The Evolution of Royalist Hegemony in Modern Thai Historiography

The development of modern, scientific history in late nineteenth-century Siam occurred amidst a profound semantic shift. The term initially used at the royal court, phongsawadan, meaning "lineage of the avatar," specifically referred to dynastic chronicles of Thai kings, considered incarnations of the god Vishnu. As this framework proved limiting for a modern discipline, a new term, prawattisat, was coined and subsequently adopted. Despite this nominal modernization, Thai historical writing remained overwhelmingly dominated by the presence of the monarchy. This persistence was amplified because, unlike neighboring Southeast Asian kingdoms thrust into modernity via European colonization, Siam retained formal political independence, a achievement credited in official history to the genius of its kings and central to Thai nationalism.

Siam transitioned from one of the world's last absolute monarchies after its overthrow in the 1932 coup by the People’s Party. Following a turbulent fifteen-year period of political struggle, a 1947 coup restored royalists to power in alliance with military factions. This monarchy-military alliance, with the royalist civilian bureaucracy, has formed the dominant axis of Thai politics to the present day. Consequently, Thai historiography since the Second World War has been fundamentally shaped by this enduring political framework, which actively protects the monarchy's narrative. The institution is shielded not only by political dominance but also by a constitutional provision declaring the king "sacred and inviolate" and a draconian lèse-majesté law imposing severe penalties for criticism.

This legal environment renders critical historical analysis of the present monarch's long reign, which began in 1946, effectively unconstitutional and potentially treasonous. Unsurprisingly, a long list of books deemed critical of the monarchy, including historical works, are officially banned in Thailand. Controversial events of the past six decades involving the king constitute dangerous territory for historians, leading to a high degree of professional self-censorship. Official historiography during this reign is thus characterized by an extraordinary royalist hegemony, supported by the ratchakan state—a state apparatus where the military and civilian bureaucracy derive legitimacy from serving the king.

The roots of this post-1945 royalist hegemony in historiography lie in the Absolute Monarchy era, particularly in the work of Prince Damrong Rachanuphap, the officially recognized "father of Thai history." A brother of the great modernizing King Rama V (Chulalongkorn), Damrong was a central architect of the centralized absolutist state. As Minister of the Interior, he reformed territorial administration, replacing local rulers with Bangkok-appointed bureaucrats. After retiring, he applied this same drive for centralization and standardization to the kingdom's historical records through the National Library, then known as the Wachirayan Library.

Prince Damrong edited and published hundreds of manuscripts, each prefaced with his interpretative introductions, fundamentally shaping the primary source corpus. His major accomplishment was the Prachumphongsawadan (Collected Histories), an eighty-volume series published between 1908 and 1943 that remains a principal collection of primary sources. Damrong is directly responsible for producing a large proportion of the corpus recognized today as "Thai history," and narratives taught for over a century still largely rest on his editorial foundations. Beyond volume, his great achievement was establishing the central historiographical structure and themes of Thai nationalist history.

Damrong established a definitive chronological sequence for the Thai nation: beginning with the first Thai state at Sukothai, followed by Ayutthaya, Thonburi, and the current Bangkok-centered Ratanakosin kingdom. He subordinated the histories of rival principalities like Chiang Mai, the Lao territories, and the Patani sultanate to this central narrative, justifying their absorption. He initiated a shift from focusing solely on kings to emphasizing "Siam" and the Thai people, though kings remained prime movers, now recast as national leaders. Most crucially, he framed Thai history as an ongoing struggle for national independence, a theme reflecting the court's political concerns during the colonial era.

This theme is vividly illustrated in his classic work, Thai Rop Phama (The Thai Wars with the Burmese), which narrates cycles of loss and regained independence through warrior kings' heroism. Damrong presciently intertwined the two institutions that would dominate modern Thai politics: the monarchy and the military. His final work, a biography of King Naresuan the Great—who defeated the Burmese—cemented this narrative. The immense historiographical edifice Damrong constructed between the 1880s and 1932 proved remarkably durable, surviving the overthrow of the absolute monarchy itself.

The 1932 revolution by the People’s Party did not immediately produce a new historiographical model. Instead, historians often developed themes already present in Damrong's work. The chief ideologue of this period, Luang Wichit Wathakan, served as a key example. A commoner and prolific writer, his long career spanned the Absolute Monarchy to the royalist-military dictatorship of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat. Luang Wichit's contribution was popularizing a militaristic nationalism that grew directly from Damrong's soil but made the Thai nation, not the kings, the explicit subject of history.

In his influential Prawattisat Sakon (Universal History) and popular historical plays like Luat Suphan, Luang Wichit depicted the Thais as a martial race struggling for independence, led by warrior kings. He also developed a racial theory of the Thai people, influenced by Western works like W. C. Dodd's The Thai Race: Elder Brother of the Chinese. He traced Thai origins to the Nan Chao kingdom in southern China, positing a greater Thai race including the Lao, Shan, and others beyond state borders. While he changed the subject, he did not significantly alter the royalist narrative structure.

The first significant break from Damrong's narrative came with Phra Sarasas's English-language work, My Country Thailand, published in 1942. A commoner and radical intellectual, Phra Sarasas supported the 1932 revolution but was later exiled. His work shared the basic nationalist and racial themes but represented a radical break in two major respects. First, it directly criticized the absolute monarchy as despotic and an obstacle to progress, condemning Ayutthaya kings, praising the overthrown King Taksin, and criticizing Chulalongkorn, Vajiravudh (Rama VI), and Prajadhipok (Rama VII).

Second, My Country Thailand was the first significant work to introduce elements of a Marxist historical framework. It depicted Thailand in transition from feudalism to capitalism, criticized the ruling class for neglecting the people, and argued that Buddhism and education had been perverted to serve despotic interests. Despite six editions and 7,000 copies by 1960, the book vanished from mainstream Thai scholarship. Its English-language format was a factor, but the primary reason was the dramatically worsening political climate for anti-royalist historiography after its publication, as the monarchy-military alliance consolidated its control over historical narrative and the state itself.

Thus, the establishment of royalist hegemony over Thai historiography is a process spanning from the centralizing reforms of Prince Damrong to the political repression of the post-1947 era. This hegemony, protected by law and state power, has consistently marginalized alternative narratives, such as that of Phra Sarasas, ensuring that the national story remains inextricably linked to the sanctity and leadership of the monarchy. The struggle to challenge this dominant narrative continues to define the contested field of Thai historical scholarship.