Thailand

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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 neighbours.

The king was succeeded by his younger brother Phumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), who was a schoolboy in Europe. In August Pridi was forced to resign amid suspicion that he had been involved in the killing. Without his leadership, the civilian government floundered, and in November 1947 the army, its confidence restored after the debacle of 1945, seized power. In April 1948 the army brought Phibun back from exile and made him Prime Minister.

The new capital of Bangkok was located on the island of Rattanakosin, protected from attack by the river to the west and by a series of canals to the north, east and south. Siam thus acquired both its current dynasty and its current capital

Ayutthaya was friendly towards foreign traders, including the Chinese, Indians, Japanese and Persians, and later the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British and French, permitting them to set up villages outside the city walls. The court of King Narai (1656-1688) had strong links with that of King Louis XIV of France, whose ambassadors compared the city in size and wealth to Paris.

The European colonial powers threatened in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but Thailand survived as the only south-east Asian state to avoid colonial rule. After the end of the absolute Thai monarchy in 1932, Thailand endured sixty years of almost permanent military rule before the establishment of a democratic system

The regimes of Sarit and Thanom were strongly supported by the U.S. Thailand had formally become a U.S. ally in 1954 with the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). While the war in Indochina was being fought between the Vietnamese and the French, Thailand (disliking both equally) stayed aloof, but once it became a war between the U.S. and the Vietnamese Communists, Thailand committed itself strongly to the U.S. side, concluding a secret agreement with the U.S. in 1961, sending troops to Vietnam and Laos and allowing the U.S. to open airbases in the east of the country to conduct its bombing war against North Vietnam. The Vietnamese retaliated by supporting the Communist Party of Thailand's insurgency in the north and northeast.

Outside this system to some extent were the Buddhist monkhood, or sangha, which all classes of Siamese men could join, and the Chinese. Buddhist monasteries (wats) became the centres of Siamese education and culture, while during this period the Chinese first began to settle in Siam, and soon began to establish control over the country's economic life: another long-standing social problem.

The decline of the kingdom started in the early 16th century, and became worse after the death of King Phraya Kaeo in 1526. There was fighting over who should succeed him. Some of the kings were assassinated; others had to abdicate. This political instability invited an invasion from the neighboring Burmese kingdom, and in 1558 Lanna had to surrender and became a vassal of Burma. When the dynasty of Mengrai became extinct in 1578, the Burmese sent their own princes to serve as rulers of Lanna.

In the end it was the students that played the decisive role in the fall of the junta. Student demonstrations had started in 1968 and grew in size and numbers in the early 1970s despite the continued ban on politcal meetings. In June 1973, nine Ramkhamhaeng University students were expelled for publishing an article in a student newspaper that was critical of the government. Shortly after, thousands of students held a protest at the Democracy Student demanding the reenrollment of the nine students. The government ordered the universities shut, but shortly after backed down and allowed the students to be reenrolled.

This was the last major Burmese invasion of Siam, although as late as 1802 Burmese forces had to be driven out of Lanna. 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 Empire dominating an area considerably larger than modern Thailand.

Pridi in turn was driven into exile, eventually settling in Beijing as a guest of the People's Republic of China.

As devaraja (Sanskrit for "divine king"), the king ultimately came to be recognized as the earthly incarnation of Shiva and became the object of a politico-religious cult officiated over by a corps of royal Brahmans who were part of the Buddhist court retinue. In the Buddhist context, the devaraja was a bodhisattva (an enlightened being who, out of compassion, foregoes nirvana in order to aid others).

In March 1946 Pridi became Siam's first democratically elected Prime Minister. In 1947 he agreed to hand back the French territory occupied in 1940 as the price for admission to the United Nations, the dropping of all wartime claims against Siam and a substantial package of American aid.

In 1833, the United States began diplomatic exchanges with Siam, as Thailand was called until 1939 (and again between 1945 and 1949). However, it was during the later reigns of King Mongkut (Rama IV, 1851-1868), and his son King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, 1868-1910), that Thailand established firm rapprochement with Western powers.

Mobile Call To Thailand and Thailand online resources.