Some time towards the tail-end of last century China and India changed the standard exonym by which its respective principal city is known to outsiders. Thus, Peking became Beijing and Bombay became Mumbai. Other cities within each country followed suit. At the time this caused some pointed comments and a degree of puzzlement among onlookers and even governments around the world. After being called “Peking” and “Bombay” for what seemed like forever (it wasn’t!), why did the Chinese and Indian governments all of a sudden make such a fundamental switch in nomenclature?
Bombay Mumbai (credit: hayesandjarvis.co.uk)
The reasons why governments up and change the names of their cities and even occasionally the name by which the sovereign state itself is known※※, varies. Quite frequently, it’s about politics or ethnic/cultural identity. Often, it’s a matter of transliteration of writing systems to keep up with the state of contemporary realities – which dovetails neatly into the need for recognition of ethnic identities within the country. In some instances the change of name may be about both the political and the phonetic. Let’s look at a few specific cases from different countries.
Politics of decolonisation: Let’s start with India and Mumbai. “Bombay” was the first to be (officially) cancelled. In 1995 the Shiv Sena—a right-wing Hindu nationalist party—took power in the Maharashtra region (includes Bombay/Mumbai). Shiv Sena changed the city name because it wanted to rid it of a name with the connotation of the British colonial legacy (“Bombay” apparently being a tainted “Raj” name to Hindu nationalists)1⃞. In its place, the regional authority seeking a name which reflected Maratha heritage and identity chose “Mumbai” to honour the Koli goddess Mumbadevi2⃞.
Standardisation of spelling: From 1996 other Indian cities similarly underwent a name change, the most significant of which are Kolkata, replacing the former name “Calcutta”, Chennai, replacing “Madras”, Kozhikode, replacing “Calicut”, and Bengaluru, formally called “Bangalore”. While post-British decolonisation was at the heart of the desire to change names, many of the new names were the result of spelling changes to align with the prevailing local languages/ethnic communities (eg, Kolkata is a Bengali word for a city nearly two-thirds populated by Bengalis)3⃞.
Linguistic map of India
Transliteration:China has quite a track record of changing the name of its cities, during the imperial era it was a regular occurrence. The question most are curious about is how “Peking” got traded in for “Beijing” (which translates as “northern capital”). Well for a start, Beijing is not a new name for the city. Back in 1403, during the Ming Dynasty, it was thus named…hence the wheel has gone full circle. In-between Beijing 1.0 and Beijing 2.0 the city was known variously as Beiping, Peiping and Peking (prior to Beijing 1.0 it was called Dadu when ruled by the Mongols). Which brings us back to the question of why Peking became Beijing. Basically, it was the (delayed) outcome of a change in the Chinese writing system/script, requiring the conversion of text to tally with the new Pinyin romanisation system introduced by the communist authorities. As part of the process the phonetic changes necessitated new spellings of many city names. And as the new system involved replacing Cantonese with Mandarin, this led to “Canton”, the old English name for the great southern Chinese city, being transliterated as “Guangzhou”4⃞. For the same reason “Pusan” in South Korea became “Busan” in 2000.
More politically motivated name swaps: The communist era of the USSR occasioned name changes of some cities to honour Bolshevik supreme leaders – “Tsaritsyn”, the Tsarist era name became “Stalingrad” (after Joseph Stalin), only to change again to “Volgograd”); “St Petersburg” became “Petrograd” before the Bolsheviks renamed it “Leningrad” (after VI Lenin), only for it to revert to St Petersburg after the dissolution of Soviet communism. Turkey’s preeminent city and capital, Istanbul, too has a history of different names, the changes occasioned by the succeeding waves of rulers who in turn conquered the city. Founded as “Byzantium” by the ancient Greeks, later it was renamed “Constantinople” when absorbed into the (eastern) Roman Empire (unofficially also known as “New Rome”), and finally, under the Ottoman conquerors it became and remains “Istanbul”5⃞.
(What) Once was Constantinople is now Istanbul (photo: global-geography.org/)
Endnote: The capital of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan is arguably the world record-holder for most changes of its name. While it was part of Russia it was originally called Akmoly, this changed to Akmelinsk and then Tselingrad. Since independence the capital has regularly changed autonyms (and at least one change of location and therefore its name as well) – going from Akmola (= “white tomb”, perhaps not the most uplifting name for a city!), to Astana (which simply means “capital”) to Nursultan (named after Kazakhstan’s autocratic first president) back to Astana.
Transformed and modernised Astana (photo: Jose Fuste Raga/Corbis)
※※ Re country name changes see this site’s August 2024 blog Bharat, Türkiye, etc. What’s in a Name?: The Politics of Country Rebranding
𖣴𖣴𖣴 𖣴 𖣴𖣴𖣴
1⃞ “Bombay” (meaning “good bay”) was the name the English adopted during the British Raj which derived from Bombaim, the name the Portuguese chose for the city during their occupation
2⃞ the new name, Mumbai, didn’t trigger a change in the name of the city’s famous film-making complex which remains “Bollywood”
3⃞ Goa, a Portuguese colony for 450 years interestingly has not changed its name…possibly something to do with “Goa” deriving from a South Asian Sanskrit word Gomantak (= “cow’s horn”)
4⃞ Shànghâi already conformed to the Pinyin system and so didn’t require a change of name
5⃞ if we turn our eyes to Europe other politically-motivated changes in the city name include “Danzig” (when a German city), changed to “Gdańsk” (when it came under Polish jurisdiction), and “Königsberg” (historic Prussian name) ➜ “Kaliningrad” (after the USSR took control of it from Germany). The spoils of war also accounts for the change in name of the Vietnamese city “Saigon” to “Ho Chi Minh City” after the North Vietnamese were victorious in the civil war
In 1975 the Republic of India annexed the small, remote Himalayan Kingdom of Sikkim. This was a sudden move on Delhi’s part but not entirely unexpected by observers outside Sikkim. For a number of years leading up to this, India had flagged its intentions, sometimes obliquely, to tighten its grip on the Himalayan micro-state. Sikkim’s ruler, the Chogyal (“god–king” or “righteous ruler”), had been under mounting pressure from forces, both external and internal, conspiring to subvert his increasingly tenuous hold on power.
Map of the Kingdom of Sikkim
The buffer state: After British rule over the Indian Sub-continent ended in 1947, the new nation of India, faced with the imposing spectre of communist China to the north, sought to shore up its northern frontier borders. The vast Himalayas provides a natural barrier to India’s north but the 64km-wide independent state of Sikkim offers several passes through the mountain range. This gateway to and from Tibet gave any hostile power (ie, China) a saloon passage into the heart of India. Thus to the Indians from the very start, Sikkim was of immense strategic importance to their national security. In 1950 Delhi bullied Sikkim into accepting a treaty favourable to India, allowing it control of the tiny kingdom’s international affairs, defence and communications, restricting Sikkim to control of its internal affairs only§. After the PRC forcibly incorporated Tibet in 1951 India closed its borders with Tibet. In 1967 Sikkim was the site of border clashes between Chinese and Indian troops in Nathu La and Cho La passes.
Nathu Pass on the Indo-Chinese frontier (credit: Nature Canvas Travel)
Clashing political agendas: While Indian designs on Sikkim intensified, internal factors also challenged the Chogyal’s rule. Chogyal’s vision for Sikkim centred around a greater independent role for the country and an enhancement of its (and his) international identity. Chogyal’s policies also tended to favour the Bhutia–Lepcha community which made them widely unpopular with other sections of society. In the early 1970s domestic opposition to the Chogyal was led by Sikkim’s chief minister Kazi Lhendup Dorjee. Opponents of the monarchy were critical of the ruler’s reluctance to initiate democratic reforms for the country. They wanted Chogyal to concentrate on internal development and increase Sikkim’s political freedom, rather than continue with his preoccupation with the kingdom’s international stature [Gupta, R. (1975). Sikkim: The Merger with India. Asian Survey, 15(9), 786–798. https://doi.org/10.2307/2643174]; ‘Letting go of Sikkim’s ghost’, Nepali Times, 03-July-2021, www.nepalitimes.com].
Chogyal of Sikkim (Palden Thondup Namgyal)
Undermining the monarchy: India played a double game in the political intrigues in Sikkim – openly supporting Dorjee’s anti-king movement while reassuring Chogyal that the country’s monarchy was not in peril. Chogyal was completely blindsided by the deception and tragically continued to believe in the goodwill of the Indian government towards his kingdom. A principal agent of the subversion was RAW (India’s secret service organisation), often working through the pro-democracy Sikkim National and State Congresses (commandeered to do India’s bidding). RAW covertly promoted public unrest within Sikkim in various ways, such as trucking in stacks of Indians to take part in supposedly Sikkimese-dominated protests against Chogyal. RAW also incited those Hindu–Sikkimese who bore a grudge against Chogyal to revolt against his regime. Similarly alienated from the king were the Nepali-speaking Sikkimese (comprising 75% of the population), leaving the Chogyal with little popular support at the time he needed it most [‘The Pain of Losing a Nation’, Sudeer Sharma, The Darjeeling Un-Limited, Sept. 2007, www.darjeeling-unlimited.com].
RAW headquarters in New Delhi
Countdown to coup: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, fixated on the question of border securityand creating a buffer to China, was a prime mover in the push for a “permanent association”…in 1973 India made its move. Chogyal was coerced into taking part in talks with Delhi, the outcome of which was the severe curtailing of his royal powers (reducing his rule to the status of figurehead). More ominously India formally became the “protectorate” of the tiny Himalayan state. The ultimate chapter in the saga came in April 1975 when, totally unexpected by Chogyal, a 5,000-strong Indian force stormed the royal palace in Gangtok, easily overcoming the royal guards and took the king prisoner. India swiftly abolished the Sikkimese monarchy, installing Chief Minister Dorjee (nominally) in charge. A hastily-arranged referendum–for which the foreign press was banned from observing—produced a highly contentious, totally lopsided vote confirming Sikkim’s incorporation into the Indian republic as its 22nd state, described by Delhi as (giving Sikkim) “freedom within India”. India was prompted to fast-track the coup against the king because of concern that Sikkim might follow the same course as Bhutan had in 1971, becoming a member of the UN (Sharma). Beijing duly protested India’s annexation of the Himalayan micro-state.
Entrance to the Sikkim royal palace and monastery, Gangtok
Postscript: Arguments have ensued over whether the 1975 annexation was legal or not. From the Indian standpoint, the key element was the Maharaja of Sikkim joining the British-initiated Chamber of Princes (CoP) in 1920. As an “Indian princely state” Indians argue, this bound Sikkim to post-independence India’s arrangements with the princely states for incorporation. Advocates for the retention of Sikkimese sovereignty counter that Sikkim was only ever a formal member of CoP, which in any case had no executive powers to legislate [‘Did India have a right to annex Sikkim in 1975?’, Sunil Sethi, India Today: Upd. 18-Feb-2015, www.indiatoday.in].
PM Mrs Gandhi and the Chogyal: Choosing your Indian friends
Footnote: The Chogyal’s choice of wife in the early 1960s, the new Gyalmo (“Queen of Sikkim”), a young American woman named Hope Cooke, didn’t enhance the king’s popularity among many of his countrymen or in Delhi. Because of her American origins suspicions were voiced in that Cooke was a CIA agent (unsubstantiated) and was thought to be influencing the Chogyal in his stated intentions to achieve greater independence from India [‘Take-Over of Sikkim by India Is Laid To Protectorate’s Move to Loosen Tie’, Bernard Weinraub, New York Times, 28-April-1973, www.nytimes.com].
The king and queen of Sikkim (Namgyal and Cooke)
§ as the British had done in Sikkim before India gained it’s independence
Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (GLF) in 1958—communist China’s bold venture to transform the nation’s economy from agrarian to industrial—necessitated some drastic social engineering, and more than a little tinkering with nature. The “Paramount Leader”, repudiating the advice of state economists, consistently advocated the efficacy of population growth for China (Ren Duo, Liliang Da – “With Many People, Strength is Great”) …he stated that “even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution, the solution is production” (‘The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History’, (1949)). One strategy of Mao’s for protecting the imperative of national productivity and boosting output involved an extreme “solution” in itself.
Four Evils Campaign poster (source: chineseposters.net)
Pest controllers: As a plank of the GLF Mao spearheaded the “Four Evils Campaign”, four “pests” of the natural world were targeted for elimination – rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows…the first three especially concentrated in large numbers certainly could pose a threat to public health and hygiene, but why sparrows? Mao singled out the sparrow because it consumed the grain seed and rice from agricultural fields. What followed was a government propaganda campaign exhorting the people to fulfil their patriotic duty and zealously hunt down these proscribed “enemies of the state”. The regime enlisted the civilian population in a military-like operation, a coordinated mass mobilisation, dedicated to this singular task. The mass participation event included the very young, armies of children aged five and older were despatched from their homes armed with slingshot and stones, to formicate all over the countryside and wipe out vast numbers of sparrows often with frightening effectiveness.
“Patriotic duty” of young Chinese (source: chineseposters.net)
Mao v Nature: Mao’s war on passerine birds was part of a wider war on nature. Mao encapsulated the objective for China in one of his oft-repeated slogans: Ren Ding Sheng Tian (“Man must conquer nature”). Mao’s modernist conception of the world saw humans as fundamentally distinct and separate from nature, so in order to fashion the world’s most populous republic into the socialist utopia that he envisioned, nature, this external thing, had to be harnessed and defeated (Zhansheng ziran). The result was a drastic reshaping of China’s physical landscape, the over-extraction of resources, intensive farming schemes, massive deforestation, riverine pollution, over-hunting and over-fishing [Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature (2001)]
Eurasian Tree Sparrow: top of Mao’s nature hit-list
A monstrous ecological imbalance and a species endangered: The nationally coordinated campaign against the four pests proceeded with phenomenal speed and ruthless efficiency. By early 1960 an estimated one billion sparrows had been destroyed🄰, nearly wiping out the species altogether in China…a fateful consequence that was to prove catastrophic for the country’s food production. The authorities had not heeded the expert advice from Chinese scientists🄱 that sparrows fulfilled a vital function in feeding off not just crops but off insects including locusts. With the removal of this natural predator, locusts in plague quantities were free to ravage the nation’s fields of grain and rice, and ravage they did, in Nanjiang 60% of the produce fields were ruined [‘Mao and the Sparrows: A Communist State’s War Against Nature’, Agata Kasprolewicz, Przekroj, 22-Mar-2019, www.przekroj.org] .
The Great (man-made) Famine, 1959–1961: The resulting Great Famine in the PRC caused up to 30 million deaths and an estimated similar figure or more in lost or postponed births, making it the worstfamine in human history judged by population loss [‘Berkeley study: Historic famineleavesmultiplegenerationsvulnerable to infectiousdisease’, Berkeley Public Health, www.publichealth.berkeley.edu]. The plunge in agricultural output linked to the sparrow decimation project was further exacerbated by other factors such as Peking’s procurements policy, increase in grain exports from 1957 (redirecting grain away from domestic consumption which otherwise could have allowed millions of Chinese to survive the famine); the priority on industrialisation diverting huge numbers of agriculturalworkers into industrial sectors adversely affected the food scarcity crisis.
Fujian province propaganda poster, 1960 (image: US National Library of Medicine)
Postscript: Reprising the eradication campaign In 1960 the Chinese government upon realising the folly of its sparrow offensive, overturned its proscription of the birds, declaring war on bed bugs in their place. The disastrous sparrow mega-kill episode however didn’t bury the Four Evils campaign forever. The Chinese government in 1998 launched a new version of the movement, posters were seen in Beijing and Chongqing urging citizens to kill the four pests…the first three were the usual suspects as in 1958, but this time cockroaches were substituted for sparrows. Unlike the original sparrow campaign the 1998 version was not successful [‘The Four Pests Campaign: Objectives, Execution, Failure, And Consequences, World Atlas, www.worldatlas.com].
🄰 along with 1.5 billion rats, over 220 million pounds of flies and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes
🄱 there were doubters within the hierarchy of the Communist Party who had misgivings about the wisdom of the Paramount Leader’s policy, but most found it expedient to remain silent for fear of the personal consequences of incurring the wrath of Mao
Authoritarian regimes modelled on Italian Fascism and German Nazism in the interwar period were conspicuous in Europe, but by no means confined to that continent. Asia had its share of emerging political movements and regimes that were attracted to the clarion call of Euro-fascism and the German Nazi phenomena in particular. The nationalist Kuomintang in China had its New Life Movement and the Blue Shirt Society. There was the militaristic, ultranationalist Shōwa Statism associated with the Empire of Japan. In Syria the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, formed with the aim of restoring Syrian independence from its colonial master France, borrowed its ideas and symbols from Nazi ideology.
Another Asian country in the 1930s that was inspired by the Euro-fascist movement to venture down the right-wing authoritarian path was Thailand. Army officer Plaek Phibunsongkhram, better known as Phibun (or alternately transliterated, Pibul), rode to power on the back of his domination of the military faction of the People’s Party (Khana Ratsadon), becoming prime minister of Siam in 1938. Phibun, one of the most controversial figures in Thailand’s turbulent, coup-prone political history, consolidated his power by establishing a de facto dictatorship during the Second World War. Whether Phibun or his regime was fascist has been a topic of debate by scholars. But before we look at whether the fascist tag sticks to the Thai kingdom in the period of the Phibun ascendancy (1938–1944), we need to hit on a working definition as to what is meant when we refer to a political organisation or movement as “fascist”.
Thailand, WWII
This is far from a straightforward task given the complexity of the concept of fascism, one not helped by the fact that “fascist” is a catch-all word in everyday speech for spontaneously describing in a pejorative fashion any individual or organisation which vexes us even for a fleeting moment. The term is so loaded and problematic that a universally acceptable definition remains elusive…as historian and political theorist Roger Griffin notes, “with the possible exception of ‘ideology’, there can be no term in the human sciences which has generated more conflicting theories about its basic definition than ‘fascism’” [Roger Griffin, ‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth. The Politics and Aesthetics of Performance in the Context of Fascist Studies’, Library of Social Sciences, (1996), www.libraryofsocialsciences.com]. A broad and simple answer might be that fascism is a totalitarian entity – defining “totalitarianism” as an extreme form of authoritarian rule where the state has complete control over its citizens, using coercion to suppress individual freedoms𝟙. The problem with “totalitarianism” is that it can be applied equally to either extremity of the political spectrum – the far right, fascist regimes like the Nazis and the Italian Fascists, and to systems on the far left, ie, to the Marxist communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Red China, and to contemporary North Korea under the Kim dynasty.
The Third Reich propagandising a supposed führer and Nazi connexion to a heroic Teutonic medieval imperial past
Reductionist heuristics: A short search through the pages of Google will quickly confirm the nigh-on impossible challenge of pinning down a broad consensus as to an acceptable definition of this hyper-complex term. So perhaps enumerating the essential elements or characteristics that constitute fascism might prove a more fruitful exercise? I am somewhat taken by Griffin’s approach to the definition conundrum, seeking to identify “what all permutations of fascism have in common – what he terms the “fascist minimum”, reducing the slippery concept to its bare essentials. Griffin actually condenses his take on “fascism” to a single basic sentence, viz. “a genus of political ideology whose mythical core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism” (‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth’). This brief statement requires some fleshing out. Griffin identifies three elements that are central to the ideology of fascism: the first is the idea of palingenesis (national revival) which all genuine fascist movements carry in their baggage. This entails the perpetuation of a utopian urban myth which exalts “the regenerative national community which is destined to rise up from the ashes of a decadent society”𝟚. Through emphasising the societal decadence of the status quo (the second idea), the fascist can isolate and vilify the supposed enemies of society (eg, Jews, communists, Gypsies). The evoking of this palingenetic myth allowed fascist movements to attract large masses of voters who have lost faith in traditional parties and religion with their glittering promises. The third element, populist ultra-nationalism, “arises from seeing modern nation-states as living organisms which are directly akin to physical people because they can decay, grow, and die, and additionally, they can experience rebirth” [‘Ultranationalism’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. This palingenetic– ultranationalism fusion is what distinguishes Griffin’s “true fascism” from para-fascism and other authoritarian, nationalist ideologies [Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (1991)].
A fascist or para-fascist checklist?: There are other characteristics evident in the praxis of fascist organisations and movements, including an opposition to or emasculation of parliamentary democracy; the leader’s cult of personality𝟛; (a revolutionary movement with a) belief in a natural hierarchical social order; an inordinately dominant or influential role played by the military in the state’s governance and in society as a whole; victimhood, suppression of targeted minorities in society (be it ethnic or religious); anti-communism; the all-powerful, all-seeing party as the vanguard of the fascist movement; a “cult of action for action’s sake” (Umberto Eco)…the square peg here is that these characteristics are not the exclusive domain of fascism or fascist politics as they feature in far-right authoritarian rulerships and sometimes in communist ones as well𝟜.
✑ ✑ ✑
Pridi (left) and Phibun (source: warfarehistorynetwork.com)
If we turn now to look at Thailand at the end of the 1930s we see that Phibun consolidated his position as prime minister before embarking on the road to dictatorship. Moving quickly to neutralise political opponents, he had his chief army rival Phraya Song’s supporters eliminated and Phraya himself exiled, while curtailing the already restricted royal power. Parliament was reduced to a rubber stamp chamber, press censorship was rigorously imposed. With other parties outlawed, the principal opposition Phibun faced came from within his ruling People’s Party in the form of Pridi Phanomyong (Banomyong) who headed up the civilian faction of the party. Phibun expressed admiration for the major right-extremist powers, Nazi German, Fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan. Militarisation of Thai society was a major focus for Phibun, borrowing extensively from the fascist template he copied the Nazi Jugend (Hitler Youth) with his Thai youth organisations, Yuwachon for boys and Yuwanari for girls. Phibun also relied on propagandist techniques through his right-hand man Wichit Wathakan who acted as party ideologue and propagandist to the extent that he was known in some circles as the “Pocket Goebbels” [REYNOLDS, E. B. (2004). PHIBUN SONGKHRAM AND THAI NATIONALISM IN THE FASCIST ERA. European Journal of East Asian Studies, 3(1), 99–134. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23615170].
Phibunsongkhram: Phibun’s eponymous province
Phibun in power projected the image of a “charismatic national savour”, presenting himself as the Thai people’s one great hope to lift the country out of the straitjacket of its weak and subordinate global position and achieve modernisation and a strong national position. And he built a form of personality cult for himself…pictures of himself were ubiquitous; awarding himself a raft of high offices and titles (including field marshal of the army). Another manifestation of this was how the Thai people celebrated Phibun’s birthday as the nation’s phunam (leader), venerated his auspicious birth-colour (green) and his birth sign, etc (Reynolds). Phibun even named a province after himself, comprising Cambodian territory wrestled from the French.
Prime Minister Phibun in 1948 (photo: Jack Birns/Life Photo Collection)
”Thaification”, Phibun’s territorial expansion ambitions: Was Griffin’s core “palingenetic myth” an element of Phibun’s political ideology for Thailand? Phibun and those other Thais who espoused nationalist sentiments subscribed to a genuine belief in Thai exceptionalism which derived from the pride of Siam having been the only state in Southeast Asia to have retained its independence in the wave of European colonisation of the region, an exceptionalism which Thais presented as a heroic tale in promoting nationalism. The Thai situation seems however to lack a homegrown urban myth in which the phoenix of national revival arises out of a state of decadence, instead the prevailing ideology had an irredentist component which has been called Pan-Thaiism. [‘Thaification: from ethnicity to nationality”, Marcus Tao Mox Lim, Identity Hunters, 05-Dec-2020, www.identityhunters.org].
Name changing ceremony Bangkok, 1939: Affixing of the royal seal by the crown prince (source: Life)
Ditching “Siam” for “Thailand”:Phibun pursued an expansionist foreign policy by which he hoped to reunite ethnically-related peoples under a “greater Thai race-based nation” (Tao Mox Lim). The name change from Siam to Thailand in 1939 had a dual function for Phibun – an intent to modernise the country and the creation of a new national identity𝟝. The name “Thailand” (Prathet Thai) symbolised a departure from the multi-ethnic identity of Siam, a device to assimilate other ethnic minorities (including the Chinese, a very significant minority in Siam𝟞) into a new construct, a national (homogenised) Thai identity – what Tao Mox Lim calls a “reimagining of a ‘Thai race’”. This was all a precondition to Phibun’s irredentist aspirations, allowing him to stake a claim on lost territories, mainly in French Indochina (Reynolds).
Under Phibun’s heavy authoritarian hand democratic rights and freedoms were restricted and the populace subjected to a series of cultural mandates dictating the modes of dress and behaviour to be adopted. The earlier pluralism of Thai society was squashed but the degree of coercive control over aspects of citizens’ lives never got close to the Orwellian “big brother” levels in totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and in some Cold War Eastern Block countries. Phibun did not secure a totalitarian hold over the Thai population during his six-year long regime𝟟 and Thailand didn’t experience the ideological journey of national destruction/rebirth process as prescribed by Griffin.
Thailand, the most coup-prone sovereign state in the world (photo: Agence France-Press via Getty Images)
The unravelling of a SE Asian dictator: As autocratic as Phibun was in running the country, the elephant in the room was his wartime relationship with Japan. Having steered Thailand to a neutral stance in the world war, he switched positions, committing to an alliance with the Japanese under the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere in the hope of realising his long-held goal of Thai territorial expansion. Unfortunately, the alliance proved to be very unequal and heavily in Japan’s favour. The Japanese with its occupying forces in Thailand wouldn’t allow the Thai army to participate in its invasion of Burma and the Thais were forced to hand back the limited territorial concessions it received from France at the war’s end. By 1944 Phibun—with Japan’s military fortunes on the slide and seen as its increasingly unpopular collaborator—was forced out of the prime ministership in which some describe as a parliamentary coup masterminded by his rival Pridi [‘The Fall of the Phibun Government, 1944’, Benjamin A. Batson, www.thesiamsociety.org].
𝟙 as Mussolini summed up the function of totalitario…”all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state“
𝟚 having sold the masses on the notion of the regenerative national community utopia, the masses convinced of its efficacy must (unquestioningly) follow its creator, the (fascist) leader, sowing the seeds for the leadership cult to develop
𝟛 ample examples exist of leaders who were not fascists who cultivated a personality cult, eg, authoritarian populist Juan Peron and communist supremo Stalin
𝟜 it’s quite plausible for authoritarian regimes to practice even extreme fascist tactics, but this of itself doesn’t necessarily make the political system a fascist one
𝟝 the word “Thai” means “free” in the Tai tongue (thus “land of the free”) which resonates with the idea of the country never having been colonised
𝟞 Phibun’s imposition of the Central Thai language on all citizens promoted Thai ethnocentricity after 1939, which together with the introduction of harsh laws had the outcome of lessening the inordinate economic impact of the Chinese community (Reynolds)
𝟟 Phibun in his second stint as PM (1948–57) was preoccupied with “trying to reinvent himself as a democrat” (Reynolds) and surviving several coup attempts before his ultimate removal and exile to Japan
