King Chulalongkorn’s crisis and today’s crisis

26 December 1997

Last week the Siam Society held a seminar to commemorate the centenary of King Chulalongkorn’s first visit to Europe. Hosted by this august cultural institution and officially opened by Princess Sirindhorn, the seminar promised a glimpse into history.

Instead, the seminar turned out to be much more about today, the present, the economic crisis.

The parallels were simply too strong. In the 1890s, Siam was threatened by the colonial designs of the British and French. Today Thailand is besieged by international banks, multinational companies, world-scale speculators and vulture funds. In the 1890s, Siam’s sovereignty was at stake. Today, the ownership of much of the Thai economy is at stake. As the former deputy prime minister, Virabhongse Ramangkura told the meeting, there is little difference between the nineteenth-century European traders who demanded Siam open up its markets, and the World Trade Organisation’s current demands for liberalisation. Once again, a small country is under threat from big forces outside.

King Chulalongkorn is revered for steering Siam through the crisis of a hundred years ago, evading the clutches of the colonialists, and engineering the internal reforms which enabled Siam to survive. The chairman of the seminar, Vichit Suraphongchai ("Dr Goodbank"), opened the event by drawing an explicit parallel between the successful leadership provided by Chulalongkorn in the 1890s crisis, and the need today for leaders with the vision and clout to enforce internal change on a similar scale. Globalisation, argued Vichit, is big, accelerating, irresistible. Just as Chulalongkorn recognised the power of Europe and modernised Siam for survival, so Thailand today must recognise the powerful forces of globalisation and reform internally to cope with them.

"How capable and ready are our leaders," Vichit asked, "to implement the changes necessary to prepare Thailand for the future?"

But as the seminar evolved over two days, the comforting prospect that Siam could again be saved from disaster by enlightened leadership came under challenge.

Is "leadership" the key to overcoming today’s crisis? "The problem of great leaders," noted Somsak Xuto, "is that they are difficult to follow. The seed doesn’t take root in the cool shade of a large banyan tree."

The historian Thongchai Winitchakul took this point further. Looking to "leaders" for instant solutions is a form of escapism. We tend to pin our hopes on leaders, but leaders always have limitations. It’s important, Thongchai urged, not to obstruct the bigger, creative forces in society. Too often we say that the mass of the people are not ready, not educated. But they are the real dynamism in society. "If we think it difficult to build people of high quality, why do we think it will be easier to create a good leader?"

Is King Chulalongkorn the right inspiration for confronting today’s crisis? This is complex, because the image of Chulalongkorn lives on in the present day. It has become the focus of a form of national cult. As Apinan Poshyananda’s photographs showed, the image turns up on racks of posters between Bon Jovi and Madonna; on shrines at shops, restaurants, go-go bars and brothels; among the ranks of Hindu and Chinese deities called upon to provide good fortune; and partnered with images of monks like Luang Por Koon who also offer comforting promises of good fortune. For the mass of people, in other words, Chulalongkorn is not so much an inspiration for leadership in the age of globalisation, as part of superstitious belief in the power of fate and fortune. As Surichai Wan’gaeo commented, the idea that development would reduce the role of superstition now belongs to the past. We know instead that development simply turns superstitious practice into a commercial opportunity.

Where lies the real root of the current crisis? An outside threat or an internal problem? The real parallel between the Chulalongkorn era and our own, argued Thongchai, lies in the elite’s tendency to chase after rainbows. In the late nineteenth century, the Siamese elite felt threatened not just by gunboats but by the cultural aggression of western Europe which made them feel inferior. Siamese aristocrats wanted to be sivilai - a term adapted from "civilised", expressing a yearning to be accepted as full members of the modern world. But being sivilai was not the same as being westernised. It was being what the Siamese elite though being westernised might be. In other words, an illusion. By definition, an illusion is unattainable. The quest is bound to be unsuccessful. The inevitable result is failure and disappointment.

Today the idea of globalisation plays the same role as sivilai a century ago. Thai leaders fear they are falling behind in the world, so in Thongchai’s words they "scramble out from their undistinguished status in order to stand out ahead and above the crowd ... by quick wealth and signs of the New Rich".

Kasian Tejapira added "we don’t really know what globalisation is, but we think it up ourselves, we want it so much, and we chase after it until we fall over".

The lawyer, Kittisak Prokati, approached this idea of an internal crisis from another angle. He argued that the Chulalongkorn reforms have handed down a very imperfect legacy for modern Thailand. In particular, the rule of law has never taken root. In Europe, popular movements created law codes designed to control abuse of power and exploitation of resources. But this was one model which the Fifth Reign did not adopt from Europe, partly because it would restrict the power of the monarch. Law in Thailand is still seen as a set of rules - to obey and often to evade. Students are still taught about the concept of law in this way, rather than as an expression of justice.

The crisis today, Kittisak added, is a crisis of ethics. Over the last few years, everybody has tried to get rich by breaking the laws, by cheating. This has created a crisis of freedom. How can you have free markets without the law or ethics which allow free markets to work properly? This problem is deep-rooted in history, in politics, in business. It explains the persistence of violence in society. We need people with the courage to fight against those who abuse freedom for political advantage. Changes in the law, added Amorn Chantrasomboon, will only come after changes in politics. And here the new constitution has only made a small start.

Finally, is it already too late to hope a leader can rescue Thailand? The final speaker in the seminar - and the starkest image - was Virabhongse. Where other speakers came in casual clothes, Virabhongse dressed in dark suit and tie. Where others spoke in spirited and often dramatic fashion, he presented in a funeral-march monotone which reduced the audience to pin-drop silence. He had come, after all, to deliver a speech over a corpse. He had helped to shepherd through the financial decrees which transferred the debts of the dead financial companies to the Thai people. We now live, he warned, with the consequences. The banking sector has already been opened up to 100 percent foreign ownership. Restrictions on land, businesses and occupations are likely to follow. And the fire-sale of assets is coming soon. Any prospect that we can escape the gunboats of globalisation, as Chulalongkorn fended off the gunboats of the French, is already past.