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1 Introduction Monarchy and Modernity In 1996 the people of Thailand rejoiced in an unprecedented celebration : the Golden Jubilee of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, ninth monarch of the Chakri dynasty and the longest-reigning in the world today. Among the events that punctuated Bhumibol’s jubilee was the October visit of Elizabeth II, herself a long-serving monarch, on the throne since 1953. This exchange of royal courtesy had a notable precedent in the visit that Bhumibol ’s grandfather, King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), had paid to Queen Victoria, Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother, on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee (sixtieth anniversary of reign) in 1897. Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 had initiated the fashion for such royal celebrations; her Diamond Jubilee, ten years later, became a touchstone for other monarchs including Chulalongkorn, who in 1908 celebrated with great pomp his fortieth anniversary on the throne. The unfolding of history is fraught with irony. When one considers the 1996 meeting of King Bhumibol and Queen Elizabeth, both remnants of a bygone era of crowned heads, the former would appear to enjoy today a far more comfortable position than the latter. Apart from his dynastic achievement, Rama IX is regarded by most observers—both local and foreign—as a crucial balancing factor in Thailand’s often tumultuous political arena and by the majority of the population as a man of merit (phu mi bun) endowed with the moral virtues befitting a Buddhist monarch. True, gossip about the royal family is an entrenched feature of Bangkok’s social life; but open criticism of the throne is shunned in virtue of deeply rooted taboos as well as a legal code that still envisages the anachronistic offense of lèse-majesté.1 One could only speculate that Queen Elizabeth looked to King Bhumibol, if not with envy, at least with longing for a time past when the authority of the crown would have prevented relentless tabloid exposure of the House of Windsor’s matrimonial tribulations (not to mention their fictionalization in a TV movie). Feelings of an opposite nature must have animated the encounter 2 Introduction between King Chulalongkorn and Queen Victoria in August 1897. Arriving in England shortly after the celebration in the streets of London of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the king of Siam was received at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight, in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales (the later Edward VII and Queen Alexandra), Prince Charles of Denmark, and the king of Belgians (and Victoria’s relative), Leopold II.2 The reception made it to the front page of the Illustrated London News, then Britain’s leading weekly, which carried an imaginative sketch of the banquet held in Osborne House’s Indian Room. Yet in announcing Rama V’s imminent visit a few weeks earlier, the British Press Association had somewhat condescendingly pointed out that “the King of Siam is coming to Britain not on a ordinary state visit . . . but with a view of educating himself in the matters of British customs and resources.”3 In fact, Chulalongkorn’s visit to England was but one stop in a journey that took him throughout most of Europe, Russia included. The centennial of Rama V’s first European tour, fortuitously coinciding with King Bhumibol’s seventieth birthday, was commemorated by the national media in 1997 as Thailand’s entry into the modern world. To mention only two examples, the widely circulated cultural magazine Sinlapa watthanatham ran a series of articles on the various stages of the tour; and a twenty-four-part TV series, broadcast on Thailand’s Channel 5, documented the places visited during the follow-up to that first tour, ten years later.4 Academia joined in the celebrations with a colloquium appositely held at Chulalongkorn University. Whether Rama V’s visit to Europe in 1897 marked a turning point in the history of Thailand, then known as Siam, may be a matter of contention. But the direct encounter with Europe’s ruling dynasties and heads of state unquestionably provided a litmus test for the endeavor examined in this book: the fashioning of the public image of the Siamese monarchy as a modern, civilized, and civilizing institution. Because of the transformation that the Siamese economy and institutions underwent in the Fourth and especially the Fifth Reigns (1851– 1868 and 1868–1910, respectively), these periods have attracted considerable scholarly attention. Existing studies, however, are concerned almost exclusively with the reform of the administrative, educational, and financial...

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