A History Of Thailand

by Baker Chris

  The great households that had been the foundations of the old elite changed in character. Chulalongkorn was the last king to practise and hence endorse polygamy. Vajiravudh had only one wife and one daughter at the very end of his reign. King Prajadhipok had only one wife, Queen Rambhai Bharni, and no children. The 1935 legal code recognized only one marital partner. Many elite men still practised polygamy but increasingly by taking minor wives in serial sequence or in separate domiciles. Many elite children rebelled against parental control over their choice of marriage partners. Great households could no longer build influence through strategic webs of polygamous marriage connections. Once the great households lost this ability, and their privileged grip on high office, they began to disintegrate. Kukrit Pramoj’s hugely popular novel Si phaendin (Four Reigns, 1950) traced the fragmentation of one fictional aristocratic family as the members of its new generation are drawn off to varied careers, rival political ideas, and diverse marriage partners (farang, Chinese). The bombing of the family house in 1944 symbolizes the household’s final disintegration.

  The state ceased to act as a mechanism for the old elite’s financial support and accumulation. Allowances to the sprawling royal clan ended in 1932. Other great households lost sinecures. The crown’s landed property and investments, mostly accumulated in the Fifth Reign, were managed by the Crown Property Bureau, rather like a foundation. Other great families fell back on the land and other assets they had been able to accumulate over the previous half century. Urban land, in particular, inflated in value and sustained many families. But other assets lost value because of changing fashions and the great wartime inflation. And the culture of polygamy, which had once built the great households, now divided and dissipated their assets by inheritance. A popular memoir described how Queen Rambhai Bharni and a chance co-inheritor divided up Prajadhipok’s personal assets by drawing lots over the land deeds, then sharing out the movables in the grounds of Sukhothai Palace, with many items auctioned immediately to Chinese dealers or pilfered later because of neglect.19

  Education was a more secure support for the descendants of the old households. Chulalongkorn had encouraged his kin and other aristocrats to invest in education so their sons could contribute to progress. The culture of sending sons overseas for education, preferably to Europe, had taken strong root among the elite. In the post-1945 era, many descendants of the royal clan and great households had outstanding careers as professionals, educators, technocrats, scientists, and artists.

  A handful with royal or noble blood were drawn to the People’s Party from conviction and had political careers after 1932, especially Wan Waithayakon who became an envoy and virtual foreign minister. Even after many exiles returned at the end of the Second World War, very few gained political prominence. The Pramoj brothers, Seni and Kukrit, were the outstanding exceptions. The revival of the monarchy in the post-war era (see next chapter) focused very much on the immediate royal family. Personal titles that indicated royal family membership (prince, Mom Chao, Mom Ratchawong, Mom Luang) remained in use and carried social cachet. But the driving forces of society and politics were now the new generals, businesspeople, and technocrats.

  Conclusion

  The Second World War proved to be a boundary between eras. The memory of an absolute monarchy faded. The great households disintegrated. The old colonial powers retreated. The liberal nationalist ideas of the 1920s and 1930s were first pushed aside by the militaristic nationalism of the wartime era, then crushed by the anti-communist fervour in the aftermath.

  After the war, the USA recruited Thailand as ally and base for prosecuting the Cold War in Asia. The colonial concept of ‘progress’ and its local interpretation as the cultivation of a new national citizen was replaced by the concept of ‘development’ and its more precise focus on economic development through private enterprise. ‘Development’ released the potential of the urban society imported from southern China over the past century – and especially the large chunk that had arrived in the last surge of immigration in the inter-war period. Entrepreneur families grabbed opportunities created by the collapse of the old colonial economy in wartime, and were then boosted by the money flows, ideological commitment, bureaucratic infrastructure, and political links of the era of US patronage. From the late 1950s, the Thai economy grew at a sustained average of 7 per cent a year, one of the fastest rates in the developing world.

  This growth came from more intensive exploitation of natural resources and people. Another surge of the agrarian frontier completed the transformation of the natural landscape of forest into a zone of intensive agricultural exploitation. Peasant smallholders were bound much more firmly into the market, and subject more to governmental instruction and patronage. Increasing numbers were squeezed out of the villages to work in the factories and service establishments of the expanding neocolonial city.

  In the American era, Thailand became a subject of academic study. By avoiding colonial rule, it had not had such full attention earlier. American academics portrayed a society where passivity and paternalism were traditional. Sociologists discovered that Thai society was ‘loosely structured’, meaning it lacked institutions and traditions for collective action. Anthropologists explained that Theravada Buddhism concentrated people’s minds on merit in future lives, not the present day. Riggs argued that the ‘bureaucratic polity’, meaning the absence of democratic politics, resulted in large part because Chinese businesspeople had to depend on bureaucratic patronage. Historians reproduced Damrong’s story of a singular and dominant monarchical tradition stretching back through Ayutthaya to a Sukhothai ‘golden age’. There were also dissenters who examined the diverse cultures of outlying regions, the little traditions of resistance and revolt, and the rise of militarism. But the mainstream of American scholarship provided reassurance that the current military dictatorship, perched over a passive society and legitimized by monarchy, was a natural outcome of Thailand’s history, sociology, and culture, and was unlikely to be threatened.

  Yet the results of Thailand’s insertion into the ideological contest of the Cold War were complex. In Thailand, the USA underwrote dictatorship, but at home it exemplified ideals of liberalism and republicanism, which were experienced by more and more Thai visiting the USA as students or absorbing its cultural output in literature, song, and film. Opposition to neocolonialism, military dictatorship, and rapid capitalist exploitation also looked for inspiration both backwards into Thailand’s pre-American past and outwards to America’s Cold War rivals. The crucible for this conflicting mix of new ideas was a new generation of students.

  7 Ideologies, 1940s to 1970s

  The era of development incorporated more people more firmly into the national market economy. The era of ‘national security’ brought more people more firmly under the direction of the nation-state. Armed with new funds and technologies, the nation-state extended its power deeper into society, and farther into the villages and hills. Struggles to control and direct the nation-state now affected the lives and commanded the interest of larger numbers of the nation’s citizens.

  In the late 1950s, the USA brought together the military, businesspeople, and royalists – the three forces that had tussled since 1932 – in a powerful alliance. Together they resurrected and embellished the vision of a dictatorial strong state, demanding unity in order to achieve development and to fight off an external enemy – in this era, communism. But the alliance’s strength was undermined by the generals’ abuse of power and their obvious subordination to American policy. Opposition to the intensity of capitalist exploitation grew. Protests emerged against American domination. Communists launched a guerrilla war, which attracted the support of old intellectuals, young activists, and exploited peasants. Students became the channel through which radical, liberal, nationalist, Buddhist, and other discourses were focused against militarism, dictatorship, and unrestrained capitalism.

  Military polity

  Sarit Thanarat was typical of the military st
rongmen who flourished under US patronage all over the world during the Cold War (Figure 14). He came from an ordinary family in the provincial northeast, and had his education and career entirely within the army. He made himself prime minister, supreme commander, head of the army, director of the police, and minister of development. He espoused the military virtues of discipline, unity, and strong leadership – including summary executions of arsonists and other criminals.

  Figure 14: Sarit on tour in the hill villages of Mae Hong Son, c. 1962.

  His rise realigned the military against the constitutional project begun in 1932. He argued that constitutions had failed because they were a western import and unsuited to Thai conditions. He justified rule by soldiers on the precise grounds that soldiers had no need to court popular favour: ‘We work with honesty, scholastic competence, and just decision-making which is not under the influence of any private party and does not have to demonstrate personal heroism for purpose of future elections’.1 He projected himself as a pho khun, a paternal ruler in the legendary mode of the Sukhothai kings. He argued that this was ‘Thai-style democracy’, sanctioned by tradition. He suppressed all opposition on grounds of the threat of ‘communism’. When he died in 1963 (cirrhosis of the liver brought on by heavy drinking), his subordinates from the First Army took over as if by military promotion. Thanom Kittikhachon became prime minister and defence minister, with Praphat Charusathian as deputy prime minister and minister of interior.

  The generals focused on dividing up the spoils of the massive dollar inflows and the resulting increase in government budgets and business profits. They formed companies to supply goods and services to government agencies, particularly construction, insurance, and import. They participated in the exploitation of natural resources, particularly logging, which began with clearances for dams and roads, and climaxed in schemes to level whole forests to deny base areas to communist guerrillas. They shared out land opened up by new roads; when he died, Sarit’s estate included over 22 000 rai. They took cuts on arms purchases. They exploited the US presence: an air vice-marshal ran the travel agency handling the R&R programme for US servicemen, and an airforce general ran the transport company ferrying military cargo. They continued to patronize major business families in return for shares and directorships. Sarit sat on 22 company boards and Praphat on 44.

  The military officer elite became somewhat like a ruling caste, distinguished by its unique dress and rituals, vaunting its own purity, and claiming extensive privileges. Generals took over executive posts in state enterprises, and honorary posts in sports and social organizations. By their own machismo and corruption, they relegitimized old-fashioned male privileges and habits of exploiting political power for personal gain. Sarit appropriated women as kings once had, with a special interest in beauty queens. After his death, his assets were estimated at 2.8 billion baht. Virtually all had been accumulated while he was prime minister, and the amount represented around 30 per cent of the total capital budget for that period. The government eventually seized 604 million as illegally acquired. Over 50 consorts and their children emerged to claim part of the remainder. Journalists gleefully paraded their numbers, their photographs, and their life stories. The collapse of his successors’ regime in 1973 also resulted in the seizure of 600 million baht of illegally acquired assets. The behaviour of this ruling caste was echoed through society. Beauty contests proliferated. The sex industry boomed. Corruption increased. Poh Intharapalit and other authors wrote hugely popular serialized fiction about swaggering bandit chiefs and superheroic crimebusters.

  Military rule reproduced ‘strongmen’ at other levels of society. In the provincial areas, such figures had begun to emerge since the early 20th century with the growth of a market economy without strong administration or the rule of law. From the 1950s, these nakleng (tough guys) or pho liang (patrons) became more prominent. They made money from the expanding cash-crop trade, from logging, from government construction contracts, and from local monopolies, such as liquor distribution concessions. Particularly around the US bases, they made fortunes from the businesses that flourish on the margins of a war – drugs, gambling, girls, gun-running, and smuggling. The new wave of officials appointed into the provinces often found they had to work with these figures rather than against them. In return, the generals made the officials their local partners in logging, construction, and other ventures. Occasionally, Sarit and his successors vowed to eliminate these tall poppies, but truly only those unwilling to cooperate.

  Extending the nation-state

  Justified by ‘national security’, US aid funds and rising tax revenues underwrote a major expansion in the bureaucracy. The number of civilian officials increased. Many new ‘development’ departments appeared. Spurred by the US patrons’ need to understand the country, the government increased its investment in data-gathering of all kinds.

  All these new activities were built around the old colonial-style, centralized system of provincial governors and district officers under the Interior Ministry. New clusters of government officers dominated the landscape of the provincial towns. Their size and distinctive, standardized style signified both the centralized unity of the government and its difference from local culture. The uniforms of local officials emphasized the same features. Many new administrative districts were created, pushing the government deeper into the countryside. Some provincial areas, particularly on the expanding uplands agrarian frontier, had previously been run by the local mafia rather than the government. In 1959, Sarit established control over Chonburi by a virtual military invasion, arresting hundreds of gunmen and local bosses.

  The government loomed much larger in the life of ordinary citizens, especially beyond the provincial centres where the government had previously been virtually non-existent. The government supplied more public goods, including health services, seeds and fertilizer, birth control devices, irrigation, household water supplies, and all-weather roads. It imposed more restrictions on citizens, such as rights of access to forests and other natural resources. The personal ID card and house registration document became increasingly important as the basic documents of citizenship required for any transaction with officialdom.

  The increased funding from the USA made possible some of the projects of national discipline that had been conceived, but never fully realized, during the Chulalongkorn reforms. Primary schooling was now pushed out beyond the district towns into the villages and hills. New school buildings, again in a distinctive and standardized style, stood out among village houses as much as the government complexes in the towns. To enter these special places, schoolchildren donned a uniform, again a mark of difference and standardization. Primary education focused first and foremost on the Thai language, which for most children outside the central region was different from the language spoken at home. Other primary subjects were history and social studies, which meant indoctrination in the national ideology of nation, religion, and king. School texts encouraged children to ‘buy Thai goods; love Thailand and love to be a Thai; live a Thai life, speak Thai, and esteem Thai culture’.2

  Buddhism became more closely associated with this extension of the scope and reach of the government. Renewed efforts were made to replace wat texts written in local scripts and embodying local traditions with documents issued from the centre. Particularly in the northeast, which was becoming identified as most susceptible to communism because of its poverty and its proximity to Indochina, renewed efforts were made to recruit villagers into the monkhood. In 1964, the government’s religious affairs department, headed by an army colonel, launched the thammathut (ambassadors of thamma) programme to send monks to tour the remote northeast. They were instructed not only to preach Buddhism, but also to organize villagers in development projects, explain about laws, and discourage communism. Locally famous monks were absorbed into the Thammayut sect.

  These programmes went much further in trying to realize the Chulalongkorn-era ambition to create the ‘unity’ of a ‘
Thai nation’. In particular, they tried to impose ‘unity’ on parts of Thailand where linguistic, religious, and cultural traditions differed from the imagined national standard. These differences had been present ever since diverse areas were collected within the first national boundaries, but they became more apparent as the government intruded more deeply. Resistance to the spread of government was often expressed in terms of the defence of local identity and practice. The government perceived such resistance as a special threat to ‘national security’ because these remote communities had historical and cultural links that flowed across the borders drawn at the turn of the 20th century, and often into areas already engaged in communist revolt. Three regions were critical.

  The northeast or Isan contained a third of Thailand’s population. Most spoke a dialect of Lao, while many along the southern border spoke Khmer or Kui. Poor soil, a harsh climate, and the nature of its agrarian colonization meant the region had far more people living in poverty than other areas. Since 1932, political leaders of the region had opposed the increasing centralization of power in Bangkok, and petitioned for resources to counter the region’s disadvantages. In the late 1940s, some northeastern leaders hoped that national borders would be redrawn as part of the process of decolonization, uniting Isan with other Lao-speaking areas. Northeastern leaders were regularly jailed or killed in the bouts of repression that followed each advance of military power. In 1959, Sila Wongsin, a religious adept and traditional healer, set up an independent village ‘realm’ in Khorat. Troops attacked the village and Sila was publicly executed. Two former MPs formed a Northeastern Party committed to socialism and demanded more development funds for the region. Sarit accused the leaders of advocating communism and separatism. Khrong Chandawong, a peasant turned teacher who gained a large following for his ideas on socialism and self-reliance, was jailed for five years and then publicly executed in his home province of Sakon Nakhon (Figure 15).