NOT A SPIRIT HOUSE
This is a picture of a sao phra phum if you ask the men putting it in place (as I did) or ask any of their neighbors here in Northern Thailand. A native of Central Thailand might say that it is a san phra phum. If you ask a foreigner the answer in English will almost certainly be, “It’s a spirit house”. I would like to respectfully argue that neither a sao phra phum nor a san phra phum(called san jao here in the North) are “spirit houses”. They are shrines.
First, the linguistic reasons for my objection to calling these “spirit houses”. The phrase “spirit house” cannot be translated back into Thai in any way that makes sense. “Ban pii” is ludicrous and “ban winyan” is an oxymoron. The entity being reverenced or respected is called a “jao” or “chao” (pronounced like “jowl” without the final L). There is a different set of words for spirits. The word “jao” means a lord, and with the prefex “pra” or “phra” a level of royalty or divinity is indicated.
Second, and more controversial, is my understanding that the spirit supposedly being accommodated by the sao phra phum neither needs a house nor is in a form to benefit from one. The spirit is still integral with the land. It belittles the meaning of the entire undertaking to insist that the bird-house sized sao phra phum is somehow a residence to make the spirit of the land happy when its land is being taken over. That is essentially a child’s version of a much more sophisticated faith tradition. Typical of this domesticated interpretation is one found online, which says, “The purpose of the Spirit House is to provide an appealing shelter for the spirits, or celestial beings, who would otherwise reside in the heavens, find a place in large trees, or in caves, cliffs. waterfalls or other natural surroundings. According to folklore, the spirits themselves are either good or evil, but most are just finicky and mischievous, demanding respect from humans and capable of disastrous interferences if they don't get their way, The spirit of the land, for example. expects to be informed when a human intends to start a business or engage in improvements to an existing business. If the spirit is not informed, and if the human does not respectfully request permission, the spirit can indeed cause the venture to fail.” [See the whole article at www.chiangmai-chiangrai.com/spirit_house.html for a respectful and easy-to-read presentation on Thai animism. Unfortunately, the article does not differentiate between even the basic spirits of nature and the more pernicious spirits of the dead.]
Third, we notice the shapes and size of the various sao phra phum and san jao. Throughout Chiang Mai there are manufacturers of statuary and religious architectural components. They have yards full of sao phra phum in all sorts of color and size, but hardly ever are they shaped like a house. The shape is almost always like a temple. Philip Cornwel-Smith says otherwise in his excellent book Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture. He reports, “Spirit houses typically come in pairs. Chao thii – the animist ‘spirit of the place’ – occupies the lower one, a plain miniature home on four or six legs. Later Hindu influence on Thai culture means that the taller painted masonry shrine resembles an opulent Khmer sanctuary upon a pedestal. Inside, stands a gilded icon of the ‘spirit of the land’ holding a sword and money bag, who gets a prestigious Sanskrit name, phra phum.” Cornwel-Smith goes on to tell us, “‘They are envisaged as an old man who lives in a traditional wooden house and an angel who lives in a palace,’ Marlane Guelden explains.” In the picture (above) accompanying this blog there are a pair, just as Cornwel-Smith says, but the owner erecting them does not understand the smaller blue one to be a miniature house. It is a place where offerings are made and will be outfitted like a temple. The idea that “spirit houses typically come in pairs” is a fairly recent Central Thai concept that developed, not co-incidentally, at the same time as the rapidly improving economy began to require more conspicuous displays of status. Our neighbor is one of the first in our thirteen villages to have them side-by-side in the Bangkok style. In this, and in several other ways, he is seeking to be identified with the economically and socially up-scale side of village life.
“Who is the spirit?” we might ask. Cornwel-Smith has identified them as two distinct entities, one called “chao thii” (meaning spirit of the place) and the other “chao phum” (phum being an elegant word for land). This distinction is not what I hear people saying around here. “Thii-din” is a plot of land, specifically a plot of real estate. “Din” is soil, but if you are selling only the dirt to be trucked away you sell the “din” and if you are selling the plot of ground you sell the “thii-din”. I respectfully contend that “the land” and by extension “the Lord of the Land” were not divided when government surveyors made maps and created real estate documents (along with a bureaucracy offering extensive employment opportunities). So, the Lord of the Land is the same abstract entity being honored by all the millions of sao phra phum. The Lord of the Land on which our house is built is the same as the Lord of the Land next door being honored by a separate shrine. In other words, I cannot find evidence here in Chiang Mai that Cornwel-Smith’s two-levels of spirit are how village people conceptualize it.
Finally, the word sao (pronounced like south without the final TH) means a post or pillar. That conforms to Cornwel-Smith’s report that residential and commercial san phra phum evolved from “shrines to the village spirit”. In our part of the country there is a distinction made between a sao phra phum and a san jao; the former are what we have been describing, but the latter are for housing representations of supernatural beings and rites associated with them. Shrines to village and city spirits are always posts or pillars, housed elaborately in some cases inside a san jao. Chiang Mai has a famous pillar housed inside a shrine in Wat Chedi Luang. Joseph Campbell described these vertical sorts of monuments as “axial”, meaning that they symbolically connect the regions below the earth with the heavenly realm above. I believe the Northern Thai tradition is clear that the sao is meant for offerings to honor an elemental aspect of nature that far exceeds the human capacity to comprehend, much less to manipulate (or placate, or coerce – as simplistic explanations would have it).
“Spirit houses” is a term so firmly established in literature about Thailand that I do not expect my argument to be given much attention. Nevertheless, I am increasingly convinced that early European interpreters of exotic cultures and their missionary descendants were influenced by their prejudice against indigenous expressions of faith and that even the supposedly neutral term “animism” is diminutive and pejorative. Thai domains of faith are being treated unfairly when their sophistication and antiquity are ignored in favor of a childish narration.
This essay is the latest in a series of blogs on our website www.kendobson.asia that expand on an article entitled “Varieties of Faith: the Thai Case”. To access the article with links to other illustrated short essays about Thai religion and culture click here:
http://www.kendobson.asia/varieties-of-faith.html
December 7, 2014
This is a picture of a sao phra phum if you ask the men putting it in place (as I did) or ask any of their neighbors here in Northern Thailand. A native of Central Thailand might say that it is a san phra phum. If you ask a foreigner the answer in English will almost certainly be, “It’s a spirit house”. I would like to respectfully argue that neither a sao phra phum nor a san phra phum(called san jao here in the North) are “spirit houses”. They are shrines.
First, the linguistic reasons for my objection to calling these “spirit houses”. The phrase “spirit house” cannot be translated back into Thai in any way that makes sense. “Ban pii” is ludicrous and “ban winyan” is an oxymoron. The entity being reverenced or respected is called a “jao” or “chao” (pronounced like “jowl” without the final L). There is a different set of words for spirits. The word “jao” means a lord, and with the prefex “pra” or “phra” a level of royalty or divinity is indicated.
Second, and more controversial, is my understanding that the spirit supposedly being accommodated by the sao phra phum neither needs a house nor is in a form to benefit from one. The spirit is still integral with the land. It belittles the meaning of the entire undertaking to insist that the bird-house sized sao phra phum is somehow a residence to make the spirit of the land happy when its land is being taken over. That is essentially a child’s version of a much more sophisticated faith tradition. Typical of this domesticated interpretation is one found online, which says, “The purpose of the Spirit House is to provide an appealing shelter for the spirits, or celestial beings, who would otherwise reside in the heavens, find a place in large trees, or in caves, cliffs. waterfalls or other natural surroundings. According to folklore, the spirits themselves are either good or evil, but most are just finicky and mischievous, demanding respect from humans and capable of disastrous interferences if they don't get their way, The spirit of the land, for example. expects to be informed when a human intends to start a business or engage in improvements to an existing business. If the spirit is not informed, and if the human does not respectfully request permission, the spirit can indeed cause the venture to fail.” [See the whole article at www.chiangmai-chiangrai.com/spirit_house.html for a respectful and easy-to-read presentation on Thai animism. Unfortunately, the article does not differentiate between even the basic spirits of nature and the more pernicious spirits of the dead.]
Third, we notice the shapes and size of the various sao phra phum and san jao. Throughout Chiang Mai there are manufacturers of statuary and religious architectural components. They have yards full of sao phra phum in all sorts of color and size, but hardly ever are they shaped like a house. The shape is almost always like a temple. Philip Cornwel-Smith says otherwise in his excellent book Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture. He reports, “Spirit houses typically come in pairs. Chao thii – the animist ‘spirit of the place’ – occupies the lower one, a plain miniature home on four or six legs. Later Hindu influence on Thai culture means that the taller painted masonry shrine resembles an opulent Khmer sanctuary upon a pedestal. Inside, stands a gilded icon of the ‘spirit of the land’ holding a sword and money bag, who gets a prestigious Sanskrit name, phra phum.” Cornwel-Smith goes on to tell us, “‘They are envisaged as an old man who lives in a traditional wooden house and an angel who lives in a palace,’ Marlane Guelden explains.” In the picture (above) accompanying this blog there are a pair, just as Cornwel-Smith says, but the owner erecting them does not understand the smaller blue one to be a miniature house. It is a place where offerings are made and will be outfitted like a temple. The idea that “spirit houses typically come in pairs” is a fairly recent Central Thai concept that developed, not co-incidentally, at the same time as the rapidly improving economy began to require more conspicuous displays of status. Our neighbor is one of the first in our thirteen villages to have them side-by-side in the Bangkok style. In this, and in several other ways, he is seeking to be identified with the economically and socially up-scale side of village life.
“Who is the spirit?” we might ask. Cornwel-Smith has identified them as two distinct entities, one called “chao thii” (meaning spirit of the place) and the other “chao phum” (phum being an elegant word for land). This distinction is not what I hear people saying around here. “Thii-din” is a plot of land, specifically a plot of real estate. “Din” is soil, but if you are selling only the dirt to be trucked away you sell the “din” and if you are selling the plot of ground you sell the “thii-din”. I respectfully contend that “the land” and by extension “the Lord of the Land” were not divided when government surveyors made maps and created real estate documents (along with a bureaucracy offering extensive employment opportunities). So, the Lord of the Land is the same abstract entity being honored by all the millions of sao phra phum. The Lord of the Land on which our house is built is the same as the Lord of the Land next door being honored by a separate shrine. In other words, I cannot find evidence here in Chiang Mai that Cornwel-Smith’s two-levels of spirit are how village people conceptualize it.
Finally, the word sao (pronounced like south without the final TH) means a post or pillar. That conforms to Cornwel-Smith’s report that residential and commercial san phra phum evolved from “shrines to the village spirit”. In our part of the country there is a distinction made between a sao phra phum and a san jao; the former are what we have been describing, but the latter are for housing representations of supernatural beings and rites associated with them. Shrines to village and city spirits are always posts or pillars, housed elaborately in some cases inside a san jao. Chiang Mai has a famous pillar housed inside a shrine in Wat Chedi Luang. Joseph Campbell described these vertical sorts of monuments as “axial”, meaning that they symbolically connect the regions below the earth with the heavenly realm above. I believe the Northern Thai tradition is clear that the sao is meant for offerings to honor an elemental aspect of nature that far exceeds the human capacity to comprehend, much less to manipulate (or placate, or coerce – as simplistic explanations would have it).
“Spirit houses” is a term so firmly established in literature about Thailand that I do not expect my argument to be given much attention. Nevertheless, I am increasingly convinced that early European interpreters of exotic cultures and their missionary descendants were influenced by their prejudice against indigenous expressions of faith and that even the supposedly neutral term “animism” is diminutive and pejorative. Thai domains of faith are being treated unfairly when their sophistication and antiquity are ignored in favor of a childish narration.
This essay is the latest in a series of blogs on our website www.kendobson.asia that expand on an article entitled “Varieties of Faith: the Thai Case”. To access the article with links to other illustrated short essays about Thai religion and culture click here:
http://www.kendobson.asia/varieties-of-faith.html
December 7, 2014
PROTESTANT INFLUENCE IN SIAM
It would be interesting to know what the intelligence-gathering sources available in the early days of the Chakri Dynasty in Siam were. How did HM King Mongkut (1808-1868), Rama IV, and his son HM King Chulalongkorn (1853-1910), Rama V, come to realize the successful strategy they adopted to mitigate the colonialist aspirations of Great Britain and France?
First, the standard account that I have heard since I got to Thailand in 1965 is that Siam was lucky to serve as a buffer zone between the British in India-Burma-Malaya and the French in Lao-Vietnam-Cambodia. The implication was that there just wasn’t enough here in the middle for the colonizers to go for. That simple explanation has never entirely satisfied me. In fact, there were things the colonialists sought, and if they wanted those badly they got them: teak and tin in particular, not to mention chunks of geography.
The other story that nurtured pride was the legend of the doughty “Father-Teacher” McGilvary and how the missionaries managed to secure freedom of religion for the citizens of Siam and Lanna. The legend glosses over unsavory bits of stupidity, intrigue and skullduggery shrewdly parried by the palace to its considerable advantage.
That brings me to the topic of this essay, which is to re-examine the missionary legacy against the background of encroaching colonialism being handled by the Kings of Siam better than by other South East Asian monarchs. This is an essay, not a thorough historical article. Nor is this a critique of the histories and memoirs we have inherited from McFarland, Bradley, McGilvary and Wells. Its only claim is to review the legacies of the period of 1860-1930, and to try to explain how Thai sources have so resolutely ignored the contributions of Protestant missionaries.
THE BRITISH
In a way, the earlier threat to Siamese sovereignty came from the British. Great Britain took over what they called Burma in two phases. The first was largely defensive. That is, the British wished to secure its control of India. The economy of Great Britain was based on control of trade and commerce. With the loss of the US colonies in the American Revolutionary War, and the loss of sovereignty over the Atlantic Ocean in the War of 1812, England set its eyes on new empire in Asia. India was indispensable. But greed expanded to devour whatever came within reach.
When the Burmese made an incursion north against Chittagong (under British control, an area of British India that is now Bangladesh) the British launched a counter-offensive meant to eliminate this threat. The result was the First Anglo-Burmese War, 1823-24. It was the longest, most expensive war in British-India history and it was fought with some Siamese assistance.
After twenty-five years of relative peace the British decided to expand its holdings in Burma in order to gain rice-producing farmland farther from the coast, since the market for rice was greatly expanded with the opening of the Suez Canal. This naked land grab required the ruse of military intervention to put down spurious political unrest and threats to British citizens. The Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852-53 gave Britain control over all of Lower Burma. That was the first phase. The final conquest of the rest of Burma (except the Shan states in Siamese control) took place in November 1885 as the result of another dispute over whose courts could try British citizens. Behind the provocation was British fear that the Burmese king was secretly negotiating agreements with the French.
Meanwhile, Siam was consolidating its political authority over its vassal states by exercising more direct control from Bangkok. In 1860 Siam claimed control and suzerainty over all of present-day Thailand, Cambodia and Laos as well as several states in Northern Malaya and the Shan states in Burma, an area of 432,400 square miles (about the size of France and Great Britain combined). But the situation was precarious.
Today we understand that Britain’s interest in empire was all about commercial profits. That was the motivation for expanding into the Far East after the disastrous loss of the American colonies and their monopoly in Atlantic shipping. Domestically, the motive for empire building was sold as the expansion of Western Civilization to benighted areas that lacked the capacity to develop the complex network of religious, moral, scientific, intellectual and artistic components of civilization. Benevolent colonial rule would bridge the gap. Great Britain and Europe at the time was persuaded by Romanticism. Idealism prevailed. Empire might be good for business, but civilization was Britain’s burden for the world.
To an extent just being remembered, the Nineteenth Century goal was China. If Great Britain could extend its empire to include both India and China the merchants of London would soon rival the pashas of old. There were considerable problems in ruling such extensive territory. Policing was a constant issue that cost money and manpower. There were nagging moral questions as well, which got far worse when actual realities were exposed. Secrecy was best. Little of the dealings of the trading companies was transparent, except to a few stockholders. And when the companies were dissolved the functions simply devolved to the Crown. The mechanisms of control and influence were varied but tended to expand. Beginning with a trading post, the British then tried to wrest a colonial enclave, followed by military-commercial treaties with British advisors officially inserted in royal courts wherever they could, and finally a provocation for taking over.
In general it was the French who relied on provocations, sometimes imaginary, to justify (back home) the need to intervene. Gunboat diplomacy or the threat of it was how Siam lost its holdings to the French beginning with the loss of the Cambodian heartland in 1867 and all the rest of Cambodia forty years later.
The French and the British had warships, but the British also had Sir John Bowring. Bowring had the advantage of being able to deal with a single power in Siam, whereas in the Malay Peninsula there were sultans galore. Bowring’s plan was to get what Britain wanted without military action if possible. But the possibility of force was real, as Bowring made clear in his correspondence leading up to his trip to Siam in 1855. The lessons to the attentive were many, following the Opium War against China in 1839-42 (which Bowring was about to re-kindle). Bowring was a Machiavellian pragmatist when it came to negotiating treaties. What the British wanted, nay demanded, were essentially two things, British legal sovereignty over British citizens in Siam (called “extraterritoriality”) and better trade regulations in the form of reduced import duties and the end of Siamese monopolies. Agreeing to these demands cost Siam dearly in terms of tariff income and pride, but the palace thought of it as the cost of political security which could be made up otherwise, as was the case. Income slumped for only one year.
THE FRENCH
The French had overplayed their hand in dealings with the kings of Ayuthaya. French Catholic policy of trying to convert the kingdom by winning over the King led to disaster for all
those involved, following the death of King Narai in 1688. A century and a half later, after Ayuthaya fell to the Burmese and King Taksin and Rama I restored the Siamese empire, the French were at a disadvantage in empire-building in Asia. The Dutch and the British had claimed the lion’s share while Spain still held onto the Philippines for another few years.
The prize was always China. But China was too large to swallow. Nevertheless, immense wealth was supposed to go to whoever could gain access to it. The French plan was to gain entrance through “the back door” to China. The French imagined that the Mekong River was the door. Of course, the river flowed through lands that the French needed to take over if their penetration of China was to succeed. The French imagined there was urgency because the British were well on the way onto the back porch with their conquest of Burma.
To simplify a really complicated scenario, let’s say that what the French did was to conquer the two coastal parts of Vietnam and then begin chipping away all the inland vassal states that Siam held. They exploited every opportunity to get control over an area along the Mekong usually by expanding some small claim or incident into a big one. Since Siam had neither a modern standing army nor navy, Bangkok was at a disadvantage when the French resorted to gunboat tactics as they did in 1893. Siam had treaties and agreements with several city-states and small kingdoms throughout what is now Laos and Cambodia. In order to protect them the Siamese had to raise armies locally to respond to trouble, supplemented by troops sent from Siam itself. Based upon the fictitious claim (widely believed throughout France) that France had been abused when Siam defended areas in Lao from French military advances, the French sent a warship up the Chaopraya River and trained guns on the Grand Palace, demanding all the land in the Mekong watershed in Lao and on the western Siamese side, as well as huge reparations. King Rama V had to acquiesce when the British failed to back up Siam, as had been expected. But the British agreed to protect Siam against any further French aggression against the central homeland, in exchange for Tai-speaking Shan states.
The end of land losses to the French and British came in 1909. By that time Siam had forfeited about half of its territory, but none of the heartland. Kings Rama IV and V had managed to stave off full colonization.
It is now clear, in retrospect, that the French were wrong on several points. Control over the Mekong River did not lead to penetration of China. The French gained small commercial advantage from its colonization of interior South East Asia. The age of empire was ending as the years to World War I could be counted on the fingers of one hand. From 1914 on, French influence globally diminished. France, itself, was nurturing the radical nationalists attending French universities who would accelerate the end of classical imperialism.
THE SUBTLE STRATEGY
The criticism that Siam was uncivilized carried considerable dangers for the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Until the imperialists could be convinced that Siam was a modern nation with an uncorrupt judicial system the demand for legal protection of expatriate citizens (extra-territoriality) was always a concern. This very matter was at the heart of every one of the initial casus belli prosecuted by France and Great Britain in India, Burma, and China. The Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1859-64 both started because China sought to force British merchants to comply with the Emperor’s laws against the import and sale of opium inside China. The second Anglo-Burmese War arose from a fabricated case in which British traders were represented as having been
mistreated. The French used an infringement of rights case to instigate their take-over of Laos. It was clear to the Siamese leaders that an uncorrupt judicial system is a mark of civilization and an argument against extraterritoriality.
Similarly, a firm, trustworthy management of internal and foreign affairs is basic to sound international relations. International agreements are based on the presumption that the partners will not collapse. Throughout the nineteenth century Siam consisted of a five-tier structure of internal and vassal relationships. The level of attachment to Bangkok varied from place to place. The system included a confederation of city-states governed or ruled by princes or kings, as in the case of Lanna and Luang Prabang, as well as Phnom Penh and sultanates on the southern peninsula. The duty of the members was primarily mutual protection. A level of tribute, otherwise called taxation in the form of labor manpower or money, was involved. In the case of areas of Southern Laos and Eastern Cambodia there were conflicting loyalties. Depending on circumstances the leaders were either aligned to Bangkok or Saigon. Armies sometimes had to make an impact. In the south, the sultanates were often at odds with each other and so, again, armed intervention from Nakhon Sri Thammarat at Bangkok’s direction became a repeated means for settlement.
Vassal princes could be troublesome. Cao Kawilorot of Chiang Mai was constantly undertaking and mismanaging affairs that endangered stability. One of the areas most at risk was with regard to Kawilorot’s clumsy handling of teak forestry agreements with British firms. The British tended to hold Bangkok accountable. On several occasions Kawilorot was involved in military action with Karen and Shan forces inside Siam and across the river in Burmese territory as the British had negotiated the borders with Bangkok. Then the Lanna “Lord of Life” decided to suppress a presumed insurrection by the nascent Christians being nurtured by American Protestant missionaries.
Modernization and industrialization were other marks of civilization. At the very least a rail-line and modern ports for steamships were necessary. Before long a post and telegraph system and then electricity as well as streets and highways were de rigueur.
When Kings Rama IV and V began to encourage “civilization” which included government reforms, they were taking great risks. Rama III, Rama IV’s half brother, had been conservative but Mongkut was considered both a religious radical and an Anglophile, giving one of his sons the nickname George Washington. There was constant danger well into the 1880s that the old nobility would rebel or at the very least passively resist. Without their support the throne had insufficient power to survive, much less to implement reforms. Every one of the kings of the Chakri Dynasty has had to deal with violent threats to their sovereignty. In retrospect, King Chulalongkorn’s accomplishment in replacing the old order of nepotistic and hereditary prerogatives with a modern state bureaucracy is stunning.
At last, after the last of the old guard had died or retired, King Chulalongkorn undertook his final phase of protecting Siam. Having transformed the very look of Bangkok by the construction of modern palaces and boulevards and having led a sartorial movement into international couture the King took a trip.
In 1897, with a full entourage, HM the King embarked on a grand tour to see for himself how Europe was civilized and modern and to be seen by the crowned heads and common people of Europe, as well as to be seen being seen by them. One item on the itinerary was to visit his children, strategically scattered, being educated in country after country. At each stop there were personal excursions and pompous state occasions, including discussions with political leaders.
In the world of diplomacy leading up to 1914, alliances and accords, treaties and tacit agreements were universal, some concluded with elaborate ceremony and others with a cigar and a glass of brandy. No one knew all of the links the King was forging. What was obvious was that he was visiting every capital from Madrid to Moscow and having a grand time with the Kaiser, the Pope, the Kings of Scandinavia and Her Britannic Majesty. From then on respect was expected and caution was advised on the part of other world leaders.
A second visit to Europe a decade later reinforced the impression that Siam had arrived in the community of modern nations. Quite obviously Siam would neither need nor benefit from the civilizing effects of being subjected to colonization.
THE PROTESTANTS
Protestant missionaries must always deal with target countries’ short-term perception that their presence and work is a nuisance or mixed blessing at best, in hopes that in the long term they will be successful and appreciated.
Missionaries to Siam in the 19th century brought a trunk full of modern wonders to convince the Siamese leaders that the missionaries were worth having around. For the most part, King Mongkut needed no persuasion, already being convinced that the rapidly industrializing West had a head start in the direction he wanted to go. King Mongkut was an intellectual who was attracted to the scientific knowledge that the missionaries brought. In particular, the King was fascinated with astronomy. He was aware that astronomy challenged the traditional wisdom of the East and might undermine the prestige of the Buddhist adepts, but one of King Mongkut’s emphases had always been on the knowledge-based concept of Buddhism. He doubted that Western science would do otherwise than supplement what could be known about nature. Lunar and solar eclipses were rare and unpredictable mysteries before the scientific revolution heralded by astronomy. The King collected telescopes and learned the math to make his own observations to prove his calculations, all the while encouraging scholars who busily re-described reality to comport with sensible Dharma about the nature of things, and quietly ignoring the traditionalists who were alarmed.
In the same spirit of daring, the King rebuffed the traditional medicine practitioners. At the onset of a smallpox epidemic, rather than confronting the physicians directly, the King merely mandated that everyone at court be inoculated by the missionary doctors. When the epidemic passed with none of those protected coming down with the pox, no further arguments were necessary.
Printing presses, sewing machines, and typewriters were also brought by missionaries and gratefully appreciated.
In the minds of 19th century Christians there was a straight line between Christian moral principles, the need for education to ponder those principles, the production of scientific applications as a result of education, and the improvement of life as an outcome of scientific industrialization. Christianity led to civilization. Siamese intellectuals were impressed with Western (Christian) developments and the advantages of modernization, but were unconvinced that it all sprung from an elevated level of Christian morality.
There was ample evidence, in fact, to the contrary.
Surely, the 19th century opium trade was the most obvious undertaking of the British that belied any link between moral and economic superiority. International trade, carried out by ships, was the source of British wealth and strength. One constant search was for a commodity so much in demand that a small, easily transportable amount of it would create immense profit. Nutmeg was the first such product, followed by tea. But the profits never promised to match that which could be had from transporting opium from Turkey and Bombay to the Far East before the new Suez Canal was finished. The fact that the use of opiates is addictive and debilitating was an inconvenient moral factor not worth considering as far as the traders were concerned.
Opium was not first introduced to China by the British, but by Arab traders in the 7th century or before. It was used as a medicine, not becoming popular until after tobacco had been popularized; then a mixture of opium and tobacco, called madak, made opium use much more common. By the dawn of the 19th century opium trade was very lucrative, amounting to as much as 20% of the British shipping income by the end of the century. It was nearly worldwide, wherever income permitted. As early as 1800 it was having a depressing social effect due to its impact on health. Some governments began to consider how to regulate access to opium. But Emperor Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty in China launched the first major effort to stop massive imports. After appeals for the traders to stop and to remove or destroy their supplies in Guangzhou, the Chinese commissioner seized 20,000 chests of opium and destroyed them. In fact, the chests were turned over to the Chinese, who had blockaded the port of Canton thus holding the British hostage; the British Superintendent of Trade with China promised the shippers the British government would compensate them. The British government, rather than compensating the shipping companies for their massive losses, launched the first Opium War of 1839 eventually winning the war and opening up China to trade through five ports as well as giving Hong Kong Island to Britain.
Nobody was very satisfied with the outcome of the war. The Chinese resisted implementing open trade and punished Chinese people who assisted in the opium business. Then in October 1856 a Chinese pirate ship flying the British flag was intercepted by the Chinese. The name of the ship, the Arrow, became the synonym for the Second Opium War which began when the British got around to it in 1857 following a bungled assassination attempt on the life of the British Trade Superintendent, none other than Sir John Bowring. Bowring was believed by the Chinese to have created the crisis over the Arrow as a pretext for imposing further trade on the reluctant Chinese. In retribution the British Governor of Hong Kong ordered the bombardment of Canton without British approval from London. The causes for conflict mounted when the Chinese executed a French Jesuit missionary who was illegally working in Guangxi Province. The French and British attacked and captured Guangzhou at the end of 1857. An interlude followed the signing of another treaty in 1858 that opened up eleven more ports. But militant members of the Qing court pressured the emperor to refortify forts that led to Beijing. When the British tried to force their way up the river they were humiliated. This was an insult which the arrogant British would not tolerate. Parliament dispatched Lord Elgin to accompany a large group of reinforcements and they again attacked costal forts to gain access to Beijing. During peace talks diplomacy failed. The British were accused of duplicity and their envoy and team were taken, tortured slowly and killed. A second phase of war was inevitable. In battles with France, Britain and the USA participating, the Qing army was decimated and the emperor was disgraced. The treaties imposed on China amounted to utter defeat just short of being occupied and colonized.
There was no doubt that the Western nations, now including the USA, would not let moral issues influence their economic priorities. In the wake of the Opium Wars in China, opium trade was mandated with other nations including Vietnam, which resisted it adamantly, and Siam which chose other ways of mitigating its effects. If we imagine the principle is unconscionable today, substitute the word “oil” for “opium” and see where the trail leads.
Colonial practices as nearby as Burma and attitudes of the missionaries in Siam were inconvenient obstacles to the theory that Christian morality was superior. Cultural chauvinism was the major defect of attitude that undid what the missionaries proposed to accomplish. It manifested itself in the form of racism and religious bigotry, two defects that have survived into the 21st century.
The attitude easier to understand is probably the religious prejudice the missionaries brought. There is a built-in element of exclusivity in Christianity that insists on “One Way, One Salvation, One God” and brands all other religions heathen, pagan, false and deceitful. So, when Americans came to Siam they were predisposed to find Buddhism defective. There are three sacred aspects to Theravada Buddhism in Siam: the Lord Buddha, the Dharma or teaching of the Lord Buddha, and the Sangha or the priests of the Lord Buddha. From the earliest visitors, the priests/monks were special objects of derision. The famous periodical, Harper’s Weekly, introduced Siam to America, advocating that England be prevented from taking over the country and thereby consolidating its access to both India and China. In the July 18, 1857 issue Harper’s talked about the many restrictions and vows the monks follow, and then concluded, “It would be difficult to frame rules more admirably adapted to render the Siamese priests useless nuisances.” This lack of understanding, manifesting a lack of concern to even consider how Buddhism functions in the social and spiritual life of the people of Siam, was repeated well into the next century and may still be found echoing among conservative evangelical Christians from overseas. In 1903 Lillian Johnson Curtis, freshly back in the USA from 4 years in North Thailand working and observing the Presbyterian mission to the Lao, concluded her otherwise laudatory description of the people with scathing critiques of the monks. She commented, “The monks are supposed to supply the educational wants of the people, but…they do nothing of the kind. They are merely teachers by their example of apathy, laziness, and downright vice; and every year finds them on the downhill road.” (Curtis, p. 220) She concluded, “The wats [temples] of the Laos are thoroughly typical of the heart religion they teach. At a distance there is much promise of good. But when near enough to lose the enchantment of distance, one sees how worthless it all is – how inconsistent, how contradictory, and how incoherent!” (p. 210)
Racism is often concealed as cultural bias. So it was with the Harper’s article where the comments on HM King Mongkut include mention that “his hareem [sic.] is stocked with 600 ladies, many of whom are young and lovely.” Fifty years later school boys in London were repeating the slur that HM King Chulalongkorn was a polygamist to satiate his immense lust. Harper’s informed America that “The Siamese like all Orientals are polygamists…” On the whole, Harper’s thought rather highly, but patronizingly, of Rama IV. “He offered Sir John [Bowring] a cigar as any civilized white man would do.” Four months after the Harper’s article was published, The Illustrated London News, on November 21, 1857 reported on a “Voyage to Siam” by J.Y. Chevalier. As with most accounts of the strange people of the world, the English were fascinated by physical, racial characteristics. Based on his time in Bangkok, Chevalier observed, “The Siamese are of a dark yellowish complexion; they have rather high cheek bones with little or no beards. The women are rather masculine in their features, and being dressed similar to the men it is rather a difficult job to distinguish one from the other.” On the other hand, Harper’s thought “The ladies of Siam are said to be a very fine variety of the Asiatic female.” That leaves it up to the reader to conclude how they would compare to Victorian era European or American females.
King Chulalongkorn was not unaware of the modern notion that males and females be radically different in appearance, action and attitude. As well as modernizing the streets and public buildings of Bangkok, he encouraged “civilized” dress for women including narrow waists, bustles and floor length skirts and high collars to show as little skin as possible.
Protestant work in Chiang Mai and among the Laos, which Lillian Curtis describes as flourishing and being carried on among a most attractive and receptive people nearly came to an end before it got well started. The cantankerous Prince of Chiang Mai, Lord Kawilorot, quickly grew tired of the missionaries and their insistence on religious conversions when they had been given permission to demonstrate modernization.
In the recent past there have been several reinterpretations of the missionaries’ accounts of the deaths of the two “Christian martyrs” in 1869. Herb Swanson wrote extensively about this in 1984 as an event that redirected and restricted the budding influence of the first Christian work in Lanna. Prasit Pongudom used Swanson’s thesis and his own analysis in 2010 to expand the notion, calling the “martyrdom” a threshold event in Thai history. Meanwhile, Paul Chambers and Eva Pascal tried to include more regional political analysis to suggest that it was not a very big event except to the church. In 2004 Don Swearer spoke to a group of amateur historians and long-time residents in Thailand, explaining that the way the missionaries had interpreted the events was molded by their concepts about the glorious effects of martyrdom rather than by a clear perception of the political and historical realities that were unfolding as King Chulalongkorn ascended the throne upon the death of his father.
The point has been made, certainly, that Prince Kawilorot would have rooted out the Christian influence if he had been able to. In fact, he died before he could bring that about, but not before chilling the interest in Christianity that was growing in Chiang Mai. Kawilorot’s Bangkok-picked successor was friendlier to the Christian workers, but the threat had not ended. A decade after the death of the two converts a “viceroy” attempted to prevent Christian marriages. This backfired when King Chulalongkorn issued an edict of religious toleration that expanded religious freedom throughout the Lanna portions of Siam. By this time the process of Siamization of Northern Thailand was in full swing, aided by the missionaries at every turn. It can be said that the mission had become an ally, if not an agent, of Bangkok in removing the old authority structure in the North.
The Protestant missionaries to the Lao established stations in every major city. Their strategy was to build schools for children who were deprived of education, beginning with girls in Chiang Mai. Schools were sometimes built before churches, but usually it was the children of Christians who first benefitted from missionary education. Medical work resulted in hospitals as soon as feasible. By the end of the reign of Rama V the Lao Presbyterian mission had stations with a school and hospital in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lampang, Nan and Prae. There were ten or twenty churches attached to each of those stations. But by then modernization had a firm foothold. Railroads were on the way, and the modernizing influence of the Protestants would no longer be needed. The purpose of the church from then on would be to care for the members of the Christian sub-culture and to supplement the work of education and medical care as adjuncts to the main providers of those services.
July 1, 2014
It would be interesting to know what the intelligence-gathering sources available in the early days of the Chakri Dynasty in Siam were. How did HM King Mongkut (1808-1868), Rama IV, and his son HM King Chulalongkorn (1853-1910), Rama V, come to realize the successful strategy they adopted to mitigate the colonialist aspirations of Great Britain and France?
First, the standard account that I have heard since I got to Thailand in 1965 is that Siam was lucky to serve as a buffer zone between the British in India-Burma-Malaya and the French in Lao-Vietnam-Cambodia. The implication was that there just wasn’t enough here in the middle for the colonizers to go for. That simple explanation has never entirely satisfied me. In fact, there were things the colonialists sought, and if they wanted those badly they got them: teak and tin in particular, not to mention chunks of geography.
The other story that nurtured pride was the legend of the doughty “Father-Teacher” McGilvary and how the missionaries managed to secure freedom of religion for the citizens of Siam and Lanna. The legend glosses over unsavory bits of stupidity, intrigue and skullduggery shrewdly parried by the palace to its considerable advantage.
That brings me to the topic of this essay, which is to re-examine the missionary legacy against the background of encroaching colonialism being handled by the Kings of Siam better than by other South East Asian monarchs. This is an essay, not a thorough historical article. Nor is this a critique of the histories and memoirs we have inherited from McFarland, Bradley, McGilvary and Wells. Its only claim is to review the legacies of the period of 1860-1930, and to try to explain how Thai sources have so resolutely ignored the contributions of Protestant missionaries.
THE BRITISH
In a way, the earlier threat to Siamese sovereignty came from the British. Great Britain took over what they called Burma in two phases. The first was largely defensive. That is, the British wished to secure its control of India. The economy of Great Britain was based on control of trade and commerce. With the loss of the US colonies in the American Revolutionary War, and the loss of sovereignty over the Atlantic Ocean in the War of 1812, England set its eyes on new empire in Asia. India was indispensable. But greed expanded to devour whatever came within reach.
When the Burmese made an incursion north against Chittagong (under British control, an area of British India that is now Bangladesh) the British launched a counter-offensive meant to eliminate this threat. The result was the First Anglo-Burmese War, 1823-24. It was the longest, most expensive war in British-India history and it was fought with some Siamese assistance.
After twenty-five years of relative peace the British decided to expand its holdings in Burma in order to gain rice-producing farmland farther from the coast, since the market for rice was greatly expanded with the opening of the Suez Canal. This naked land grab required the ruse of military intervention to put down spurious political unrest and threats to British citizens. The Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852-53 gave Britain control over all of Lower Burma. That was the first phase. The final conquest of the rest of Burma (except the Shan states in Siamese control) took place in November 1885 as the result of another dispute over whose courts could try British citizens. Behind the provocation was British fear that the Burmese king was secretly negotiating agreements with the French.
Meanwhile, Siam was consolidating its political authority over its vassal states by exercising more direct control from Bangkok. In 1860 Siam claimed control and suzerainty over all of present-day Thailand, Cambodia and Laos as well as several states in Northern Malaya and the Shan states in Burma, an area of 432,400 square miles (about the size of France and Great Britain combined). But the situation was precarious.
Today we understand that Britain’s interest in empire was all about commercial profits. That was the motivation for expanding into the Far East after the disastrous loss of the American colonies and their monopoly in Atlantic shipping. Domestically, the motive for empire building was sold as the expansion of Western Civilization to benighted areas that lacked the capacity to develop the complex network of religious, moral, scientific, intellectual and artistic components of civilization. Benevolent colonial rule would bridge the gap. Great Britain and Europe at the time was persuaded by Romanticism. Idealism prevailed. Empire might be good for business, but civilization was Britain’s burden for the world.
To an extent just being remembered, the Nineteenth Century goal was China. If Great Britain could extend its empire to include both India and China the merchants of London would soon rival the pashas of old. There were considerable problems in ruling such extensive territory. Policing was a constant issue that cost money and manpower. There were nagging moral questions as well, which got far worse when actual realities were exposed. Secrecy was best. Little of the dealings of the trading companies was transparent, except to a few stockholders. And when the companies were dissolved the functions simply devolved to the Crown. The mechanisms of control and influence were varied but tended to expand. Beginning with a trading post, the British then tried to wrest a colonial enclave, followed by military-commercial treaties with British advisors officially inserted in royal courts wherever they could, and finally a provocation for taking over.
In general it was the French who relied on provocations, sometimes imaginary, to justify (back home) the need to intervene. Gunboat diplomacy or the threat of it was how Siam lost its holdings to the French beginning with the loss of the Cambodian heartland in 1867 and all the rest of Cambodia forty years later.
The French and the British had warships, but the British also had Sir John Bowring. Bowring had the advantage of being able to deal with a single power in Siam, whereas in the Malay Peninsula there were sultans galore. Bowring’s plan was to get what Britain wanted without military action if possible. But the possibility of force was real, as Bowring made clear in his correspondence leading up to his trip to Siam in 1855. The lessons to the attentive were many, following the Opium War against China in 1839-42 (which Bowring was about to re-kindle). Bowring was a Machiavellian pragmatist when it came to negotiating treaties. What the British wanted, nay demanded, were essentially two things, British legal sovereignty over British citizens in Siam (called “extraterritoriality”) and better trade regulations in the form of reduced import duties and the end of Siamese monopolies. Agreeing to these demands cost Siam dearly in terms of tariff income and pride, but the palace thought of it as the cost of political security which could be made up otherwise, as was the case. Income slumped for only one year.
THE FRENCH
The French had overplayed their hand in dealings with the kings of Ayuthaya. French Catholic policy of trying to convert the kingdom by winning over the King led to disaster for all
those involved, following the death of King Narai in 1688. A century and a half later, after Ayuthaya fell to the Burmese and King Taksin and Rama I restored the Siamese empire, the French were at a disadvantage in empire-building in Asia. The Dutch and the British had claimed the lion’s share while Spain still held onto the Philippines for another few years.
The prize was always China. But China was too large to swallow. Nevertheless, immense wealth was supposed to go to whoever could gain access to it. The French plan was to gain entrance through “the back door” to China. The French imagined that the Mekong River was the door. Of course, the river flowed through lands that the French needed to take over if their penetration of China was to succeed. The French imagined there was urgency because the British were well on the way onto the back porch with their conquest of Burma.
To simplify a really complicated scenario, let’s say that what the French did was to conquer the two coastal parts of Vietnam and then begin chipping away all the inland vassal states that Siam held. They exploited every opportunity to get control over an area along the Mekong usually by expanding some small claim or incident into a big one. Since Siam had neither a modern standing army nor navy, Bangkok was at a disadvantage when the French resorted to gunboat tactics as they did in 1893. Siam had treaties and agreements with several city-states and small kingdoms throughout what is now Laos and Cambodia. In order to protect them the Siamese had to raise armies locally to respond to trouble, supplemented by troops sent from Siam itself. Based upon the fictitious claim (widely believed throughout France) that France had been abused when Siam defended areas in Lao from French military advances, the French sent a warship up the Chaopraya River and trained guns on the Grand Palace, demanding all the land in the Mekong watershed in Lao and on the western Siamese side, as well as huge reparations. King Rama V had to acquiesce when the British failed to back up Siam, as had been expected. But the British agreed to protect Siam against any further French aggression against the central homeland, in exchange for Tai-speaking Shan states.
The end of land losses to the French and British came in 1909. By that time Siam had forfeited about half of its territory, but none of the heartland. Kings Rama IV and V had managed to stave off full colonization.
It is now clear, in retrospect, that the French were wrong on several points. Control over the Mekong River did not lead to penetration of China. The French gained small commercial advantage from its colonization of interior South East Asia. The age of empire was ending as the years to World War I could be counted on the fingers of one hand. From 1914 on, French influence globally diminished. France, itself, was nurturing the radical nationalists attending French universities who would accelerate the end of classical imperialism.
THE SUBTLE STRATEGY
The criticism that Siam was uncivilized carried considerable dangers for the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Until the imperialists could be convinced that Siam was a modern nation with an uncorrupt judicial system the demand for legal protection of expatriate citizens (extra-territoriality) was always a concern. This very matter was at the heart of every one of the initial casus belli prosecuted by France and Great Britain in India, Burma, and China. The Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1859-64 both started because China sought to force British merchants to comply with the Emperor’s laws against the import and sale of opium inside China. The second Anglo-Burmese War arose from a fabricated case in which British traders were represented as having been
mistreated. The French used an infringement of rights case to instigate their take-over of Laos. It was clear to the Siamese leaders that an uncorrupt judicial system is a mark of civilization and an argument against extraterritoriality.
Similarly, a firm, trustworthy management of internal and foreign affairs is basic to sound international relations. International agreements are based on the presumption that the partners will not collapse. Throughout the nineteenth century Siam consisted of a five-tier structure of internal and vassal relationships. The level of attachment to Bangkok varied from place to place. The system included a confederation of city-states governed or ruled by princes or kings, as in the case of Lanna and Luang Prabang, as well as Phnom Penh and sultanates on the southern peninsula. The duty of the members was primarily mutual protection. A level of tribute, otherwise called taxation in the form of labor manpower or money, was involved. In the case of areas of Southern Laos and Eastern Cambodia there were conflicting loyalties. Depending on circumstances the leaders were either aligned to Bangkok or Saigon. Armies sometimes had to make an impact. In the south, the sultanates were often at odds with each other and so, again, armed intervention from Nakhon Sri Thammarat at Bangkok’s direction became a repeated means for settlement.
Vassal princes could be troublesome. Cao Kawilorot of Chiang Mai was constantly undertaking and mismanaging affairs that endangered stability. One of the areas most at risk was with regard to Kawilorot’s clumsy handling of teak forestry agreements with British firms. The British tended to hold Bangkok accountable. On several occasions Kawilorot was involved in military action with Karen and Shan forces inside Siam and across the river in Burmese territory as the British had negotiated the borders with Bangkok. Then the Lanna “Lord of Life” decided to suppress a presumed insurrection by the nascent Christians being nurtured by American Protestant missionaries.
Modernization and industrialization were other marks of civilization. At the very least a rail-line and modern ports for steamships were necessary. Before long a post and telegraph system and then electricity as well as streets and highways were de rigueur.
When Kings Rama IV and V began to encourage “civilization” which included government reforms, they were taking great risks. Rama III, Rama IV’s half brother, had been conservative but Mongkut was considered both a religious radical and an Anglophile, giving one of his sons the nickname George Washington. There was constant danger well into the 1880s that the old nobility would rebel or at the very least passively resist. Without their support the throne had insufficient power to survive, much less to implement reforms. Every one of the kings of the Chakri Dynasty has had to deal with violent threats to their sovereignty. In retrospect, King Chulalongkorn’s accomplishment in replacing the old order of nepotistic and hereditary prerogatives with a modern state bureaucracy is stunning.
At last, after the last of the old guard had died or retired, King Chulalongkorn undertook his final phase of protecting Siam. Having transformed the very look of Bangkok by the construction of modern palaces and boulevards and having led a sartorial movement into international couture the King took a trip.
In 1897, with a full entourage, HM the King embarked on a grand tour to see for himself how Europe was civilized and modern and to be seen by the crowned heads and common people of Europe, as well as to be seen being seen by them. One item on the itinerary was to visit his children, strategically scattered, being educated in country after country. At each stop there were personal excursions and pompous state occasions, including discussions with political leaders.
In the world of diplomacy leading up to 1914, alliances and accords, treaties and tacit agreements were universal, some concluded with elaborate ceremony and others with a cigar and a glass of brandy. No one knew all of the links the King was forging. What was obvious was that he was visiting every capital from Madrid to Moscow and having a grand time with the Kaiser, the Pope, the Kings of Scandinavia and Her Britannic Majesty. From then on respect was expected and caution was advised on the part of other world leaders.
A second visit to Europe a decade later reinforced the impression that Siam had arrived in the community of modern nations. Quite obviously Siam would neither need nor benefit from the civilizing effects of being subjected to colonization.
THE PROTESTANTS
Protestant missionaries must always deal with target countries’ short-term perception that their presence and work is a nuisance or mixed blessing at best, in hopes that in the long term they will be successful and appreciated.
Missionaries to Siam in the 19th century brought a trunk full of modern wonders to convince the Siamese leaders that the missionaries were worth having around. For the most part, King Mongkut needed no persuasion, already being convinced that the rapidly industrializing West had a head start in the direction he wanted to go. King Mongkut was an intellectual who was attracted to the scientific knowledge that the missionaries brought. In particular, the King was fascinated with astronomy. He was aware that astronomy challenged the traditional wisdom of the East and might undermine the prestige of the Buddhist adepts, but one of King Mongkut’s emphases had always been on the knowledge-based concept of Buddhism. He doubted that Western science would do otherwise than supplement what could be known about nature. Lunar and solar eclipses were rare and unpredictable mysteries before the scientific revolution heralded by astronomy. The King collected telescopes and learned the math to make his own observations to prove his calculations, all the while encouraging scholars who busily re-described reality to comport with sensible Dharma about the nature of things, and quietly ignoring the traditionalists who were alarmed.
In the same spirit of daring, the King rebuffed the traditional medicine practitioners. At the onset of a smallpox epidemic, rather than confronting the physicians directly, the King merely mandated that everyone at court be inoculated by the missionary doctors. When the epidemic passed with none of those protected coming down with the pox, no further arguments were necessary.
Printing presses, sewing machines, and typewriters were also brought by missionaries and gratefully appreciated.
In the minds of 19th century Christians there was a straight line between Christian moral principles, the need for education to ponder those principles, the production of scientific applications as a result of education, and the improvement of life as an outcome of scientific industrialization. Christianity led to civilization. Siamese intellectuals were impressed with Western (Christian) developments and the advantages of modernization, but were unconvinced that it all sprung from an elevated level of Christian morality.
There was ample evidence, in fact, to the contrary.
Surely, the 19th century opium trade was the most obvious undertaking of the British that belied any link between moral and economic superiority. International trade, carried out by ships, was the source of British wealth and strength. One constant search was for a commodity so much in demand that a small, easily transportable amount of it would create immense profit. Nutmeg was the first such product, followed by tea. But the profits never promised to match that which could be had from transporting opium from Turkey and Bombay to the Far East before the new Suez Canal was finished. The fact that the use of opiates is addictive and debilitating was an inconvenient moral factor not worth considering as far as the traders were concerned.
Opium was not first introduced to China by the British, but by Arab traders in the 7th century or before. It was used as a medicine, not becoming popular until after tobacco had been popularized; then a mixture of opium and tobacco, called madak, made opium use much more common. By the dawn of the 19th century opium trade was very lucrative, amounting to as much as 20% of the British shipping income by the end of the century. It was nearly worldwide, wherever income permitted. As early as 1800 it was having a depressing social effect due to its impact on health. Some governments began to consider how to regulate access to opium. But Emperor Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty in China launched the first major effort to stop massive imports. After appeals for the traders to stop and to remove or destroy their supplies in Guangzhou, the Chinese commissioner seized 20,000 chests of opium and destroyed them. In fact, the chests were turned over to the Chinese, who had blockaded the port of Canton thus holding the British hostage; the British Superintendent of Trade with China promised the shippers the British government would compensate them. The British government, rather than compensating the shipping companies for their massive losses, launched the first Opium War of 1839 eventually winning the war and opening up China to trade through five ports as well as giving Hong Kong Island to Britain.
Nobody was very satisfied with the outcome of the war. The Chinese resisted implementing open trade and punished Chinese people who assisted in the opium business. Then in October 1856 a Chinese pirate ship flying the British flag was intercepted by the Chinese. The name of the ship, the Arrow, became the synonym for the Second Opium War which began when the British got around to it in 1857 following a bungled assassination attempt on the life of the British Trade Superintendent, none other than Sir John Bowring. Bowring was believed by the Chinese to have created the crisis over the Arrow as a pretext for imposing further trade on the reluctant Chinese. In retribution the British Governor of Hong Kong ordered the bombardment of Canton without British approval from London. The causes for conflict mounted when the Chinese executed a French Jesuit missionary who was illegally working in Guangxi Province. The French and British attacked and captured Guangzhou at the end of 1857. An interlude followed the signing of another treaty in 1858 that opened up eleven more ports. But militant members of the Qing court pressured the emperor to refortify forts that led to Beijing. When the British tried to force their way up the river they were humiliated. This was an insult which the arrogant British would not tolerate. Parliament dispatched Lord Elgin to accompany a large group of reinforcements and they again attacked costal forts to gain access to Beijing. During peace talks diplomacy failed. The British were accused of duplicity and their envoy and team were taken, tortured slowly and killed. A second phase of war was inevitable. In battles with France, Britain and the USA participating, the Qing army was decimated and the emperor was disgraced. The treaties imposed on China amounted to utter defeat just short of being occupied and colonized.
There was no doubt that the Western nations, now including the USA, would not let moral issues influence their economic priorities. In the wake of the Opium Wars in China, opium trade was mandated with other nations including Vietnam, which resisted it adamantly, and Siam which chose other ways of mitigating its effects. If we imagine the principle is unconscionable today, substitute the word “oil” for “opium” and see where the trail leads.
Colonial practices as nearby as Burma and attitudes of the missionaries in Siam were inconvenient obstacles to the theory that Christian morality was superior. Cultural chauvinism was the major defect of attitude that undid what the missionaries proposed to accomplish. It manifested itself in the form of racism and religious bigotry, two defects that have survived into the 21st century.
The attitude easier to understand is probably the religious prejudice the missionaries brought. There is a built-in element of exclusivity in Christianity that insists on “One Way, One Salvation, One God” and brands all other religions heathen, pagan, false and deceitful. So, when Americans came to Siam they were predisposed to find Buddhism defective. There are three sacred aspects to Theravada Buddhism in Siam: the Lord Buddha, the Dharma or teaching of the Lord Buddha, and the Sangha or the priests of the Lord Buddha. From the earliest visitors, the priests/monks were special objects of derision. The famous periodical, Harper’s Weekly, introduced Siam to America, advocating that England be prevented from taking over the country and thereby consolidating its access to both India and China. In the July 18, 1857 issue Harper’s talked about the many restrictions and vows the monks follow, and then concluded, “It would be difficult to frame rules more admirably adapted to render the Siamese priests useless nuisances.” This lack of understanding, manifesting a lack of concern to even consider how Buddhism functions in the social and spiritual life of the people of Siam, was repeated well into the next century and may still be found echoing among conservative evangelical Christians from overseas. In 1903 Lillian Johnson Curtis, freshly back in the USA from 4 years in North Thailand working and observing the Presbyterian mission to the Lao, concluded her otherwise laudatory description of the people with scathing critiques of the monks. She commented, “The monks are supposed to supply the educational wants of the people, but…they do nothing of the kind. They are merely teachers by their example of apathy, laziness, and downright vice; and every year finds them on the downhill road.” (Curtis, p. 220) She concluded, “The wats [temples] of the Laos are thoroughly typical of the heart religion they teach. At a distance there is much promise of good. But when near enough to lose the enchantment of distance, one sees how worthless it all is – how inconsistent, how contradictory, and how incoherent!” (p. 210)
Racism is often concealed as cultural bias. So it was with the Harper’s article where the comments on HM King Mongkut include mention that “his hareem [sic.] is stocked with 600 ladies, many of whom are young and lovely.” Fifty years later school boys in London were repeating the slur that HM King Chulalongkorn was a polygamist to satiate his immense lust. Harper’s informed America that “The Siamese like all Orientals are polygamists…” On the whole, Harper’s thought rather highly, but patronizingly, of Rama IV. “He offered Sir John [Bowring] a cigar as any civilized white man would do.” Four months after the Harper’s article was published, The Illustrated London News, on November 21, 1857 reported on a “Voyage to Siam” by J.Y. Chevalier. As with most accounts of the strange people of the world, the English were fascinated by physical, racial characteristics. Based on his time in Bangkok, Chevalier observed, “The Siamese are of a dark yellowish complexion; they have rather high cheek bones with little or no beards. The women are rather masculine in their features, and being dressed similar to the men it is rather a difficult job to distinguish one from the other.” On the other hand, Harper’s thought “The ladies of Siam are said to be a very fine variety of the Asiatic female.” That leaves it up to the reader to conclude how they would compare to Victorian era European or American females.
King Chulalongkorn was not unaware of the modern notion that males and females be radically different in appearance, action and attitude. As well as modernizing the streets and public buildings of Bangkok, he encouraged “civilized” dress for women including narrow waists, bustles and floor length skirts and high collars to show as little skin as possible.
Protestant work in Chiang Mai and among the Laos, which Lillian Curtis describes as flourishing and being carried on among a most attractive and receptive people nearly came to an end before it got well started. The cantankerous Prince of Chiang Mai, Lord Kawilorot, quickly grew tired of the missionaries and their insistence on religious conversions when they had been given permission to demonstrate modernization.
In the recent past there have been several reinterpretations of the missionaries’ accounts of the deaths of the two “Christian martyrs” in 1869. Herb Swanson wrote extensively about this in 1984 as an event that redirected and restricted the budding influence of the first Christian work in Lanna. Prasit Pongudom used Swanson’s thesis and his own analysis in 2010 to expand the notion, calling the “martyrdom” a threshold event in Thai history. Meanwhile, Paul Chambers and Eva Pascal tried to include more regional political analysis to suggest that it was not a very big event except to the church. In 2004 Don Swearer spoke to a group of amateur historians and long-time residents in Thailand, explaining that the way the missionaries had interpreted the events was molded by their concepts about the glorious effects of martyrdom rather than by a clear perception of the political and historical realities that were unfolding as King Chulalongkorn ascended the throne upon the death of his father.
The point has been made, certainly, that Prince Kawilorot would have rooted out the Christian influence if he had been able to. In fact, he died before he could bring that about, but not before chilling the interest in Christianity that was growing in Chiang Mai. Kawilorot’s Bangkok-picked successor was friendlier to the Christian workers, but the threat had not ended. A decade after the death of the two converts a “viceroy” attempted to prevent Christian marriages. This backfired when King Chulalongkorn issued an edict of religious toleration that expanded religious freedom throughout the Lanna portions of Siam. By this time the process of Siamization of Northern Thailand was in full swing, aided by the missionaries at every turn. It can be said that the mission had become an ally, if not an agent, of Bangkok in removing the old authority structure in the North.
The Protestant missionaries to the Lao established stations in every major city. Their strategy was to build schools for children who were deprived of education, beginning with girls in Chiang Mai. Schools were sometimes built before churches, but usually it was the children of Christians who first benefitted from missionary education. Medical work resulted in hospitals as soon as feasible. By the end of the reign of Rama V the Lao Presbyterian mission had stations with a school and hospital in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lampang, Nan and Prae. There were ten or twenty churches attached to each of those stations. But by then modernization had a firm foothold. Railroads were on the way, and the modernizing influence of the Protestants would no longer be needed. The purpose of the church from then on would be to care for the members of the Christian sub-culture and to supplement the work of education and medical care as adjuncts to the main providers of those services.
July 1, 2014
Attitude toward Thailand
After these several decades of struggling to come to terms with what it takes to adjust to being a foreigner here in Thailand I think I have a proposal to make. It has to do with attitude – an everyday, all-the-time, wherever-you-go self-perception that feels right and works well.
Before I get to that, let me try to describe why it is a problem that needs a solution. What am I adjusting to?
I am adjusting to the fact that wherever-I-go, all-the-time, I am a foreigner. I look different from Thai people and therefore I am different.
I sound different, too. No matter how almost perfect my spoken Thai might be in some social circumstances, it is different. I get various reactions to it. Sometimes people do a double-take when they overhear me, checking to be sure they had heard who they thought they had. Sometimes they swear my Thai is “very clear,” meaning they can understand what I say despite having to deal with my accent and errors. The best reaction is no reaction, normal conversation, and then we can almost forget that I am a foreigner and we can carry on as something else: student-teacher, clerk-client, informant-inquirer – something else than Thai-alien.
I used to get angry when I confronted two-tiered pricing. Entry fees to national parks and cultural venues, for example. Ok, it still makes me angry and it’s one of the things I’m trying to deal with. There is one town where you get charged 4 times as much on public transportation if you are a foreigner. I won’t go there anymore. It’s one thing to be charged more for merchandise, and another almost as bad thing to be told “but I’m giving you the Thai price!” Well, what do I want if it’s not the Thai price? I want the fair price, that’s what I want. I want the right price because it’s right and not because of who I am.
The trouble is every social convention in Thailand is a lot more about “who you are” than it is in farang (Caucasian) countries. Who you are and who you know make a bigger difference here. All political and social arrangements involve these complex balances and exchanges of influence. It is what sustains the culture, or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, the whole society is organized on a hierarchical, patron-client principle. Cross-cultural business propositions are more complex than otherwise because for a farang or any outsider the relational factor is so well hidden. The deal is likely to be made or broken by relationships, and if not by relationships then by trading shares of influence, and if not influence then something of material value might stand in its place. It’s very complex and convoluted, and often feels conniving and corrupt. It’s way better to be an insider.
The only way to be an insider, however, is to be accepted in, and then you are in only so far. There are ceilings and limits, and there are rewards and penalties to be dealt with, and, alas, the rules change all the time. It’s what makes acculturation hard for me and a lot of foreigners.
It’s what makes Thai language hard to master, too. It’s not only the tones and the grammar, or the slang, or the speed, it’s the social nuances. For instance, in English there is “you”, only one second person pronoun (unless you count y’all). It can be used to refer to anybody. In Thai there are at least seventeen second person pronouns. Which one is used depends on the relative age and status of the speakers, the formality or informality of the circumstances, the background and previous history of the two persons, the subject being discussed, the levels of agreement being experienced, hoped for, or expected, and the emotional volubility of the situation – among other things!
An outsider can never get it right all the time. Even insiders are outsiders in some social circumstances. It’s one way to maintain the “higher” in “hierarchy.” It’s very undemocratic. It also appears to be random and unpredictable.
Now we have it. It’s out in the open now. This is about my attitude. I have this belief that goodness, fairness, justice and opportunities apply to everyone. Pigmentation, pronunciation and popularity shouldn’t come into it. This is deep within me, this attitude, even though it’s taken a lot of effort to nurture and develop. I was born a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male, Mid-western, American. That’s pretty synonymous with racist, chauvinist, bigot. I’ve come a long way. I won’t get farther into confession here, but I do know racism inside and out, and it bothers me to be a victim of it, even when it’s benign or meant as a benefit.
But I’ve had an attitudinal breakthrough.
It came as a sort of epiphany, or an “ah-ha!” as I was working on a joint research project at Payap University here in Chiang Mai. I was reading Walter Brueggemann’s treatise on “The Land”. One of the basic theological understandings that Brueggemann introduced was the concept of attitude toward being landless and being landed. Brueggemann points out that things began to go wrong for the people of God when they lost track of the fact that the land and their right to live there was a gift from God. Even during the time David was king they did not own the land, it was not theirs. Moreover, even their control of it was not an entitlement. They were entitled to nothing except the right to be grateful for the gifts that being there provided if they worked hard.
Now, as Christians we are taught that our true and ultimate citizenship is in the Kingdom of God, in the New Jerusalem, a city whose location, splendor and nature are “not of this world.” It is what St. John the Divine describes as “Heaven.”
Meanwhile, those of us with citizenship and passports from diverse nations are sojourners here in a kingdom that is of this world. We know we are non-immigrants here. We are reminded of it every 90 days when we have to report our continued presence and complicity to special rules of this kingdom that apply to foreigners. But reminders of other sorts are much more frequent.
On the one hand, forgetfulness of the fact that we are aliens here seems almost ludicrous. How could we forget when the barrage of second glances, changed expressions on the faces of those who see us, and reactions of children to our appearances are so marked? We are the constant objects of what one observer called “in-your-face racism,” even if it is not often to the point of being dangerous to our personal safety.
On the other hand, I find myself forgetting. That is, I find myself assuming that I have earned certain rights here. I have the right to drive a vehicle on the streets and roads, for example. And in most ways it is a right shared equally with other drivers. But if I were to be involved in an accident I know that inflated demands and emotions would be further exaggerated by the fact that I am a foreigner. I would, of course, consider it an injustice that extraneous facts might color judgments in the matter, but it would not be prudent to forget that they might.
However, I do forget. As I said, I tend to drift toward thinking of myself as belonging here. I have earned this status, I think. I have lived here for decades, invested my life in worthy causes here, spent lots of money here, given up positions and rights elsewhere to be here, and I am trying to live by the rules here. I’m even willing to be treated as an alien to be here, a farang, a perpetual outsider. And still I am often jolted by a sense of dis-contiguousness. The reality of my presence here in Thailand is that my attitude toward being here is sometimes out of synchronization with the attitude of Thai people towards me.
So it struck me to realize that what’s going on with me is what was going on with the people of Israel. They had drifted away from thinking about being in the land of promise as a gift and thought about it as an entitlement. As their gratitude for grace diminished their concerns about management and security mounted. So, when they lost the land (and the Temple, of course; it went with the land) their sense of loss was lamentable. Their despair was extreme, as people who had lost everything.
A contemporary Christian point of view would be that they had not actually lost anything that was permanently theirs. It is a fact of life for tenants that they do not own the land. They are there on it for a while. The Christian point of view is that this transiency is the reality; ownership is a delusion, and wanting to control is a mania.
I had never thought to apply that perspective to my being in Thailand, not directly. I had thought of being here as a calling, a vocation, a mission. It was in this context that I was grateful for opportunities and successes, relationships and rewards.
But what if I were to expand this perspective to be more comprehensive? That is the proposal I want to make. I want to try to adopt this attitude toward every aspect of being here. I am going to try to think of being here as a gift and try to develop a sense of gratitude toward all the people, agencies and operatives that are making it possible day after day.
I am going to try to lay aside my sense of entitlement and belonging and as much freight that comes with it as I can. I’m going to try to give up thinking, “I have as much right-of-way on this highway as any driver,” and “I have as much say in this meeting as others do.” Maybe I can give up obsessiveness about personal possessions while I am at it (that would be a relief) and limit my attempts to control, to things from my skin on in.
It’s going to take practice as does any attitudinal shift. I will need to work on the idea that “I’m a guest here,” “being here is a privilege,” “I don’t have to exercise the same level of control here,” “being here is a gift,” “smile at this person, he may not yet be glad you’re here.”
Here’s what I think: most Thai people would respond positively to this attitude of my being a type of guest here; they already think about me as here by a different set of rights than theirs. This new attitude would help me lower my profile; fitting in is a positive value in this culture. Most of all I think it would give me peace of mind to have my perception about being here fit the Thai perception about my being here. And it would make me a nicer driver.
May 2, 2009, revised November 1, 2012
Before I get to that, let me try to describe why it is a problem that needs a solution. What am I adjusting to?
I am adjusting to the fact that wherever-I-go, all-the-time, I am a foreigner. I look different from Thai people and therefore I am different.
I sound different, too. No matter how almost perfect my spoken Thai might be in some social circumstances, it is different. I get various reactions to it. Sometimes people do a double-take when they overhear me, checking to be sure they had heard who they thought they had. Sometimes they swear my Thai is “very clear,” meaning they can understand what I say despite having to deal with my accent and errors. The best reaction is no reaction, normal conversation, and then we can almost forget that I am a foreigner and we can carry on as something else: student-teacher, clerk-client, informant-inquirer – something else than Thai-alien.
I used to get angry when I confronted two-tiered pricing. Entry fees to national parks and cultural venues, for example. Ok, it still makes me angry and it’s one of the things I’m trying to deal with. There is one town where you get charged 4 times as much on public transportation if you are a foreigner. I won’t go there anymore. It’s one thing to be charged more for merchandise, and another almost as bad thing to be told “but I’m giving you the Thai price!” Well, what do I want if it’s not the Thai price? I want the fair price, that’s what I want. I want the right price because it’s right and not because of who I am.
The trouble is every social convention in Thailand is a lot more about “who you are” than it is in farang (Caucasian) countries. Who you are and who you know make a bigger difference here. All political and social arrangements involve these complex balances and exchanges of influence. It is what sustains the culture, or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, the whole society is organized on a hierarchical, patron-client principle. Cross-cultural business propositions are more complex than otherwise because for a farang or any outsider the relational factor is so well hidden. The deal is likely to be made or broken by relationships, and if not by relationships then by trading shares of influence, and if not influence then something of material value might stand in its place. It’s very complex and convoluted, and often feels conniving and corrupt. It’s way better to be an insider.
The only way to be an insider, however, is to be accepted in, and then you are in only so far. There are ceilings and limits, and there are rewards and penalties to be dealt with, and, alas, the rules change all the time. It’s what makes acculturation hard for me and a lot of foreigners.
It’s what makes Thai language hard to master, too. It’s not only the tones and the grammar, or the slang, or the speed, it’s the social nuances. For instance, in English there is “you”, only one second person pronoun (unless you count y’all). It can be used to refer to anybody. In Thai there are at least seventeen second person pronouns. Which one is used depends on the relative age and status of the speakers, the formality or informality of the circumstances, the background and previous history of the two persons, the subject being discussed, the levels of agreement being experienced, hoped for, or expected, and the emotional volubility of the situation – among other things!
An outsider can never get it right all the time. Even insiders are outsiders in some social circumstances. It’s one way to maintain the “higher” in “hierarchy.” It’s very undemocratic. It also appears to be random and unpredictable.
Now we have it. It’s out in the open now. This is about my attitude. I have this belief that goodness, fairness, justice and opportunities apply to everyone. Pigmentation, pronunciation and popularity shouldn’t come into it. This is deep within me, this attitude, even though it’s taken a lot of effort to nurture and develop. I was born a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male, Mid-western, American. That’s pretty synonymous with racist, chauvinist, bigot. I’ve come a long way. I won’t get farther into confession here, but I do know racism inside and out, and it bothers me to be a victim of it, even when it’s benign or meant as a benefit.
But I’ve had an attitudinal breakthrough.
It came as a sort of epiphany, or an “ah-ha!” as I was working on a joint research project at Payap University here in Chiang Mai. I was reading Walter Brueggemann’s treatise on “The Land”. One of the basic theological understandings that Brueggemann introduced was the concept of attitude toward being landless and being landed. Brueggemann points out that things began to go wrong for the people of God when they lost track of the fact that the land and their right to live there was a gift from God. Even during the time David was king they did not own the land, it was not theirs. Moreover, even their control of it was not an entitlement. They were entitled to nothing except the right to be grateful for the gifts that being there provided if they worked hard.
Now, as Christians we are taught that our true and ultimate citizenship is in the Kingdom of God, in the New Jerusalem, a city whose location, splendor and nature are “not of this world.” It is what St. John the Divine describes as “Heaven.”
Meanwhile, those of us with citizenship and passports from diverse nations are sojourners here in a kingdom that is of this world. We know we are non-immigrants here. We are reminded of it every 90 days when we have to report our continued presence and complicity to special rules of this kingdom that apply to foreigners. But reminders of other sorts are much more frequent.
On the one hand, forgetfulness of the fact that we are aliens here seems almost ludicrous. How could we forget when the barrage of second glances, changed expressions on the faces of those who see us, and reactions of children to our appearances are so marked? We are the constant objects of what one observer called “in-your-face racism,” even if it is not often to the point of being dangerous to our personal safety.
On the other hand, I find myself forgetting. That is, I find myself assuming that I have earned certain rights here. I have the right to drive a vehicle on the streets and roads, for example. And in most ways it is a right shared equally with other drivers. But if I were to be involved in an accident I know that inflated demands and emotions would be further exaggerated by the fact that I am a foreigner. I would, of course, consider it an injustice that extraneous facts might color judgments in the matter, but it would not be prudent to forget that they might.
However, I do forget. As I said, I tend to drift toward thinking of myself as belonging here. I have earned this status, I think. I have lived here for decades, invested my life in worthy causes here, spent lots of money here, given up positions and rights elsewhere to be here, and I am trying to live by the rules here. I’m even willing to be treated as an alien to be here, a farang, a perpetual outsider. And still I am often jolted by a sense of dis-contiguousness. The reality of my presence here in Thailand is that my attitude toward being here is sometimes out of synchronization with the attitude of Thai people towards me.
So it struck me to realize that what’s going on with me is what was going on with the people of Israel. They had drifted away from thinking about being in the land of promise as a gift and thought about it as an entitlement. As their gratitude for grace diminished their concerns about management and security mounted. So, when they lost the land (and the Temple, of course; it went with the land) their sense of loss was lamentable. Their despair was extreme, as people who had lost everything.
A contemporary Christian point of view would be that they had not actually lost anything that was permanently theirs. It is a fact of life for tenants that they do not own the land. They are there on it for a while. The Christian point of view is that this transiency is the reality; ownership is a delusion, and wanting to control is a mania.
I had never thought to apply that perspective to my being in Thailand, not directly. I had thought of being here as a calling, a vocation, a mission. It was in this context that I was grateful for opportunities and successes, relationships and rewards.
But what if I were to expand this perspective to be more comprehensive? That is the proposal I want to make. I want to try to adopt this attitude toward every aspect of being here. I am going to try to think of being here as a gift and try to develop a sense of gratitude toward all the people, agencies and operatives that are making it possible day after day.
I am going to try to lay aside my sense of entitlement and belonging and as much freight that comes with it as I can. I’m going to try to give up thinking, “I have as much right-of-way on this highway as any driver,” and “I have as much say in this meeting as others do.” Maybe I can give up obsessiveness about personal possessions while I am at it (that would be a relief) and limit my attempts to control, to things from my skin on in.
It’s going to take practice as does any attitudinal shift. I will need to work on the idea that “I’m a guest here,” “being here is a privilege,” “I don’t have to exercise the same level of control here,” “being here is a gift,” “smile at this person, he may not yet be glad you’re here.”
Here’s what I think: most Thai people would respond positively to this attitude of my being a type of guest here; they already think about me as here by a different set of rights than theirs. This new attitude would help me lower my profile; fitting in is a positive value in this culture. Most of all I think it would give me peace of mind to have my perception about being here fit the Thai perception about my being here. And it would make me a nicer driver.
May 2, 2009, revised November 1, 2012