Statistical yearbook 1923

Google books has scanned many very old reference books, but they are all only visible in the snippit mode, teasing enough to make sure its the resource one would need but still making it impossible to use them. It is quite annoying to have valuable information so near and still so far. When I last week again tried in vain to check the old yearbooks in the online library of the NSO - the scans there stop after a few pages - and then looked Google Books, I noticed that there actually is a form to ask for a book to be fully available. Without much hope I entered it for the 1923 yearbook, stating that by Thai law works from juristic persons have a copyright term of 50 years after publication and it thus should be long freely available. And to my total surprise - just one week later I received an email that the review is done, and the book is now fully readable.

Though they just changed access to this one year edition - after this success I'll do the same request for the other years as well later - it gives access quite a lot of interesting tables. The number of administrative units in 1922 for each of the 18 Monthon - totally there were 80 provinces, 421 districts and 5061 subdistricts. And most useful - and the reason why I chose this edition in my request - are the population numbers for each of the provinces from the 1919 census. The 1952 yearbook strangely had lot of nonsense numbers for this year. Also, especially the 1952 yearbook hide the fact that there were more provinces in 1919, and quietly added them to those provinces into which these were integrated in 1932.

There are some notable data points for some provinces. Phra Nakhon and  Phuket had far more male than female citizen, the ratio was over 130% for these. Though the numbers by nationality are only listed at Monthon level, these two Monthon have far less Siamese than others, and instead lots of Chinese - indicating there were many single male workers who could not bring a Chinese wife. Even more striking are the numbers for Monthon Pattani - only 15% of the population is listed as Siamese, the majority are Malay. The table is titled by "nationality", and not ethnic group, hence it seems that these were not considered full citizens back then. 100 years later the lack of integration of these people is still and unresolved problem...

Apart from the rather unusual way the province names were romanized in this edition of the yearbook, there are two province where a different name is listed than the one I expected - Lampang and Nan both are preceded by the word "Nakhon". While I had read about it for Lampang before, I have to investigate these further - at least there seems to be no official Royal Gazette announcement removing the "Nakhon" from these province names.

Anyway, now the census 1919 XML has been updated with all the data, the numbers of subdivisions are in a Yearbook1923.XML, and I will also soon update my big spreadsheet to show these province population numbers as well. And for those who prefer spreadsheets over XML, there's also a spreadsheet with the 1923 data I picked from the book. Next projects now should be to get the 1909 and the 1929 census data from yearbooks as well.

Library requests

In preparation for my forthcoming annual visit to Thailand, I have checked with some of the online library catalogues whether there are any of the reference works I could use available in one of the libraries I could easily reach while I am in Bangkok. The Pridi Banomyong library of Thammasat University, located right next to Wat Phra Kaeo, has the full reports of the census 1947 and 1937, as well as a few issues of the Local Directory (ทำเนียบท้องที่ พุทธศักราช), most interestingly the 1940 issue. However all these are in the rare book section, so hope I can get access to them.

A bit less interesting are the older issues of the Statistical Yearbook, which are more wide common in university libraries in Thailand. Though not the complete series, the Mahidol Central Library in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, has several of the older issues, so I hopefully can further complete the data series with the number of subdivisions.

But even if I can get access to all the works I looked up, and have enough time to scan all the relevant pages to process when back home, there are still more issues of the yearbook or the even older census reports which would be great to have - and there are also some books or thesis which are impossible to get when having access to the academic sources. Thus I have compiled a list of the library requests and made it a static page, so hopefully someone who has the chance to provide me scan of any of these I would be very grateful. I will update that page whenever I stumble onto something new which I could need, or of course once I can get one of the requested data.

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.

Statistical yearbook 2016

The latest edition of annual statistical yearbook was published in October 2016, though I just noticed it to be available online. Sadly, not the full PDF file can be downloaded, only a version for online reading (which even wants to use the obsolete flash) is available - even worse most of pages are garbled as the conversion tool handled Thai characters very faulty. At least the table which I use to import from the yearbooks can still be read.

But its not just that the online version is of bad quality, even worse the data itself has problems. According to Table 1.23 (Area and Administration Zone by Region and Province), the number of the administrative subdivisions by type as of May 27 2016 are (in brackets the coresponding numbers from the 2015 yearbook)

• 928 districts (Amphoe and Khet) [2015: 928]
• 7425 subdistricts (Tambon and Khwaeng) [2015: 7425]
• 57081 administrative villages (Muban) [2015: 55387]
• 2452 municipalities (Thesaban, including Pattaya) [2015: 2442]
• 5433 subdistrict administrative organizations [2015: 5334]

Comparing with the 2015 numbers shows no change in the central administrative units except the Muban, but oddly changes in the number of the local governments even there have been municipal upgrades in the last year. While looking through the provinces, it seems that for several of them (but by far not all) instead of the current number of TAO the original number of TAO in 2002 was listed. The additional ten municipalities are due to a wrong number in Kamphaeng Phet, inbsteal of 25 the table lists 35. These wrong data however make the whole table totally worthless. Additionally, the number of administrative villages seems to have risen in a strange way by almost 2000, but only 55 Muban were created in 2016 and just 11 in 2015. Thus I can only suspect that here again old numbers were mixed with the current values, counting Muban which were previously excluded as being part of municipalities and thus loosing their function. However 900 of the new Muban are in fact a mistake in the 2015 edition, which lists 1097 Muban for Surin instead of 1907 as in 2014 and 2016. I posted a more detailed discussion of the varying Muban numbers earlier.

Even though at least this table in the yearbook has become useless, I nevertheless translated it into my XML structure, but adding a new schema entries to indicate and correct the bogus values. But what really worries me is that if an amateur like me can already spot such big mistakes in this publication, what is the quality of the other tables then?

How many Muban are there in Thailand?

The administrative villages (Muban, หมู่บ้าน) are the central administrative subdivision for which it is most difficult to find authoritative information. I still haven't find any complete official lists online by the Department of Provincial Administration, though it seems they publish a list every year named "ทำเนียบท้องที่ พุทธศักราช ####", but only the 2003 edition is online and hardly readable as being scanned at too low resolution. Haven't had any luck yet to find any of these book in a library in Bangkok...

While it is difficult to get a complete list of all the Muban, at least the total number should be easier to find. Every year DOPA publishes a short statistics showing the numbers of the administrative subdivision, thus the latest official number is 74965. I already mentioned that my own list compiled mostly from the postcode page of noplink has a few more, 75090 as of December 31st 2015. Another source is the Statistical Yearbook published by the NSO, the 2015 edition lists however a much lower number of 55387. Apparently NSO only counts those Muban which are still in use administratively, the difference of almost 20000 Muban are probably those which no longer have a village headman as being part of a municipality.

Since I collected the DOPA number for several years already, and also now worked through all the yearbooks available online, its possible to compile a little chart showing the development of the numbers. And as since 2002 the creation of new Muban was announced in the Royal Gazette, I could also calculate the past numbers from my data. The actual numbers can be found in this spreadsheet, but the graphics is what shows most.
My numbers (yellow) and the DOPA numbers are almost same, the difference of 125 is hardly visible in this scale. However for 2002 the difference is already 1241. thus apparently not all Muban creation were announced in the Royal Gazette. The Yearbook numbers are steadily decreasing, interestingly in the 2010 yearbook the DOPA full number from 2008 was published.

I'd love to get my list in better sync with the other data, but for that I would need access to those Local Directory (ทำเนียบท้องที่) books. Also, there are holes in the Yearbook graph, some of the latest issues are not found online. During my latest stay in Bangkok I tried to find some in a library, but despite having them in the catalog they weren't on the shelve where the belonged. The online library of the NSO is sadly also no help, there are only few issues listed there, and most of those don't work. If anyone this access to a university library having these books is willing to help, please contact me.

Statistical yearbooks

One resource I so far neglected when collecting my data were the Statistical Yearbooks, published by the National Statistics Office (NSO) annually (in past sometimes bi-annually). Quite a lot of the statistics in these books are really specialized, whereas the population numbers I already took from the census reports and the registration data. There is however one table which turns out to be useful - the number of administrative units of each type for each province. For some recent years I could even find this table as a Excel sheet, which made it most easy to translate to my XML structure.

Using the Royal Gazette, I believe I already have all the data on creation of districts and subdistricts from about 1950, however for the administrative villages they only became published in the Gazette since 2004, so only source for these numbers so far were the census reports. However, these lists help to check for any discrepancy, for entities created or abolished without announcement in the Royal Gazette.

There is however one problem - those books are of course available in several Thai libraries but as I am not living in Thailand they are hardly reachable for me. The NSO has an online library, but that still has by far not all issues of the yearbook, but even worse for many of those available the pages with this specific table are missing, often only the table of contents is displayed. For example for 1964, the last available page is number 32, luckily the table with the entity numbers end at page 31.

The most strange issues with the entity numbers was the number of subdistricts, which according to my data should have be 7256, but in the annual lists from the Department of Provincial Administration always listed as 7255, which made me believe that the subdistrict Pak Phanang in Nakhon Si Thammarat might have been dissolved as there more some contradicting values for the number of subdistrict in this province. Looking at the lasted yearbook, it lists 7425 subdistricts, including those in Bangkok this makes 7256 again. Thus it seems the confusion is within DOPA itself, both for the population statistics and the reports to the NSO they use the number of 7256, but in their own annual report for whatever reason one Tambon is omitted.