Benjamin Batson

Benjamin Batson (1942 – January 7, 1996) was an American academic who specialized in the study of 20th century Thai history. He spent almost his entire professional life in Southeast Asia. He was initially a university mathematics lecturer before developing his interest in Thai history while posted in Bangkok in a maths post.

Batson began his academic life by earning a degree in mathematics at Harvard University in 1963 where he was elected to membership of Phi Beta Kappa. He briefly returned to his home state of Tennessee to work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He then moved to Thailand, teaching mathematics at Chulalongkorn University from 1964 to 1966. This chance opportunity marked the beginning of his interest in Thailand. After completing a M.A. under Walter Vella at the University of Hawaii in 1968, he returned to Thailand to teach mathematics, this time at Chiang Mai University in the north of the country. His potential was recognised by funding institutions, receiving grants from the East-West Center, NDFL Act (Title IV), the Ford Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council.

In 1969 he entered the Southeast Asia Program graduate program at Cornell University, where his thesis on the end of Thailand's absolute monarchy and transition to a constitutional monarchy was supervised by David Wyatt. While at Cornell, Batson attracted the attention of Walter LaFeber, the eminent historian of American foreign policy, whom he served under as a teaching assistant. Sifting through neglected files at the National Archives in Bangkok, Batson uncovered a long lost collection of papers in which the concept of democracy in Thailand was debated between the seventh Bangkok king and his ministers and advisers. He translated a selection of these and published them as "Siam's Political Future: Documents from the End of the Absolute Monarchy" in 1974. He was a research fellow at the Australian National University in the late 1970s, during which time he revised his dissertation for publication as "The End of the Absolute Monarchy in Siam" by the Oxford University Press in 1984. He wrote a work on the Thai literary figure and political activist, Kulap Saipradit. He also began studying Japanese-Thai relations with Shimizu Hajime which bore fruit as "Siam and Japan" in "Southeast Asia under Japanese Occupation", edited by A. W. McCoy in 1980 and "The Tragedy of Wanit: A Japanese Account of Wartime Thai Politics" in 1990.

Batson was known for his indifference to bureaucracy and saw little reason to conform to what was considered a "normal job". It was not until 1982 that he accepted a teaching appointment at the National University of Singapore, where he stayed until his death. There he gained a reputation as a learned, conscientious, generous, and empathetic teacher. He was uncomfortable talking before large audiences, from undergraduate classes or conference sessions. Hemaintained a home on the western shore of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok and was as much at home there as any other place.

Batson's last published piece, published in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, in March 1996, discussed Phra Sarasas, a figure who positioned himself as power-broker between the Japanese and Thai governments during the leadup to World War II. It was typical of Batson that he spent substantial time examining the evidence and uncovering the life of a historical personage who was prominent but difficult to fathom.

Batson died unexpectedly of heart disease in Singapore on Sunday, January 7, 1996 at the age of 53.

References

*cite journal|first= Reid |last=Anthony|year=1996 |month=November |title=Obituary: Ben Batson (1942-1996) |journal=Journal of Asian Studies |volume=55 |issue=4 |pages=pp. 1113–1114 |accessdate= 2007-11-07