History-5

SIAMESE & THAI HISTORY & CULTURE Part 5
Reactionary forces: In December 1938, Luang Phibunsongkhram became Prime Minister of Thailand. He was an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, and his period of rule, which lasted until 1944, was marked by authoritarianism and strident nationalism. Within a month of taking office, he arrested 40 of his real or
imagined opponents, among them members of the royal family and nobility, deputies of the National Assembly and rival army officers, on charges of conspiring against the government. Of these 18 were executed after a series of unashamedly political trials. In the first year of his government, Phibun also imposed on the Chinese a series of discriminatory laws and a greatly increased burden of taxation. In 1939, the name of Siam was changed to Thailand on the grounds that Siam was a foreign name forced upon the country by foreigners, whereas, the name Thailand signified that the country belonged to the Thais rather than to the economically dominant Chinese.
After the fall of France in 1940, Phibun seized the opportunity of avenging the humiliating defeat that the Thais had received at the hands of the French in 1893 and invaded Laos and Cambodia. With Japanese mediation, he imposed a settlement by which substantial areas of Lao and Cambodian territory, including the Cambodian province of Siem Reap, which contains Angkor and which he renamed Phibunsongkhram, were ceded to Thailand. In December 1941, at the same time as they attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Thailand at several points along the east coast and in the peninsula. The Thais at first resisted, but soon capitulated. Meanwhile, the British sent a force to Songkhla to attempt to stop the Japanese. but were held up by Thai border police; the Japanese continued their march south and captured Singapore. In January 1942, the Thai government concluded a military alliance with Japan and declared war on Britain and the United States. However, the Thai minister in Washington, Seni Pramoj, a cousin of the king, refused to deliver the declaration of war to the US government and in collaboration with the Americans set up a resistance movement called Seri Thai (Free Thai), while Pridi Phanomyong, who had been appointed regent for the absent king, also began secretly to organize resistance in Thailand. At the end of the war Pridi repudiated the Japanese alliance, and in January 1946 an election was held, which resulted in the election of Pridi and the Seri Thai. A new constitution was drafted, and at the end of 1957 King Ananda returned to Thailand from Switzerland. Within six months of his return, the young king was found dead in the Grand Palace shot through the head with a pistol. Three palace servants were tried and executed, but the king's death has never been explained. Pridi was held responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the tragedy, resigned and went abroad, and the present king, Ananda's brother Bhumibol Adulyadej came to the throne as Rama IX.
	JUBILEE CELEBRATION FIT FOR A KING Throughout 1996, the entire nation of Thailand is celebrated one of its most notable events in its modern history - the Golden Jubilee of His majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej's ascension to the throne as ninth ruler of the Chakri Dynasty, making him the longest reigning monarch this century. The man who has earned such remarkable devotion seemed far from the throne at the time of his birth on December the 5th 1927 in Cambridge Massachusetts, where his father, Prince Mahidol was studying medicine at Harvard University.
King Prajadhipok (Rama VII) stilled ruled and any children he might have would be the first in succession. The future King Bhumipol also had an older brother, Prince Ananda Mahidol. Thus, he appeared likely to have a more or less ordinary life, no doubt influenced by his father's strong determination to use his education and social position to improve public welfare, but in relative obscurity. As fate would have it, Prince Mahidol died in 1929, and King Prajadhipok, who had no heirs abdicated in 1935, three years after a coup de'etat ended Thailand's absolute monarchy. For the first eleven years of his reign, King Ananda Mahidol remained mostly in Switzerland with his mother, sister and younger brother, pursuing his studies while effectively cut off from his homeland by W.W.II. In June 1946, he died in the Grand Palace during a visit, and Prince Bhumipol, then 19 years old, became the ninth ruler of the Chakri Dynasty. He was officially crowned in June 1950, a week after his marriage to the young Mom Rajawongse Sirikit Kitiyakara, daughter of the Thai ambassador to France. Despite the time honored rituals that attended his coronation, the monarchy had scarcely dimmed as an institution even after the 1932 change to constitutional government. Perhaps the most important decision he made was to bring the monarchy to his people, the process began with a 22 day pioneering trip that he and his queen took by traveling through northeastern Thailand, the nations poorest region in 1955. The royal couple traveled to remote villages, talking with the local people and observing at first hand the problems of daily life. In 1956 the king entered the monkshood for two weeks as most Thai men are expected to do at some point in their lives. Today the King and Queen and other members of the royal family spend most of the year outside the capitol, using various royal residences in every major region as bases. The King has visited every province of Thailand, not just the larger towns but to isolated hamlets as well. In the process, he has become the best informed ruler In Thai history and a recognizable human figure to millions of his subjects. Besides bringing obvious benefits to the country, such activities have had other results, less tangible perhaps but no less important. The improvements that were made to his country played a leading role in confounding proponents of the "domino theory', so that Thailand remained independent after the collapse of Indochina in 1975. The concept of a caring, paternalistic monarch goes back in Thai history to the first capitol of Sukhothai. Modern as it is in many respects, the Thai monarchy is also steeped in tradition, expressed in a variety of ceremonies reflecting the country's ancient past. In May there is the annual sloughing ceremony, an ancient Brahmin ritual dating back to the Ayutthaya period and marks the official beginning of the rice planting season. Three times a year, at the beginning of each season, the king presides over the changing of the robes of the sacred Emerald Buddha, spiritual guardian of the Kingdom; a golden, diamond studded tunic for the hot season; a gilded robe flecked with blue stones for the rainy months; and one of emerald coated solid gold, covering the image from head to toe, for the cool season.

As head of the armed forces, he is the focus of attention each December at the Trooping of the Colors held at the Royal Plaza near the statue of his grandfather, King Chuckalongkorn, during which the royal guards pledge allegiance to him.

Perhaps the grandest of the all is the Royal Barge Procession in which scores of carved vessels each manned by a team of chanting oarsman in ancient costumes parade along the Chao Phraya river.
	Dating back to the Ayutthaya period, this is performed only on exceptional occasions like the celebration of the Chakri Dynasty's Bi-centennial in 1982 and the king's 60th birthday in 1989. Another was be held in 1996 to make the Golden Jubilee, when a new barge in more than 75 years will join the fleet. Rather more somber but less impressive
are the royal cremations, traditionally held at Sanam Luang. The most recent was that of His majesty's mother, officially known as her Royal Highness the Princess Mother whose death last July prompted a seven month period of national mourning.
For this event a gilded Royal Crematorium of Merumas, was constructed at Sanam Luang, representing the heavenly abode of the gods Vishnu and Indra. The princess Mother's remains, in a golden urn, were solemnly brought from the grand Palace in an ornate chariot created during the reign of the first Chakri kings some 200 years ago. Over 50 years of his eventful reign, King Bhumipol Adulyadej has given it a new vitality at once traditional and creatively modern that reflects the hopes and aspirations of his people.