Monday, January 26, 2009

What happened with Tambon Makluea

The many subdistricts created in 1947 include some strange cases, one I already mentioned with the subdistrict created twice. Another one is the creation of the subdistricts Makluea Kao (ตำบลมะเกลือเก่า) and Makluea Mai (ตำบลมะเกลือใหม่), which according to the announcement were both split off from a district named Makluea (ตำบลมะเกลือ). So far I was always able to identify the parent subdistrict for the new subdistricts, in case the name does not exist today anymore there was either an announcement which lists a name change, or by the description of the location of the new subdistrict I was able to identify a name change which apparently wasn't published in the Royal Gazette. But in this case I was not successful, but that's not the only thing strange on this.

When looking at the village numbers for the two new subdistricts, the strange thing is that Makluea Kao gets villages 1 to 3 from Makluea, while Makluea Mai gets the village 1 to 4 from Makluea. This of course must be wrong, as villages 1 to 3 cannot be assigned to both subdistricts - and the announcement does not say anything about these being parted.

From the names of the two subdistrict one would assume that Makluea Kao is the original one (Kao meaning "old"), and Makluea Mai the new one (Mai meaning "new"). ThaiTambon.com is no help with this one either - for Makluea Kao is simply says that it's an ancient subdistrict (ตำบลมะเกลือเก่า เป็นตำบลเก่าแก่), for Makluea Mai it says absolutely nothing on its history.

And to make it even stranger - when looking the Royal Gazette for any other announcement on this subdistrict, it turned out that in 1943 the forest Sung Noen (ป่าสูงเนิน) was declared a protected forest (ป่าคุ้มครอง) - and the announcement lists both Makluea Kao and Makluea Mai as subdistricts partially covered by this forest (Gazette).

My interpretation is that the subdistrict Makluea was split in two equally large new subdistricts, and the original subdistrict got renamed to Makluea Kao. However, in the announcement it was wrongly written down, instead of the renaming it became a creation. Maybe that'd even explain the village numbers, villages 1 to 4 got into Makluea Mai, while number 5 to 7 became the villages 1 to 3 of Makluea. The renaming of the subdistrict would not change the villages anymore then, so when writing the rename as a new creation it'd be exactly like this one, villages 1 to 3 stay villages 1 to 3. And even though this was announced in the Gazette in 1947 officially (and that announcement states the date of becoming effective on August 15 1947), the new subdistricts were in use before.

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