In everyday speech and assumption, Thailand and its people are often taken as natural fact, as if the ‘Thai people’ have always existed. Yet no national people, as such, exist. There is no conscious collective Thai actor, nor is there a sociological entity that may be termed the ‘Thai people’. Indeed, it has become commonplace in academic studies to note that the attempt to form a national people involves multiple processes of discursive construction that are never quite successful at encompassing their intended targets. Thailand, in that sense, is not particularly unique. From the fiction of a Thai and Buddhist people to the very physical existence of the land, one can uncover a history of construction.