SIAM: Garden of Smiles

(3 of 9)

"Then Phumiphon got into his Daimler and drove back to the palace, where he had another shower. What he thought of it all, none knew. Perhaps he shared the skepticism of his cousin, Prince Chumphot, who had officiated at a similar ceremony during the previous week. At its conclusion, Prince Chumphot had turned to a Western guest and said: 'I'm interested to know what you make of all this. Traditional, of course, you know. But pure superstition.' !

As Clouds Gather. Chumphot, Phumiphon and many of their countrymen had been strongly influenced by the West. For good & ill, Siam was changing, yet it remained outside the main patterns of transition through which its neighbors were passing. Unique in many ways, Siam was most important in the fact that it had escaped any serious contact with Western imperialism. India had been unified by imperialism and its cultures had been left more or less intact under a veneer of Westernization; its rulers in independence were trying to bring old & new together. Burma's ancient way of life had been all but destroyed by Western rule; now the Westerners had left Burma and it was wallowing in chaos. To Siam's east lay Indo-China, where the Westerners refused to leave and where the Communists had been able to take advantage of a confusion second only to Burma's. To Siam's north lay China, the most tragic example of the contact between East & West. South and East of Siam were Indonesia and the Philippines, the most hopeful cases of what could happen after imperialism's exit. West and south of Siam was Malaya, where imperialism still had an uneasy grip.

Siam's virtues and defects were still largely its own, not a bastard product of two civilizations. Phumiphon's never-never land was a land of what-might-have-been, a jewel of (almost) unblemished Easternism shining on the junk heap of the wrecked empires. Like a jewel, Siam was temptingly easy to pick up. The Communist imperialists who had taken China might turn Siam's way any time.

The prize included the world's largest postwar (1,300,000 tons a year) exportable surplus of rice, a booming rubber and tin production, and a docile people. Siam was no bulwark, but the old land and its young King were worth a good look, as a garden is worth a good look as storm clouds gather.

Westernization was brought to Siam largely by her own people who went abroad to study. In the 19203 a group of young Siamese revolutionists formed in Paris' Left Bank cafes. Two of them were Pridhi Banomyong and Phibun Songgram, who were to become rivals and to alternate in control of modern Siam. The revolutionists returned in 1932 to stage a coup which made Siam a constitutional monarchy. King Prajadhipok ceased to be the last absolute monarch left in the world.

The Boy from Brookline. Phumiphon had been born in 1927 in a Cambridge hospital while his father, Prince Mahidol, half-brother of Prajadhipok,* studied medicine at Harvard. The first years of Phumiphon's life were spent in the suburban atmosphere of Brookline, Mass. A few years later, after his father's death, he had moved with his mother, sister, and elder brother Ananda to Lausanne, Switzerland. Six years after that childless King Prajadhipok abdicated in favor of his nephew Ananda.