[ { "id": 205783, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 89, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n83\n\nopened the Treaty Ports and a second British conflict with China had proved the superiority of Western arms, the Chinese court refused to reform. The Japanese were quicker to read the signs. Only Siam, unlike her weak neighbours in the tropical south, was able to adapt herself to the new world without war or its threat and without loss of sovereignty.\n\nWhy was this? Was it because Britain and France had agreed to the Thai kingdom being a buffer between their Indian and Indo-Chinese empires? Or was it that the King of Siam who received Sir John Bowring had more vision than most of his Asian contemporaries and was succeeded by an equally gifted son? Whatever the reasons, the Treaty of 1855 was a major factor in determining the future of the Thai kingdom. It provided for the opening of diplomatic relations with Britain and, as a natural consequence, with other western nations. It introduced extra-territorial rights to British subjects living in Siam and allowed them to own or rent property. In commerce the Treaty abolished the strangling system of monopolies owned by the King and 'farmed' to Chinese merchants - replacing it by a free market with low duties on imports and exports. The year after the conclusion of the British treaty the Americans and the French secured similar agreements and these in turn were hastily followed by treaties with various European nations. These treaties marked a turning-point in the modern history of Siam.\n\nIn the century and a half which followed Louis XIV's mission to Ayuthia in 1689 Siam had little or no contact with the West. In the mid-eighteenth century her main preoccupation was the constant war with the Burmese who finally sacked their ancient and splendid capital in 1767. By the time the new house of Chakri had established the capital at Bangkok in 1782 the British East India Company had consolidated its dominion over India. The tea trade with China was growing rapidly and ports of call on the eastern run were obvious advantages. Francis Light obtained Penang island for the Company from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786 for the annual payment of $6,000 and the vague understanding of British protection. Kedah was an acknowledged feudatory of Siam, but at that time King Rama I was far too busy with the building of Bangkok to concern himself with the incident and the British were not then interested in Siam. Raffles had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205784, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "84 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nlost Java and gained Singapore for a reluctant Company, and Malacca followed. Siam was eventually drawn into the picture not for her trade or her position on the way to China \n\na little \n\noff the route -- but, in fact, because of Kedah and the other northern Malay States. \n\nBy 1818 the Chakri dynasty had gained sufficient strength to instigate her vassal Kedah to attack the neighbouring Malay State of Perak. The Siamese army then entered Kedah itself and the Sultan fled to Penang. British merchants there were indignant and called on the Company to intervene, but the Supreme Council in Calcutta considered that \"a war with Siam would be an evil of very serious magnitude\". Their policy was one of conciliation. \"All extension of our territorial possessions and political relations on the side of the Indo-Chinese nations\" the Company declared, \"... is earnestly to be deprecated and declined as far as the course of events and the force of circumstances permit\". \n\nAs well as the Malay States there was the Burma question. The restive Burmese had extended their power to Arakan, thus making them neighbours of the British in India. By the eighteen-twenties Britain became involved in war with Burma in the southern part of the country. With the extension of the East India Company's interests to Siam's western and southern borders it became desirable that relations between the Company and Bangkok should be regulated on a peaceful basis. At the same time trading relations should be improved. The bad conditions of trade were described by Raffles as \"slavish and humiliating” for English merchants. He gave this account of the trade: \n\n“On arrival in port the most valuable part of the cargo is immediately presented to the King who takes as much as he pleases; the remaining part is chiefly consumed in presents to the courtiers and other great men, while the refuse of the cargo is then permitted to be exposed to sale. The part which is consumed in presents to the great men is entire loss; for that which the King receives he generally returns a present which is seldom adequate to the value of the goods which he has received; but by dint of begging and repeated solicitation this is sometimes increased a little.\" \n\nTo remedy the situation John Crawford was sent to Bangkok by the Governor General of India in 1822. \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205789, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n89\n\nBallestier did not meet the King and so never presented the President's letter. He was treated with little respect and left Bangkok in less than a month without a treaty or hope of one. Ballestier reported angrily to Washington that the only way to improve trade with Siam was by the threat or use of force. After he left, fear spread through the city that force might be used. Some teachers who had been instructing American missionaries in the Thai language thought it judicious to leave their employment, but all fear was soon to be removed. The old King died in 1851, and Prince Mongkut ascended the throne.\n\nIt was the beginning of a new era. From a long period of isolation, from suspicion and fear of Western merchants and sailors, Siam, in the fourth reign of the Chakri dynasty, turned to co-operation, free trade, and acceptance of the new civilisation. The change came quickly, almost as soon as the cremation ceremonies of Rama III were completed a year after his death. Emerging from a Buddhist monastery at the age of forty-seven, His Majesty Somdet Pra Paramenda Maha Mongkut, King Rama IV, proceeded to reform his kingdom and open new relations with the West.\n\nIn 1824, when he was twenty, Prince Mongkut had entered the order of monkhood. It was a custom, still sustained today, for all young men to enter the order for three or four months. That might have been the length of Mongkut's service as a monk, but just then, within two weeks of his entering the monastery, his father, King Rama II, died, and his half-brother was chosen for the throne. Mongkut decided to remain a Buddhist monk indefinitely. Out of disappointment? This may have been so, for his claim to the crown was stronger than that of his half-brother, Pra Nangklao. Mongkut was the eldest son of the King by a royal mother, and his half-brother, though seventeen years his senior, was the son of a lesser wife. However, in Siam, the succession is not necessarily according to strict rules of primogeniture, and in this instance, the choice by the Council of Nobles of Pra Nangklao seemed a wise one. He had had many years' experience in matters of state, often assuming duties for his father, who was more interested in poetry than politics. But if Mongkut was disappointed, monastic life suited him, and he remained a monk for the next twenty-seven years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n93\n\nThe new King imported printing presses, mainly for the publication of Buddhist writings. He encouraged monks to teach in the monasteries. He continued his own studies, particularly of astronomy and acquired telescopes and other scientific equipment. Some ten years after he became King he took the unprecedented step of employing a foreign woman, the celebrated Anna Leonowens, to act as governess and tutor to his numerous children.\n\nKing Mongkut built roads, canals and bridges. New Wats and new palaces were constructed at his command. He encouraged ship-building and personally supervised the building of the first steam-boat on the Menam, importing an engine from England. He abolished the corvée forced labour required for land or other privileges and replaced it by taxation. There was no limit to his energy or his delight in innovation, but in one respect King Mongkut saw no need for change.\n\nHe kept an enormous harem in his Palace. Having been celibate for twenty-seven years he now set about building the biggest Royal Family of the Chakri Dynasty. In the \"Inside\" of the Palace there was a veritable city of women - reports say three thousand or more. They were mostly servants, 'Amazons' for guards, officials, maids and so on, but Mongkut acquired thirty-two wives and by the time he died, aged sixty-four, he had eighty-two children. Some accounts put the number of wives and concubines much higher. Townshend Harris, the American envoy who concluded a treaty with Siam in 1856 - following the British success in 1855 - commented in his dispatches to Washington: \"After some twenty years spent in the rigid celibacy of the priesthood the King gives up a large portion of his time to voluptuous pleasures....\n\nhe is indulging himself in a manner equally repugnant to decency and the laws of his religion of which he was a stern supporter while in the priesthood.\" It was, of course, a custom and one required especially of the monarch, but it is a little surprising that the reforming zeal of the King did not extend to his prodigious practice of polygamy.\n\nOf all his reforms the most significant was in his relations with the West. As soon as he became King a new attitude was revealed. He indicated willingness to have a return visit from the disappointed Brooke of Sarawak. Could Sir James come, he said, a little later to allow for the prolonged cremation ceremonies", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207816, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 204, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Ancient Mon-Pagan, Peru & Nakorn Pathom 189\n\n(Rama VI) complete with Shakespearian house and a statue to his dog whom he suspected had been poisoned by jealous courtiers.\n\nThe Pagan theme of temple paintings, though of a different period, may also be taken up again in Dhonburi, across the river from Bangkok. Dhonburi was the capital between the fall of Ayuthaya in 1757 and the establishment of Bangkok in 1782 and boasts a number of old temples, many still having their original mural paintings. The little visited Wat Wai Thepnimit is lost amid sluggish canals and has paintings in good condition dating from the late 18th century. Like many of such temples, the scene above the main door inside represents the victory of the Buddha over the temptations of Mara; the scene behind the altar shows the division of the world into paradise, earth, and hell; and at the lower levels on the sides, between the windows, are the stories from the last ten Jataka tales, while above are serried rows of alternating orahan, or devotees, and yaksa or giants. In better condition, though in not so charmingly dilapidated a building, is the temple of Wat Chaiyathit, which can only be reached by a walk by narrow canals and a railway track. The well-known paintings at the fine Wat Suwannaram on Klong Bangkok Noi need little introduction. The small dual buildings of Wat Rumarin Ratchapaksi near Wat Dusit, bombed by accident in the last war, are now at last being repaired, though not before the weather has caused considerable damage to the quality of the paintings. One of the most impressive buildings to survive the passage of time and weather is the old library at Wat Rakhang, the Ho Trai. This has three rooms and was formerly part of a dwelling of General Chakri, the founder of the present dynasty, in the 18th century. He had it converted into a library for the temple after he became king. The carved entrance doors are magnificent, and the Ayuthia period lacquered library cupboards are in very good condition. The paintings, which had been much damaged by time and smoke from a fire at the temple, are now being restored. The scenes depict barely recognisable episodes from the Thai version of the Ramayana.\n\nBangkok does not lack evening entertainment, but there is not much that can rival the setting of Krisnavara House, with its collection of antiques beside the Chao Praya River, for a performance of the now rarely presented hoon krabawk, or stick puppet theatre. The figures are clothed in 19th-century court dresses and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 } ]