Editor, Writer, Researcher
At a time when European banks would only loan to non-whites on crippling terms—if at all—Chin Sophonpanich was renowned for placing his trust in promising Chinese entrepreneurs throughout Southeast Asia. Among his protegés who rose to become dollar multi-millionaire and billionaire tycoons were Malaysia’s Robert Kuok and Indonesia’s Liem Sioe Liong.
Estimates that one million people might gather here during the period are probably conservative, says Tongthong Chandransu, a law professor and expert on Thai royal funeral ceremonies. “After all, 500,000 people showed up last year on October 14 to observe when the king’s body was transferred across the river from Siriraj Hospital to the Grand Palace,” he says.
Along with the stories of King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat, The King in Exile tells of the strange, twisted lives of their four daughters and seven grandchildren. As foreign visitors surge in, drawn by the idea of a new frontier, the book erodes the mythology, so pervasive in the region, of a happier, fairer era when white European men kept the grateful dumb natives gently in place.
The way he crushed the 1967 Samlaut Rebellion—torching villages, the summary executions, severed heads as trophies–was straight out of the French rulebook, particularly the Nghe-Tinh Rebellion chapter. Though the survivor memoirs usually depict the Sihanouk and Lon Nol periods as an idyllic time, “paradise” even ...
Tl;dr? Student? Teacher? Fairly new to Thailand? You don't want this book. You need David K Wyatt's Thailand: A Short History. Which is longer and more thorough than this mess. Wyatt even covers the origin and range of Tai people if you're curious about the Shan, Tai Daeng, Lao, Tai Lu and their relatives. Genuine footnotes and bibliography too. Follow that with Thailand: Buddhist Kingdom as Modern Nation State by Charles Keyes and The King Never Smiles by Paul Handley.
Susan J Cunningham 