by Peter Church
These proposed changes are an example of how the Singapore government continues to worry about forging a national identity, especially with the young and Millennials whose social media savviness has drastically changed the political scene. The challenge for the Singapore government is in striking a fine balance to meet the aspirations and popular calls for political reform by its youth and the reality that it has a growing ageing population. In the face of security threats, economic challenges, and global changes, the Singapore government is always concerned about the unity of its people, particularly bearing in mind its ethnic makeup. The extent to which Singapore meets these challenges in the next ten years will be closely watched by those who have witnessed the city‐state emerge from the crisis of 1965 to become a highly regarded regional economic powerhouse in just five decades.
10
Thailand
Thailand stands at the heart of mainland South‐East Asia, yet its modern history differs strikingly from the turbulent history of the rest of the region. With the exception of the three southernmost provinces, Thailand's population of 68 million is relatively homogeneous; no major regional, ethnic, linguistic, or religious rifts have threatened national coherence. Thailand does have minorities, but it is well on the way to assimilating its most significant minority, the Chinese. Uniquely in South‐East Asia, Thailand avoided the disruptions of Western colonial rule and, therefore, the upheavals of decolonisation. World War II produced no serious conflict on Thai soil. After the war, and unlike in neighbouring Indochina, communism never attracted wide support in Thailand. While revolution was tearing Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia apart, and military‐imposed “Burmese socialism” was stifling Burma, the country embarked upon a course of capitalist development which, in spite of the 1997 Asian economic crisis which started in Thailand, made it one of South‐East Asia's most resilient economies.
Historically, however, the Thais have had to face serious problems. In the 18th century, Thai society had to rebuild itself after the trauma of almost‐total destruction by Burmese armies of the four‐centuries‐old Thai kingdom of Ayudhya. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western pressures forced major, though necessarily delicate, adjustments to traditional Thai government, economy, and social organisation. In World War II, Thailand had to adjust to Japanese military pressures and the country suffered acute economic disruption. Afterwards, Thailand became a frontline state in the Cold War, its fortunes tied closely to US interests.
Until 1932 Thailand was an absolute monarchy. Subsequently, it experienced a succession of unrepresentative, military‐dominated governments. A violent collision between the military and prodemocracy demonstrators on the streets of Bangkok in 1992 seemingly ushered in an era of representative democracy, but as military coups have demonstrated, with the most recent taking place in 2014, this is not yet assured. Resolution of conflict about the form of Thai government is urgently needed, for the country is again facing major problems. The country's economic successes have been impressive, but they have forced headlong change on Thai society. Pressing problems include inadequate infrastructure, an overburdened metropolis in Bangkok, serious pollution and ecological degradation, deplorable conditions for many workers, and widening gaps between urban and rural conditions and between rich and poor.
Thais sum up their social coherence in the nationalist prescript, “Nation, Religion (Buddhism), and Monarchy.” They are proud of the history from which these nationalist symbols have emerged. This history is worth studying for clues about the ability of the Thais to handle their present difficulties.
EARLY HISTORY
In the 13th century, several small kingdoms emerged across the regions known today as northeast Burma, central and northern Thailand, and Laos. These were probably the first attempts at state‐building by Tai communities. The Tais were the principal ancestors not only of today's Thais but also of the Lao peoples, the Shans of Burma, a range of upland communities in mainland South‐East Asia such as the Black, Red, and White Tais of Laos and northern Vietnam, and the Lü of Yunnan, China.
It used to be thought that before the 13th century, Tais had dominated a kingdom called Nanchao in Yunnan, but had been dispersed southwards by a Mongol attack in 1253. Scholars no longer hold this theory. Instead, the evidence suggests long, slow Tai migration over many centuries, beginning in western China, or even further north, and spreading southwards from the 7th century.
The Tais were wet‐rice farmers clustered in muang—one or more villages under a chieftain. Over time some muang developed interrelationships cemented by trading networks, intermarriage, security needs, and talented military leaders. But the 13th century leap from linked muang to kingdoms was propelled by Tai adaptations of beliefs, ideas, and techniques derived from the states and empires they were encountering in their southward movement. The Tais probably adopted Theravada Buddhism from Mon states in what is now central Thailand and from the Burmese kingdom of Pagan. This religion accommodated itself to Tai folk traditions and animist beliefs, but it was also an institutionalised religion with a universalist worldview, and a transmitter of Mon, Burmese, and Sinhalese civilisation.
The principal blueprint for Tai state‐builders was, however, Angkor, the great Cambodian kingdom which at its height from the 11th to 13th centuries dominated an empire stretching from the Mekong Delta to the northern Malay peninsula and as far north as the Vientiane plain. From Angkor came ideas adapted originally from Indian Brahmanical thought, particularly concepts of society as divinely ordained hierarchy and of devaraj—the ruler as immensely potent incarnation of a Hindu deity and/or Buddhist bodhisattva. Angkor also provided lessons in administering large, scattered populations and in a range of arts and technologies.
Tai attacks upon Angkor's imperial outposts, and eventually upon Angkor itself in the 14th and 15th centuries, would lead to a direct transfer of human and material resources. Meanwhile, in the 13th century the most celebrated of early Tai states was the kingdom of Sukhothai. Modern Thais regard Sukhothai as the birthplace of the Thai nation, particularly under Ramkhamhaeng (reigned c.1279–98), whose rule is celebrated by the Sukhothai stone—an inscribed obelisk reputedly discovered in 1833 by the Thai prince, Mongkut, then a monk and scholar and later Thailand's first modernising monarch. The inscription portrays Sukhothai as an idyllic place, governed by a just, fatherly, and devoutly Buddhist monarch. Possibly this is Ramkhamhaeng's self‐justifying counterblast to the arrogance and avariciousness of imperial Angkor. In recent years, the stone's authenticity has been questioned, some sceptics arguing that Mongkut himself devised the inscription to give his people an appealing early history. Scholarly consensus continues to view the inscription as genuine, however.
THE KINGDOM OF AYUDHYA, 1351–1767
After Ramkhamhaeng's death Sukhothai dwindled in significance. In 1351, the establishment further south of the kingdom of Ayudhya—or Siam, as it came to be known—would provide a more lasting basis for Thai statehood. As Siam's capital, Ayudhya would survive for over four centuries, until 1767. It was founded by U Thong, who is thought to have been a Chinese merchant who acquired wealth and prestige from his trading connections with the Chinese imperial court. He was related by marriage to a prominent Thai family, and he emphasised his devotion to the Thai form of Buddhism. In him may be seen an early example of a recurring theme in Thai history—the readiness of Thai society to absorb talented Chinese and other foreigners. The people over whom U Thong claimed kingship in 1351 were perhaps predominant Tai, but “Thai‐ness” was also being constructed out of Mon, Khmer, Chinese, and other peoples.
Ayudhya prospered, partly because of its strategic position. It stood only 70 kilometres up the broad Chaophraya river from the sea, enabling it to become one of South‐East Asia's great trading ports. Simultaneously, it commanded the vast, fertile Chaophraya plain, providing rice for a growing population and for export. The city's power was also based on its rulers' keen attention to government and social control. From the beginning,
they insisted that male subjects pay many months of service each year to the state, as soldiers or labourers. King Trailok, who reigned from 1448 to 1488, elaborated to an extraordinary degree the place and duties of subjects in a rigidly hierarchical society. Codifying the structure of government and the civil law, Trailok developed the system of sakdina, which carefully scaled the positions of everyone in the kingdom. The pyramid social structure which resulted was intended to enforce social discipline and enable the easy mobilisation of manpower. The structure was legitimated by a parallel hierarchical organisation of the sangha (Buddhist monks) under royal patronage and oversight.
Elements of the sakdina conception of society persist in Thai thinking, and indeed, are embedded in the Thai language. However, automatic social obedience was probably never absolute in Ayudhya. The elaborate delineation of social standing bred a self‐conscious concern for dignity in even the humble individual, resulting in at least passive resistance to unjust superiors. Other question marks against the cohesion of Ayudhyan society concern the regional dispersal of administrative and military power, and the difficulties surrounding monarchical succession. Ayudhyan history would be marked by rivalries between powerful families, each with bases in the provinces, and by clashes over a vacant throne.
Even so, Ayudhya's social structures proved remarkably strong and enduring. Manpower conscription enabled military‐minded kings to defeat Angkor decisively, wage war on other regional rivals, and claim an empire sometimes encompassing much of modern Laos, the Tai kingdom of Lan Na, based at Chiang Mai, and the states of the Malay peninsula. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Cambodia remained a significant antagonist, but Ayudhya's main challenges would come from the Burmese. Only the strong institutions of Ayudhyan society would enable it to survive the blows dealt it by the Burmese.
In 1568, the Burmese king Bayinnaung laid siege to Ayudhya, having extended his military power over the north as far as Laos. The city fell in 1569 and was destroyed. Yet over the next decades, Narasuan, heir to the throne, managed to reconstitute the kingdom and, as king, decisively repulsed a renewed Burmese attack in 1593. In succeeding years he clawed back much of Ayudhya's tributary empire, and by the early 17th century, Ayudhya was again a major power.
European reports provide a striking picture of 17th‐century Ayudhya as a famed and wealthy trade centre. By then, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English traders jostled there with Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Indian, Malay, and other Asian traders. Ayudhya's openness to trade—and to the information and ideas that traders brought—may have been one of the sources of its strength. In 1688, however, the nobility split over the degree of foreign influence at court, particularly that of an extraordinary Greek adventurer, Constantine Phaulkon, who had become a powerful minister, and of the French, including French Jesuit missionaries. On the death of King Narai, a relatively minor official, Phetracha, organised a coup, excluded the French, and had Phaulkon executed. Phetracha assumed the throne himself. Agitation over these events and the legitimacy of Phetracha's subsequent dynasty would dog Ayudhya for the next 80 years.
It was possibly ruling‐class divisiveness which accounted for Ayudhya's poor response to its greatest challenge—another, and massive, Burmese siege in 1766. In April 1767, the city fell to an enemy set on destroying Thai state power forever. Ayudhya's ruling class was decimated. Tens of thousands of people and all portable wealth were carried off. The city was burned and vast tracts of territory were left as scorched earth by the Burmese forces.
THE RISE OF THE BANGKOK EMPIRE
This time of crisis saw two remarkable Thai military leaders emerge: Taksin and his leading general, Chaophraya Chakri. Taksin had a Thai mother and Chinese father. He had been raised at court and in 1767 was a provincial governor. In the leadership crisis following the destruction of the old regime Taksin rallied an army, imposed his authority on a distracted people, declared himself king, and founded a new capital at Thonburi. During the 1770s, he and his armies rebuilt an empire which included Chiang Mai in the north. In 1778, armies under Chaophraya Chakri subdued Luang Prabang and captured Vientiane. From the latter city they brought back the Emerald Buddha, subsequently Thailand's most sacred and, it is believed, most potent Buddha‐image.
In his later years, Taksin undermined respect for his imposing achievements with viciously tyrannical behaviour. He may have succumbed to religious dementia, for he alienated the sangha. In 1782, a tax revolt evolved into a coup, and Taksin was deposed and executed. The coup leaders offered Chaophraya Chakri the throne, thus inaugurating the dynasty of Thai monarchs which continues to the present.
Rama I (reigned 1782–1809) had been born of a Thai father—a relatively minor Ayudhyan official, though of aristocratic lineage—and a Chinese mother. He would prove to have both military skills and great administrative and intellectual abilities. Militarily, his reign would see the triumphant, and final, repulsion of the Burmese in 1785 and 1786, and the consolidation of a Thai empire larger than any Ayudhya had controlled. Effectively, it covered all of mainland South‐East Asia excluding Burmese and Vietnamese territory, and also included the northern Malay states. Local dignitaries ruled at the empire's perimeters—in Cambodia, Laos, and the Malay states—but they did so at the Thai king's behest.
At home, Rama I supervised the construction of his new capital, Bangkok, founded in 1782, which soon became a major cosmopolitan port. From Bangkok the king rebuilt administrative structures reminiscent of Ayudhya's but arguably even stronger. Labour control now involved mass registrations and the tattooing of subjects to indicate place of residence and administrative superior. Rama I gathered about him talented officials, jurists, scholars, and artists. With them he revitalised Thai culture. Their achievements included the reconstruction and reform of the sangha hierarchy, the production of a new, definitive text of the Buddhist scriptures, the complete revision of the kingdom's laws, and the translation of numerous literary and historical works, including the Indian epic Ramayana (in translation, Ramakian). The king and his followers self‐consciously renovated, rather than merely restored, old institutions. The Bangkok court thus moved into the 19th century demonstrating an intellectual and cultural acuity that would be of incalculable value in the years ahead.
BANGKOK AND THE WEST
Unlike island South‐East Asia, where the Dutch had been extending their empire since the 17th century, mainland South‐East Asia did not encounter intense Western pressures until the 19th century. Even Rama I's successors, Rama II (reigned 1809–24) and Rama III (reigned 1824–51), were largely able to ignore or turn aside the problems presented by the increasing Western presence in the region. Rama III did reach vague agreement with a British emissary in 1825 (at a time when the British were conquering south‐east Burma) about reducing and standardising the taxes on trade. He was unwilling, however, to grapple with the major legal and administrative changes which Western businessmen, perplexed by Thai customs and Asian ways in general, were calling for.
In key respects, therefore, Bangkok remained “traditional” in the first half of the 19th century. This was most obvious in its vigorous prosecution of its authority over its empire. By military intervention in the Malay peninsula, it risked tensions with the British, who from the 1820s were firmly ensconced in the Straits Settlements and lower Burma. In the 1830s and 1840s, Bangkok saw Vietnam as its chief foreign threat rather than any Western power. Between 1841 and 1845, it fought an exhausting struggle with the Vietnamese over control of Cambodia, a struggle that ended in a standoff.
Virtually at the centre of Bangkok society, however, a group of royal and noble young men were studying the West keenly, led by the example of Prince Mongkut, brother of Rama III. Then a monk, Mongkut was devoting much of his energies to the ongoing reform of Thai Buddhism. He founded the Thammayutika sect, whose goal was intellectually rigorous religious scholarship that would clear away obscurantist accretions to original Buddhist teachings. Mongkut and his circle were also studying Western l
anguages, Western science and mathematics, and such matters as Western military organisation and technology. When Mongkut succeeded to the throne, he was therefore in a position to reorient Bangkok positively toward the West.
King Mongkut (also known as Rama IV, 1851–68) signed the Bowring Treaty with Britain in 1855. Under this treaty, import and export duties were sharply reduced and fixed, ruling‐class trading and commodity monopolies were abolished, and British subjects were granted extraterritorial legal rights. In subsequent years, Mongkut signed similar treaties with many other Western powers. The signing away of legal power over foreign subjects in the kingdom was a bitter blow and these rights would not be fully recovered until the 1930s. More crucially, the other provisions of the treaties deprived the throne and many powerful subjects of much income. The shortfall would be reversed in time by the expansion of trade and by heavy taxes on opium, alcohol, and gambling, but it is testimony to Mongkut's domestic diplomatic skills, and to the cohesion of his court, that the major fiscal rearrangements passed without revolt.
Mongkut avoided other fundamental reforms. The “modernisation” of the kingdom would really only begin with his son Chulalongkorn (Rama V, 1868–1910). Even then, it would be cautiously undertaken and limited in scope. Chulalongkorn learned caution early in his reign. In 1873, at the age of 21, he announced some financial and legal reform measures which alarmed conservatives and provoked an attempted coup in 1874. The young king survived, but had to rein in his reforming enthusiasm. A strategy for the gradual abolition of slavery, also announced in 1873, continued, however. Slavery (although not always the bonds of patronage and obligation in Thai society which slavery had formalised) disappeared over the next decades. Later, Chulalongkorn was also able to phase out corvée (forced labour for the state), replacing it with a capitation tax.
