Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ter access to trade. Consolidating his power, King Taksin, the son of a Chinese father and
Thai mother, strongly promoted trade with China.
The king was deposed in 1782 by the military. One of the coup organisers, Chao
Phraya Chakri, assumed the throne as Phraphutthayotfa Chulalok (r 1782-1809;
posthumously known as Rama I) and established the Chakri dynasty, which still rules
today. The new monarch moved the capital across the Chao Phraya River to modern-day
Bangkok.
The first century of Bangkok rule focused on rebuilding what had been lost when Ay-
uthaya was sacked. Surviving knowledge and practices were preserved or incorporated
into new laws, manuals of government practice, religious and historical texts, and literat-
ure. At the same time, the new rulers transformed their defence activities into expansion
by means of war, extending their influence in every direction. Destroying the capital cit-
ies of both Laos and Cambodia, Siam contained Burmese aggression and made a vassal
of Chiang Mai. Defeated populations were resettled and played an important role in in-
creasing the rice production of Siam, much of which was exported to China.
Unlike the Ayuthaya rulers, who identified with the Hindu god Vishnu, the Chakri
kings positioned themselves as defenders of Buddhism. They undertook compilations and
Thai translations of essential Buddhist texts and constructed many royal temples.
In the meantime, a new social order and market economy was taking shape in the
mid-19th century. Siam turned to the West for modern scientific and technological ideas
and reforms in education, infrastructure and legal systems. One of the great modernisers,
King Mongkut (Rama IV) never expected to be king. Before his ascension he had spent
27 years in a monastery, founding the Thammayut sect based on the strict disciplines of
the Mon monks he had followed. During his monastic career, he became proficient in
Pali, Sanskrit, Latin and English and studied Western sciences.
During Mongkut's reign, Siam concluded treaties with Western powers that integrated
the kingdom into the world market system, ceded royal monopolies and granted extrater-
ritorial rights to British subjects.
Mongkut's son, King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) was to take much greater steps in re-
placing the old political order with the model of the nation-state. He abolished slavery
and the corvée system (state labour), which had lingered on ineffectively since the Ay-
uthaya period. Chulalongkorn's reign oversaw the creation of a salaried bureaucracy, a
police force and a standing army. His reforms brought uniformity to the legal code, law
courts and revenue offices. Siam's agricultural output was improved by advances in irrig-
