perhaps better known for his diplom atic and scholarly work on Japan, where he began his Foreign Service career in 1862, becom ing the British Minister in Tokyo in 1895. He also continued to advise the Foreign O ffice up to his retirement in 1906 as the British Minister in Beijing, where he was involved in the negotiations follow in g the suppression o f the Boxer R ebellion. S ee E. M. Satow, A
his own head’.”7S Siam, essentially, was abandoned to its fate until the French blockade of the Chao Phraya River threatened British trading interests, while an annexation of Siam by France would have broken the balance of power in the region.79 The French encroachment led to the pushing for the neutralisation o f Siam by Britain. On 15 January 1896, a joint Anglo-French declaration was made which guaranteed the independence o f the central plain o f Siam.80
By 1940, however, the situation had reversed. France had fallen to Nazi Germany. Britain remained the lone power in Europe still resisting the Axis, while European colonies in East Asia, such as Flong Kong and Singapore, were under direct threat from Imperial Japan. Despite its non-interventionist history with
Thailand, the British government expected the Thai government to stand and fight on its behalf, should the Japanese invade Malaya and Singapore via the Thai southern provinces o f Songkhla and Pattani. On the night the Pacific War started, Winston Churchill sent a telegram urging a sacrificial last stand to be made by the Thai armed forces against incoming Japanese forces, promising that British help would be forthcoming:
There is a possibility of an imminent Japanese attack on your country. If you are attacked, defend yourself. The preservation o f the full independence and the sovereignty o f Thailand is a British interest and we shall regard an attack on you as an attack on ourselves.81
It was highly doubtful that Pibul took such assurances seriously, given Britain’s past history with Thailand, coupled with the fact that the British and her allies had failed to protect countries nearer to home, like Czechoslovakia and
78 P. Tuck, The French W o lf a n d the Siam ese L am b, p. 242.
79 The Siam ese concession o f Laos to France led to the signing o f a treaty between Britain and France, defining the border between British Upper Burma and French Laos in 1896. The two powers did not settle their regional rivalry until after the signing o f the Entente Cordiale in 1904.
80 P. Tuck, The French W o lf a n d the Siam ese L am b, pp. 155-67. 81 J.A. Stowe, Siam becom es Thailand, p. 224.
Poland,S2 from invasion and occupation. Indeed, if the Thai government had any confidence remaining in the power o f the British Empire in Southeast Asia after the successful Japanese invasion o f southern Thailand on 8 December 1941, they were literally sunk by the destruction o f Force ZS3 by Japanese air squadrons on 10 December 1941. The subsequent actions of the Pibul government, in particular its alignment with Japan (which promised and eventually delivered further territorial gains, namely the Shan States and some provinces of Malaya) was perhaps its way of saying “every herring must hang by its own head” to the son o f Randolph Churchill. In Thailand itself, it meant that those who did not agree with the irredentists and the ‘Leader’ could easily be smeared as ‘unpatriotic’ or accused o f working with the enemy as ‘Fifth Columnists’. The ascendancy of the totalitarian vision, at the expense of the constitutionalist vision, was thus sealed by the developments and opportunities offered by the international situation.
Arguably, Thai democracy under the first Pibul government was once again ensnared in a Faustian pact. The alignment with Japan was as much about
Thailand’s survival as a sovereign nation as it was about the expansion o f existing interests. It is true that, by doing so, Thailand was saved from the excesses that a Japanese invasion and occupation would have entailed and might have reaped some rewards for their support had the Japanese been ultimately victorious. But that did
S2 The German invasion o f Poland in 1939 did lead to the declaration o f war by the British government. However, this w ould have been o f little comfort to the Poles w ho saw their country divided between the victorious German forces and the com plied Soviet government as according to the secret clauses o f the 1939 N azi-S oviet Pact. They would remain under the influence o f the latter until 1989.
Sj Force Z comprised o f HMS Prince o f W ales and HMS Repulse - two capital ships o f the British navy. The naval detachment sent to Malaya as a deterrent against Japanese invasion. The new s o f the ships’ destruction shocked the British in Singapore and in Britain itself, w hile Churchill, in his recollection o f the moment he received the new s, wrote: “In all the war, 1 never received a more direct shock... A s I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror o f the new s sank in upon me. There were no British or American ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors o f Pearl Harbour, w ho were hastening back to California. Over all this vast expanse o f waters Japan was supreme, and w e everywhere were weak and naked”. See F. Owen, The F all o f S ingapore (M ichael Joseph, London, 1960), p. 65.
not mean that there were no political or economic costs. The totalitarian tendencies of the Pibul government had also taken its toll on the Constitution. Despite the provisions for negating legislation that was contraiy to the principles o f the
Constitution,84 that piece o f paper could not prevail in the face o f raw political power. The drafting o f the 1946 Constitution could be seen as an attempt to redress the flaws exposed by Pibul’s regime, but it was also an exercise in restoring the Constitution to a central position in the Thai political regime. O f course, it is debatable whether the Constitution really ever held such an exalted position in the first place. However, considering the centrality of the idea o f a constitution in the demands of the 1932 coup-makers, its subsequent apotheosis as the fourth pillar of national identity, and its annual celebration (arguably usurping the K ing’s birthday celebrations) in the 1930s, there were certainly some sectors of society who supported constitutionalism. The 1946 effort itself reconfirms the existence o f this group. However, ultimately it was a futile exercise. The ultimate test o f a
constitutional regime is its ability to perform in extremis. In the Thai case, it had simply been abandoned by Pibul in favour o f political expediency. The 1947 coup that eventually swept Pibul back to power, and to an extent all subsequent coups and constitutional re-drafting, merely served to mark the acknowledgments of political realities.
The development o f the pillars of Thai national identity thus reflected the general political circumstances o f this period. The eventual focus on Buddhism indicated the weakening o f the other pillars of the state and the desire o f the Pibul regime to legitimise itself. Indeed, Pibul consciously linked the well-being of
84 Section 6, Article 61 o f the permanent 1932 Constitution stipulated that “A ll law s that are in