Chris Baker

Chris John Baker (b. 3 Jan. 1948) is a British writer living in Thailand since the 1980s, the honorary editor of the Journal of the Siam Society (JSS), and the author of numerous books related to Thailand economics, history and politics, most of them in collaboration with his wife and collaborator Pasuk Phongpaichit ผาสุก พงษ์ไพจิตร (b. 11 Feb. 1946), a Thai economist, historian, and professor at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. Together, they were the recipient of the 2017 Fukuoka Prize for outstanding contributions to academia, arts, and culture in Asia.

With a PhD from Cambridge University, he taught Asian history at that same university before moving to Thailand, where his research firstly focused on economics, being the coordinating writer of the United Nations Development Programme’s Thailand Human Development Report 2007: Sufficiency Economy and Human Development. His research interest expanded to Thai history, literature and contemporary politics. 

Publications

• [with Pasuk Phongpaichit] Thailand: Economy and Politics. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995; repr. 1997, 1999. TH version: 2002.
• [with Pasuk Phongpaichit] Thailand’s Crisis. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000. ISBN 9812300910.
• [with Pasuk Phongpaichit] Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2004. ISBN 9749575555.
• [with Pasuk Phongpaichit] A History of Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 334 p.. ISBN 0521016479; reprint 2009, 334 p, 
  ISBN‎ 978 – 0521759151.
• [editor with Pasuk Phongpaichit], Thai Capitalism after the 1997 Crisis. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2008.
• [with Pasuk Phongpaichit] Thaksin. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009 (2^nd ed.). ISBN 978 – 1631024009.
• [tr. and ed. with Pasuk Phongpaichit, illus. by Muangsing Janchai] The Tale of Khun Chang Khun Phae : Siam’s Great Folk Epic of Love and War, Silkworm Books, 2010, 2 vols, 984 p. ISBN 9789749511961.
• [with Pasuk Phongpaichit] A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
  Baker, Chris and Phongpaichit, Pasuk. From the Fifty Jataka: Selections from the Thai Pannasa Jataka. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2019.
• [ed. with Peter Skilling] Journey to Angkor, HRH Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, tr. by Bruce Evans, Bangkok, River Books, 2024, 182 p. ISBN 978 616 451 089 0.