Prof. Tamara Loos on the life of Prince Prisdang Chumsai
Exploring Siamese politics through the extraordinary life of Prince Prisdang Chumsai “The European impulse to ‘civilise’ represented the biggest threat to Siam’s sovereignty”
Who was Prince Prisdang Chumsai and why did you decide to write a biography about his life?
Prince Prisdang, who lived from 18521935, was the first Siamese (Thai) royal family member to obtain a university degree abroad (King’s College, London, in 1876), and went on to become Siam’s first diplomat to most countries in Europe in the 1880s. He served as Siam’s ambassador to the world’s dominant global powers during the most dramatic moment of Siam’s history, when its independence was threatened by European imperialism. In the 1880s France threatened Siam’s independence from the east, where it finalised its conquest of Indochina, and Britain encroached on Siam from Burma in the west. As Siam’s ambassador to these imperial countries in Europe, Prince Prisdang was best placed to advise his king about how to proceed in precarious negotiations with France and Britain, which were eyeing Siam as their next potential colony.
In 1885, King Rama V sought Prisdang’s advice on how to prevent a European colonisation of Siam. What did the prince suggest?
To ensure Siam wouldn’t suffer the same fate as its colonised neighbours, Prisdang responded to the king’s request by taking the lead in drafting a blueprint for the massive reform of its governing institutions, including the recommendation for a constitutional monarchy. The document’s brilliance lay in its realpolitik awareness of how ideas such as progress and civilisation operated as a justification for colonisation in Asia. To the petition drafters, the European impulse to ‘civilise’, whether sincere or a ploy, represented the biggest threat to Siam’s sovereignty. Instead, they argued
Siam would have to transform and modernise its political, economic and legal structure. Through such efforts, Prisdang showed that he was more than a cultural interlocutor and diplomat: he was also midwife to Siam’s emergence as a modern state. The king eventually adopted some of these recommendations, but not the one suggesting a constitutional monarchy.
Why was Prisdang forced to flee into exile in 1890?
Most scholars point to the 1885 proposal as the cause for Prisdang’s demise – they argue it incurred the king’s wrath for suggesting a form of rule other than absolutism. However, Prisdang fled into exile in 1890, five years after submitting the petition to his beloved monarch. Prisdang himself was at a loss to explain conclusively what caused the rift between him and the king that catapulted him out of his homeland for 20 years, from 1890 until 1911. No official explanation was given for the departure of Siam’s most well-known government official. Even in his autobiography, published in 1930, Prisdang did not write about the momentous event that threw into question his loyalty and caused him to flee into exile in 1890. Instead, he removed several tantalising pages of the narrative leading up to his exile, as if Prisdang had changed his mind and ripped them out just before the autobiography went to press. Yet in the autobiography’s foreword he remarks on the missing pages, purposefully revealing their absence. Into the silence, attempts at an explanation rushed in. He fled to escape a rap sheet of rumours and ruinous gossip. In a social system that shunned conflict and profoundly valued group harmony, this attack on Prisdang’s reputation amounted to a colossal and irreparable loss of face. Face or reputation is determined by and through social relationality, one that demands the de-emphasis of the individual and continual re-inscription of hierarchical positions between people. It is this social hierarchy that undergirded Siam’s royal political complex that Prisdang’s case so clearly exposes. And the cost of his disruptive actions impelled him to consider suicide and, when that failed, to flee in ignominy.
What can Prisdang’s story tell us about Siamese politics in the late19th century?
His story sheds light on the weakness of political institutions, including the monarchy, in the late-19th century
– a time when imperial powers were expanding their territorial reach in Southeast Asia. This in turn led Siam’s king to centralise power exclusively in his own hands, using the European colonial state as his model. It also reveals the significance of extralegal social mechanisms to punish anyone who suggested a political system that curtailed the king’s power. Prince Prisdang lived
in exile for two decades, during which he was enrobed as a monk in Sri Lanka, led educational reforms for the poor in that country, lionised Siam’s king as the pope of the world’s Buddhists, and mediated the gift of the Buddha’s bone relics to King Chulalongkorn, among many other adventures. He continually sought forgiveness from the king in an attempt to return home, but was granted this wish only after King Chulalongkorn died. Once home, Prisdang was socially ostracised and barred from meaningful employment. He lived a life of penury until he died in 1935.
How does Prisdang’s eventful life shed light on the censorship regarding the monarchy in modernday Thailand?
Prisdang’s story draws critical attention to acts of self-censorship, which are motivated both by laws against criticising the monarchy and by social expulsion. His example forces us to consider the invisible acts of selfcensorship that many Thai nationals exercise today to avoid prosecution for breaking lèse majesté laws and to avoid upsetting the status quo. His experience reveals that power and control over
Thai subjects can be exerted through forms of social disciplining, not just through law or other overt forms of punishment meted out by the state.
The tools of social control used against Prisdang included gossip, rumours and ‘influence’ – extra-institutional methods that disciplined lapses in emotional and behavioural expression. These forms of emotional control reinforced Siam’s existing social and political hierarchy by casting out those who breached its limits. Today Thai protesters deploy both forms of protest – the silent threefinger salute from The Hunger Games, as well increasingly vocal forms by demonstrators who bravely critique the current King Vajiralongkorn.