had its deepest roots in the history of the Lan Na Kingdom, which was founded in 1259 by King Mangrai. Although the Lan Na Kingdom became a center of Southeast Asian Buddhism and civilization, it eventually fell to Burma in the mid-sixteenth century and was divided into a set of smaller states ruled by the Burmese. For the next two hundred years, those states suffered under oppressive rule and unsettled conditions until the 1770s when the states of Chiang Mai and Lampang initiated wars of liberation that culminated in the final eviction of Burma from all of the five states in 1804. That victory required the aid of Siam, Burma's long-standing military rival, and once they had freed themselves from the Burmese the five states established a tributary relationship (
prathetsarat) with Bangkok that left them as functionally semi-autonomous "princelets."
The Siamese and Westerners living in Bangkok generally called the five Northern States "Laos" and thought of them as being separated into two geographic divisions. "Eastern Laos" included the larger state of Nan and the smaller Phrae. Chiang Mai, Lamphun, and Lampang comprised "Western Laos," of which Chiang Mai was the chief. Wilson notes that, "The duties of the Lan Na principalities as prathetsarat fell into three general areas, periodic displays of loyalty to Bangkok, defense, and the supply of local products." The "displays of loyalty" included local annual ceremonies where the chao luang ("prince" or, following, Sarasawadi, "local king," in Lan Na History, 356) of each state drank the waters of allegiance as well as periodic missions to Bangkok to present gifts to the King of Siam. (Wilson, 75) For the most part, however, Siam left the Northern States to themselves in an arrangement that was congenial and beneficial to both sides. The North retained its autonomy while Bangkok gained the prestige of being suzerain to a set relatively important states and the protection of its northern border.
By the 1850s, however, European colonialism, embodied especially in the looming presence of the British, was fostering increasingly massive political, economic, and social change into Southeast Asia. That colonialism imperiled both Siam's own independence and the status of the Northern States, and over the course of the next four decades politicians and diplomats in Bangkok, the Northern States, Britain, British India, and France danced an often intricate dance of power over the fate of Siam and its tributary states. The Laos Mission necessarily danced to the same
7
political and diplomatic tunes as it pursued its own evangelistic agenda. At times, its members even proved themselves to be deft at political gamesmanship as they struggled to establish and expand an indigenous northern Thai church.
The following commentary focuses on the history of "Western Laos," especially Chiang Mai, for two reasons. First, secondary sources on the history of Nan and Phrae are limited for the period under study, and most of the historical work that has been done on the nineteenth-century history of the Northern States focuses on Chiang Mai and, secondarily, on Lamphun and Lampang. Second, Christianity only gained an entry into the two eastern Northern States in the early 1890s and the histories of Nan and Phrae, thus, are not relevant to the earlier history of the Laos Mission. It is clear, in any event, that the general trends described in this article apply to those two states as well. The timing of those trends was different, however, particularly in Nan where the chao luang of that state retained a large degree of autonomy into the 1890s, well after it had been lost in the other four states. In Nan, the specter of France also loomed larger than it did in the western Northern States. (See Ratanaporn, "Social History of Nan")
With Siamese aid, the Northern States successfully evicted the Burmese from all of their territory by 1804, and all hostilities ceased five years later, in 1809. Over the next roughly thirty years, the Northern States enjoyed an era of peace that allowed that them to recover socially and economically from the devastation of the brutal wars of liberation of the eighteenth century. They reoccupied abandoned territory and rebuilt deserted cities, towns, and villages. They also developed their status as tributary states of Siam.
One of the facts that has to be kept in mind when dealing with the history of the Northern States is that there was nothing "traditional" about the political structures and international relations that emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century. Prior to its fall to the Burmese, the Lan Na Kingdom had been more of a rival than anything else with Siam. Their status as tributary dependencies of Siam was a new development, one that proved inherently unstable, as we will see, in the face of European colonial expansion. The Northern States' continuing fear of Burma, more
8
than anything else, motivated them to seek Siam's formal suzerainty, and that fear remained the key factor in their relationship for two decades, into the 1820s.
Both sides, as we have already mentioned above, derived important benefits from that tributary relationship. The Northern States were small and required a militarily strong patron while Bangkok benefited from the protection the Northern States gave to its northern borders as well as the prestige of being suzerain to these five relatively stable and well-off statelets. The Northern States, in particular, had every reason to remain loyal to their new suzerain. Initially, they required Siam's power to act as a counter weight to that of Burma, and then as Burmese power began to fail it was all the more important for them to remain on good terms with their powerful patron to the south because of the relative ease with which Siamese military forces could invade the North and because of the brutal way it suppressed an uprising by another of its tributary states, Vientiane, in 1827. The Northern States, furthermore, were too small to maintain independence on their own; nor could any one of them, even Chiang Mai, dominate the rest. Their tributary status thus gave them a unity they could not otherwise have achieved. For all of these reasons, the Northern chao (ruling class) deemed it wise to affirm regularly their tributary status to Siam. (See Brailey, 79, 48-49. On the Vientiane rebellion, see Wyatt, Studies, 185-209)
Scholars generally agree, furthermore, that Siamese suzerainty rested lightly on the Northern States, which retained a large degree of autonomy after they became tributaries of Bangkok. Communications between the North and Siam were slow, the distances between them great, and there was very little commerce between the two. The Siamese state itself was relatively weak and simply could not manage effective administrative oversight of its own outer provinces, let alone the still more remote tributary states. So light did their power rest on the North that the various northern tributary states even conducted their own independent international affairs. (Brailey, 79; Bunnag, 69; Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 87-89; and Sarasawadi, Lan Na History, 283) Ramsay points out, in addition, that the northern Thai and the Siamese did not get along very well. The Siamese looked down on the northern Thai as being ignorant country bumpkins while the people of the North considered the Siamese to be haughty as well as physically inferior. (Ramsay, 55)
9
Bangkok and the Northern States developed their relationship initially in a pre-colonial Southeast Asian political and diplomatic context little troubled by global issues. The First Anglo-Burmese War, which ended with the British defeat of the Burmese in 1826, brought about a fundamental change in that context. By the terms of the Peace Treaty of Yandabo, the British acquired important territories from Burma including the province of Tenasserim, which bordered both Siam and Chiang Mai. The city of Moulmein became Britain's main seaport and administrative center. Grabowsky and Turton note that the British defeat of the Burmese "marked a watershed" in the regional balance of power; and they argue that while Siam and the Northern States benefited from the decline in Burmese power, they suddenly confronted a more powerful, and potentially more dangerous foe in Great Britain. They, in sum, had to contend for the first time with the geographical and military proximity of Western colonialism. (Grabowsky & Turton, 5)
The British, however, were not an immediate threat. Britain had no pressing reason for or interest in acquiring territory beyond its Burmese possessions and desired nothing more than good relations with its eastern neighbors, relations it hoped would be marked by safe, stable borders. The next twenty years, indeed, represented something of a "golden age" for the three western Northern States. They developed a thriving export trade in cows and buffaloes with both Burma and British Tenasserim, the resettlement of territory depopulated in the eighteenth century continued at an increased pace, and the North experienced both political stability and economic growth. (Grabowsky & Turton, 10)
The Northern States, meanwhile, developed good diplomatic as well as economic relations with the British in Tenasserim, although there was resistance to such relations among some chao particularly in Chiang Mai. That resistance foreshadowed the emergence of an identifiably anti-Western (and anti-missionary) party in the North in the 1860s and 1870s. In spite of some objections, however, trade between the North and Tenasserim flourished, and by the mid-1830s the first British subjects from its Burmese territories began to export teak from the Northern States. The western Northern States and the British in the 1830s and 1840s, in sum, developed mutually satisfactory relations, and Bangkok wisely did not interfere in them. (Brailey, 68-69; Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 109-110)
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The 1850s marked the full-blown emergence of a new and dangerous era in the history of Siam, the Northern States, and their relationships with each other. Wyatt bluntly states, "The last half of the nineteenth century was an extraordinarily dangerous time for the Tai peoples," a large majority of whom were at least nominally living under Siamese suzerainty at the time. (Wyatt, Thailand, 181) Britain to the West and South and France to the East and, eventually, North absorbed state after state until their troops stood on the very borders of Siam and its tributary states. To many it seemed inevitable that Siam and the Northern States would sooner or later share the fate of Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Malay states of falling under the full authority of either the British or the French. That threat dominated the political life of the Northern States and forms the largest political and diplomatic context for the establishment and early development of northern Thai Christianity. As Ramsay states, "The equilibrium in relations between the central government and the northern tributary states which existed in the first half of the nineteenth century was thrown into increasing disequilibrium in the second half of the century by the impact of the West on Siam." (Ramsay, 57)
The threat to Siam's independence was a real one, and only good fortune and political skill saved Siam from a fate similar to the other major states of the region. The fortune was a combination of geographic location and the historical moment. Siam stood at the periphery of both British and French expansion in Southeast Asia, which meant that, especially in the case of the more dominant British, it did not pose a threat to European colonial territory. Britain did not conquer Burma because it coveted Burmese territory so much as because the Burmese foolishly threatened Britain's hold on some of its Indian territories. Historically, meanwhile, Siam was ruled by a new and relatively dynamic ruling house, the Chakri Dynasty, which had itself undergone a period of expansion that meant that it had "extra" territory that it could give up to the British and French without diminishing the integrity of its inner core. Finally, Bangkok generally displayed a political acumen in its dealings with the colonial powers unusual among the larger states of Southeast Asia. It understood that Britain dominated the scene and that in order to remain independent Siam must keep Britain happy, a task at which it largely succeeded. (See Tarling, 6, 64, 70; cf. Wyatt, Thailand, 185) From the 1860s, the British adhered to a policy geared to maintain the
11
stability of Siam, using it as a buttress for British security in Southeast Asia while protecting its own dominant economic interests in the country. The nature of British colonialism, that is, actually aided and abetted Siamese strategies for staying independent. (See Tuck, 239-242, 253)
The emergence of a European colonial system in Southeast Asia dominated by Britain affected the Northern States even more than Bangkok because of their inherent inability to weather the forces of change independently. Despite Siam's own evident weaknesses, the northern chao had to continue to rely on Bangkok's suzerainty to protect them. To a degree, then, they too benefited from the "luck" of their benefactor's geographical position and historical situation, since in the long run their tributary status to Bangkok allowed them to avoid being swallowed whole by Britain or France. On hindsight, however, it seems all but inevitable that the five states could not survive in their original condition and that their dependency on Siam simply meant that they would lose their autonomy to Bangkok rather than a European power. The European colonial system imposed on Southeast Asia at gun point by the British and the French, in sum, forced Siam to learn to play the same colonial game in order to survive, and the Northern States proved to be the chief victims (or beneficiaries, depending on one's point of view) of that learning process.
It would take some fifty years for Bangkok to complete its conquest of the Northern States in a process that was, in contrast to the European penchant for violent military takeovers, largely but not entirely peaceful. Three key events in the early 1850s, none of which took place in the North, prepared the ground for that conquest, In April 1851, King Mongkut (Rama IV) assumed the Siamese throne and initiated a new, more accommodating policy towards the West, one aimed particularly at placating Britain. It was just this policy, as we have seen, that played an important part in preserving Siamese independence at a time when the other major states of the region were falling under colonial rule one-by-one. In 1853, Britain concluded the Second Anglo-Burmese War with a surprisingly easy conquest of a nation that had long been a formidable adversary of Siam. The lesson of unchallengeable European military might was not lost on the Siamese government, even as Britain extended its borders with the Northern States. In 1855, finally, Siam and Britain concluded the Bowring Treaty, a trade agreement that fundamentally altered Siam's economic
12
relations with the West. (Brailey, 83-95) The Bowring treaty had an especially direct impact on Siam's relations with the Northern States because Britain expected that Siam would enforce the provisions of the treaty in the North as well, especially the clause giving its Burmese citizens, including traders and loggers, extra-territorial rights. While the Northern States tried to deny that the treaty applied to them, they could not halt the growing economic power of Britain in the North or the fact that Siam, from 1855 on, would necessarily take a deeper interest in their affairs. Siam, for its part, could not ignore Britain's threat to deal with the Northern States independently if Siam did not bring them into line with Britain's economic interests. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 121-126)
By 1855, then, the dim outlines of Bangkok's future, more "intimate" relationship with the Northern States was beginning to emerge. Until the Siamese government finally and fully integrated the Northern States into the Siamese nation state, Bangkok's authority in those states would vary from year to year and situation to situation. Its power, now and again, would recede for a time, but the larger trend was one of incremental increases in Siamese authority as the government sought to gain control over the North without driving it into rebellion. This is not to say that it was clear in the mid-1850s that Siam had the power to change fundamentally its relationship with the Northern States. Its armies had, in fact, failed miserably to conquer in three attempts the Shan state of Kengtung, a neighbor to the Northern States, between 1850 and 1854. (Brailey, 95-109. See also Wyatt, Thailand, 182)
More than counter-balancing Bangkok's governmental and military limitations was what may well have been the greatest single factor in the Northern States' inability to preserve their semi-autonomous state. That factor was the failure of the northern chao to learn how to deal with the British and the Siamese. They failed, most importantly, to respond creatively or positively to Britain's growing economic interests in their teak forests. They, instead, took unscrupulous advantage of the British Burmese teak traders and loggers by demanding heavy bribes for leasing forests for logging and, not infrequently, double leasing the same lands to two leaseholders. Serious, constant tensions arose, generated by the greed of both the chao and the British and Burmese involved in teak logging. By the same token, the chao also failed to take effective action to limit banditry along their border with
13
Britain, which action would have reduced tensions with the British and reduced the need for Bangkok to intervene in northern affairs. The
chao also failed to make any modernizing changes in the governmental and legal structures of their states, which failure only deepened British mistrust of and disgust with Northern States' corruption. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 127-145)
Symptomatic of the situation in the mid-1850s were the events surrounding the choosing of a new chao luang for Chiang Mai after Phrachao Mahawong died in January 1854. Three rivals claimed the throne, and Chiang Mai finally had to refer the matter to Bangkok for a decision. Brailey argues that the fact that one of the main contenders, Chao Kawilorot, finally gained the throne by threatening to withdraw from government altogether if he did not demonstrates that Chiang Mai could intimidate the Bangkok government because it could not exercise real authority in the North. (Brailey, 109-114) Sarasawadi argues, however, that the King of Siam had never before played such an important role in the process of selecting a successor to a chao luang and that from this point on the Northern States had to fall into line with Bangkok's demand that it show greater loyalty and deference to the Siamese government. (Sarasawadi, Lan Na History, 289) Taken together, Brailey is surely correct that as of 1855 Bangkok still had little effective power in the North, and Sarasawadi is surely just as correct in arguing that Bangkok's power was growing.
During the 1850s, then, an inherently unstable situation arose created by British territorial and economic expansion, Bangkok's inability to project its power effectively in the North, and the Northern chao's inability to adapt themselves to the emergence of a new international order in inland Southeast Asia. Yet, it was not until after 1870 that this instability began to resolve itself into the full incorporation of the Northern States into the Siamese state system. The British were not particularly interested in acquiring the Northern States for themselves and did not wish to press matters too far. That reluctance limited its ability to influence change in the North. Bangkok, meanwhile, still did not have the political wherewithal to bring the Northern States to heel. In the Northern States, Chao Kawilorot, who as we have seen rose to the position of chao luang of Chiang Mai in 1856, provided the strong, if not particularly creative, leadership needed for Chiang Mai and the other western Northern States to retain their autonomy for the time being.
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Chao Kawilorot was a forceful ruler who had a deserved reputation for brutality when the security of his state and his own personal power were at stake. Brailey calls him "one of the greatest characters in nineteenth century Thailand" and correctly describes him as "the last effectively independent Prince of western Laos." (Brailey, 115) Born sometime around 1800, Chao Kawilorot on his accession vigorously moved to suppress his rivals and end the internal political divisions of Chiang Mai, which divisions at that juncture posed a serious threat to the western Northern States' autonomy. (Brailey, 116-117) Brailey also notes, however, that Chao Kawilorot did not effectively address the problems facing the Northern States, as described above. In particular, the border regions between Chiang Mai and British Burma remained violent and unstable, and the Northern chao kept to their corrupt, greedy ways particularly in the way they mismanaged their teak forests. (Brailey, 119ff)
The pressure for a decisive change concerning the status of the Northern States continued to build in the 1860s, but matters apparently drifted during that decade. One of the factors that limited both Bangkok and Britain's ability to effect that change was the internal divisions facing both of them in terms of their respective policies towards the North. British India had one set of objectives with regard to Siam and the Northern States while the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office in London each had their own agendas. They not infrequently worked at cross-purposes, and even the British consulate in Bangkok and local officials in British Burma at times acted as independent agents. King Mongkut's ability to develop a policy with regard to the Northern States, meanwhile, was limited by the power of the Bunnag clan and its head, Chaophraya Si Suriyawong (See Wyatt, Studies, 107-127). Si Suriyawong believed that Bangkok did not have a right to interfere in the affairs of the Northern States while Mongkut eventually sought to increase his authority over them. Change, thus, came to the North only haltingly, receding or proceeding according to the rise and fall of various factions, parties, and officials in Bangkok, London, Calcutta, Maulmein, and in the North States.
When the decade of the 1860s opened, Si Suriyawong and the Bunnag clan still blocked Mongkut's growing desire to gain closer control over the Northern States. Two events, both related to Chao Kawilorot, however, opened the door, momentarily,
15
for the king to gain a modicum of that control. In 1862, a complex dispute over the lease of teak forests under Chao Kawilorot's control was referred to the Siam government's court for foreigners, and Bangkok called him down to participate. Although the original ruling was in Kawilorot's favor and against the British plaintiff, Mongkut took the opportunity of a British protest to reverse the decision and get Chao Kawilorot to make concessions in the case. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 140-141; and, Brailey 130-135) Brailey suggests that Mongkut's treatment of Chao Kawilorot shows that, "The Siamese attitude to Chiengmai was clearly, progressively hardening, partly no doubt, from a desire to placate Britain, the only possible counter-weight to French ambitions, but also, probably, as the beginning of a vague centralization policy." (Brailey, 139)
The second event that allowed King Mongkut to exercise increased oversight over the North took place in 1866 when several of Chao Kawilorot's political rivals in Chiang Mai sent a letter to Bangkok accusing him of planning to transfer his allegiance to the Burmese. It is possible that Kawilorot did, in fact, contemplate such a change, but an investigation by Bangkok turned up no solid evidence; Kawilorot, subsequently, traveled to Bangkok where he took a humble attitude and even offered to give over to Mongkut certain gifts he had received from the Burmese. His argument that it had all been a misunderstanding was accepted, and he returned to Chiang Mai confirmed in his power as chao luang there. (Brailey, 141-151; Ratanaporn, 158-160) While Brailey feels that yet another shift in power back towards Si Suriyawong forced Mongkut to deal leniently with Kawilorot, the fact remains that Kawilorot did feel constrained to explain his actions, was careful to remain on the good side of King Mongkut, and depended upon powerful support from another faction in the Siamese government for protection. The weight of Bangkok's opinions and the ebb and flow of Bangkok party politics was much more important to the northern chao in the mid-1860s than it had been even a decade earlier.
It was while Chao Kawilorot was in Bangkok in 1866 that Daniel McGilvary approached both him and the Siamese government for permission to move to Chiang Mai and initiate Christian missionary work there. (See "Prelude to Irony," pp. 1-5) It is revealing of the changing but not yet changed situation facing the Laos Mission in its early years that McGilvary felt it necessary to gain permission from both Bangkok
16
as well as Chiang Mai. Yet, Chao Kawilorot remained powerful in his own "kingdom," and it would have been impossible to live in Chiang Mai without his express approval. Britain had, meanwhile, begun to make its demands for a stable border and fair treatment of its citizens with increasing force. The political and diplomatic situation in Chiang Mai and the North was complex. The older tributary relationship seemed still in force, in Nan as well as Chiang Mai; but in both cases it was the strong personalities of the
chao luang that obscured the fundamental shift in power that was taking place.
When the McGilvarys arrived in Chiang Mai in April 1867, Chao Kawilorot had entered the final years of his rule, which would end with his death in 1870. Tensions with the British over teak logging and border conditions had abated, and Bangkok, for the time being, was not inclined to interfere in Chiang Mai's affairs. The death of King Mongkut in 1868 brought Chao Kawilorot's old supporter, Chaophraya Si Suriyawong, to supreme power in Bangkok as the Regent for the young King Chulalongkorn. (See Ratanaporn, 160) In spite of Kawilorot's initial willingness to allow the missionaries to move to Chiang Mai, this brief final era of his ascendancy proved to be politically the most dangerous period in the whole history of the Laos Mission. As a rule, the mission benefited most from those periods when the Bangkok asserted its authority in the North and suffered most in those years when Bangkok's power receded. Fate would have it that the mission began in an era when the Siamese government's influence was momentarily in decline in the North
In fact, as both Ramsay and Ratanaporn point out, the most serious challenge to Chao Kawilorot's authority in the closing years of his reign came from the Presbyterian missionaries themselves. Beyond all of the chao luang's expectations, the people of Chiang Mai showed considerable interest in the Christian religion, and by August 1868 seven men had actually converted to Christianity. Kawilorot interpreted their conversions as a challenge to his own authority and to the very foundations of Chiang Mai's patron-client social order, and he responded with a brutal persecution of the small Christian community including the execution of two of its
17
members. (Ratanaporn, 161, and Ramsay, 64-66. See
"Prelude to Irony," pp. 119-131 and
Khrischak Muang Nua, pp. 12-15) At the behest of the American Consul and the missionary community in Bangkok, the Siamese government sent a special envoy to Chiang Mai to ensure the safety of the two missionary families resident there. Bangkok did not feel that it could do anything, and Chao Kawilorot ordered the missionaries to leave. Only his death in the following year, 1870, prevented their expulsion.
The initial context in which the fledgling Laos Mission worked, then, was one reminiscent of the situation in the Northern States prior to 1850. Although both Britain and Bangkok hovered just off stage and the days of northern autonomy were numbered, Kawilorot stood in a momentarily strong position in September 1869 in his confrontation with the mission. King Mongkut was dead, and the Regent was Si Suriyawong, who adhered to the principle of full Northern States autonomy. It was almost as if someone had turned the clock back to the 1840s. (Brailey, 159) The prevailing attitude in Bangkok, thus, was that the northern chao had their own laws and administered them according to their own likes. Those laws were strict, and the chao luang of Chiang Mai had every right to enforce them. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 161)
The Laos Mission in the late 1860s, then, had to contend with a volatile situation that was both hopeful and desperate, dangerous and yet not without advantage. Chao Kawilorot, who seemed so powerful, had to contend with a difficult position as he tried to resist the irresistible forces of political, economic, and social change. The Laos Mission, apparently so weak, was the first local agency in the Northern States to embody and represented those changes. While in the near term the mission could not resist the powerful Chao Kawilorot, in the long run, paradoxically, it actually stood in a more favorable situation than he did. It represented a change that the chaos could not, finally, contend with because of their own failures of leadership, and once Kawilorot died in 1870 there was no one left who had the power or the political acumen needed to drive the mission out of Chiang Mai.
Systemic weaknesses in the Northern States' political system contributed to the inability of the northern chao to deal with what amounted to the nineteenth century version of globalization. The northern Thai political system was generally
18
loosely defined, power was scattered among various individuals, and much depended on who was married to whom. The
chao luang did not have a clear-cut mandate to exercise actual political control, and his ability to do so depended on a variety of factors including his own political acumen, force of personality, family relations, and ability to create a viable political faction. This informal system worked fine in the hands of a strong ruler, one who could gather in the reins of power, but after Chao Kawilorot died, as we have seen, there was no other political figure in the western Northern States who could "work the system" as he did. (Rujaya, 67; and, Sarasawadi,
Lan Na History, 289. See also McGilvary,
Half Century, 142-143.)
Chao Kawilorot's death in 1870 thus effectively marked the passing of the "old" Chiang Mai, although it took another nearly three decades for it and the other Northern States to lose the remainder of their former autonomy. The passing of the old regime was of fundamental importance to the Laos Mission. There are indications that as far back as the 1830s, the northern Thai ruling class, the chao, were divided loosely into those who favored closer ties with the West and those who feared and resisted such ties. After 1870, these two tendencies emerged as identifiable political alliances, the one pro-Western and pro-missionary (or, at least, tolerant of the missionaries) and the other strongly anti-Western and bitterly anti-missionary. The main supporter for a tolerant, supportive approach to the missionaries and, more generally, to Westernization was Chao Mae Tip Kasorn, daughter of the deceased Chao Kawilorot, and wife of his successor as chao luang, Chao Intawichaiyanon (usually referred to as Chao Intanon). The chief pillar of the anti-Westernization, anti-missionary party was Chao Bunthawong, the chao hona or "second king" and Chao Intanon's half brother. The bulk of the upper level chao supported Bunthawong, and he dominated the daily political affairs of the state; his power, however, was not overwhelming such as had been the case with Chao Kawilorot. (See Brailey, 166-168; and, Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 176-177).
As the 1870s opened, the Chiang Mai government, dominated by Chao Bunthawong, faced the same problems that had plagued the state during Chao Kawilorot's reign. Conditions on the border with British Burma remained unsettled, and the teak loggers, who were British subjects, still complained about the way in
19
which the
chao handled (or, better, mishandled) them. Britain was not happy with developments in the Northern States and maintained its policy of putting pressure on Bangkok to take unambiguous command of its northern dependencies. The Siamese government in the early 1870s, however, remained under the control of the Regent, Sri Suriyawong and he steadfastly refused to try to exercise authority over those states.
The Laos Mission, as we have just seen, suffered a nearly fatal attack by Chao Kawilorot in September 1869. While his death the following year brought it a reprieve, the mission had experienced a major set-back, and this period of temporary political stasis during the early 1870s allowed it to begin the process of recovery. Mission records show that the people of Chiang Mai were still afraid to convert, but the mission itself was able to set its own affairs in order and continue to evangelize the citizenry. Full recovery would not come until the end of the decade, but during the period 1870 to 1875 the ground was prepared for that recovery. The mission was aided by the fact that while Chao Bunthawong sought to maintain Chiang Mai's traditional political order he lacked the stature needed to command a unified response to Britain, Siam, and, locally, the missionaries. The Chiang Mai government could not thus solve the problems it faced with the Burmese teak loggers, could not bring peace to its border with British Burma, and did not have the wherewithal to prevent its gradual loss of autonomy to Bangkok. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 177; Brailey, 174-184) Most importantly for our story here, it also did not have the strength to rid the state of its missionary presence.
The political and diplomatic situation in the Northern States began to shift again in 1873 when King Chulalongkorn attained his majority and the period of the Regency came to an end. The King, his party of young princes, and some younger government officials were by that time convinced that Siam had to engage in Westernizing reform if it was to survive the threat of European colonialism. Not everyone in the government agreed, of course, and a loose anti-reform alliance comprised of senior government officials, senior members of the Bunnag family, and a powerful clique led by the Second King, Prince Wichaichan coalesced around the former Regent, Si Suriyawong. (Ramsay, 67-68) The young King, in spite of this
20
opposition, initiated a set of wide-ranging reforms aimed at streamlining governmental administration, reducing the power of the traditionalists, and bringing slavery to an end. (See Bunnag, 88-93; and,
Wyatt, Thailand, 192-193)
Among the issues that divided the reform party of the King and the traditionalists was their different views on Bangkok's relationship with the Northern States. According to Ratanaporn, King Chulalongkorn had
concluded that to resist the West it would be necessary for Thailand to become a unified state rather than a loosely organized tributary state as it was. The implication for the Northern States was that the King was determined to bring them under Bangkok control." (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 178)
The traditionalists, have we have seen, held that the Northern States were autonomous political entities, which Bangkok did not and had no right to rule directly. While they sought to frustrate any moves towards incorporating the Northern States into the Siamese state, the traditionalists had to act circumspectly because the British supported the King's "forward policy in the Northern States." (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 180-181)
Before he had assumed his full power, King Chulalongkorn had taken a trip to British India in 1872, which along with earlier trips overseas had an important impact on his thinking, encouraging him to engage in reform. That trip also provided him with personal contacts within the government of the British Raj. In 1873, he availed himself of those contacts to further his project to gain control over the Northern States by initiating negotiations for a treaty with British India aimed at resolving the problems between the British and the Northern States chao. (Brailey, 185-190; and, Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 174) The result was the Chiang Mai Treaty of 1874, which called for a range of governmental, legal, and economic reforms in the North. As it turned out, most of the provisions of this treaty were vague, only fitfully implemented if at all, and the treaty did not ultimately satisfy British demands that the Siamese government take charge in the North. Among its provisions, however, was one that did increase Bangkok's influence and to a limited extent its actual power in the North. According to the treaty, Bangkok was to appoint a resident Siamese "commissioner" (kha luang) for Chiang Mai who was to see that the provisions of the treaty were carried out. (Brailey, 194ff) Ratanaporn observes that the result was the
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emergence of a "dual government" in Chiang Mai, a government headed by both the local
chao and the Siamese commissioner. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 172)
The man King Chulalongkorn chose for the position of commissioner was Phra Narin (Phum Srichaiyan), a civil servant who spoke English well, had traveled to Europe on a diplomatic mission, and had experience in governmental finances. He was evidently a skilled diplomat, and his assignment as Chiang Mai's first resident Siamese commissioner required him to use those skills to the fullest. (Brailey, 199; Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 189-191) Ramsay argues that the basic problem Bangkok faced with regard to the Northern States in the mid-1870s was "to remove the chaos as obstacles to increasing its authority in the North while, at the same time, not antagonizing them as to cause them to rebel." (Ramsay, 83) Phra Narin, who for his success in Chiang Mai was later rewarded with the new name and title of Phraya Thep Prachun, also had to placate the British while attempting to minimize and limit their power in the North. Bangkok still did not have adequate political structures and sufficient reach to extend its own administration into the North. It had to rely instead on a commissioner to represent it there, and it had to allow its commissioners wide latitude in carrying out needed political and financial reforms. (Bunnag, 104-105)
Ratanaporn sees the Chiang Mai Treaty of 1874 as being an important milestone in the eventual incorporation or "centralization" of the Northern States into the Siamese state, particularly because of the role of the commissioner. Through all of the maneuverings for position between Phraya Thep Prachun and the chao in Chiang Mai, Lamphun, and Lampang, he was able to inject an unparalleled degree of Siamese authority into the northern political process. His very presence served to undermine the traditional power structure to a certain extent. He made changes in the border police and gained some financial control over the northern teak forces, which further reduced the authority and income of the chao. Phraya Thep Prachun also convinced the northern chao to begin to turn some of their revenues over to Bangkok. The "dual government" system he introduced also served to increase the power of the chao luang, Chao Intanon, as opposed to the other higher strata of chao because Chao Intanon could deal directly with Phraya Thep Prachun on some matters instead of having to consult with the other chao. He, for example, began to levy taxes on his own initiative, something not done previously. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties,"
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195, 197, 201. See also, Rujaya, 73; and, Ramsay, 71) Concerning Bangkok's policy of using resident commissioners in its outlying territories, Bunnag states, "In spite of the limitations, the commissioners made administrative changes which constituted the beginnings of a centralized provincial administration." (Bunnag, "Provincial Administration of Siam," 105) Such was certainly the case in Chiang Mai.
The "era of dual government" did not by any means reduce the traditionalist's threat to the Laos Mission, but it did provide the mission with an important ally in Chiang Mai, one who could help it resist the pressure of its adversaries. The role of the kha luang as sympathetic ally of the missionaries was particularly seen in one of the most important local events to take place in Chiang Mai in the later 1870s, the issuing of the so-called "Edict of Religious Toleration" in 1878 by Phraya Thep Prachun. Ratanaporn emphasizes the importance of this event and argues that the edict "partly liberated converts in the Northern States from the traditional control of the chao." (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 195. See also Brailey, 232-235)
The events surrounding the Edict of Religious Toleration began as a contest of wills between the mission and the traditionalist party led by Chao Bunthawong over the right of Christians to marry without having to conform to local animistic traditions that carried the force of law. (See Edict of Religious Toleration, and "Prelude to Irony," pages 141-148) Although the chao luang and his influential wife, Chao Mae Tip Kasorn, sided with the missionaries, as did Phraya Thep Prachun, none of these three believed that they had sufficient authority to deal with the matter at hand. They felt that it had to be referred to King Chulalongkorn, who then authorized Phraya Thep Prachun, as Siamese commissioner, to issue an edict giving certain religious freedoms to Christians in Chiang Mai, Lamphun, and Lampang states.
The missionaries and the small community of Christian converts were, naturally, overjoyed at their apparent victory over the traditionalists. They seem not to have taken into account the fact that their victory created still further bitterness between the mission and the traditionalist party, which as we will see was shortly to make a final attempt at driving the mission and its churches out of the North. Still, if Ratanaporn is correct, the Edict marked an important moment in the political and social history of the western Northern States in at least three different ways. First, when Phraya Thep Prachun issued the Edict he thereby initiated a process of de-
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sacralizing the political system by which it was now understood that the citizens of Chiang Mai, Lamphun, and Lampang states no longer had to be Buddhists in order to be loyal subjects of the state. Until that time, the control the northern
chao traditionally exercised over certain Buddhist-animistic rituals had been an important pillar of their political power. It was, as Ratanaporn writes, one of their "main techniques in controlling the people who were subject to spirit practices from birth to death." (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 209) While events proved that northern Thai authorities widely ignored the Edict, it did provide the Christian community with a new legal standing that rested on a secular, rather than religious foundation.
Second, one of the clauses of the Edict acknowledged the right of the missionaries to employ northern Thai servants, and the Edict also gave Christian converts the right to refrain, except under unusual circumstances, from working on Sundays irrespective of the strictures of the northern Thai corvée labor system. These provisions virtually confirmed the new, alternative patron-client relationship that had been developing between the missionaries and Christian converts. The emergence of a missionary-convert system of patronage beyond the boundaries of "traditional" society served to weaken further the socio-political structures of the Northern States by establishing a legally recognized patron class apart from the northern Thai chao. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 210)
Third and finally, by the same token, church membership suddenly offered those northern Thai who were willing to convert to Christianity a new avenue for social mobility, which was now legally ratified by Bangkok in spite of the wishes of the politically powerful traditionalist party in Chiang Mai. (Ratanaporn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 199) In the decades that followed, the Laos Mission opened opportunities for women to become employed as teachers, Bible women, and domestic help in their own homes. They provided a Western-style "modern" education to women. These same types of opportunities were open men who had no particular social standing as well as men and women who had been socially marginalized by being accused of complicity in spirit possession (phi ka) or through leprosy or for other reasons.
The issuance of the Edict of Toleration, in sum, was a key event in the political history of both the Northern States and the Laos Mission. In the context of the Northern States' evolving dual government, the Bangkok side of the dual
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government gave Christianity a legal status that facilitated the mission's work and all but guaranteed its future in the North. At the same time, the occasion of the Edict afforded the Siamese government with an opportunity to strengthen its own political role in the Northern States, cement its reformist alliance with the Laos Mission, and slightly weaken the standing of the
chao, its recalcitrant "partners" in the dual government.
More should not be made of the event, however, than it deserves. On the one hand, persecution of Christians continued almost unabated in spite of the Edict (See Khrischak Muang Nua, pages 28-29), and the Edict did not provide particularly effective legal protection for Christians in the years immediately after 1878. Many of the chao still did not think that the King in Bangkok had a right to legislate for them. By the same token, the Edict did not immediately and magically reduce the actual power of the chao, who did show that they had the ability and will to resist its implementation "on the ground." The tectonic plates of northern Thai politics did shake and rumble a bit in 1878, but the great shift in them that tumbled the North into Siam's lap was taking place at a much more measured pace.
The tension generated by the events leading up to the proclamation of the Edict demonstrates that the Laos Mission faced virtually the same basic problem in Chiang Mai that Phraya Thep Prachun had to deal with as the Siamese commissioner. As best it could, the mission too had to neutralize the power of the chao to interfere with its work while also placating them because throughout the 1870s the chao continued to exercise a great deal of political power. This similarity of interest between Bangkok and the mission in the 1870s reflects a larger set of parallel interests and concerns between the two that marks the whole era from the 1860s to the 1880s and beyond. Both the Siamese government and the Laos Mission were outsiders who, each in their own way, sought to increase their influence and power in the Northern States. The two differed in that while Bangkok, as a political entity, had also to compete for power in the North with other political entities, especially the British, the Laos Mission did not have to compete with any other external agent and actually shared a number of parallel interests with the British, particularly in seeing that the Northern States were stable and well run states.
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The political situation during the 1870s, in any event, remained highly fluid and unstable. The Siamese commissioners, beginning with Phraya Thep Prachun, represented one new power center; their political allies, the Presbyterian missionaries, represented a second new, if lesser, political power center. As we have seen, something of a "balance of power" existed between the traditionalists, led by Chao Bunthawong, and the modernists, led by Chao Mae Tip Kasorn, with neither one being able to take full control over the other's objections. Brailey argues, however, that a generally anti-Western attitude continued to hold sway in Chiang Mai, one directed at the missionaries as well as the British. (Brailey, 217-218) Still, the Chiang Mai Treaty of 1874 led to important changes in the relationship between Bangkok and the Northern States, changes that ultimately benefited the Laos Mission.
In Bangkok, the balance of power between the traditionalists led by Si Suriyawong and the reformers under the King tilted first towards the King's party and then in early 1875 back towards his opponents. The reforms instituted by the King in 1873 and 1874 generated serious resistance on the part of the traditionalists and led to the famous "Front Palace Crisis of 1875," a political confrontation between Prince Wichaichan, the so-called "Second King," and King Chulalongkorn that threatened to descend into a civil war. While the crisis was finally resolved more or less in the King's favor, it brought his reform campaign to an abrupt halt for a decade or so. The King realized that his reforms posed a threat to the power of Bangkok's ruling elite and to the "traditional" political, economic, and social structures of the day. He also realized that he did not yet have the political clout he needed to achieve his reform agenda, and while he did continue to carry out some minor reforms the larger program was put aside for the time being. To put the matter bluntly, the King had to wait for the elder generation of political conservatives to die before he could proceed. (See Wyatt, Thailand, 192-194; and, Ramsay, 72-73) By the end of the decade, subsequent events—ones involving the British consul, Sir Thomas Knox, and his infamous daughter, Fanny, who had an indiscreet affair with a political rival of the powerful Bunnag clan—enhanced the power of the conservatives, again at the expense of the King whose prestige, Brailey concludes, "reached its nadir." (Brailey, 239-242)
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The general suspension of King Chulalongkorn's reforms after 1875 meant that Bangkok also slowed the process of centralization. The Bunnags, in particular, used their increased authority to replace Phraya Thep Prachun, who they mistrusted and who had offended some of the northern
chao, with an appointee of their own. The Northern States' dual system of government initiated by Phraya Thep Prachun in 1874 thus remained in place at the end of the 1870s, but the Laos Mission could no longer rely on the power of the King to sustain it in Chiang Mai.. (Brailey, 244--245)
Even though the Laos Mission had won an important round in 1878 in its ongoing struggle with the traditionalist party of Chao Bunthawong, that momentary victory did not immediately lead to an improved situation politically for the mission. As suggested above, by the beginning of the 1880s the pendulum had swung back in favor of the traditionalists in Bangkok and, therefore, in Chiang Mai as well. The King's relative loss of power in Bangkok meant that the mission still faced a potentially dangerous situation in Chiang Mai.
The reality and extent of that danger was realized in 1882—after a period of two or more years during which Chiang Mai Christians suffered through increased persecution—when Chao Bunthawong made what proved to be the last concerted effort of the Chiang Mai chao to be rid of the Laos Mission. In July 1882, Chao Intanon made his first trip to Bangkok in a decade, leaving Chao Bunthawong in charge of things in Chiang Mai. The following September Bunthawong published a decree sent up to Chiang Mai from Bangkok concerning the need to initiate certain religious reforms; to that decree he appended further decrees of his own forbidding people from visiting the missionaries, selling property to them, or seeking refuge with them when accused of causing demon possession. (Brailey, 249-250) In his own description of the events surrounding Chao Bunthawong's attempt to suppress the Christian faith, the Rev. Jonathan Wilson stated that Bunthawong evidently received a letter from the "Bangkok government" that left the question of whether people could become Christians or not to the discretion of the chao. He termed the letter a "distinct repeal" of the Edict of Religious Toleration. (Wilson to Irving, 27 Nov. 1882, Records of the Board of Foreign Missions) The letter Wilson refers to must have originated
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with one or another of the Bunnag clan, who generally believed, as we have seen, that the northern
chao should be left to run their own affairs as seemed best to them.
As it turned out, Chao Bunthawong died in November 1882, just as his campaign against Laos Mission and its converts was getting into full swing. With his death, the traditionalist party lost its last strong, politically powerful voice, and the Laos Mission never had to face such a dangerous situation in Chiang Mai again. The state of affairs in Bangkok had also begun to change, as the King was able slowly to restore his power. A key moment in that process came in January 1883 when the former Regent and chief figure among Bangkok's traditionalist party, Sri Suriyawongse, died. (Ramsay, 92-93) With the death of other leading figures that had resisted significant reform, the King's ability to initiate meaningful change increased rapidly. The Northern States' years of autonomy were, as one consequence of these changes, rapidly coming to an end.
The rest of the decade of the 1880s would witness a number of highly important events the sum total of which was to promote the continued slow, but increasingly remorseless erosion of northern Thai autonomy by Bangkok. In 1883, Siam and Britain signed the Second Chiang Mai Treaty, which corrected a number of the weaknesses in the first treaty and led, subsequently, to the establishment of a British consulate in Chiang Mai in 1884. From this point on, the British teak firms would expand their presence in the North rapidly. In 1884, King Chulalongkorn sent a special commissioner, Krom Mun Phichitprichakon (Prince Pichit), to Chiang Mai, and the Prince initiated a set of political and economic reforms that included the reorganization of the western Northern States' governments and that further reduced their autonomy in spite of the fact that the northern chao still had enough power to thwart the full implementation of Prince Pichit's reforms. We should note, as an aside, that Prince Pichit played a direct role in the expansion of the Laos Mission when he urged the mission to consider opening a new station in Lampang and offered government support in doing so. The mission responded by founding the Lampang Station, its first outside of Chiang Mai, in 1885. In 1889, meanwhile, Siam brought the Northern States still more fully into its orbit when it completed the first telegraph line from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Even the abortive rebellion of Phaya Prap in Chiang Mai in September 1889 only managed to slow down the process of
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centralization and perhaps make it somewhat less heavy handed in its taxation of the general populace. (See Ratanaporn, , "Chiang Mai Treaties," 297)
The process of centralization reached its culmination in the 1890s, in two stages. In 1892, the Siamese government underwent a thorough reorganization that brought it into line with European governmental organization and practices. That reform saw the appointment of Prince Damrong, one of the most capable and effective members of the royal family (and the "Father of Thai History"), as the Minister of the Interior. He capably moved the process of centralization along to the point that, in 1899, the Northern States were fully incorporated into the Siamese state as provinces.
While these later events, as will be mentioned below, were of fundamental importance to the Laos Mission, they were important in a way quite different from those up to 1882. None of them threatened the existence of the mission or its churches. None of them, by the same token, "saved" the mission from the dire straights it faced in the 1860s and again in the 1870s. Chao Bunthawong's failed suppression of the mission and Christianity marked thus the end of an era for the Laos Mission.
For a period of roughly fifteen years, from 1867 through to 1882, the Laos Mission was an important local "player" in the political events that were shaping the political future of the Northern States. It was important enough as a political factor that in 1869, 1878, and 1882, the traditionalist powers in Chiang Mai took aim at the mission, seeking to cripple its work and drive it out of the North. Twice, the mission was saved by the death of a chief political rival, Chao Kawilorot in 1870 and Chao Bunthawong in 1882. So far as the mission itself is concerned, as we have seen, the passing of Bunthawong in November 1882 marked the end of an era, whether or not it was apparent at the time. After his death, the traditionalist party had no leader of sufficient stature to exercise effective political leadership in Chiang Mai, and as we have also seen Chao Intanon, the chao luang, gradually increased his power over against the other chao through a functional governing alliance with the various resident Siamese commissioners. By the mid-1880s, the Laos Mission was a fixture in Chiang Mai, and its buildings and heavily clad, white skinned members had become a "natural" part of the cityscape. In spite of future tensions and occasional
29
local persecutions, the mission would never again be the political factor it had been up to 1882, and diplomatic and political developments in Southeast Asia would never impinge on it with the intensity of its first fifteen years. In that sense, the Northern States, in the aftermath of Chao Bunthawong's aborted persecution in 1882, had already become "Northern Siam" for the Laos Mission, although it would not be until 1899 that the transformation from Northern semi-autonomy to full incorporation into the Siamese state would be completed politically.
This is not to say, however, that political and diplomatic events ceased to be important to the mission or its history. From the Chiang Mai Treaty of 1883, through the Shan Rebellion of 1902, down to 1921 when the northern railway line finally reached Chiang Mai, those events would shape the course of the mission to an extent. At times, it would have to deal yet again with traditionalist parties that were still in power in, for example, Lampang in the 1880s and Phrae in the 1890s. Throughout that period from 1882 to 1921, the mission would continue to be a beneficiary of the process of centralization and would, in fact, contribute substantially to the process in a number of ways. Bangkok understood, perhaps from the beginning, that it could use the Laos Mission as a tool for furthering its own political agenda in the North; in the mid-1880s, thus, the Siamese Government officially encouraged the mission to open a station in Lampang and even provided land for it to do so. After the turn of the century, Siamese governmental agencies in the North made substantial use of the mission's printing office for publishing notices and official documents in both northern Thai and Siamese. During the Shan Rebellion of 1902, the missionaries and local Christians sided entirely with the government and in Phrae even provided shelter for Siamese officials and residents fleeing the Shan massacre. Elsewhere during that rebellion Christians provided information and assistance to Siamese governmental representatives.
Still, in the end, the political scene did not influence the life of the mission to the degree or with the intensity of the years up to 1882. Viewed from the perspective of northern Thai history, the era 1867-1882 might be styled as the "Era of Resistance," the era when most of the most powerful political figures in Chiang Mai and elsewhere in the North sought to impede as much as possible the massive forces of political, economic, and sociocultural change buffeting their states. In Chiang Mai,
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the powerful traditionalist party repeatedly took aim at the Laos Mission, recognizing in it a dangerous foe that challenged the religious prerogatives of the
chao as state liturgists, threatened their economic self-interest in the corvée labor system, and undermined their social standing by setting up an independent system of patronage. This power struggle between the Laos Mission and the traditionalists significantly shaped the work of the mission itself, limiting its ability to expand, intimidating its converts, and impeding its institutional work.
In the final analysis, however, the Laos Mission rode the crest of a political, economic, and social revolution in the Northern States that was not to be denied; and while it cannot be claimed that "historical necessity" magically ensured the survival of the mission, it had more in the way of resources and allies than might at first seem to have been the case. The anti-Westernization party could and did impede the work of the mission, but it failed to halt it. That party could persecute, intimidate, and make life unpleasant for converts to Christianity, but it failed to bring conversions to an end. When the "Era of Resistance" in Chiang Mai itself came to an end with the death of Chao Bunthawong in 1882, both the Laos Mission and the rulers of the Northern States had changed each other in important ways to the extent that historians cannot understand the history of either except in light of the actions of the other.
If the experience of the Laos Mission and its churches is any measure, political leaders and concerns have historically constrained the ways in which missionaries carry out their work. They have forced Christian missions to adapt themselves to local situations and defined, to an extent, how evangelism can be conducted and churches organized. Not being conversant with the literature on the contextualization of the Christian faith in non-Christian nations, so called, I'm not sure if it has given much consideration to the role of political forces in that process, but I suspect not. It is likely that the situation and nature of the northern Thai church would have been quite different but for the constant political pressure placed on the Laos Mission in its first fifteen years. Politics, that is, is a factor in contextualization, which has a religious process cannot be separated out from the larger world.
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