library at the Thammasat University has the 1940 (2483) issue - I hope I will find chance to visit there during my forthcoming vacation in Thailand, and hope I will be allowed to photograph all the relevant pages to compile a digital list later. The book is in the rare book collection, and given its age probably must be handled with lot of care. It would be just great if this whole book series would get scanned and made publicly available - even Google Books hasn't scanned any of them yet, though even there it would probably be inaccessible.

Census 1947 and 1937

After I had found an online resource with the census reports starting in 1960, I was trying to find the older data as well. However, the online library of the National Statistics Office does not have the earlier census reports, and those few issues of the Statistical Yearbook in there have only few pages available - the recent issues which are completely available don't give any details on older censuses other than the regional aggregates. If I were in Thailand, I could of course visit some of the university libraries in Bangkok which have such old printed books - but since I am only there for vacation annually, I never made it yet to find such a book in a library.

But finally, Google and some luck helped to locate a scanned version of the 1952 Statistical Yearbook at archive.org. Google Books would have many more issues, but all of them only in snippet view, so totally unusable. And in that 1952 issue, several tables show at least partial data from the early censuses.

• Table A3 - Population by Sex by Changwat, 1929, 1937 and 1947
• Table A4 - Percentual changes of population by region and changwat, 1929, 1937 and 1947
• Table A5 - Population per square km by changwat, 1937 and 1947
• Table A6 - Population and area of Thai Changwats, 1947
• Table A7 - Population and area of Thai Changwats, by Size, 1947
• Table A17 - Population of  Municipalities, 1947

Despite the table title, A4 also included the census 1919 - however the data for 1919 and 1929 is rather inconsistent - the numbers don't sum up, out of the provinces abolished in 1933 only Sukhothai/Sawankhalok is considered, Si Sa Ket is left out though it was not newly created but renamed in 1939, thus for now I have to leave out these numbers. But for 1937 and 1947, I could now extract the numbers for each province including the numbers for each gender as well as the municipal population. I certainly would still love to get the census reports itself in my hands, especially if those go down to district levels like the later census reports, but now I already have more and better data than e.g. statoids. Of course, I already uploaded the new data to Wikidata as well as added the numbers to my spreadsheet and the corresponding XML files.

Translations of Thai laws on Wikisource

Royal decree creation Galyani Vadhana district

One of the lesser known sites within the Wikipedia universe is Wikisource, which aims to collect and translate source texts which have their copyright expired or are in the public domain already - similar with the Project Gutenberg but with a wider scope, as it is not limited to books. By the Thai copyright act, Thai laws like all documents produced by government directly, are not protected by copyright, thus everyone is free to reproduce these texts.

Thanks to one diligent user, there not just the Thai texts of several laws or acts online there, but also really good English translations  - much better than the English translation of the municipality act I bought as a book several years ago, and still haven't made it to write up the slating review. Those interesting law texts concerning the subdivisions available in English are the following:

• 1946 - (re)creation of Samut Prakan, Nonthaburi, Samut Sakhon and Nakhon Nayok province
• 1947 - creation of Kalasin province
• 1959 - creation of Umphang district, Tak
• 1991 - creation of Sirindhorn district, Ubon Ratchathani
• 2004 - creation of Krong Pinang district, Yala (actually upgrade of the minor district Krong Pinang)
• 2009 - creation of Galyani Vadhana district, Chiang Mai 
• 2011 - creation of Bueng Kan province
• 2015 - change of area of Tha Pla and Nam Pat district, Uttaradit 

Especially as the laws for the creation and upgrade of districts are worded very similar, it'd be relatively easy to add more, but sadly my time is limited so I haven't been active on these myself. Besides, more interesting would be translations of acts like the municipality act, which give the legal background on how the various subdivisions are supposed to work. However, the amendments of the Bangkok Meltropolitan Administration Act are the only ones in this class.

Residence of Phraya Anuman Rajadhon

As its very quiet in the Royal Gazette regarding the administrative subdivision, I'd like to report the announcement of a new historical monument (เขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน) - the former residence of Phraya Anuman Rajadhon (บ้านพระยาอนุมานราชธน) in Bang Rak district, Bangkok.

Phraya Anuman (1888–1969) was a very notable anthropologist, who researched and wrote a lot about Thai culture, though sadly most of his works were never translated and thus remain behind the language barrier. He worked for the renowned Royal Institute, and even made it to become president of the Siam Society shortly before his death.

Map of the historical site

His residence in Soi 2 of Narathiwat road in Bang Rak district, not far from Chong Nonsi BTS station, has now been registered as a national historical site. The whole plot of the residence, an area of 1076 m² (2 งาน 69 ตารางวา) has been included as can be seen on the map which has been included with the announcement. The map also includes a list of nine numbered locations within the compound, not sure whether these are listed for orientation or whether these are actually notable parts of the monument.

1. บ้านพระยาอนุมานราชธน (Residence)
2. บ้านหลังเล็ก (Side house)
3. อาคารที่พัก (Staff house)
4. ศาลาแปดเหลี่ยม (Octogon pavillion)
5. ห้องน้ำ (Toilet)
6. ซุ้มไม้ระแนง (Pergola)
7. สระน้ำ (Pool)
8. ปั๊มน้ำ (Water pump)
9. รูปแกะสลักสิงห์ (Stone lions)

I have added this new site to the list on the Thai Wikipedia - oddly this was a totally new site, not one of the many sites which were already listed by the Fine Arts Department but not announced officially in the Royal Gazette. Sadly the GIS site of the finearts department no longer allows to link the individual sites anymore - but even on the map this new site isn't listed yet, so this site apparently has no official Fine Arts ID number yet. I have also added an item in Wikidata, which (if all the sites were added someday) would allow to create a GIS map with a relatively simple query like my map of monuments in Bangkok Noi district. And since I also collect the monuments on my XML data files, here's the diff which added this site and the corresponding announcement.

From what the building looks like in Streetview, it seems this will be a difficult target to take a photo for the forthcoming next round of Wiki Loves Monument in September, unless someone knows the present owners. I probably get to that area in my forthcoming next holiday visit in Thailand, so I will at least be able to take a street view photo myself.