King, Officials and People: Perspectives on the First Royal Private Tour Of King Chulalongkorn

Abstract

The perception about the king, nobility and the people through the first royal private (incognito) tour of King Chulalongkorn (14 July- 7 September 1904) rested on divergent patterns of “behaviour” and “functioning” accompanying the three different statuses. The king, the leader of the country, behaved in the same manner as the commoner in order that he could be able to “perceive” the livelihood of his subjects as it really was by first hand experience rather than only to have it reported by aristocrats. At the same time the trip was also to observe and evaluate the outcomes of his previous regional administrative reform, as well as a tryout of the modern communications system he had just constituted. By the same token, the officials who accompanied the tour, were the ones who played enormously important administrative roles in the newly founded modern administrative system. Along the course of the tour, these powerful aristocrats could develop their understanding and could get close to the commoners. As a result, they could make an appropriate adjustment to the functions under their responsibilities, which were important parts of the progressive reforms of Thailand under King Chulalongkorn’s direction at the time. As for the people, they could be able to meet the king in private and be able to convey to him their personality, happiness and sorrow, in a straight forward way without their acknowledgement that the man, with whom they had meals and close conversations, was their sovereign lord of life and land. The behavioural conduct according to such statuses reflected a beautiful relationship between the king, state officials and the commoners. It was “love, indulgence, and kindness”, which the king showed towards his subjects, both the officials and the commoners alike, in the same manner as “a father behaves with his own children”. At the same time, the bureaucrats, who had the utmost loyalty wholeheartedly to the king, eagerly administered the country for the benefits of the people as their service to the king and the country. As for the commoners, they already had their abstract loyalty to the king according to the absolute monarchy governance. The first royal private tour opened to them opportunities to realize the love, indulgence, and kindness of their king in concrete terms and, therefore, brought to them the multiplied feeling of appreciation and gratefulness to the king. This led to the offering to King Chulalongkorn, “the Great Beloved King”, who has been highly worshiped by all groups of the Thai until the present.