Thailand’s Modernising Monarchs

Tony Stockwell looks behind the exotic facade to examine the role of the kings of Siam and Thailand in modernising their country.  

Worldhistoryblogspot.blogspot.com - In the days before global tourism, Thailand was for many in the West a faraway country of which they knew little. Siam, to use the country’s pre-war name, conjured up images of imperious cats, white elephants, conjoined twins and oriental despots. These images were reinforced by The King and I, the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, which was first performed in 1951, released as a film in 1956 and recently revived on stage. Their story was based on Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam which in turn derived from The English Governess at the Siamese Court written by Anna Leonowens and published in Boston, Mass., in 1870. The widow of an officer in the Indian Army, Mrs Leonowens came to Bangkok in 1862 to take up the position of governess in the royal court. For five-and-a-half years she tutored the children of Rama IV, who was also known as Mongkut. The account of her experiences in Siam is a keenly observed, if somewhat sententious, description of life in the enclosed court. She portrays the king as an enlightened though capricious monarch and harps on their differences over the position of women and particularly her own role and status.

The film version of The King and I, with Yul Brynner playing the king and Deborah Kerr as the governess, caused great offence in Thailand and is still banned there. This confection of the exotic and the absurd – like Gilbert and Sullivan’s interpretation of Japan in The Mikado – appeared to patronise, if not to ridicule, King Mongkut. When Twentieth Century Fox embarked on the recent, non-musical re-make, Anna and the King (starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-fat), the Hollywood company was prevented from filming in Thailand and instead shot it in various locations in neighbouring Malaysia. On its release in December 1999, the chairman of the Thai censorship board (Police Major-General Prakard Sataman) proscribed the film, although the police estimate that at least 10,000 illegal copies of it have filtered into Thailand. It was, he declared, historically inaccurate and the Thai people, ‘particularly uneducated upcountry villagers’, needed to be shielded from misrepresentations of the royal family. It is true, a romantic imagination runs riot in Anna and the King which deteriorates into an orientalist ‘High Noon’ towards the end of the film when, apparently against all the odds, the king takes on and defeats rebels and reactionaries. Moreover, while it handles with some sensitivity the dilemmas confronting a modernising monarch, it grossly exaggerates the influence of Anna both on Mongkut and on his son and successor, Chulalongkorn.

In the light of Thailand’s reputation for media freedom, such strict controls on historical dramas may seem surprising. Censorship in support of the country’s laws of lèse majesté, however, dates back to the period before the introduction of democracy in 1932 when the priority was to uphold the authority, religion and institutions of the state. A leading Thai documentary producer, one of whose films was banned in 1998 because it was considered damaging to Buddhism, has commented:

The law is an instrument of power – it has nothing to do with protecting the public from bad influence.

Indeed, it remains in the national interest to protect the reputation of the king who still commands enormous popular respect. Even the mildest criticism of the monarchy can incur criminal prosecution and at least two people face up to a year in jail for alleged intent to distribute Anna and the King.

In the month that the film was outlawed, the present king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, celebrated his seventy-second birthday. Bhumibol has been on the throne for fifty-four years and is the world’s longest reigning monarch. His golden jubilee in June 1996 was a great national occasion. His latest birthday was another; for Thais, who believe in the importance of twelve-year cycles, the monarch’s sixth-cycle anniversary was a particularly auspicious event. To commemorate it another film, called Suriyothai, was made, this time by Thais and for Thais. Employing hundreds of elephants and thousands of extras, the director, who is a royal prince, recreated the epic battle between Thais and Burmese forces in the sixteenth century. Although Suriyothai is no less cavalier with history and presents the court in a more lurid light than Anna and the King, it enjoys unreserved official support. Suriyothai has been acclaimed a fittingly heroic tribute to Thailand’s glorious past, whereas Anna and the King has been condemned for traducing the ‘Father of Modern Thailand’ who secured Siam’s independence from Western colonialism and laid the foundations of the nation-state. Indeed, although the monarchy may appear to be a relic of traditional Siam, in fact it has been central to the creation of modern Thailand.

For centuries, the history of Thailand was a chronicle of the rise and fall of dynasties. Kingdoms expanded and collapsed as a result of internal power struggles and periodic wars with the neighbouring Burmese. In the fourteenth century the kingdom of Sukhotai was succeeded by another at Ayudhya, further south on the Chaophraya river. When in 1767 Burmese forces captured and destroyed Ayudhya, P’ya Taksin, who had been a provincial governor under the former regime, took advantage of Thai disarray to seize power. Taksin defeated the Burmese and founded a new capital at Thonburi, fifty miles south of Ayudhya and across the Chaophraya river from present-day Bangkok. Constant military campaigning to expel the Burmese, unify his kingdom and eliminate rivals, however, unhinged P’ya Taksin and provoked rebellion. In 1782 he was overthrown by one of his own generals, Chakri, who, taking the title of King Rama I, inaugurated the Chakri dynasty with its capital at Bangkok.

The origins of modern Thailand – the structure and bureaucracy of the state, the centrality of Bangkok to the economy, the development of the army, the flexibility of Thai foreign policy – date from this time when the independence of the indigenous kingdoms of Southeast Asia was threatened by Western imperialism. Like contemporary regimes in Burma and Vietnam, as well as in China and Japan, the Siamese at first tried to keep European traders and diplomats at bay. But, whereas the Konbaung kings of Burma, the Nguyen emperors of Vietnam, and sultans of the Malay states succumbed to foreigners’ demands, successive Chakri rulers managed to preserve Siam’s independence. Indeed, as the Dutch, British, French, and from 1898 the Americans, established various forms of empire over, respectively, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Indochina and the Philippines, Siam was the only country in Southeast Asia to escape formal colonial rule. This was in large measure due to the policies of Rama IV or Mongkut (r.1851-68) and Rama V or Chulalongkorn (r.1868-1910). Father and son adjusted to alien pressures in ways similar to those adopted at the same time by the advisers to Emperor Meiji of Japan.

Thus, in 1855 Mongkut abandoned the closed-door approach characteristic of so many Asian monarchies and concluded a free-trade treaty with Britain. This was followed by similar agreements with many other Western governments. Moreover, determined to secure the heartland of his kingdom, he surrendered territory on the periphery, notably conceding to France in 1867 his claim upon that part of Cambodia to the east of the Mekong river. Furthermore, in order to anticipate criticisms of ‘oriental misrule’, which might have been used as excuses for foreign intervention, he embarked on a programme of reform. For example, he relaxed court ritual which had so frustrated foreign diplomats in the past. He also employed Western advisers, astutely recruited from a range of countries to avoid becoming excessively beholden to any single foreign power. These advisers played a leading part in improving the administration, the army and the infrastructure, such as the construction of canals in the Bangkok area.

Chulalongkorn continued this strategy. Like his father, he pursued a subtle foreign policy: by ‘bending before the wind’, accommodating foreign interests and making appropriate territorial concessions, he secured Siam as a buffer between the empires of Britain and France. He also employed foreign advisers, and carried modernisation much further than had his father: he abolished slavery, bureaucratised hereditary provincial government, built railways, and sent royal princes overseas to be educated in the ways of the West. By the time Chulalongkorn died in 1910, royal absolutism was underpinned to an extent never achieved by previous regimes in Siam by a country-wide bureaucracy and a standing army.

Mongkut and Chulalongkorn are revered by Thais for having saved their country from colonial rule. Ironically, they were greatly assisted in this feat by those very imperial rivalries which were carving up Southeast Asia. The reason for this lies in Siam’s geographical position between French Indochina and British Burma and Malaya. Given Siam’s strategic location, it was a cardinal principle of British foreign policy to preserve its ‘independence’. Yet, although the country did not fall under the colonial rule of any great power, it was drawn into a Western web of economic and diplomatic interests. Indeed, its so-called independence was gained at a price: Britain and France were bought off with land over which the Thais had once been suzerain; Western (especially British) business interests established control of Siam’s banking, shipping and the import-export trade in, for example, rice and teak; foreign nationals occupied key positions in government and enjoyed special privileges (known as extra-territoriality). Finally, by the end of the nineteenth century Britain to all intents and purposes directed Siam’s external relations.

Modernisation from the top created tensions in Thai society. First of all, the old order resented the loss of patronage and privileges. Chulalongkorn’s modernisation programme adopted colonial models and, like colonial rulers elsewhere in Asia, he ran into opposition over the centralisation of power and restrictions on the historic autonomy of vassal regions. Attempts by the Ministry of the Interior to assert control over out-lying areas, where warlords were prepared to show allegiance to the king but were hostile to direct intrusions by carpet-baggers from Bangkok, led to a number of rebellions in 1902 affecting Pattani in the south, the north-east region bordering upon Laos and the area abutting the northern frontier with Burma’s Shan states. Moreover, although the traditional order may have been inefficient and heavy-handed in its exactions, it still commanded considerable support from a peasantry which was fearful that drastic change would threaten the very order of things, even bringing about the end of the world. The military and civil arms of the new Thai state quelled this provincial unrest, displaced old ruling families and re-educated their sons for service in modern government. A second group that grew increasingly restless under the absolute monarchy comprised military officers, civil servants and professionals. These elites, which in large measure were the product of enlightened absolutism, now aspired to greater influence and felt frustrated by the royal monopoly on power. At the end of Chulalongkorn’s reign, for example, nearly all ministerial appointments were still made from his own family.

Chulalongkorn’s successor, Vajiravudh or Rama VI (r.1910-25) who had been trained at Sandhurst and educated at Oxford, encouraged these new forces in Thai society. Wishing to escape the overbearing influence of his uncles and brothers at court, he built up a personal following ostensibly to defend ‘nation, religion and king’. Recruited from the civil service, yet operating outside the bureaucracy, his Wild Tiger Corps not only antagonised members of the royal family but also incited junior military officers to conspire to clip the powers of the king. Although their attempted coup in 1912 failed, it goaded Vajiravudh into making changes; he appointed commoners to senior posts and embarked on a populist campaign to arouse Thai nationalism. Education, cultural initiatives and sheer propaganda were harnessed to the task of binding Thais in allegiance to their king, country and religion. Vajiravudh’s targets were, firstly, the unequal treaties granting Westerners extra-territorial rights and economic privileges. By 1926 Siam had successfully renegotiated these engagements. Another object of his loathing was Thailand’s community of immigrant Chinese, who had achieved an economic importance out of all proportion to their numbers (they amounted to 12.2 per cent of the population by 1932). The king roundly condemned them as ‘Jews of the East’. Vajiravudh’s brand of xenophobic nationalism did not, however, hold out the prospect of more inclusive or representative government. On the contrary, it remained restrictive and hierarchical. Moreover, his habit of advancing favourites together with financial extravagance fuelled criticism of the monarchy and not just the person of the monarch.

Succeeding his brother in 1925, Prajadhipok, who had been educated at Eton and at the Woolwich Military Academy, was unable to cope with growing financial and economic problems or, despite attempts to liberalise government, to appease the opposition. Prajadhipok had not expected to become king and was ill-prepared for the task, which was made all the more difficult by a lack of personal authority, the legacy of his predecessor’s wild policies, princely squabbles and, ultimately, the depression of the 1930s. Notwithstanding institutional experiments such as the introduction of the Supreme Council of State, Cabinet of Ministers and Privy Council, the press and intellectuals who had experience overseas now openly criticised royal absolutism and government inefficiency. Nonetheless, an opportunity to challenge the regime did not arise until the world depression in 1930-32 punched gaping holes in both government finances and the staple rice economy. In a desperate attempt to appease disaffection caused by crisis measures to retrench expenditure and raise taxation, Prajadhipok produced plans for constitutional reform. It was too late. A combination of army officers (led by Colonels Pahol and Pibul Songkram) and civilians (organised as the People’s Party by Nai Pridi Phanomyong) brought the absolute monarchy to an end in a peaceful coup on June 24th, 1932.

Prajadhipok remained king. He complied with the provisional constitution, which was largely drafted by Nai Pridi Phanomyong, who was professor of law at Chulalongkorn University as well as leader of the People’s Party. Although the king was stripped of his prerogatives and ministers were to be responsible to an elected legislature, he retained immense symbolic authority. As it happened, the liberal experiment did not last long. Constitutionalists were soon marginalised by army officers who, with their common background, shared values and sense of hierarchy, formed a more coherent leadership group than did any political party. In 1933 Nai Pridi was condemned as a socialist and forced to live in France for a time. Two years later, Prajadhipok abdicated; he found military dominance intolerable. He was succeeded by his nephew, Ananda Mahidol (r. 1935-46). But the new king was only ten years old and spent most of his reign in Switzerland. The army was now in the ascendant and propagated military values and a populist nationalism. Xenophobic and racist towards Siam’s Chinese, the military aspired to a greater Thai state embracing all people of ethnic T’ai stock, whether they lived in Siam or Laos or the Shan states of Burma. In keeping with this nationalism, Field Marshal Pibul Songkram (prime minister 1938-44) changed the name of the country from Siam to Thailand. In 1941-42 Pibul followed the traditional strategy of bending before the wind, and negotiated agreements with Tokyo whereby Japan had access to key resources and overland routes while Thailand avoided occupation and even regained territory formerly surrendered to the French. Just as fifty years previously it had reached a modus vivendi with imperialists from the West, Thailand now established a similar position within Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

The upheavals of war and its aftermath to all intents and purposes swept the Thai monarchy to the sidelines. As the Pacific War ended, the military briefly gave way to constitutionalists, while Americans assumed the influential position which had once been enjoyed by the British. Although Ananda Mahidol returned from abroad, in June 1946 he died of a gunshot wound in circumstances which have never been explained. Ananda was succeeded by his nineteen-year-old brother, Bhumibol, who immediately departed for Switzerland. He did not return for his coronation until 1950 by which time, it might be thought, there was no significant place for the monarch. After all, one king or another had been absent from the country more or less continuously for fifteen years and the military were back in the saddle. Thailand was now a front-line state in Asia’s Cold War and monarchical trappings seemed vestiges of a bygone era. In fact, during the last fifty years the king has been of immense significance as a symbol of national unity, an arbiter at times of political crisis and a revered guardian of the people.

The reinstatement of the king in public affairs started in 1957 when Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, who in that year seized power from Pibul Songkram, started to groom Bhumibol for a much more active role. Beginning with ceremonial and civic duties, Bhumibol soon took up the promotion of rural development and welfare schemes. In addition, although he regularly aligned himself with the forces of law and order, at moments of crisis the king has intervened to safeguard democratic institutions from being entirely overwhelmed by the armed forces. For example, in October 1973 he mediated to end the bloodshed that resulted from the violent suppression of student demonstrations on the streets of Bangkok and was consequently responsible for an interlude of parliamentary politics. When, however, Communist successes in Indochina led to the victory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the fall of Saigon, as well as the overthrow of the monarchy in Laos, Bhumibol sided with the military against student protesters. On October 6th, 1976, a student demonstration at Thammasat University protesting against the return from exile of Field Marshal Kittikachorn was savagely broken up. Well over forty-six (the official death toll) were killed, hundreds wounded and thousands arrested. The massacre was used as a pretext for a military coup which Bhumibol condoned. The king’s popularity plummeted.

From time to time thereafter he cautiously interceded in the interests of more benign military rule and greater probity in public affairs. In February 1991, although he did not dissent from the military coup which ousted the elected government of Chatichai Choonhavan, he distanced himself from the in-coming junta. When, the following year, the army opened fire on protesters against the return of a military regime, he brought an end to violence by holding talks between the principal protagonists at the palace. He was then instrumental in the restoration of civilian rule through democratic elections held in September 1992. Bhumibol’s contribution to political stability is widely recognised as a major factor in fostering Thailand’s rapid economic growth in the 1980s and also in assisting the country to weather the economic storms of the late 1990s. Indeed, no matter the differences between them, all aggrieved groups actively profess loyalty to the crown. As one minister has recently put it: ‘The present king provides the bridge between traditional politics and democracy.’

Although Bhumibol has grown in stature and respect, the future of the monarchy is by no means assured. While the people of Thailand still regard the king as a semi-divine figure linking them with the cosmic order, they are increasingly inclined to expect from him the attributes of a ‘just king’. Judged according to the standards of the ‘just king’, the dutiful Bhumibol scores well, as was demonstrated by the celebrations of his golden jubilee. He has emerged as a figure of virtue, publicly taking to task politicians for neglecting Bangkok’s horrendous traffic and flooding problems and regularly calling for greater honesty and less corruption in government. His son and heir apparent, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, on the other hand, is held in far lower esteem on account of his extravagance and frivolous lifestyle. Since Bhumibol is only too aware of the history of succession crises and the chaos that in the past regularly engulfed the country on the fall of a dynasty, he has tried to reinforce the institutions of civil society so that the stability of Thailand will in future be less dependent on the personal qualities of the king. In so doing, he has moved from being a more or less passive upholder of the forces of conservatism to endorsing the 1997 constitution. Known as ‘The People’s Charter’, this constitution has devolved more power to the public and promises greater transparency in government. Meanwhile, the majesty of kingship is rigorously preserved: few Thais openly discuss the future of the monarchy; the law preserves the royal family from the obsessive media coverage that has afflicted the House of Windsor; and the authorities proscribe foreign films like The King and I and Anna and the King.

Empowering the people to question traditional authority, however, is a risky strategy. Indeed, Bhumibol is facing today the same dilemma encountered by Mongkut 150 years ago: How to keep change within bounds? Since the 1850s the monarchy has been a symbol of both tradition and modernity. But it has been more than that; it has acted in turn as a dynamo for and as a brake upon change. If it is to survive, the Chakri dynasty cannot opt for one role or the other, but will have to continue straddling the contesting forces of conservatism and reform.

Further reading:

• Nicholas Tarling, ed., The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol 2 (Cambridge, 1992) 


• D.J. Steinberg and others, In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History (Honolulu, 1987)


• David Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History (New Haven, Conn., 1982)


• Ian Brown, (Singapore, 1989)


• Patrick Tuck, The French Wolf and the Siamese Lamb: The French Threat to Siamese Independence, 1858-1907 (Bangkok, 1995)


• Judith A. Stowe, Siam becomes Thailand: A Story of Intrigue (London, 1991) 


• For current affairs see the weekly Far Eastern Economic Review published in Hong Kong and Michael Leifer, Dictionary of the Modern Politics of South-East Asia (London, 1995).