Monarchy in South East Asia

The Faces of Tradition in Transition

Roger Kershaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134667062
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This title is the first study to relate the history and contemporary role of the South East Asian monarchy to the politics of the region today. Comprehensive & up-to-date, Monarchy in South East Asia features an historical and political overview of
*Cambodia
*Thailand
*Malaysia
*Brunei
*Indonesia
*Laos
*as well as the region in general.
The excellent coverage of this fascinating subject should be of interest to general reader as well as to specialists focusing on region.

Part I
Opening thoughts

1 Introduction

1.1 Introducing the study

Surveying the scene in the year 1511, a strategic analyst – if such a profession had existed in those days – would probably not have placed any bets on the longterm survival of monarchy in South-East Asia. That was the year in which the Portuguese conquered Malacca, and its Sultan fled in search of allies or an alternative territorial base. His heirs eventually settled in Johor, but Malacca was never again recovered for monarchy. After passing into Dutch hands in 1641 and British in 1795 (or at any rate, 1824), it finally became a constituent state of Malaysia – which it remains today, still without a Sultan.

It was a similar story of ‘Western colonial depredation’ in the Philippines – although there was no monarchy of any substance in Manila when the Spanish took control in 1571, only a Raja who was a dependant or viceroy of the Sultan of Brunei. For another upheaval on the scale of Malacca, we have to look to Burma in 1886, when the British completely abolished the monarchy (the most powerful in the area in the previous century) at the last stage of their colonization of the country. However, the process of territorial attrition had begun with the take-over of Lower Burma in 1826. Or take the case of the French in Vietnam: their ‘forward movement’ began under Emperor Napoleon III, with the annexation of Cochin China (six provinces of the delta region around Saigon) from the Empire of Annam in 1863–66. Never again would this part of Vietnam know monarchy except indirectly, under France’s contrived association of the three parts of Vietnam, headed by the briefly resuscitated puppet Emperor, Bao Dai, between 1949–55.

As for the ‘Dutch East Indies’ (today, Indonesia): the historical pride of Mataram – successor to Majapahit and hence standard-bearer for one of the great ‘Hinduized’ civilizations of South-East Asia – made it an almost inevitable centre of resistance to Dutch economic objectives. Consequently, the Dutch had to pour a large proportion of their economic gains, in the eighteenth century, into managing local wars of succession and keeping the kingdom in a state of uneasy subjection as their vassal. Following the Raffles interregnum of the Napoleonic Wars period, the problem reappeared in the 1820s with the ‘War of Dipo Negoro’. After Dutch victory in that conflict, Javanese monarchy was at an end in all but name, with much of the territory of Mataram annexed to colonial direct rule, and only the most pliant of royalty allowed to sit on the thrones at Yogjakarta and Surakarta, as ‘Sultans’.

These examples, selected fairly arbitrarily from different eras and areas of the South-East Asian region, are intended to illustrate how monarchies could succumb completely to the onward march of Western colonialism, or if surviving, then only as mere shadows of former glory, and typically in reduced territorial circumstances. However, for balance we should note that not only Western states have destroyed South-East Asian monarchies. Powerful states within the region traditionally showed little mercy to recalcitrant vassals. The kingdom of Vientiane – one of two monarchies of lowland Laos in the early nineteenth century – was wiped off the map in 1827–28, as its restlessly provocative ruler was driven into exile and the whole population deported to the west side of the Mekong by the region’s rising power, Siam. In this way, the greatness and future resilience of one monarchy were secured at the cost of a lesser neighbour.

A third way in which monarchies have been forced ‘off the stage of history’ is by the pressure of nationalism. It was partly because the Dutch had kept a number of Indonesian monarchies half-alive as ceremonial camouflage for the far-reaching economic and administrative changes of colonialism, and more immediately because the rulers were lukewarm towards the Independence movement, that they became a target of nationalist hatred in the revolution at the end of World War II. There were particularly bloody scenes in Sumatra. However, a more subtle style of nationalist succession was to obtain a ‘voluntary’ transmission of traditional authority from a monarch, as Ho Chi Minh did from Bao Dai when declaring Vietnam’s independence after the Japanese surrender. This legitimizing act in 1945 vitally helped the Vietminh in projecting themselves as ‘nationalists’, not ‘Communists’, and was a far greater asset than anything the post-war, French-sponsored state of Vietnam would enjoy, after Bao Dai graced it by stepping back out of retirement as an imperial Head of State in 1949!

This leads us on to yet a fourth way of ‘seeing off a monarchy’. The technique is one that has appealed to revolutionary movements during a period of anti-Western struggle – that is, to collaborate with monarchy, or at least pay it honour, in order to preserve an image of virtue with the more traditionallyminded strata, especially among the peasantry. But after victory, and as soon as the consolidation of political power seems assured, a transmission of authority can be effected and the king sent into a more or less secluded retirement. Laos in the two-and-a-half decades up to 1975 offers a perfect example.

In this context, an oblique comparison may be possible with the colonial ‘Indirect Rule’ of which some examples were glimpsed in the passages above. Under ‘Indirect Rule’, a c olonial government does not abolish monarchy as such, but conceals political reality behind a façade of royal legitimacy – most effectively in the least direct versions (the British in Johor, 1885–1914), least effectively in the most direct (the Dutch in Java after Dipo Negoro). At first sight, the political structure of Laos post-World War II may not seem to have anything in common with this phenomenon, least of all as far as a revolutionary Communist movement waiting in the wings is concerned. Nevertheless, it was in that country that a French late-colonial regime worked through a constitutional monarchy from 1947–54, while the USA, in giving heavy backing to the independent Royal Lao Government from 1954–75, rendered it some sort of ‘neo-colony’ or ‘puppet regime’, at least in Marxist terms. Meanwhile, the Communist-led Pathet Lao were co-opted into the governmental arrangements from time to time, being too weak to seize power yet too strong (thanks to their North Vietnamese backing) to be defeated. So in a sense they were ‘siphoning off ’ some of the royal legitimacy which was intended to benefit the constitutional government and its foreign backers. Apart from joining coalitions, the Pathet Lao even paid lip service to the monarchy in their propaganda. It may be suggested that operating behind a royal façade in this fashion, on the road to power, is not so fundamentally different from what colonial regimes did in their day when they held power.

Still, the upshot in Laos was that the monarchy did indeed leave the scene, in 1975. So we have glanced superficially at four broad patterns of monarchical ‘decline and fall’: colonial abolition (or more or less), often preceded by annexation of chunks of territory; absorption by a powerful neighbour in an intra-regional war; nationalist overthrow (but with the possibility of obtaining a transmission of authority into the bargain); and an opportunistic Communist ‘front’ with monarchy on the slow road to power (with abolition of the throne the inevitable result if the ploy succeeds). While allowing for the somewhat extended nature of the period between the flight of the Sultan of Malacca and the abdication of the last King of Laos, can we say that the ‘gloomy prognostication’ that might have been made in 1511 has now been fulfilled?

Not completely – as the title of this book has already announced. The ‘story of monarchy’ in South-East Asia continues – although our title also hedges its bets about the future, with its reference to traditions ‘in tension’. Against all the historical odds, after passing through the upheavals of colonialism, world war, nationalism, and Communist revolution, South-East Asia still counts four polities with some system of monarchy. The polities in question have been kept out of the discussion so far, in order to develop a background which will be more in keeping with the ‘natural expectation’ of many readers. This will serve to suggest a certain uniqueness in the fact that four structures of monarchy have in fact survived, and will thus send us in search of historical, if not sociological and cultural, explanation. There is quite a lot of interpretation to be done in any case, given that the four do not share a single set of characteristics. (However, at least three of them do turn out to owe quite a lot to the practice of colonial Indirect Rule, which tided them over into the era of Independence.) After a survey of the modern historical background, covering Chapters 2–4, Part III will explore in detail the dynamics of the contemporary monarchy in Cambodia, Malaysia (which has a plurality of rulers), Brunei (the only example of royal absolutism) and Thailand. But because the demise of monarchy in Laos happened within the last twenty-five years, and the path to that outcome illustrates several important themes in South-East Asia’s modern development, Laos will be granted a short chapter first.

Meanwhile, this introductory chapter itself contains two more sections: a brief sketch of the contours of South-East Asia in earlier epochs with special reference to monarchy and its associated beliefs; and a reflection in theoretical vein on the relevance of that more distant past. It was felt inappropriate, in a book on politics, to hold up the narrative with an extensive exploration of early history, or a lengthy excursion into related theory. However, readers who are sufficiently interested in these dimensions may like to consult the series of short readings and commentaries in Chapter 11 (Part V), which augment sections 1.2 and 1.3 of this chapter.

It is hoped that the study, both in its general and its particular aspects, will communicate a sense of the exciting variety of political phenomena in the region, but also certain common historical, sociological and cultural themes. Clearly, after the decade in which the existence (or doctrine) of ‘Asian values’ was introduced to the world, we cannot ignore the question whether the ‘anomaly’ of monarchies surviving is due to the persistence and natural workings of traditional political values, or whether their existence, besides being partly fortuitous, is now manipulated by elites (even by monarchs themselves) in order to pre-empt the destructive or destabilizing effects of modernization – the very modernization which seems to make the survival of monarchy rather unpredictable. As well as the legacy and workings of ‘traditional values’ as ‘authentic reality’, considered in this chapter, the function of ‘traditional values’ as ‘doctrine’ will be visited particularly in Chapter 3, section 3.5, and Chapter 9 (dealing with Thailand); as also in Chapter 8 (dealing with modern Brunei). If there is a serious element of manipulation, then monarchy should figure as one of the ‘Asian values’, seen as a synthetic doctrine designed to preserve power. In other words, it is conceivable that many of the people of South-East Asia did not ‘need’ a monarchy at their head until they were told that they did! But as in Britain, tradition which is synthetic or ‘invented’ does not lose any of its political potency for all that.¹ Indeed, it may take strength from being methodically structured and projected. Thus a valid account of monarchy in South-East Asia should try to incorporate the dimension of ‘synthetic institutional asset’ as well as ‘authentic traditional values’.

However, it is difficult to stray far from the consensus of academic and journalistic writing that sees paternalistic authority and dependency as features which typically distinguish Asian cultures from their contemporary counterparts in the West. These values should favour the persistence of monarchy at least as much as any other established structure of paternalism. We only need to beware of the simplistic assertion that the cultural factor alone, or even mainly, is what keeps monarchies in being today, for a subjective popular need still has to be mediated and given concrete effect by committed elites (or by the monarch himself !), facilitated by various non-cultural factors and modalities. In the future, much might depend on the personality of particular elected, or bureaucratic, leaders and the personality of the current incumbent of the throne. Much could depend also on the impact of economic crisis on political stability, and whether in a situation of flux leaders perceive monarchy as serving, or hindering, their imperatives. Chapter 10 will ruminate about possible patterns of interplay of all these factors in the near future. The four surviving monarchies of South-East Asia are not approaching a single crossroads, but each in its own way prompts a query about its further staying power. In the event of early demise, this book hopes to have anticipated some of the factors relevant to such outcomes. But no less interesting, obviously, are the factors which have kept royalty in existence for the time being.

1.2 Contours of an ancient tradition

It is a commonplace that the region of South-East Asia is divided between a ‘Sinicized’ zone east of the Annamitic Chain, and the ‘Hinduized’ (or ‘Indianized’) zone to the west and south, including the Indonesian Archipelago. The ‘Chinese’ features of Vietnamese culture can be explained both from physical proximity (or even ancient migration from China) and from the almost one thousand years of Chinese political domination during the first Christian millennium. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the basic exclusion of Vietnam from this study is due to the fact that monarchy there has been defunct for nearly half a century, not to any preferred cultural definition of what constitutes ‘South-East Asia’.²

Apart from Vietnam, Chinese trade was not followed by the metaphorical ‘flag’ of cultural, let alone, political penetration – even though China claimed overlordship of the region at most periods. By contrast, Indian trade did act as a channel for the widespread adoption of Indian religious and political ideas by local kingdoms – even in the absence of imperial pretensions on the part of any Indian great power most of the time. Not only did merchants marry into local ruling families, but Indian priests (brahmans) were employed to supervise the royal cults established in imitation of India. The leading brahmanical families intermarried with royalty and even formed some hereditary ‘dynasties’ in their own right. At times, however, the kings turned to Buddhism instead, or gave it a place side by side with Hinduism. Eventually, Buddhism proved more durable because it was able to put down roots in non-elite society, albeit brahmans have continued to be employed in the supervision of Hindu rites at the courts of Thailand and Cambodia. But from the thirteenth century onwards we see yet another incoming wave of religious influence with profound political implications, in the form of Islam. The Muslim merchants and missionaries came from India, like their Hindu and Buddhist forerunners, but also from the Arabian Peninsula.

Yet whereas Hindu religion and statecraft gave the region a striking cultural unity westwards from Tonkin and Annam (today’s Vietnam) as far as Burma, Islam’s penetration was not nearly so complete, and thus became a factor for a new division in the region: between the Muslim societies dominant in the Malay Peninsula and Indonesian Archipelago, and the Buddhist societies of the mainland (plus a Hindu survival in Bali). Certainly it will seem difficult to detect any commonality between, on the one hand, the Sultanates of modern Malaysia and Brunei, propagating Islam as their official religion in ever more revivalist forms, and on the other hand (if not the other extreme) the Buddhist kingship and societies of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand in the past half-century. Islamic intelligentsias easily take offence at any suggestion of affinities with their Buddhist neighbours, as they are intent on rooting out traces of a Hindu/Buddhist past in their native religious culture, precisely in the name of Islam. Interestingly, this sensitivity is at its most acute in Indonesia, where the penetration of Islam from the coastal ports into the royal courts and rural society of inland Java was relatively superficial, resulting in ‘syncretic’ cultural tendencies which have infuriated Muslim purists in the twentieth century.

At any rate, the traces of ‘Indianization’ are still visible – and audible – even in the polities which have made Islam the official religion. The Malaysian national anthem begins with the evocation of negara (the Sanskritic word for ‘State’), while the Brunei national anthem ends with it. Court ceremonial is still infused with language and ritual of Hindu origin. Moreover, in tracing their political descent and legitimacy back to Malacca, both the Malaysian and Bruneian negara are not only claiming an Islamic pedigree but tapping into the vanished glory of Srivijaya on Sumatra, which was not Muslim at the time a fugitive prince crossed the Straits of Malacca, around 1391. Nor, for that matter, had the eighth- to ninth-century realm of the Sailendras on Sumatra and Java, from which the rulers of Srivijaya derived their ultimate legitimacy in turn, been Muslim (the Sailendras were Buddhist).

Of course, there was a vital economic foundation to cultural penetration and hegemony. Initially, it was the harbour states that drew upon their hinterland for part of their trade resources and, in Cambodia at least, established a form of overlordship. By the eighth century, however, in both Cambodia and Java, inland states had developed which became more powerful than their coastal predecessors. In contrast to the harbour states, these inland states based their power more on the control of their population’s manpower than upon control of the sea trade. Economic power came from the agricultural production of a dense population by means of intensive irrigated farming. Military power came more from a large land army than control of seaways. Control of manpower also enabled these states to create architectural wonders such as the Angkor temple complex in Cambodia and the tiered stupa of Borobudur on Java.

Meanwhile, monarchy had found theological support for its authority in the core of a system of philosophy that combined Buddhist, Brahmanical, and indigenous religious elements syncretically. Cambodia is particularly famous for the elaboration of the doctrine of the God-king, that is, a monarch who was at the very least the representative of the god Vishnu on earth, if not sharing elements of that divinity in himself. Not only kings but senior officials erected funerary statuary to indicate that they had achieved some kind of apotheosis after death. Of complementary significance to these ideas was the way in which architecture was used to signify that the capital city was the earthly equivalent of the central mountain of the cosmos (Mount Meru), standing in ‘correct’ relationship to its subordinate princes and satellite states, which were seen as counterparts to celestial bodies at the cardinal points. Nor are the architecture and the underlying doctrines purely of interest to archeologists and ancient historians – or modern-day tourists! Modern historians and social scientists have presumed that the ‘God-kingship’ idea (the devaraja) has remained a latent but dynamic reference point for absolutist authority-building in Khmer society ever since. Even while denying his divinity to Western interlocutors, neither King Norodom Sihanouk (1941–55), nor his subsequent reincarnation as populist ‘Prince Sihanouk’, discouraged the revival of the myth in his self-presentation and propaganda to the peasantry; and Western observers even detected a degree of suggestibility or self-persuasion in his highly autocratic dominance of government.

It is generally agreed that beliefs about royal divinity must have played some part in the successful mobilization of mass labour to construct the nearmiraculous stone edifices and irrigation systems of Cambodia and Java. And after the event, the edifices would provide visual ‘proof ’ of the transcendental power of the kings responsible, while the prosperity arising from irrigation confirmed the blessing of the deity upon the correctly ruled kingdom, at least, or even the divine or semi-divine attributes of the king. But at the same time there is a ‘pragmatic’ dimension to prosperity, in providing a purely rationalistic basis for legitimacy (always a useful su...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series editor’s preface
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• A chronological key to principal events, 1840–2000, by country
• Part I: Opening thoughts
• Part II: Modern history
• Part III: The latest phase
• Part IV: Closing thoughts
• Part V: Steps retraced
• Notes
• Bibliography