Thai History III

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Thai History III

• Rattanakosin Period Chakri Dynasty

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9 Kings of Chakri Dynasty
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9 Kings of Chakri Dynasty
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Rattanakosin/Bangkok (since 1782)

• When King Buddha Yod Fa Chulaloke, or King Rama I
  succeeded to the throne of Chakri dynasty, he and
  his younger brother started to establish
  Rattanakosin city or Bangkok in 1692. When the
  city was nearly completely found, most people
  both in Thonburi and Ayutthaya integrated to
  settle down in the new capital city.

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Rama I (1782 - 1809)

• Rama I (Buddha Yod Fah Chulaloke) became a king
  together with the inauguration of the Chakri
  dynastry on April 6, 1782. He moved the capital
  across the Chao Phaya River from Thonburi to
  "Bangkok.

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Restoration

• He restored most of the social and political
  system of the Ayutthaya kingdom, promulgating new
  law codes, reinstating court ceremonies and
  imposing discipline on the Buddhist monkhood.

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Occupation

• In 1792 the Siamese occupied Luang Prabang and
  brought most of Laos under indirect Siamese rule.
  Cambodia was also effectively ruled by Siam. By
  the time of his death in 1809, Rama I had created
  a Siamese over lordship dominating an area
  considerably larger than modern Thailand.

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Rama II (1809 - 1824)

• In 1809, Rama II or King Buddha Loet Lah, son of
  Rama I took the throne until 1824. He devoted
  himself to preserve the Thai literature that had
  remained from Ayutthaya period and produced a new
  version of Ramakien or Thai Ramayana, the
  classical literature. 

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• The Chakri dynasty now controlled all branches of
  Siamese government since Rama I had 42
  children, and Rama II had 73, there was no
  shortage of royal princes to staff the
  bureaucracy, the army, the senior monkhood and
  the provincial governments. (Most children were
  of concubines and thus not eligible to inherit
  the throne.)

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British Occupation

• In 1785 the British occupied Penang, and in 1819
  they founded Singapore. Soon the British
  displaced the Dutch and Portuguese as the main
  western economic and political influence in Siam.
  The British objected to the Siamese economic
  system, in which trading monopolies were held by
  royal princes and businesses were subject to
  arbitrary taxation.

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British Demand

• In 1821 the government of British India sent a
  mission to demand that Siam lift restrictions on
  free trade the first sign of an issue which was
  to dominate 19th century Siamese politics.

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• Rama II died in 1824 and was succeeded by his
  son Prince Jessadabondindra, who reigned as King
  Nangklao, now known as Rama III. Rama II's
  younger son, Mongkut, was 'suggested' to become a
  monk, removing him from politics.

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Rama III (1824 - 1851)

• In 1824-1851, Rama III or King Nang Klao was
  successful in re-establishing relation and making
  trades with China which was necessary to meet the
  increasing domestic agricultural production. 

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• In 1825 the British sent another mission to
  Bangkok led by East India Company emissary Henry
  Burney. They had by now annexed southern Burma
  and were thus Siam's neighbours to the west, and
  they were also extending their control
  over Malaya.

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Burney Treaty

• The King was reluctant to give in to British
  demands, but his advisors warned him that Siam
  would meet the same fate as Burma unless the
  British were accommodated. In 1826, therefore,
  Siam concluded its first commercial treaty with a
  western power, the Treaty of Amity and Commerce
  (SiamUK) (also called the Burney Treaty). 

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Amendment of Monopolies

• Under the treaty, Siam agreed to establish a
  uniform taxation system, to reduce taxes on
  foreign trade and to abolish some of the royal
  monopolies. As a result, Siam's trade increased
  rapidly, many more foreigners settled in Bangkok,
  and western cultural influences began to spread.
  The kingdom became wealthier and its army better
  armed.

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British Trading with Siam
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Bowring Treaty

• In late Rama III, Siam used monopoly policy again
  that against the Burney Treaty. This resulted
  trading disputes between Siam and Britain. In
  1855 (Rama IV), the British made Bowring treaty
  that forced Siamese to be under British trading
  at last.

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Lao Rebellion

• A Lao rebellion led by Anouvong was defeated in
  1827, following which Siam destroyed Vientiane,
  carried out massive population transfers from
  Laos to the more securely held area of Isan, and
  divided the Lao Mueang into smaller units to
  prevent another uprising. In 18421845 Siam waged
  a successful war with Vietnam, which tightened
  Siamese rule over Cambodia.

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• By the 1840s it was obvious that Siamese
  independence was in danger from the colonial
  powers this was shown dramatically by the
  British First Opium War with China in 18391842.

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First Opium War
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Foreign Traders Demands

• In 1850 the British and Americans sent missions
  to Bangkok demanding the end of all restrictions
  on trade, the establishment of a western-style
  government and immunity for their citizens from
  Siamese law (extraterritoriality).

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Chinese Influx

• Economically, from its foundation, Rattanakosin
  witnessed the growing role of Chinese merchants,
  who were chased out before by king Taksin. Beside
  merchants, Chinese who were farmers, endlessly
  came to seek fortune in the new kingdom.

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Chinese Assimilation

• The Rattanakosin's rulers welcomed the Chinese,
  due to their source of economic revival. Some
  ethnic Chinese merchants became the court
  officials, holding crucial positions.

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Relationship with China

• Chinese culture such as literature was accepted
  and promoted. Many Chinese works were translated
  by ethnic Chinese court dignitaries. Siam's
  relationship with the Chinese Empire was strong.

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• It has been a royal tradition to build a temple
  of king since King Rama I.
• Although temple of Rama III is Wat Ratcha O-Ros,
  his most visible legacy in Bangkok is the Wat
  Pho temple complex, which he enlarged and endowed
  with new temples.
• Both temples contain many Chinese arts and
  sculptures.

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Wat Pho (Chetupon)
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Chinese Guardians
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Wat Ratcha-Oros
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Chinese Arts_at_Thai temple
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Rama IV (1851 - 1868)

• Rama IV or King Mongkut (Phra Chom Klao), who
  reigned from 1851 to 1868 lived as a Buddhist
  monk for 27 years. He used his long sojourn as a
  monk to acquire a western education from French
  and American missionaries, and British merchants.
  He could speak many languages such as Latin,
  English, and five other languages.

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• The missionaries hoped to convert him to
  Christianity, but in fact he was a strict
  Buddhist and a Siamese nationalist. He intended
  using this western knowledge to strengthen and
  modernise Siam when he came to the throne.

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• Having been a monk for 27 years, he lacked a base
  among the powerful royal princes, and did not
  have a modern state apparatus to carry out his
  wishes.
• His first attempts at reform, to establish a
  modern system of administration and to improve
  the status of debt-slaves and women, were
  frustrated.

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• Under his reign, he created new laws to improve
  the women's and children's right. There was a
  common saying that Woman is buffalo, Man is
  human. 
• A Thai movie titled Am Dang Muen and Nai Rid
  portrayed womens lives in this period.

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• Anna Leonowens

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Anna and the King

• Anna Leonowens, a British governess,  presents a
  group of liberated Christian women in the 1800's
  that worked to end slavery. She was a part of
  Siamese history and has been fictionalized as The
  King and I. The film mentions that Anna was one
  of the forces that brought freedom from slavery
  and freedom of religion.  

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• Rama IV thus came to welcome western intrusion in
  Siam. Indeed the king himself was actively
  pro-British. This came in 1855 in the form of a
  mission led by the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir
  John Bowring, who arrived in Bangkok with demands
  for immediate changes, backed by the threat of
  force.

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• The King readily agreed to his demand for a new
  treaty, called the Bowring Treaty, which
  restricted import duties to 3, abolished royal
  trade monopolies, and granted extraterritoriality
  to British subjects.
• Other western powers soon demanded and got
  similar concessions.

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• The king soon came to consider that the real
  threat to Siam came from the French, not the
  British. The British were interested in
  commercial advantage, the French in building a
  colonial empire. They occupied Saigon in 1859,
  and 1867 established a protectorate over southern
  Vietnam and eastern Cambodia.

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• Rama IV hoped that the British would defend Siam
  if he gave them the economic concessions they
  demanded. In the next reign this would prove to
  be mistaken, but it is true that the British saw
  Siam as a useful buffer state between British
  Burma and French Indochina.

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Siam as Buffer State
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Buddhist Affairs

• Rama IV also adopted the discipline of local Mon
  monk as he saw many monks during that time were
  not so disciplined. Thus he founded a new sect in
  which called Dhammayutika Nikaya. This sect
  observed precepts stricter than the majority
  monks, later were called Maha Nikaya.

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Rama V (1868 - 1910)

• Rama V or King Chulalongkorn, Rama IV's son,
  continued the throne when he was 15 years old.
  Rama V was the first Siamese king to have a full
  western education.

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Survival of Colonization

• In 1886, Siam lost some territory to French, Laos
  and British Burma accorded the foreign powers
  intercede. After that King Chulalongkorn declared
  Thailand as an independent kingdom on the 23rd of
  October.

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• In 1893 the French authorities in Indochina used
  a minor border dispute to provoke a crisis.
  French gunboats appeared at Bangkok, and demanded
  the cession of Lao territories east of
  the Mekong.

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Seize of Bangkok
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• The King appealed to the British, but the British
  minister told the King to settle on whatever
  terms he could get, and he had no choice but to
  comply.

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• Britain's only gesture was an agreement with
  France guaranteeing the integrity of the rest of
  Siam. In exchange, Siam had to give up its claim
  to the Tai-speaking Shan region of north-eastern
  Burma to the British.

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• The French, however, continued to pressure Siam,
  and in 19061907 they manufactured another
  crisis. This time Siam had to concede French
  control of territory on the west bank of the
  Mekong opposite Luang Prabang and
  around Champasak in southern Laos, as well as
  western Cambodia.

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• The British interceded to prevent more French
  bullying of Siam, but their price, in 1909 was
  the acceptance of British sovereignty over
  of Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu under An
  glo-Siamese Treaty of 1909.

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• All of these "lost territories" were on the
  fringes of the Siamese sphere of influence and
  had never been securely under their control, but
  being compelled to abandon all claim to them was
  a substantial humiliation to both king and
  country.

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• David K. Wyatt describes King Chulalongkorn as
  "broken in spirit and health" following the 1893
  crisis and is the basis for the change in the
  name of the country with the loss of these
  territories Great Siam was now no more, the king
  now ruled only the core Thai lands.

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Nationalism

• In the early 20th century these crises were
  adopted by the increasingly nationalist
  government as symbols of the need for the country
  to assert itself against the West and its
  neighbors.

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• Meanwhile, reform continued apace transforming an
  absolute monarchy based on relationships of power
  into a modern, centralized nation state.
• The process was increasingly under the control of
  Rama V's sons, who were all educated in Europe.

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• Railways and telegraph lines united the
  previously remote and semi-autonomous provinces. 
  
• The currency was tied to the gold standard and a
  modern system of taxation replaced the arbitrary
  exactions and labor service of the past.

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Tradition Reforms

• Rama V started to reform the tradition, legal and
  administrative realm by allowing officials to sit
  on chairs during royal audiences. Under the reign
  of Rama V, Thailand developed relations with
  European nations and the USA. 

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King Chulalongkorn

• He introduced schools, roads, railways, and
  Thailand's first post office. He even established
  civil service system.
• In 1892, Rama V overhauled the administration of
  Siam to a form of cabinet government with 12
  ministers. 

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• The biggest problem was the shortage of trained
  civil servants, and many foreigners had to be
  employed until new schools could be built and
  Siamese graduates produced. By 1910, when the
  King died, Siam had become at least a semi-modern
  country, and continued to escape colonial rule.

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VDO

• Lands of Thailand

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Rama VI (1910 - 1925)

• Rama VI or King Vajiravudh, took the throne from
  1910 to 1925. During his short reign, he
  introduced the Westernization to Thailand.

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• He introduced the primary school education.
• Thai women were encouraged to grow their hair at
  a certain length.
• Surnames were introduced
• Football was introduced in Thailand. 

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Thai women and girls in Early Ratttanakosin Period
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Costumes for Thai Women
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Western Education

• He had been educated in Britain. Indeed one of
  Siam's problems was the widening gap between the
  westernised royal family and upper aristocracy
  and the rest of the country. It took another 20
  years for western education to extend to the rest
  of the bureaucracy and the army a potential
  source of conflict.

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• King Vajiravudh, knew that the rest of the 'new'
  nation could not be excluded from government
  forever, but he had no faith in western-style
  democracy. He applied his observation of the
  success of the British monarchy in ruling of
  India, appearing more in public and instituting
  more royal ceremonies.

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• However Rama VI also carried on his father's
  modernisation plan. Polygamy was abolished,
  primary education made compulsory, and in
  1916 higher education came to Siam with the
  founding of Chulalongkorn University, which in
  time became the seedbed of a new Siamese
  intelligentsia.

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• Bangkok became more and more the capital of the
  new nation of Siam. Rama VI's government began
  several 'nation-wide' development projects,
  despite the financial hardship. New roads,
  bridges, railways, hospitals and schools
  mushroomed throughout the country with national
  budget from Bangkok.

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• King Vajiravudh's style of government differed
  from that of his father. In the beginning of the
  sixth reign, the king continued to use his
  father's team and there was no sudden break in
  the daily routine of government. Much of the
  running of daily affairs was therefore in the
  hands of experienced and competent men.

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• Because of them, Siam owed many progressive
  steps, such as the development of a national plan
  for the education of the whole populace, the
  setting up of clinics where free vaccination was
  given against smallpox, and the continuing
  expansion of railways.

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• However, senior posts were gradually filled with
  members of the King's coterie when a vacancy
  occurred through death, retirement, or
  resignation. By 1915, half the cabinet consisted
  of new faces.

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World War I

• In 1917 Siam declared war on German
  Empire and Austria-Hungary, mainly to gain favour
  with the British and the French. Siam's token
  participation in World War I secured it a seat at
  the Versailles Peace Conference.

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• ForeignMinister Devawongse 
• used this opportunity to argue for the repeal of
  the 19th century treaties and the restoration of
  full Siamese sovereignty. The United States
  obliged in 1920, while France and Britain delayed
  until 1925.

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Post World War I

• This victory gained the king some popularity, but
  it was soon undercut by discontent over other
  issues, such as his extravagance, which became
  more noticeable when a sharp postwar recession
  hit Siam in 1919.

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Patriarchy

• There was also the fact that the king had no son.
  He also obviously preferred the company of men to
  women (a matter which of itself did not much
  concern Siamese opinion, but which did undermine
  the stability of the monarchy because of the
  absence of heirs).

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Transition

• When Rama VI died suddenly in 1925, aged only 44,
  the monarchy was already in a weakened state. He
  was succeeded by his younger brother Prajadhipok.

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Rama VII (1925 1935)

• Rama VII or King Prachadhipok was Rama VI's
  brother. He changed Siam's form of government
  from absolute monarchy to democracy. This
  revolution developed the constitutional monarchy
  along British lines, with mixed military and
  civilian group in power.

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• Unlike his predecessor, the king diligently read
  virtually all state papers from ministerial
  submissions to petitions by citizens. Within half
  a year only one fourth of Vajiravhud's ministers
  stayed on, the rest having been replaced by
  members of the royal family. On the one hand,
  these appointments brought back men of talent and
  experience, on the other, it signaled a return to
  royal oligarchy.

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• The initial legacy that Prajadhipok received from
  his elder brother were problems of economy the
  finances of the state were in chaos, the budget
  heavily in deficit, and the royal accounts an
  accountant's nightmare of debts and questionable
  transactions. Other countries were deep in
  the Great Depression following World War I did
  not help the situation either.

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• The first act of Prajadipok as king entailed an
  institutional innovation intended to restore
  confidence in the monarchy and government, the
  creation of the Supreme Council of the State.

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• This privy council was made up of a number of
  experienced and extremely competent members of
  the royal family, including the long time
  Minister of the Interior (and Chulalongkorn's
  right-hand man) Prince Damrong.

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• Gradually these princes arrogated increasing
  power by monopolising all the main ministerial
  positions. Many of them felt it their duty to
  make amends for the mistakes of the previous
  reign, but it was not generally appreciated.

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• With the help of this council, the king managed
  to restore stability to the economy, although at
  a price of making a significant amount of the
  civil servants redundant and cutting the salary
  of those that remained. This was obviously
  unpopular among the officials, and was one of the
  trigger events for the coup of 1932.

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• Prajadhipok then turned his attention to the
  question of future politics in Siam. Inspired by
  the British example, the King wanted to allow the
  common people to have a say in the country's
  affair by the creation of a parliament.

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• A proposed constitution was ordered to be
  drafted, but the King's wishes were rejected by
• his advisers, who felt that the population was
  not yet ready for democracy.

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• In 1932, with the country deep in depression, the
  Supreme Council opted to introduce cuts in
  official spending, including the military budget.
  The King foresaw that these policies might create
  discontent, especially in the army, and he
  therefore convened a special meeting of officials
  to explain why the cuts were necessary.

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• Serious political disturbances were threatened in
  the capital, and in April the king agreed to
  introduce a constitution under which he would
  share power with a prime minister. This was not
  enough for the radical elements in the army,
  however.

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1932 Coup

• On June 24, 1932, while the king was holidaying
  at the seaside, the Bangkok garrison mutinied and
  seized power, led by a group of 49 officers known
  as "the Promoters". Thus ended 150 years of
  Siamese absolute monarchy.

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General Phibul Songkhram

• At that time, Phibul Songkhram was a key military
  leader in the 1932 coup. He maintained his
  position and power from 1938 until the end of
  World War II. 

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Rama VIII (1935 1946)

• Rama VIII or King Ananda Mahidol, a nephew of
  Rama VII, took the throne in 1935 but was
  assassinated under mysterious circumstances in
  1946. His brother King Bhumipol Aduldej succeeded
  as Rama IX. 

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Rama IX (Since 1946)

• Under Rama IX's government, the country's name
  was officially changed from "Siam" to "Thailand"
  in 1946 which was defined in Thai as "Prathet
  Thai", the word "Prathet" means "country" and the
  word "Thai" means "free" referring to the Thai
  races.  

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VDO

• Correction Land of Thailand

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Assignments

• Select 1 essay from the book Essays on Thailand
  to present on Thursday 13th of June. (10 points)