HISTORY & POLITICS
HISTORY
1890
Siam’s fi rst railway
connects Bangkok
with Nakhon
Ratchasima.1893
French blockade Chao
Phraya River over
disputed Indochina
territory, intensify
threat of colonisation.IV) never expected to be king. Before his ascension he had spent 27 years
in the monastery, founding the Thammayut sect based on the strict dis-
ciplines of the Mon monks. During his monastic career, he became pro-
fi cient in Pali, Sanskrit, Latin and English and studied Western sciences.
During his reign (1851–68), Siam concluded treaties with Western
powers that integrated the kingdom into the world market system, ceded
royal monopolies and granted extraterritorial rights to British subjects.
Mongkut’s son, King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) was to take much great-
er steps in replacing the old political order with the model of the nation-
state. He abolished slavery and the corvée system (state labour), which
had lingered on ineff ectively since the Ayuthaya period. Chulalongkorn’s
reign oversaw the creation of a salaried bureaucracy, a police force and
a standing army. His reforms brought uniformity to the legal code, law
courts and revenue offi ces. Siam’s agricultural output was improved by
advances in irrigation techniques and increasing peasant populations.
Schools were established along European lines. Universal conscription
and poll taxes made all men the king’s men.
In ‘civilising’ his country, Chulalongkorn relied greatly on foreign ad-
visers, mostly British. Within the royal court, much of the centuries-old
protocol was abandoned and replaced by Western forms. The architec-
ture and visual art of state, like the new throne halls, were designed by
Italian artists.
Like his father, Chulalongkorn was regarded as a skilful diplomat and
is credited for successfully playing European powers off one another to
avoid colonisation. In exchange for independence, Thailand ceded territory
to French Indochina (Laos in 1893, Cambodia in 1907) and British Burma
(three Malayan states in 1909). In 1902, the former Pattani kingdom was
ceded to the British, who were then in control of Malaysia, but control re-
verted back to Thailand fi ve years later. (The Deep South region continues to
consider itself an occupied land by the Thai central government – see p 709 .)
Siam was becoming a geographically defi ned country in a modern
sense. By 1902, the country no longer called itself Siam but Prathet Thai
(the country of the Thai) or Ratcha-anachak Thai (the kingdom of the
Thai). By 1913, all those living within its borders were defi ned as ‘Thai’.Democracy vs Military
In 1932 a group of young military offi cers and bureaucrats calling them-
selves Khana Ratsadon (People’s Party) mounted a successful, bloodless
coup which marked the end of absolute monarchy and introduced a con-
stitutional monarchy. The leaders of the group were inspired by the dem-
ocratic ideology they had encountered during their studies in Europe.
In the years after the coup, rival factions (royalists, military, civilians)
struggled for the upper hand in the new power regime. Even the People’sIn 1868 King
Mongkut (Rama
IV) abolished a
husband’s right
to sell his wife
or her children
without her
permission. The
older provision, it
was said, treated
the woman ‘as if
she were a water
buffalo’.DIANA MAYFIELD/LONELY PLANET IMAGES ©» Wat Arun on the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok