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KING RAMA VI
Prince Vajiravudh was born in Siam (modern day Thailand) on New Year’s Day, 1880. Educated in both Siamese and English, he became crown prince when his brother died of typhoid in 1895. The prince’s education continued in England, where he trained at Sandhurst in 1898 before undertaking a short attachment to the Durham Light Infantry. Going up to Oxford to study law and history, he was a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club.
In 1910, upon the death of his father from lung can- cer, he became King Rama VI of Siam. Amongst his early reforms was a complete reorganisation of the armed forces, the establishment of military col- leges along the lines of Dartmouth and Sandhurst, and a boarding school similar to Eton. The latter was a radical reform as previously schools were organised along monastic lines. The king declared that he wanted the next generation of boys to ‘look forward to take up whatever burden the future may lay upon them.’ Further radical reforms saw the modernisation of civil servant training, an overhaul of the healthcare system, and the establishment of public hospitals. However, not all of the young king’s reforms were popular, and his establishment of the Wild Tiger Corps, a paramilitary palace guard outside the Army, which soon grew to over 4,000, was seen as a threat to the primacy of the military.
The Palace Revolt of 1912 had its roots in an inci- dent before Vajiravudh became king when he ordered the caning of a cadet at the military acad- emy for insulting a royal page. The coup leaders were all junior officers who also resented that pun- ishment as well as the creation of the Wild Tiger Corps. However, the officer selected by the plot- ters to kill the king let slip the plan,
bat during the closing days of the war. Nineteen Siamese soldiers died during the conflict, which later saw the force deployed as part of the occu- pation of Germany following the armistice. Despite the undoubted ‘sideshow’ element of the contribu- tion, the shrewd actions of the king gave Siam a place at the Versailles Peace Conference, repa- rations in the form of confiscated German ships, and status as a founder member of the League of
and the conspirators were arrested
and sentenced to death. However,
the king released the men “for the
sake of the Kingdom.” The following
years saw extensive modernisation
of the state with the creation of a
railway network and the establishment of an air- port near Bangkok, one of the world’s oldest still operating on its original site.
In the latter stages of the Great War, the king saw the opportunity to promote nationalism and so, in 1917, entered the war on the Allied side. On 30th July 1918, the Siamese Expeditionary Force landed in Marseilles and, a few weeks later, were in com-
The king released the men “for
the sake of the Kingdom.”
Nations.
Despite many reforms, Siam, in com- mon with much of the region, suffered from economic stagnation in the early 1920s, although the country’s status as a combatant nation ensured that it
received loans from Britain. King Vajiravudh died on 26 November 1926. His only child, a daugh- ter, was born a few hours earlier and the throne passed to his brother. For all his faults, the king was a major force in moving Thailand towards the modern state it is today. A cultured man, he wrote numerous short stories and translated the early works of Agatha Christie, introducing the detective fiction genre into Siamese society.
132 HISTORICAL