Rattanakosin Kingdom

The Rattanakosin Kingdom is the name historians give to Siam, today's Thailand, from the founding of Bangkok as its capital in 1782 to the revolution that ended absolute monarchy in 1932. It is named after Rattanakosin Island, the heart of old Bangkok, and its kings, of the Chakri dynasty, still reign in Thailand today.

After the Burmese destroyed Ayutthaya in 1767, Taksin, a general of Chinese and Thai descent, gathered forces, drove out the Burmese and became king at Thonburi, on the west bank of the Chao Phraya river. He reunited Siam and conquered Lan Na and parts of Laos. In his later years, he was said to have become mentally unstable, and in 1782 he was deposed and executed.

The general Chao Phraya Chakri took the throne as King Phutthayotfa Chulalok, known as Rama I. He moved the capital across the river to Bangkok, building the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, to house the kingdom's most sacred image, which he had brought from Vientiane. He modelled the new capital on Ayutthaya, revised the law code, the Three Seals Law, and sponsored a new version of the Ramakien, the Thai Ramayana. He fought the Burmese, defeating a great invasion in 1785–1786.

The early Chakri kings extended Siamese power over Lan Na in the north, the Lao kingdoms of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, parts of Cambodia and the northern Malay sultanates, such as Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu, which sent tribute. In 1827–1828 Rama III crushed a revolt by King Anouvong of Vientiane, destroying the city. Siam fought Vietnam for influence over Cambodia. Rama III also built Wat Pho, with its giant reclining Buddha, and traded with China.

King Mongkut, Rama IV, who ruled from 1851 to 1868, had spent 27 years as a Buddhist monk before becoming king, during which he founded a reformed monastic order, the Thammayut, studied Latin, English, astronomy and mathematics, and met Western missionaries. As king, he signed the Bowring Treaty with Britain in 1855, opening Siam to free trade and giving British subjects extraterritorial rights, followed by similar treaties with other powers. He hired Western advisers and teachers, including Anna Leonowens, whose memoir inspired the musical The King and I, which Thais consider inaccurate. He accurately predicted a solar eclipse in 1868, but caught malaria while observing it and died.

His son Chulalongkorn, Rama V, who ruled from 1868 to 1910, transformed Siam into a modern state. He abolished slavery gradually, ending it in 1905, and abolished the requirement to prostrate before the king. He created ministries on the Western model, a centralised provincial administration, a modern army, schools, railways, a postal service and hospitals. He travelled to Europe in 1897 and 1907.

Siam was squeezed between British Burma and Malaya and French Indochina. In the Paknam incident of 1893, French gunboats sailed up the Chao Phraya, and Siam was forced to give up Laos east of the Mekong. Later treaties ceded western Cambodia to France in 1907 and four Malay states to Britain in 1909. By giving up territory, modernising and playing the powers against each other, Siam remained the only country in Southeast Asia never colonised by a European power.

King Vajiravudh, Rama VI, who ruled from 1910 to 1925, promoted Thai nationalism and joined the First World War on the Allied side in 1917, winning the revision of unequal treaties. His brother Prajadhipok, Rama VII, faced the Great Depression. On 24 June 1932, the People's Party, a group of civilian officials and military officers led by Pridi Banomyong and Plaek Phibunsongkhram, staged a bloodless coup and forced the king to accept a constitution, ending absolute monarchy. Prajadhipok abdicated in 1935. In 1939 Siam was renamed Thailand.

Our maps show the Rattanakosin Kingdom from 1783 to 1930. Its largest outline, about 840,000 square kilometres on the 1800 map, is 60 percent in today's Thailand, with the rest in Laos and Myanmar. Bangkok lies inside it throughout. On the 1938 map the basemap labels the country Siam.