Reading Bangkok

Chapter 1. Landscapes of Illusion and the First Level of Colonisation: Th onburi-Kudijeen, Rattanankosin, Ratchadamnoen

Landscapes of Illusion and the First Level of Colonisation 1 Chapter 1 Landscapes of Illusion and the First Level of Colonisation Thonburi-Kudijeen, Rattanakosin, Ratchadamnoen There are difficulties in understanding — reading — Bangkok. It is, at least to the Western eye, a city of chaos, a landscape of incoherent collisions and blurring overlays. It is a city of sharp contrasts, collisions and inconsistencies (juxtapositions), also a space of screens, overlays and surfaces (superimpositions). There is constant ambiguity, in the screens seemingly masking some hidden reality but also in naming. Names do not seem to “work” in Thailand in the same way as in Western societies. These confusions of reading arise in a milieu of ambivalence towards the past — that is, in the difficulties of a Thai historiography. They also arise in the way that Thai people appear to construct their world — in a Thai worldview and epistemology or way of constructing knowledge. A key to these enigmas, I will be arguing, lies in part in the processes whereby, over past centuries, the Thai people of the Siam central plain colonised their own periphery which now colonises them and, in part, in the foundational myths that have had to be constructed around those events. The first level of colonisation is internal and the foundational myths are integral with it. Bangkok colonised Siam and its tributary states which now, in turn, invade (colonise) Bangkok. The imagery of the city’s entry is one legacy;1 an ongoing Muslim insurrection in the southern provinces and the hordes of economic refugees from the depressed but increasingly politicised north and northeast, and ultimately the colourcoded rift of the 2000s, are others. Yet a third legacy, I will argue, is the world of surfaces, screens and masks that are so distinctive to Bangkok space. 1 2 Reading Bangkok 1. Internal Colonisation and the Foundation of the City Waterscape Bangkok was a fishing village and small trading port on the west bank of the Maenam Chao Phraya (river) near its mouth to the sea, from before the era of Ayutthaya (c.1351–1767). Its name would seem to have come from bang, meaning a riverbank village, and kok or makok, a wild olive or bitter plum. In the era of King Mahachakraphat (r.1548–1568), the seafront town on the west bank became known as Thonburi Sri Mahasamut although Westerners travelling through the area still used the earlier name of Bangkok or Bancok. Early in the Ayutthaya period, the Chao Phraya river followed a meandering course, approximating to what is now the line of Khlongs Bangkok Noi and Bangkok Yai, and which seriously hindered the city’s access for trade; accordingly, a series of canals were dug as shortcuts. The first, initiated by King Chaiyarajadhira (Chairacha, r.1533–1546), went from the present southern entrance to Khlong Bangkok Noi (at the present Bangkok Noi Railway Station) to the entrance to Khlong Bangkok Yai (at Wat Arun). The second change, by King Chakkraphat (r.1549–1568), was between inner Khlong Bangkok Noi and Khlong Bang Kruay. The third, by King Prasat Thong (Sampet V, r.1629–1656), yielded a shortcut between the present entry to Khlong Bang Kruay and the northern entry to Bangkok Noi thereby, incidentally, removing the utility of the second change. The erosion from river current and floods widened the first and third channels which thereby became the new course of the river. There was one further intervention: King Tai Sa (r.1709–1733) ordered a small canal, Khlong Lad Kret Noi, for transport and military purposes in Nonthaburi. This yielded Koh Kret (Kret Island). These changes had two main effects on the Thonburi area. First, they gave its present geography as defined by the two khlong of Bangkok Noi and Bangkok Yai and by the “new” west bank of the Chao Phraya. Second, by shortening the distance to Ayutthaya, they altered both the volume of trade and the vulnerability to maritime attack. King Narai faced the need for trade control and customs collection, as well as for improved maritime defence. Thonburi in that era was developed to provide both. The Portuguese had been the first European traders with an impact on Ayutthaya. The Dutch came in 1604 and emerged as supporters of the Ayutthaya court in defence variously against the Burmese and Landscapes of Illusion and the First Level of Colonisation 3 their own internal opposition — both King Songtham (r...