Overview
Sights And Activities
Planning Your Trip
Accommodations
Outdoor Recreation
Cultural Essentials
Beyond Tourism
Basics
Human habitation in what is now Thailand was present but faint until the coming of agriculture and bronze in the second millennium BC. Remains discovered at Ban Chiang in the Khorat Plateau suggest that farmers settled there around 2500 BC. During the following milennia, various Tai-Kadai tribes moved south into northern Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos, merging with Mon and Khmer peoples and establishing small principalities, or “ muang. ” Scholars disagree about the origins of the Thai people. Some argue that their ancestors came from Mongolia or northern China, while others trace the sources to northeast Thailand. Buddhism was introduced to the region that is now Thailand at the time of the Dvaravati kingdom, which began to flourish in northern Thailand in the seventh century AD.
In the early part of the 13th century, none of the minor city-states that populated modern-day Thailand were strong enough to individually challenge the powerful Khmer empire to the north, but in 1238, two Thai chieftans, Khun Bang Klang Thao and Khun Pha Muang, rebelled and moved north. They established the kingdom of Sukhothai, considered to be the first independent Thai polity. King Si Sri Inthrathit was its first ruler. Sukhothai, meaning “Dawn of Happiness,” reached its zenith in power and size (incorporating portions of present-day Laos, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and much of Myanmar) in 1275, when King Ramkhamhaeng the Great ascended the throne.
Modern Thai ideals of the benevolent monarch and his place in society originate in the Sukhothai period. Ramkhamhaeng’s rule marked the first unification of Thais under a single monarch, and he worked tirelessly to better the condition of his people by abolishing slavery and codifying Sukhothai’s first formal laws. Ramkhamhaeng also invited Ceylonese monks to come to Sukhothai to “purify” the kingdom’s Khmer-influenced syncretic Buddhism; as a result, the Ceylonese school of Theravada Buddhism was established, and it remains the main religion in Thailand to this day. A famous inscription believed to be from this period reads, “In the water there are fish, in the fields there is rice. Whoever wants to trade in elephants, so trades..Whoever wants to trade in silver and gold, so trades. The faces of the citizens are happy.” It is no wonder everyone was smiling: King Ramkhamhaeng abolished taxes and built a bell in front of his palace so that his subjects could ring it at any time, confident that he would arbitrate justly. In 1283, the King achieved his most longstanding reform by introducing the Thai alphabet, which not only became a symbol of the nation’s cultural and political independence but also effectively unified Thailand’s myriad city-states under one common identity. Other Thai states such as Lanna (established by King Mengrai in Chiang Mai) and Phayao (located in the northern part of modern Thailand) also flourished contemporaneously, with the former becoming a center of Buddhist scholarship and evangelism.
After Ramkhamhaeng’s death in 1317, the Sukhothai kingdom began to decline, and in 1350, King U Thong (later called King Ramathibodi I) established a rival kingdom centered on the magnificent island-city of Ayutthaya. It would serve as the capital of Siam for the next four centuries, a period which is now considered to be the “golden age” of Thai history. The most significant development of the kingdom was its incorporation of the Khmer concept of the absolute monarch into Thai royal custom; the king was no longer the paternal figure of the Sukhothai period, but a divine and transcendent man physically removed from his subjects. In this imperial climate, the kingdom of Ayutthaya conquered Sukhothai and continued to expand. Ayutthaya’s location in the central plains region made it safe from external invasions during the rainy season, which was marked by massive flooding. Thus the kingdom was able to turn inward and develop the complex system of administration that was the prototype of modern Thai bureaucracy. To complement this administrative structure, Thai society began to develop complex internal hierarchies. The lowest rung on the social ladder was phrai, commoners and slaves; above them were khunnang, or nobles. At the top were chao, the princes. Monks remained the one social group that could bridge these divisions.
The rise of Ayutthaya also coincided with the arrival of European imperialists. A dispute over the Malacca territory brought the Portuguese into the picture in 1511. The Portuguese were followed by a veritable stampede of curious foreign visitors, beginning with the Spanish, followed by the Dutch, English, and Danish, and concluding with the French in 1662. This did not hinder Ayutthaya’s rise; under King Narai, who ruled from 1656 to 1688, Ayutthaya reached its peak of power and influence, boasting a population nearly double that of 17th century London. In 1688, however, while the king was seriously ill, his chief minister (a Greek named Constantine Phaulkon ) was accused of conspiring to replace Narai with a puppet-king loyal to France. Phaulkon had successfully kept the Dutch and English at bay, but permitted the French to station over 500 troops throughout Ayutthaya. Once he recovered, King Narai cut off relations with the French and executed Phaulkon for his French connections. Ayutthaya had limited contact with foreigners after the debacle with France.
The influx of European forces during Ayutthaya’s period of expansion may have been a major source of distraction for the Siamese, but the true threat to their kingdom did not come from the Europeans. Disaster swept in from the northwest in 1763, in the form of a Burmese army bent on revenging an almost 200-year-old military defeat. In 1767, after a 15-month siege, they stormed Ayutthaya, burning it to the ground and destroying culturally and religiously significant manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures. Only a few thousand out of over one million original inhabitants escaped the slaughter, including General Phraya Taksin and a few hundred of his followers. After regrouping on the east coast, Taksin led an army of several thousand men to expel the Burmese; within 15 years, the Thais had successfully recaptured Chiang Mai, Cambodia, and parts of Laos. Taksin ruled from his new capital at Thonburi, just across the river from Bangkok. Soon after winning the war, however, he began to suffer from the unfortunate misconception that he was a reincarnation of the Buddha, most likely due to some form of mental illness. Needless to say, Taksin’s declaration was poorly received in court. He was executed in royal fashion: he was thrown into a velvet sack (so as not to spill any royal blood) and then beaten to death with a sandalwood club. Commander-in-chief Thong Duang was recalled from his campaign in Cambodia and crowned King Rama I in 1782, marking the beginning of the Chakri dynasty.
When it became apparent that Thonburi was vulnerable to the Burmese and unable to accommodate major expansion, Rama I moved the capital across the Chao Phraya River to Bangkok. There he built his most lasting legacy, the Grand Palace and Royal Chapel, now the Temple of the Emerald Buddha , and unified the kingdom’s many fiefdoms. Rama I also translated the Indian epic Ramayana into Thai, and edited and codified Thai law into the innovative Kotmai Tra Samdung (Three Seals Code), which addressed the interralationship between economic, political, and military power. During his reign, Laos, Cambodia, and what is now northern Thailand were added to the kingdom.
Siam’s illustriousness only increased with the ascension of King Mongkut, or King Rama IV, to the throne in 1851; his rule was one of the most significant transitional periods in Thai history. Unfairly portrayed as a flippant and frivolous monarch in Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam, Mongkut was actually a serious man, having spent the reign of his half-brother, King Rama III, in the monkhood, traveling extensively throughout the kingdom and mastering subjects such as English, Latin, and Western history. In order to strengthen Siam and silence his Western critics, Rama IV negotiated a trade treaty with the British in 1855, carrying Siam out of 150 years of virtual isolation.
When malaria cut Mongkut’s rule short, the government fell into the able hands of his teenage son, Prince Chulalongkorn, who was crowned King Rama V. Chulalongkorn’s 42 years of rule were marked by the abolition of slavery, reforms to the Thai justice, education, and public welfare systems, and courageous foreign policy in an era of aggressive European colonialism. In 1893, after prolonged tension between France and Siam in the northeast, two French gunboats shelled Siamese defenses at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River and moved into Bangkok. Thanks to the swift diplomatic action of Foreign Minister Prince Devawongse, war between the two countries was averted. A subsequent treaty in 1896 with the French established Siam as a regional buffer state, guaranteeing its independence. In the treaty, Siam ceded much of the territory that is modern Laos and Cambodia to the French and what is now peninsular Malaysia to the British.
By the time of his death in 1910, Rama V had become esconced as the most revered Thai monarch in modern history; October 23 (the anniversary of his death) is now a national holiday, Chulalongkorn Day. In 1910, upon his death, his son King Vajiravudh took the throne. The Oxford-educated Vajiravudh oversaw the founding of Chulalongkorn University , now Thailand’s most prestigious university, in honor of his father, and solidified the country’s Western relations by declaring war against Germany in 1917 and sending a small number of troops to fight with the Allies in WWI. After the war’s end, Thailand became a member of the League of Nations in 1920. In a less internationally-acclaimed move, Vajiravudh wrote a book about overseas Chinese in Siam entitled The Jews of the Orient , a work whose intense focus on nationalism was only heightened through Vajiravudh’s adoption of the concept of surnames (which had not previously existed in Thailand), coining hundreds of them himself. Under this system, Siam’s ethnic Chinese were forced either to assimilate or be branded as foreigners.
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Siam just as hard as the rest of the world, and King Rama VII had to cut wages and raise taxes. Prominent, discontented academics and intellectuals blamed the royal government for Siam’s financial woes and demanded a civil constitution. In June 1932, civil officials and the military launched a bloodless coup which effectively transformed Thailand from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. Proclaiming themselves the People’s Party, the revolutionaries, led by Major Luang Phibun Songkhram (commonly known as Phibun) and Dr. Pridi Phanomyong, moved quickly to occupy high government posts. Phanomyong outlined a socialist economic plan that would nationalize land and labor, but conservative leaders were horrified by his proposal and forced him into exile. Unable to manage the crisis, King Rama VII abdicated in 1935 and went into a voluntary exile in England, where he died six years later. Rama VII was replaced by his nephew, 10-year-old Ananda Mahidol (later King Rama VIII ), whose age and education in Switzerland prevented him from governing, so a regent council was established to rule in his place. As the country experimented with constitutions granting varying degrees of democracy, the pendulum of Thai political power swung back and forth between the increasingly powerful military and the civilian bureaucratic elite. Thailand received its current name in 1939, when Phibun, by then firmly in charge, officially renamed the country. In 1940, Phibun requested that France return the territories that it had taken just a few decades earlier. The French were reluctant, to say the least, and subsequent military skirmishes only ended when the occupying Japanese intervened to arbitrate. The 1941 Tokyo Convention returned much of French Indochina to Thai control. Later, under Japanese pressure, Thailand would join World War II on the Axis side.
On December 8, 1941, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japan invaded Thailand. Under pressure from Japanese occupiers, the Thai Ambassador to the United States reluctantly went to American Secretary of State Cordell Hull, saying he was obligated to deliver a declaration that he did not want to deliver. Hull suggested that he not deliver it. The ambassador concurred, but Thai troops invaded Burma alongside the Japanese. At the same time, a ‘Free Thai’ movement was working against the Japanese and the Phibun regime. As the war turned against the Axis, Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram faced mounting opposition and ultimately resigned as prime minister, to be replaced by opposition leader Pridi Phanomyong. But the anti-royalist Phanomyong was also forced to resign when the newly returned Rama VIII died mysteriously in 1946. After the ascension of Pumipohn Adunyadayt (King Rama IX) to the throne, and a brief civilian interlude, the civilian government fell to a second coup led by Phibun. After his second fall in 1957, the military staged a coup d’état during the general elections, under the leadership of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat. The new government nullified the Consititution and re-established full military control while cracking down on the drug trade and suppressing Communist propaganda. By the time of Thanarat’s death in 1963, Thailand had become a staunch US ally in Southeast Asia. Under his successor, Thanom Kittikachorn, US forces were permitted to build air bases in Thailand for the war in Vietnam. Thailand became more actively involved in international affairs, joining the United Nations in 1946 and even sending troops on a UN mission to Korea in 1950.
By 1973, Thailand had been under full military rule for over a decade. But, while the government was static, the nation had undergone rapid economic growth, and its patience with military juntas was wearing thin. In June of 1973, students and workers held demonstrations in the streets, calling for a democratic government. By October 13, tens of thousands had gathered in front of the Democracy Monument in Bangkok (built to commemorate the end of absolute monarchial rule) in the largest protest in Thai history. The military attacked the crowd, killing hundreds. In the bloody aftermath, King Bhumibol called for the resignation of Field Marshal Thanom (who fled the country) and appointed Professor Sanya Dharmasakti as interim prime minister. A new constitution sparked an era of democratic rule cut short by increased political polarization. Protests began to break out across Bangkok, and military troops responding to a sit-in at Thammasat University in October of 1976 shot, clubbed to death, and hanged more than 300 protestors in what came to be called the October Massacre. Newly appointed prime minister Thanin Kraivichien oversaw an even more repressive regime. The following years saw instability and military infighting.
In 1980, with the election of the new prime minister General Prem Tinsulanonda, Thailand gained much needed and long awaited political stability. Immediately after his appointment, Prem departed from his predecessors in a surprising move: he retired from the military in a symbolic act of separation from decades of military and political entanglement. There was a revival of democratic politics under Tinsulanonda’s “Premocracy,” but corruption increased under his successor, Chatichai Choonhavan. Early in 1991, the army launched a successful bloodless coup under General Suchinda Kraprayoon, who suspended the constitution, dissolved the legislature, and curtailed general freedoms. Accusations that the army influenced the framing of a new constitution in order to institutionalize its own rule spurred hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters to hold a demonstration in May 1992. The military injured and killed hundreds of people, many of whom were strategically located in front of the Democracy Monument and Western TV cameras. A horrified King Bhumibol forced Suchinda out of office and appointed Anand Panyarachun as interim prime minister.
When Panyarachun fired the top four military officers in August 1992, it marked a renewed effort in Thai politics to separate the government from the military. Subsequent regimes, however, faced charges of corruption and mismanagement, and the resulting political instability damaged Thailand’s previously spectacular 8-10% annual growth rates. By 1996, Thailand had its highest inflation rate in five years, 0% export growth, and a 30% drop in stock market prices, and tougher times were still to come. Then-Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa was harshly criticized for meddling in economic affairs and was held responsible for the nation’s dire economic situation. In July 1997, heavy external debts and financial deregulation culminated in the collapse of the Thai baht during what is now known as the Asian Financial Crisis. Economists discovered the hard way that the corruption- and debt-ridden national economic infrastructure was too weak to absorb the shock and rebound from it. Waves of currency devaluations, accompanied by economic and political havoc, spread across Southeast Asia. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) initiated a US$17.2 billion emergency international rescue package for Thailand in August of that year, but the crisis continued; the baht’s value fell 40%, more than 350 factories shut down, and Thailand’s stock market hit a nine-year low. From 1985 to 1995, Thailand had maintained the highest growth rate in the world, but by January of 1998, its currency hit the lowest point in history: 56฿ to the US$.
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For 52 years, we have published the world’s favorite budget travel guides, written entirely by students and updated every year. With pen and notebook in hand and a few changes of underwear stuffed in our backpacks, we spend months roaming the globe in search of travel bargains.
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