7 . Arrival of Western influence
Oct 08, 2004
In the Third Reign of Rattanakosin, the Kingdom of Siam extended
its influence as far as Indochina and the Malay Peninsula. Hostilities
with Burma and Vietnam had ended, and trade with other countries,
including China, proceeded very successfully.
“Thai culture” was widely viewed as a civilised one, yet even in
an era of proud and ancient tradition, that historic culture was
both at its peak and slipping into decline.
The winds of change from the West that arrived in Siam while King
Rama III was on the throne shook Siamese society to its core. So
great was the political and economic power of the Western powers
that Siam knew it had to accept occidental influence just to maintain
its freedom.
The King and his officials were of course the first to recognise
the depth of this influence, and the way they reacted would set
the standard for future generations. This was the beginning of what
some academics have called the era of “neo-traditionalism”.
In “Journal of an Embassy from the Governor General of India to
the Courts of Siam and Cochin-China”, British envoy John Crawfurd
observed that the Siamese of Rama II’s day – both court officials
and commoners – believed themselves to be civilised people. “To
them,” he wrote, “China is the great country, followed by Siam,
Burma, Vietnam and the other countries in Asia. The West is uncivilised.”
By the mid-19th century, though, a change of attitude had become
essential. The Siamese were forced to pay more attention to the
West after Great Britain’s victory over Burma in 1825 and its subsequent
forays into China. There were also formidable new technologies being
brought from the West.
To Siam’s leaders, China had been omnipotent, Burma undefeatable,
so Britain’s successes struck them deeply, clearly necessitating
detente with a Western power that had previously been ignored.
Captain Henry Burney, who in 1825 was the British Indian government’s
emissary to Siam to deal with friendship and trading issues, wrote
that Siam’s leaders were eager to know everything about Great Britain,
especially its political institutions.
Historians now believe some Siamese leaders might have had a chance
to read John Crawfurd’s earlier chronicle, with its suggestion that
Britain might seize Bangkok, and they abruptly awakened to the danger.
The Kingdom’s focus on the West intensified quickly after Protestant
missionaries from America arrived on its shores.
Christian proselytisers had been coming since the Ayutthaya period,
but most were Catholic and interested only in spreading their faith.
They had met with little success because they lacked the support
of the country’s rulers, who based their power on Buddhism and Hinduism.
Hinduism’s Devaraja (“god-king”) doctrine and Buddhism’s Dhammaraja
(“king-dhamma”) teaching asserted that the King is God, and that
if he behaves well, his authority is both guaranteed and protected
by Buddhist dhamma. There was no need to seek out a new “God”.
In any event, the King’s subjects were uninterested in Christianity
and couldn’t understand these utterly different foreigners. The
Siamese practised Buddhism and animism, as their ancestors had,
and were happy.
But then the first group of Protestant missionaries arrived from
America in 1833, led by John Taylor Jones. The Americans were different
from earlier Western clergymen. They brought technology and knowledge
about such matters as natural science, medicine, astronomy, geography
and printing.
With such a sea change evident in the way man looked at his universe,
it was inevitable that Siam would soon yield to, and then embrace,
the era of modernity.
Nithinand Yorsaengrat
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