Bones around My Neck: The Life and Exile of a Prince Provocateur

240 Pages·2016·5.26 MB·English

by  Tamara Loos

BONES AROUND MY NECK

BONES AROUND
MY NECK
The Life and Exile of a
Prince Provocateur
Tamara Loos
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Cover illustration: Prince Prisdang in a half-European, half-Thai costume at a New
Year’s costume ball, Bangkok,1876. Drawn by Anissa Rahadiningtyas based on a
photograph in Prisdang’s Prawat (1930) and colored by Alexandra Dalferro.
Copyright © 2016 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2016 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Loos, Tamara Lynn, author.
Title: Bones around my neck : the life and exile of a prince provocateur /
Tamara Loos.
Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013029 | ISBN 9781501704635 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Pritsada¯ng, Prince, grandson of Nangklao, King of Siam,
1852–1935. | Princes—Thailand—Biography. | Diplomats—Thailand—
Biography. | Thailand—History—1782–1945.
Classification: LCC DS578.32.P75 L66 2016 | DDC 327.5930092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016013029
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For David

Contents
Preface ix
1. Staging Secrets: Prince Prisdang Avenges History 1
2 . Gulf of Siam: Prisdang’s Star Ascends 10
3 . Europe: Prisdang’s Controversial Diplomacy 23
4 . Bangkok: The Bones around Prisdang’s Neck 50
5 . Colonial Southeast Asia: Exilic Journey 73
6 . British Ceylon and India: The Prince Priest 96
7 . Bangkok: Home without Quarter 133
8 . Afterlife: The Uses of Prince Prisdang 151
Acknowledgments 167
Thai Naming Conventions, Dating Systems,
Transcription, and Translation 171
Notes 173
Bibliography 207
Index 217

Preface
I was in stubborn pursuit of a different disgraced member of the Siamese elite
when Prince Prisdang (pronounced prit-sa-dang ) Chumsai found me, unsuspect-
ing, in my chair at Bangkok’s National Archives. He simply refused to keep quiet.
You could almost feel the pressure of his incessant, desperate beseeching. “Disaster
and death are waiting for me.” “I value truth and honesty.” “I’d rather die than
break my promises.” “My intention [was] to kill myself to prove my honesty to
the king.” His loud and irrepressible urgency about the injustices he had suffered
demanded my attention. Prisdang (figure 1) had been Siam’s first ambassador to
Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth century, but he vanished from
Siam’s history thereafter. Yet here he was, protesting that he had “bones hanging
around his neck,” a reference to a Thai proverb that means being scapegoated. He
complained of receiving only reproaches for his tireless and wholehearted diplo-
matic efforts on behalf of Siam’s king and government.
Initially, I leafed through his files with reluctance. The last person I wanted
to write about was a member, however distant, of Thailand’s reigning Chakri
dynasty. Increasingly draconian application of Thailand’s lèse majesté laws since
the early twenty-first century makes it impossible to write about the king, queen,
and heir apparent without risking defamation charges and even imprisonment.
The risks are much higher for Thai nationals. I also did not want to produce
scholarship that would bring additional attention to a dynasty and an institution
that undergird a political and cultural system capable of crushing the public and
private expression of dissent. The scholarly political economy in Thai studies is
already skewed in the direction of royal hagiography.
H owever, Prisdang surprised me with his version of the past, which challenges
existing accounts of Thailand and its place in global history. His life buzzes like
a hub of frenetic political activity, linking together the spokes of Thai nation-
alism, European imperialism, Buddhist universalism, and transnational anti-
imperialism. Yet Thai historical accounts truncate his role in Siam and deny his
political activism in transnational Buddhist communities. I wanted to know why.
P rince Prisdang’s birth in 1852 and death in 1935 encompass a period in
which all territories in Southeast Asia except Siam were formally colonized. As
its first minister in Europe in the 1880s when Siam’s status as a sovereign state
was most intensely challenged, Prisdang negotiated with energetic zeal on behalf
of his country and king. To ensure that Siam would not suffer the same fate as
ix