Chaiyo! King Vajiravudh and the Development of Thai Nationalism

391 Pages·1978·3.867 MB·English

by  Walter F. Vella

Chaiyo!
KING VAJIRAVUDH AND THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THAI NATIONALISM
KingVajiravudhinCeremonialDressfortheDeclaration
ofWar(StatueatVajiravudhCollege).
ii

Chaiyo!
KING VAJIRAVUDH AND THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THAI
NATIONALISM
Walter F. Vella
ASSISTED BY
Dorothy B. Vella
Published with the support of The
Maurice J. Sullivan & Family Fund in
The University of Hawaii Foundation
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF HAWAII • HONOLULU
Open Access edition funded by the National
Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book
Program.
Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In-
ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely
download and share the work in print or electronic format for
non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the
author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per-
mission from the publisher. For details, see
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre-
ative Commons license described above does not apply to any
material that is separately copyrighted.
Open Access ISBNs:
9780824880309 (PDF)
9780824880316 (EPUB)
This version created: 16 May, 2019
Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works
from University of Hawai‘i Press.
Copyright © 1978 by The University Press of Hawaii. All rights
reserved.
The song that nerves a nation’s heart Is in
itself a deed.
Tennyson
1
Contents
Epigraph i
Illustrations iii
Preface iv
Note viii
Introduction ix
1. Prince to King 1
2. The King Consecrated 14
3. The Wild Tigers 28
4. The Monarchy 55
5. National Survival and Militarism 82
6. The West as Model 132
7. The Concept of Nationality 184
8. The Past as Model 211
9. The Media 255
10. An Assessment 270
Notes 286
Bibliography 355
About the Author 373
ii
Illustrations
King Vajiravudh in Ceremonial Dress for the Declaration of War
Prince Vajiravudh at His Tonsure Ceremony
Public Audience on Coronation Day
Cartoon: Royal Leadership in Siam
Cartoon: Appeal for Contributions to Cruiser Fund
Cartoon: Royal Support for Education
Cartoon of Prince Purachatra by King Vajiravudh
King Vajiravudh Memorial
Frontispiece and photographs on pages 18 and 271 are by Eric
and Paul Vella.
iii
Preface
Chaiyo means victory, it means hurrah. It is a cheer, a ral-
lyingcry,coinedbyakingwhoseoverallprogramofnation-
alism is the subject of the following pages. This book is devoted
to one basic aim: to examine Siamese nationalism during the
reign of King Vajiravudh as thoroughly and completely as my
talents and the sources—the Thai archives, printed works in
Thai and Western languages, and the memories of Thai
friends—permit. I have resisted temptations to digress into an
overall history of the reign or an examination of theories of na-
tionalism. Yet I hope, of course, that the work will contribute to
thegeneralunderstandingofthisperiodofThaihistoryandalso
provide information for political theorists on the nationalistic
process.
The biases of an author who is not a polemicist are apt to be
what he is least aware of and least likely to admit. I have tried
to examine my biases in two areas of vulnerability: my views
on nationalism and my feelings toward Thailand. I regard na-
tionalism as far from an unalloyed blessing. Like any system of
loyalty, it has its virtues and its faults. Its good lies in its power
to unite; its bad lies in its power to divide. Perhaps the history
iv