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The Royal Court in Ayudhya
Usually, when one refers to a royal court, one is inclined to have in
mind a relatively small number of people, comprising members of the
royal family and the highest-ranking members of the bureaucracy. The
court of Ayudhya in Borommakot's time was much more complicated, and
much larger, than that. It included royalty and commoners,
high-ranking officials and low-ranking officials, men and women, and
even Thai and non-Thai.
What those associated with the court had in common was a shared
dependence on royal favor. Most of those involved, high or low, were
in a position to have some (great or limited) access to the ruling
monarch, and to be vulnerable to the king's pleasure or displeasure.
Though their number might theoretically include higher-ranking
officials from the provinces, close and distant, for all practical
purposes they were people of the capital city, and they probably
shared a certain disdain for their less-sophisticated "country
cousins."
This "court" was by no means an undifferentiated mass. The key unit of
social, political, and economic organization was what we might call
the "household," though the Thai had another term for it which better
represented its real quality: krom.6 The word survives even today,
when it has come to denominate a government "department," which is
further subdivided into divisions, offices, bureaus, and so forth. One
of the typical ways in which the term was used in earlier times was at
least superficially similar to this. For example, the head of the
"Right Division" of that ministry which dealt with trade and foreign
affairs (the Phrakhlang) worked mostly out of his own home, which
would have been in a residential compound consisting of several
buildings in a fenced area within the city walls of Ayudhya. The
compound also housed his familial household--wives, concubines,
children, perhaps his elderly relatives and perhaps even more distant
relatives who hoped that uncle or grandfather might be able to sponsor
them for government office--and his slaves, who might be either war
captives permanently under his control or more or less temporary
slaves. But that was not all. The compound might also house several of
his subordinates and their households and retainers. Given the way in
which the court was organized, it was not uncommon for the members of
such a krom to be related by blood or marriage.
Although the court, the officials, and the krom superficially took on
the appearance of a bureaucracy, they in fact enjoyed a considerable
amount of power on their own. They might term themselves "His
Majesty's Servants," but much of the time they were more like the
king's "junior partners." Each side to such relationships--king and
high officials, senior and junior officials, etc.--needed the other
side, and there was constant jockeying among them for power and
position, for promotion and favor, and even for money and patronage.
The king was theoretically absolute, but the Dutch factory records
contain several instances when courtiers came to hide their savings
and riches in the Dutch compound, afraid of these being seized by the
king. In short, then, power in this political system was constantly
being negotiated and contested; and royal "absolutism" was more an
ideal to be striven for than a reality already achieved. A king like
Borommakot could maintain his position only by combining the
considerable power of royal blood with a sound grasp of political
realities, and by maintaining the general impression of his possessing
an unchallengeable store of powerful karma, or "merit."
By the time of King Borommakot it was becoming common for members of
the royal family to have krom of their own. When princes came of an
age when they were ready to establish independent households and begin
to start families of their own, they would be awarded a krom rank and
title and given their own establishment of officials who, among other
things, would be charged with collecting taxes on their master's
behalf and organizing the labor that was assigned for their use and
upkeep. Because Thai society traditionally had been land-rich and
labor-poor--that is, there was a chronic shortage of manpower--the
usual standard of wealth was measured in terms of labor, not in terms
of land. Thus, instead of dividing up the society's resources by
parceling out land into duchies and earldoms and such, the manpower of
the society was divided amongst numerous dignitaries, including both
members of the royal family and the various members of what we might
call the nobility--those who held high rank in the government
establishment, or, better, "krom-holders."
The significance of such krom organization can be seen when we
remember the conflict with which the reign began in 1733. The 20,000
who joined the cause of the princes Aphai and Paramet and prepared to
fight with them for the throne against Prince Phon obviously included
more than just the high-ranking officials: most high officials joined
the conflict together with the manpower that was dependent upon them.
When this faction was defeated by the 4,000 who had rallied to Prince
Phon, who became King Borommakot, the losers were in danger of losing
everything--their offices, their ranks and titles, their income, their
control over manpower, and even their lives. Those dependent upon
high-ranking officials were susceptible to similar losses. A clever
monarch, like Borommakot, might minimize future danger by pleasing the
urban or semi-urban masses of the capital so as to decrease their
willingness to follow their masters into opposition to the throne.
By the 1730s, the dynasty of which Borommakot was the latest monarch
was only in its third generation: Borommakot was the grandson of the
Ban Phlu Luang dynasty's founder, King Phetracha (r. 1688-1703).
Therefore, there do not seem yet to have been many people who might be
classed as royalty. Even allowing for the numerous progeny of kings by
their concubines, there must have been fewer than a hundred of royal
blood; and of those only a handful appear in the record as having
played significant roles. At least in the 1730s, there were few royal
krom, the most important of these belonging to the uparaja, or
designated heir to the throne.
The "nobility" were far more numerous, and far more complicated in
their nature and composition. If we take the figures of the 1733
uprising as a rough guide, and guess that of the total of 25,000
active participants, one-tenth were "nobles," that would make for
something over 2,000 men.
But who were these people? We tend to be able to identify them
primarily in terms of their social relationships, and particularly
their families. Not surprisingly, there seems to have been a high
degree of continuity among those, at least, who held the highest
offices (and presumably among their subordinates, who often were their
relatives). It was relatively common for an eighteenth-century
minister to claim descent from a minister of an earlier generation.
Such official continuity was assured by custom and law which
restricted admission into the ranks of officials to the sons of
officials, except under exceptional circumstances like valorous
performance in warfare. By the eighteenth century, however, the ranks
of high-ranking nobles were being swelled with the beginnings of
tax-farming by immigrant Chinese, the most important of whom were
given noble rank, and by some attempts of wealthy people to buy their
way into office.
One thing that is particularly interesting about these nobles is the
fact that many of them had strong blood and marriage relations with
various of the foreign immigrant communities that had settled in Siam
over the centuries. By Borommakot's reign there were at least four
groups of such families, descended from Mon, Indian, Persian, and
Chinese forebears.[9] This is not to argue that any of the four (or
others) necessarily continued to represent ethnic interests, or to
behave or to dress in an eccentrically different manner that might
have served to perpetuate some separate identity: quite the opposite
was probably the case. However, in some cases these families, whose
careers in Siam might have begun in a particular area of government
(like dealing with Indian cloth merchants, or organizing Indic
ceremonies), did continue to play influential roles in interacting
with their less-assimilated ethnic fellows.
A good example here would be the Phrakhlang, that office and officer
who had special responsibilities for trade and foreign affairs--and
who therefore had much to do with all foreign visitors. The man who
held the office of Phrakhlang in King Thai Sa's reign was Chinese,
coming out of a community intimately involved in the growing seaborne
trade with China. In 1714, a French missionary reported that ... this
mandarin, knowing the ways of the court, has taken all possible
measures to strengthen his position, and render himself formidable to
his enemies. He has found the means of introducing into the Palace
Chinese women and girls to be near the queens and princesses
continually. He has put Chinese into the most eminent posts, above all
those which have some connexion with trade, so that at present it is
the Chinese who do all the trading in this kingdom ...
When the succession dispute of 1733 erupted, this Chinese Phrakhlang
chose to support princes Aphai and Paramet, so it is not surprising
that when Borommakot came to the throne he was killed, and the
Phrakhlang office was then given, not to another Chinese, but to the
khun Chamnan Channarong (U) who had turned the succession battle in
Borommakot's favor. He now became Chaophraya Chamnan Bňrirak (U), and
was to continue to be the most powerful noble at court well into the
1750s. Chaophraya Chamnan was a leading member of a family which
ultimately traced its ancestry back to Indian Brahmans who had already
been serving Thai monarchs for several centuries.
It is important to point out, as Dhiravat does, that this does not
mean that Chinese trading interests suddenly were crippled in 1733
when their chief protector and promoter left the scene.[12] The China
trade was far too important to the Crown and to the livelihood of many
of the court and in the capital for it to have been neglected. For the
Crown in particular, it was the revenues from the junk trade that gave
the monarch a substantial advantage over his rivals, for it gave him
the wherewithal with which to purchase arms (and to attract additional
increments of manpower). That trade could not be conducted without the
active participation of many skilled Chinese, who organized the
shipments, manned the ships, handled translation and negotiation with
the authorities in China, and then arranged the merchandising of the
commodities brought back to Ayudhya. Their activities were mirrored to
a considerable extent by communities of Indian, Arabo-Persian, and
Malay-Javanese traders, who handled other (probably less lucrative)
branches of Siam's foreign trade.
Obviously, King Borommakot and his contemporaries cannot be broadly
labeled as "anti-foreign," as hostile to foreigners, nor can court
society be said to be closed to non-Siamese. Quite the contrary was
the case. If Western sources on occasion give this impression, it is
perhaps because court opinion of Westerners (like the French
missionaries and Dutch traders) was shaped in large measure by groups
and interests who were bitter rivals of Western traders, including
such people as Indians and Arabo-Persians.
Chinese resentment at their fall from preference probably is reflected
in a Chinese "rebellion" which erupted in Ayudhya just a year after
the 1733 succession crisis.[14] On that occasion, while the King and
court were out of town (on a pilgrimage to the Buddha's Footprint, as
in 1737, as it happens), a party of perhaps four hundred Chinese,
assisted by considerable numbers of Siamese (and perhaps other
"locals") attempted to seize the palace and put a new king on the
throne who would be more favorable to their interests. Dhiravat points
out that the revolt was put down with considerable force, and
"thousands" of Siamese fled into the wilderness to the east.
The usual way of describing that Chinese rebellion of 1734 suggests
some interesting possibilities concerning the society of the court and
capital (which to a considerable extent, if not completely, were
synonymous). First, the Chinese community itself was probably
fragmented, perhaps along speech-group lines, as for example between
Hokkien, Teochiu, and Cantonese. (I would emphasize here the social
and economic, rather than the ethnic, dimensions of such conflict and
competition.) If that were the case, the 1733 and 1734 conflicts may
have masked conflicts between different groups of Chinese.
A similar consideration applies to Siamese (and other resident
immigrant) involvement in the 1734 "revolt." The fact that the
"Chinese revolt" also enlisted the support of Siamese officials and
commoners in considerable numbers indicates that various Chinese
groups were sufficiently integrated with other local groups for the
two (or more) parties to have fused their interests to the point where
they could undertake very risky actions in pursuit of those
interests.
This assimilation or integration in turn leads to the question of the
social or political contexts in which such fusing of interests might
have occurred. Here we might suppose that there had to be some degree
of economic integration: after all, the main producers of export goods
ultimately were Siamese, who were also the main consumers of import
goods. While it might be tempting to imagine that all the commercial
roles were assumed by members of the various immigrant communities (as
they often were), it is clear that many of the important economic
functions were in fact performed by indigenes, including (not least)
Siamese women.[16] Even much more recent Thai experience might serve
to suggest what was happening here: The best way for a Chinese (or
Indian, or Persian, or Dutch, etc.) merchant to advance his economic
interest might be for him to strengthen his social relationships with
those Siamese with whom he dealt (or wished to deal), whether this
meant that he himself married active Thai women traders, or that he
married his daughter (real or putative) into a Thai family. (Given the
importance of language at some basic level, we might suppose that such
"daughters" were in fact the daughters of Chinese fathers and Thai (or
other local) women. This not only strengthened the relationship
between the Chinese merchant and his Thai in-laws, but it also meant
that his grandchildren would be at home--quite literally--in both
worlds.
When combined with the reference above to the introduction of "Chinese
women and girls" into the palace underlines a very important point;
namely, that one of the vital means by which the court--the society of
the capital--was knit together was by the movement of women. Surely
there is no better reminder of this fact than King Mongkut's
often-quoted reference to his great-grandmother, the mother of King
Rama I (r. 1782-1809), as having been "a beautiful daughter of a
Chinese richest family at Chinese compound or situation within wall of
city and in south-eastern corner of Ayudia."
In general then, we might say that Borommakot's court was a large,
complex, and diverse entity, including either directly or indirectly
most of the inhabitants of the capital. In many respects it was not
homogeneous, for it was divided by economic status, by political
status, by birth, by factional affiliations, by language, by religion,
and even by culture. What held people together was that they were all
participating, to greater or lesser extent, in the same "game"--the
calculus of economic and political advantage and disadvantage that
enabled all in this system to know, almost instantly, where he or she
belonged. (Of course, one key element was the knowledge of who
"belonged" and who did not--who could play the "game" as nobles and
royalty, and who could not.) Virtually all social intercourse required
this knowledge--on the basis of which one almost-instinctively knew
who saluted the other first, and how grandly or offhandedly, which
pronouns were to be used in conversation, or even whether one would
grovel or not before the other. All also knew that these relative
statuses were susceptible of rapid and meteoric change: those high
today might be low tomorrow, and vice versa.
02. December 2004