Thai History

[snorter]

To avoid intruding on another thread, some interesting stuff about Thai History:

1767 to 1782.
‘King’ Taksin came just after the obliteration of Ayutthaya by the Burmese and moved the center of power to Thonburi.

“His origins are obscure. Possibly he was the son of a Teochiu Chinese migrant gambler or trader and his Thai wife”
“The remilitarization of society, initially for defence, resulted in an expansion of the Siamese capital’s territorial influence far beyond any earlier scope. In the north and south, Bangkok’s armies pacified areas disrupted by the Burmese invasions, and settled them as tributaries”
“In the aftermath, (of the Burmese invasion) Taksin and Yotfa (Rama 1) sent armies south, gained a warmer welcome from local rulers, and established Siam’s influence down to the Malay states of Kedah and Trengganu.”
“Chiang Mai had fallen under Burmese influence since the sixteenth century. Between the 1770s and 1804 Taksin and then Yotfa helped a local lord, Kavila, drive out the Burmese and re-establish Chiang Mai. Kavila’s successors remained querulous tributaries to Bangkok. Next, Taksin took the Lao capital of Vientiane, hauling away its prince as a hostage. He also burnt the Cambodian capital to the ground, and installed a puppet ruler.”
“Large numbers of the former population were carried away to Burma in 1767. Many more fled during this and subsequent campaigns. One purpose of Bangkok’s military expansion was to restock the population by forced resettlement. In the 1770s and 1780s, Taksin’s captured many thousands of Lanna Yuan, Lao Wiang, Lao Phuan, BlackTai and Khmer. The southern expeditions brought back several thousand Malays.”

Taksin was executed following a coup in April 1782 “on the grounds he had become mad”………..I can see why.

But then worse was to come….

[snorter]

“Although the Burmese threat was contained by 1804, Bangkok’s military expansion continued over the following decades”
“In the early 1800s, the Bangkok and Lanna troops went further north to seize Khoen, Lu and Shan.”
“In the 1820s, Bangkok began to tap the resources of the Khorat Plateau which was still largely unpopulated and open for expansion. In 1827-28, Bangkok went to war with the lao ruler of Vientiane, Jao Anu, who competed to control this frontier region. Bangkok’s armies destroyed Jao Anu’s capital and dynasty much the same as the Burmese had set on Ayutthaya sixty years earlier. People were then resettled from across the Mekong river onto the Khorat Plateau to increase it’s value as a source of trade goods.”
“After the 1827 war against Vientiane, over 150,000 were captured and some 50,000 marched down to the Chaophraya basin. In the 1830s, the Bangkok armies made six expeditions into the Lao regions, depopulating the left bank of the Mekong, and bringing back Lao Phuan from the Plain of Jars, Tai Dam from Sipsongchuthai, Khmer and Vietnamese.
Some of these people were resettled around Bangkok and employed to build the new capital. Some were resettled around the central plain to increase its capacity for growing rice. Others were placed on the Khorat Plateau to collect the forest produce demanded in trade to China.”

[snorter]

Similarly, Bangkok first extended informal control into western Cambodia, and then in 1833 the king (Rama III, Phranangklao) dispatched an army to take the territory or else ‘turn Cambodia into forest, only the land, the mountains, the rivers and the canals are to be left. You are to carry off Khmer families to be resettled in Thai territory, do not leave any behind. It would be good to treat Cambodia as we did Vientiane.’”
“Trade was redirected to Bangkok. Cardamom and other forest goods were requisitioned for export to China. People were hauled away for resettlement. Elite families were taken to Bangkok for future use as tributary rulers.

Only in the west did the Siamese armies fail. Two attempts to take Tavoy and re-establish control of the portage across the peninsula were thwarted by the Burmese.

Bangkok had emboxed a new outer ring of tributary states in the south, north and east.”

[snorter]

Here’s an interesting snippet regarding the 300,000 Chinese who were resident by the1850s. The government of the day tried to control them using tried and trusted methods of absorbing community leaders into the bureaucracy and making these leaders responsible for their conduct. Unfortunately this didn’t appear to work:

“Several times during the 1840s and 1870s, troops had to be sent to the sugar tracts east of Bangkok to restore order. The southern town of Ranong was ‘almost lost to the government’ during a miners riot in the 1870s. When a gunboat was sent to restore order,
the mob reacted by burning and looting Phuket. "

"The ability of striking workers to paralyze the Bangkok port gave the rulers nightmares about a Chinese takeover of the city.
In 1889, rival Chinese gangs fought a pitched battle in the center of the capital for three days.”

[snorter]

“From around the last century BC, these people (Mon-Khmer) had trade contacts with India which eventually brought ideas and technologies from a region where urban centers had already developed. Larger settlements began to appear, especially in the lower Mekong basin, and to the west in an area stretching from the lower Chaophraya basin across the hills on the neck of the peninsula to its western coast. In the sixth century AD, by adapting scripts borrowed from southern India, these two areas began to write the languages of Khmer and Mon, respectively. In the Khmer country, the farmers became expert at trapping and storing water from rainfall, lakes and rivers to support a dense population. Rulers marshaled this manpower, along with Indian ideas about urban living, construction, religion and statecraft to create new urban centers, state systems and monarchies. The magnificent capital at Angkor became a model which was honoured and mimicked by smaller centers scattered westwards across the Khorat Plateau and Chaophraya river sytem.
This early Mon-Khmer tradition was anchored on the coast and spread inland. A second inflow of people and culture came from the north through the hills.
The group of languages now known as Tai probably originated among peoples who lived south of the Yangzi River before the Han Chinese spread from the north into the area from the sixth century BC. As the Han armies came to control China’s southern coastline in the first few centuries AD, some of these peoples retreated into the high valleys in the hills behind the coast. Then, over many centuries, some moved westwards, spreading Tai language dialects along a 1000-kilometer arc from the Guangxi interior to the Brahmaputra valley.”
“Their communities became identified with rice growing. They may also have acquired some martial skills (that’s martial….not marital ) from their encounters with the Chinese because other peoples saw them as fierce warriors.
Some of the earlier, mainly Mon-Khmer inhabitants retreated upwards into the hills.
Others coexisted with this farmer-warrior elite, often adopting a Tai language and gradually losing their own separate identity.”
“Probably they coexisted with earlier inhabitants because their different techniques of rice growing dictated a preference for different types of land. The Mon-Khmer trapped rainfall in ponds. The Tai adapted their skill with water flows to using the rivers. Eventually the Tai language now known as ‘Thai’ became dominant in the Chaophraya basin.”

[snorter]

LivinLOs: I heard that Burma extends as far south as it does in that the Brits made a deal to Leave Thailand alone as long as they were given enough to be able to steam in one passage from colonial burma to colonial penang.

Mr Lucky: ........... that's the deal in which Thailand ended up gaining the southern provinces from Malaysia. The British made a trade - a bit of Malaysia in exchange for a strip of Thailand. That's why some southerners feel they don't belong to Thailand.

snorter: Thailand actually lost territories to Britain in the south. The Siamese tributaries of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu were ceded to Britain in 1909 and remain today outside Thai territory.

And from wikipedia: "The Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 made the modern border between Siam and British Malaya by securing the Thai authority onthe provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Satun, which were previously part of the semi-independent Malay sultanates of Pattani and Kedah. A series of treaties with France fixed the country's current eastern border with Laos and Cambodia."



Above comments cover a very subjective period in Thai History, a bit like History being written by the victor, I think it's all about perspective; The Brits at the time felt the territory belonged to no-one and was up for grabs, the Siamese felt it was under their scope of influence and the local populace felt it was free but with trading ties to both Malaysia and Siam.
Wikipedia says: they were part of the semi-independent Malay sultanates. What you have to bear in mind is that, at the time, all of what is now called Thailand was semi-independent of the Siamese in the Chaophraya basin.

Also from wikipedia: "Additionally tributary states like the principalities of Lannathai, the Laotian kingdoms of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, Cambodia, or the Malay sultanate Kedah were also part of the country, but with an
even higher autonomy than the provinces. In this Mandala system the semi-independent countries sometimes were tributary to more than one country."

At the time Lannathai was Chiang Mai area, Vientiane incorporated Nong Khai, Udon Thani, Nakhom Phanom and the Khmer tributary included the Khorat plateau.

[NavyP220]

Thank you, that was quite informative.

[snorter]

“Thirayuth Boonmi was the son of an army sergeant and had been placed first in the nationwide secondary school examinations. Seksan Prasertkun was the son of a fishing boat builder and a brilliant political science student.
In November 1972, Thirayuth organized a ten-day protest against Japanese goods . In June 1973, the demonstrations began to focus on the issue of restoring the constitution and democracy. The generals refused to negotiate, and arrested the student leaders. Meeting in the Interior Ministry, they agreed that ‘ 2% of the student population’ should be ‘sacrificed for the survival of the country’ . Publicly they claimed that the students were manipulated by ‘communists’.
The press cautiously supported the students. On 13th October 1973, half a million people joined a Bangkok demonstration to demand a constitution, and parallel gatherings formed in major provincial towns. The generals backed down and released the student leaders, but the protest now had a momentum of its own. In the afternoon, the crowd moved towards the palace to avoid military harassment, and appealed to the king to mediate.
The student leaders extracted a promise from the generals to reintroduce a constitution within a year, and were granted an audience with the king. But the dispersal of the demonstration on the morning of 14 October 1973 deteriorated into violence. Soldiers fired into the crowd, killing 77 and wounding 857. The shedding of young blood on Bangkok streets undermined any remaining authority of the junta, and allowed the king and other military factions to demand that the ‘three tyrants’ (Thanom, Praphat and Narong, Thanom’s son married to Praphat’s daughter) go into exile.
The king took the unprecedented step of nominating a new prime minister (Sanya Thammasak, a judge and privy councillor) and laying down the process for writing a new constitution to re-establish parliament. The final collapse of military rule catapulted the students into a historic role, and elevated the king as a supra-constitutional force arbitrating the conflicts of a deeply divided nation.”

[RobRoy]

Snorter, this thread's a cracker. Lay claim to the throne before "you know who" snuffs it. I believe you know more about the Thais than the Thais!

[snorter]

Originally Posted by RobRoy

Snorter, this thread's a cracker. Lay claim to the throne before "you know who" snuffs it. I believe you know more about the Thais than the Thais!

Credit were credit is due; you'll find the majority of my posts on this thread are quotes from other sources, the best source being "A History of Thailand" written by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Thai history.

If board members are interested I'll continue to post other stuff I read about Thai history and hope others do the same.

[ATMwalking]

I went looking for this book at the new book store a Juncleyon. Didn't have it. Did have tons of those silly bar girl books. Will have to look up in bangkok.

[snorter]

The main Players:

Pridi Banomyong (1900-1983) Born in Ayutthaya, studied law and political economy in Paris. Interior minister 1934, foreign minister 1937, finance minister 1938, regent 1941, prime minister 1946. Left Thailand after failed Palace Rebellion and lived in China and France

Phibun (Phibunsongkhram) (1897-1964) Born Plaek Khitasangkha in Nonthanburi. Top of class at Military Staff College in 1921. Army chief and defense minister 1934, prime minister 1938-44 and 1948-57. Fled after 1957 coup and lived in Cambodia and Japan.

Sarit Thanarat (1908-1963) Born in Nakhom Phanom. Educated in Bangkok, career army officer. Commander of Bangkok troops in 1947 coup and Palace Rebellion. Deputy defence minister 1951, Head of army 1954, Field marshal 1956. Led coup in 1957, executed another coup in 1958. Promoted development and personal rule, including summary executions.

Phao Siyanon (1910-1960) Born in Phitsanulok. Career Military officer. Transferred to police. Participated in 1947 coup, appointed chief of police in 1951. Maintained covert group, ‘Knights of the Diamond Ring’, for political assassinations. Fled to Switzerland after Sarit 1957 coupe.

And the story goes.........

[snorter]

“On 8 November 1947, the military seized power by coup. Phibun was the figurehead, but the coup was plotted among veterans of the 1942 Shan States campaign – especially the expedition head, General Phin Choonhavan, and his aide and son-in-law Phao Siyanon – with firepower from Colonel Sarit Thanarat who controlled men and tanks in the capital. Phin claimed that Pridi’s ‘Seri Thai’ (resistance group during WWII) forces were about to launch a republican revolt.”
“For the next five years, the coup group and Pridi’s supporters waged a low-key civil war. After the coup, Pridi and a few others narrowly escaped overseas. The coup group purged the army of Seri Thai men, and replaced Pridi’s men on the boards of state enterprises and banks. In 1948, several northeastern supporters of Pridi were arrested and accused of plotting a rebellion, but subsequently released. In February 1949, Pridi returned to Bangkok and attempted to sieze power with the help of the Seri Thai arms cache . Sarit again showed the importance of the city garrisons, bombarding Pridi’s forces inside the Grand Palace (hence the ‘Palace Rebellion’). Pridi fled once again, this time finally. A month later, three pro-Pridi MPs and one associate were shot while in police custody . Another pro-Pridi MP was shot a month later after surrendering to the police . In June 1951, some remaining Pridi supporters in the navy attempted a coup by seizing Phibun during the ceremony to accept a vessel donated by the US (the ‘Manhattan Coup’). Phibun’s lieutenants bombed the navy’s flagship to the bottom of the Chaophraya River . The fact that Phibun was aboard and had to swim ashore emphasized that power now lay with Sarit and Phao, rather than the figurehead. (snorter: I'll say it did) They proceeded to dismember the navy. The Pridi group had lost to the gun.”

[snorter]

“From the late fourteenth century, the four emerging confederations in and around the Chaophraya basin (Lanna (Chiang Mai, Lamphun), Lanchang (Luang Prabang, Vientiane), Mueang Nua (Sukhothai, Phitsanulok), Siam (Lop Buri, Suphanburi, Ayutthaya)) began to contest against one another, beginning an era of intermittent warfare. Over the next century, people were submitted to systems of mass conscription, the size of armies escalated, societies became more militarized, and a warrior ethic prevailed. Great armies traversed the landscape, destroying cities, forcibly moving people, devastating crops, and provoking epidemics. Ultimately these wars were inconclusive. The Ayutthaya forces finally conquered Chiang Mai in the late fifteenth century but to no avail. These centres could destroy one another and cart away people, famous Buddha images, and wealth, but over these distances they could not ‘embox’ one another permanently. In the late fifteenth century, these wars petered out.”
“Then, in the late fifteenth century, Ayutthaya took control of a portage route across the neck of the peninsula, creating a new trade connection between east and west, avoiding the longer and pirate infested route through the Melaka Straits. Ayutthaya prospered as an entrepot where goods were exchanged the east (China), west (India and Arabia), and south (Malay archipelago). The Portuguese, who arrived in the early sixteenth century, marked Ayutthaya as one of the three great powers of Asia, along with China and the Indian empire of Vijayanagar”

Over the next 50 years Ayutthaya gradually extended its power over the northern city of Chiang Mai with a mixture of military might, diplomacy and the temptation of new found prosperity for the nobles. The ruling families of the northern cities married into the Ayutthaya dynasty and supplied troops to Ayutthaya’s armies.

“Ayutthaya gradually absorbed administrative systems, architectural tastes, religious practices, and probably also the everyday language from it’s northern neighbours. Because of its prime location for trade, Ayutthaya was the capital of this enlarged federation. But the northern city of Phitsanulok (Mueang Nua) operated as a second capital (the Portuguese sometimes described them as twin states) because of its strategic location for the wars against Lanna. Eventually northern nobles became the king makers Ayutthaya. In 1559 they finally dislodged the old dynasty and took control.
Over the same era, trade provoked east-west rivalries. The southward drift of people and power in the Chaophraya basin was matched on either side. To the west in the Irawadi basin, Pegu became dominant over the old Burman centre of Ava. To the east, the Khmer capital of Angkor was abandoned in favour of Lawaek-Udong in the Mekong delta. The three port capitals of Pegu, Ayutthaya and Lawaek-Udong competed to control the interior sources for exotic forest goods demanded in the China trade.
Their rulers also competed for sheer precedence. With treasures stocked from trade profits, armies swollen with recruits from the hinterland, personal guards manned by foreign mercenaries, temples embellished with images and gold looted from their conquered neighbours, the rulers of these places imagined themselves as ‘cakkavatin’, the unique world-conquering emperor described in Buddhist texts like the ‘Traiphum’. In this east-west competition, west had the advantage, probably because that direction was the source of the Portuguese mercenaries and cannon. Siam sent armies which battered the Khmer capital and placed submissive princes on the Khmer throne. Pegu demanded Siam accept similar tributary status, then allied with northern nobles to besiege and take Ayutthaya in 1559. Pegu hauled away people, artisans, Buddha images, and loot; seized Valuable elephants as symbolic tribute; and took members of the Ayutthayan ruling family as wives and hostages.”

[snorter]

I wish I could find more information about the 1559 fall of Ayutthaya. What struck me as strange was that the northern nobles seemed to have exerted a good deal of influence over Ayutthaya before aligning with the Burmese and sacking the place. They had their own warriors acting as Ayutthaya’s armies’ commanding officers and their nobles were intertwined in marriage with the ruling elite of Ayutthaya, their own administrative systems, tastes etc. were already to the fore in Ayutthayan society. I can see that human greed would lead to the northern nobles wanting to take full control of what was a very prosperous and geographically advantageous region, but then to align with the Burmese and destroy what you were trying to take-over, allowing what will be your workforce, craftsmen and treasures to be carted away.

I’d be interested if anyone’s got more detailed information about the actual campaign, individuals involved, agreements made etc.

[snorter]

Just looked at the Chronology at the front of the book I'm reading, second entry: "1569 First fall of Ayutthaya to the Burmese"?? The same book quoted in post 14 saying it was 1559.

From wikipedia: "In 1569 Burmese forces, joined by Thai rebels mostly royal family members of Siam, captured the city of Ayutthaya and carried off the whole royal family to Burma."

Quote in post 14 must be a typo???

[jao108]

Originally Posted by snorter

To avoid intruding on another thread, some

Taksin was executed following a coup in April 1782 “on the grounds he had become mad”………..I can see why.

That's a questionable 'fact'. There's a major following that he was let to live on somewhere in chumporn or surathani...can't remember the details.

His horse sure had big balls ! You been to Jantaburi?

[snorter]

The 10 and 20 baht notes used to have a pic of Taksin on his horse on the back.........never noticed the size of his horse's balls, I must admit.

I've never read or heard the story that Taksin was allowed to live on but did read that he requested to be allowed to enter the monkhood rather than be executed. His request, by all accounts that I've read, was apparently denied.

The story is that he was executed by being sewn into a velvet sack then beaten to death with a scented, sandlewood club.

I agree that this may not be a true account of the events, one of the main sources for Thai history prior to King Chulalungkorn is Damrong, the so-called 'father of Thai History' and self taught historian. As a member of the royal family one can imagine his version of events would not be totally unbiased. However, given the realities of the situation (a monarch recently deposed in a coup) I think it's more than likely that he was executed.

Incidently, some modern historians claim that the symptoms of 'madness' displayed by Taksin at the end of his reign, more closely resemble the symptoms of mid-life crisis! You'd have thaught he'd have just gone out and got himself a younger bird fur chrissakes....

[jao108]

I think I heard it in a few drunken conversations with some Thais...you know those conversations where they get all paranoid turning their heads as they whisper to tell you even though there is absolutely no one around. Perhaps its just speculation on their part, though I've heard it from a few different mouths so it may/maynot be coiincidence, though now that I think about it, yes it might have been written about in M.L Manich Jumsai's accounts, which tended to have many things not written in the Thai version as he got most of his stuff from European / Chinese records in his foreign education Or maybe it was professer in Thai Studies class refer to it. So anyway the point is I've been referred to the account by more than one source...may or may not be true.

I'm not sure if the balls are visible on the money but are perfectly clear in the statue (the picture on the money is of that statue) in a park in Jantaburi.

on the note of Jumsai, he also had an account about Ramkhamhaeng's near-demise by having an affair with one of the concubines of his friend/ruler of Payao kingdom back in the day. I think this source was from Northern chronicles to emphasis the ambasador/leadership of Mengrai of Chiangmai to save the day for Ramkhamhaeng negotiating the situation having King Ram pay some hefty fine or something and everyone living happier ever after. That was pretty cool story too that couldn't find any mention in any central Thai history book. You've ever come across it?

Cheers

[Prof Abronsius]

Thanks to Snorter for setting up the thread.

I don't want to distract anyone from matters like the size of horses' balls but just to raise a broader issue: the general histories of Thailand by the formidable Baker/Phongpaichit duo and by David Wyatt, both of which are well-written, informative and essential as reference texts, nonetheless tend to be a bit wearing to read end to end.

Silkworm Books, the excellent Chiang Mai-based publisher, produces a Short History series - I've read the very readable volume on Laos by Grant Evans and have just got the one on Cambodia - but oddly enough they haven't yet done one on Thailand.

One other way of finding out a little of Thai history is via novels. For example, an award-winning Thai novel of the mid 90s, translated into English more recently,and easily obtainable, is called 'Democracy, Shaken & Stirred by Win Lyovarin.

it covers, as the cover blurb says, 'all the major rebellions and coups between 1933 and 1992' (including the events in Snorter's post #8) told via the retrospective accounts of two old men, one a policeman, the other a bandit turned political activist, who meet in Lumphini Park to recall their decades long conflict. Lyovarin is no Tolstoy but the book has lots of interesting detail and photos of most of the main players in C20th Thai political history.