The Dutch East India Company traded in many Asian ports where it had no fort and few or no special treaty rights. Sometimes it did not even have a warehouse ashore and conducted its trade on board its anchored ships. But wherever they were, servants of the company kept careful records of their own trade. In the late seventeenth century they were especially likely to keep careful records on local political situations and on the trade of their competitors. The company was somewhat overextended in trade at ports where competition was brisk and profits were doubtful and was trying to decide where to go on struggling and where to give up. The rising commercial and political power of the English East India Company, the less consistent but occasionally daunting efforts of the French, and even a Danish presence in South India all required careful monitoring. The excellent records they kept are crucial for our accounts of Ayutthaya, capital of the kingdom of Siam, which the Dutch heard as “Yudia” and often spelled “Judea.”
In 1688 Ayutthaya was the scene of one of the strangest of all baroque political crises. An adventurer of Greek origin who called himself Constantine Phaulkon had risen to great power as director of the kingdom’s finances and foreign trade. He had many enemies, but King Narai had great faith in him. Prompted by Narai’s interest in the French as a counterweight to the commercial dominance and occasional bullying of the Dutch, Phaulkon had used his own back channels to pursue some high-risk relations with the French. The French, whose power in the Indian Ocean lagged far behind that of the Dutch and the English, had responded with alacrity. A splendid Siamese embassy to France in 1686 had led to the dispatch of a return embassy, accompanied by six hundred troops. Some entertained the hope that the king might become Catholic. But by the end of 1688 both King Narai and Phaulkon were dead and the French and their forces were gone.
In fact, although the events of 1688 led to a great deal of anger and a bit of bloodshed, the fundamental stability of the Siamese kingdom had never been in doubt, and the French hopes for either military domination or royal conversion had been very much overblown. The Siamese polity was open to participation of individual foreigners in the management of foreign trade and finance; Chinese residents had played such roles for centuries, especially as managers of Siam’s tribute embassies to the Chinese court, which were accompanied by substantial amounts of duty-free trade. But the activities of foreign merchants supported royal power and did not threaten at all an impressively solid and prosperous state with a rich mix of divine kingship, large and splendid temples and monasteries, and pervasive Buddhist practice and faith.
The most basic sources of strength of the great kingdom of Siam were the wide, rich rice lands that surrounded Ayutthaya, about forty miles up the Chao Phraya River from modern Bangkok. The annual inundation fertilized the soil, and there were no crop failures. Land, much of it uncultivated, was abundant. Freemen might be called on to serve the king for six months or more of a year, a burden that was bearable only because their family members and slaves could harvest enough to support them. This royal control of manpower could produce, as it did in 1688, large fighting forces to control and wear down a foreign intruder. However, the levies of manpower were easily diverted into the control of regional governors or high officials. In the seventeenth century the kings attempted to counter-act this centrifugal tendency by increasingly direct control and promotion of foreign trade. It was common in early modern Southeast Asia to find rulers actively involved in the foreign trade of their kingdoms, but we know of no other royal involvement as active and well organized as that of Siam. Dutch records contain examples of Siamese “king’s ships” as far afield as Java and Japan.
Ayutthaya was full of temples of all sizes, the larger capped with great pagoda spires that the Buddhist faithful covered with gold leaf. Some had long rows of statues of Buddhist deities, one a huge reclining Buddha figure. Saffron-robed monks were everywhere; progress toward breaking earthly emotional ties and eventually achieving Nirvana could not proceed far except in the monastic life. Monks were deeply respected, and many boys spent a few early years in a monastery and were educated there before they resumed lay status and married. The royal court was splendid and ceremonious; in Buddhist belief the king was a chakravartin, a turner of the wheel of the Buddhist Law. In and around Ayutthaya were large settlements of Chinese and of Portuguese (many of the latter of mixed Asian and European heritage), a substantial trading post of the Dutch East India Company, a church of the Society of Jesus, and the central seminary for all Asian missions of the French Society of Foreign Missions. Some of the royal bodyguard were descendants of Catholic Japanese who had settled there early in the century. Muslims from Persia and India were a substantial presence but less influential than they had been a few years before. The very capable King Narai (reigned 1656–88) spent much of the year at Lopburi, about forty miles farther north, where a royal hunting lodge had gradually expanded into a modest palace and attached monastery.
For the Dutch and the other European traders Siam was not a great source of riches. Large quantities of deer hides could be bought, largely for the Japanese market, as well as some important dye woods. But these were not high-profit items, and the competition of other traders, especially the Chinese, was vigorous. In the 1660s the Dutch had used military threats to get a rather leaky monopoly of deer hide exports. Still, the post was just barely justifying its existence. King Narai resented Dutch bullying and had been looking for a counterweight to them. The English had proved incompetent. Narai had been interested in a possible French connection as early as 1674 and had sent an embassy to Louis XIV, which was lost at sea, in 1681.
The man who called himself Constantine Phaulkon was a Greek from Cephalonia, which in the 1680s was ruled by Venice. He had come to Siam in the service of the English East India Company, and his way into the service of King Narai had been paved by the payments and recommendations of the English, who hoped to use his influence to smooth the way for their own trade. He had turned out industrious and extremely intelligent. Working in the royal trade management hierarchy, he favored independent English merchants, who were trading in violation of the English company’s monopoly, over the fractious and incompetent servants of the company. He expanded the fleet of ships owned by the royal court, hiring independent Englishmen and other Europeans to officer them. He spoke good Malay and good Portuguese, and he learned Siamese quickly. He came to King Narai’s notice when he interpreted at a missionary’s royal audience in 1682 and soon was having long and regular interviews with the king. He converted or reconverted to Catholicism, partly so that he could ask a missionary returning to Europe to seek favor for his family from the Venetian rulers of Cephalonia. He now became the key intermediary in Narai’s efforts to gain support from France. In 1684 he arranged for a diplomatic feeler to France. In response Louis XIV sent in 1685 a curious ambassadorial team of the abbot of Choisy, something of a cynical boudoir abbé, and the chevalier de Chaumont, a recent convert from Protestantism with a convert’s zeal and narrowness. They were to seek concessions for French trade in Siam and make a first effort to persuade the king to convert to Catholicism. The French Jesuit astronomers going to China whom we shall meet later sailed on the same ships. Lopburi became the center of the drama; a special residence for the ambassadors was erected there, and the king donated land to the Jesuits for a residence and then came there to observe a lunar eclipse.
From this time on Phaulkon was walking whole networks of tightropes. Catholic zealots like Chaumont, who knew nothing of Siam, dreamed of the conversion of the king and thereby of the kingdom. Phaulkon knew that the monarchy was so deeply linked to the Buddhist faith of the people that the chances of that were nil, but he could not refute too bluntly an important element in French interest in Siam. If King Narai got his French connection, Phaulkon would get much of the credit for it, and a modest French presence in Siam might make it easier for Phaulkon to save himself if his king died or if he otherwise lost power. But if the presence was too large, too obtrusive, it would increase Siamese hostility more than it would enhance his own safety. His immediate problem was that Chaumont included in many of his addresses to King Narai little lectures on the saving truths of Christianity. Phaulkon simply left them out of his translations. Then he convinced Chaumont that more could be done if he would offer Narai an alliance with the Sun King. This was done, and the very pleased king of Siam sent three high-ranking envoys off on the long and dangerous voyage to France. There they were much gawked at and written about, and Louis XIV, determined to project his majesty even more emphatically at that great distance than in Europe, received them on a throne glittering with jewels on a raised dais at one end of the great Hall of Mirrors. The real business of this exchange was in the hands of the Jesuit Guy Tachard, who carried a secret proposal from Phaulkon that France send a substantial body of troops to garrison Singora, a Siamese port partway down the Malay Peninsula.
When the Siamese ambassadors went home in 1687, they were accompanied by two new French envoys, one of whom, Simon de la Loubère, made use of his few months in Siam to compile materials for one of the most intelligent and observant European books written about any part of Asia before 1700; Father Tachard, who was to carry out the real instructions of Versailles by back channels, dealing only with Phaulkon; and six hundred troops on six warships. Even after about two hundred died on the voyage out, this was a substantial force, certainly more than Phaulkon had had in mind. Moreover, Phaulkon was appalled to find that Tachard’s instructions were to seek the installation of this force in Bangkok, downriver from Ayutthaya, which would give the French a stranglehold on the kingdom.
If Phaulkon agreed to these terms, many Siamese would accuse him of betraying the country to the foreigners, but it might be easier for him to run for cover at Bangkok. If he refused, the French might stay as a hostile invading force, and he, widely recognized as the man who brought them there, would be very lucky indeed to get away with his head on his shoulders. He made sure that he would be the sole spokesman for King Narai in these negotiations and then accepted the presence of the French at Bangkok on the condition that the soldiers swear allegiance to the king of Siam. The troops took the oath and settled down to improve the fortifications amid the diseases and insects of that near swamp. Their general, the elderly Desfarges, went along with Phaulkon’s plans. The ambassadors both set sail for France around the end of 1687.
Then Phaulkon’s tightropes started to fray. King Narai was in Lopburi, and Phaulkon was just a five-minute walk from the palace, in the residence that had been built for the French ambassadors. The king was in poor health, and the question of succession became critical. Phaulkon supported Narai’s choice, an adopted son named Pra Pi. The king also had two brothers who had no use for Phaulkon, clearly were playing their own game, and were beginning to give audiences in quasi-royal style. But the most capable candidate, the one best placed to exploit widespread feeling against Phaulkon and the French, was a high official named Phetracha, who had both a sister and a daughter among Narai’s wives. Armed men, drawn by the succession crisis and the need to defend the country against the French menace, began to swarm toward Ayutthaya from all directions. Phaulkon asked Desfarges to send more of his troops up to Lopburi, north of Ayutthaya, to defend him, Narai, and Pra Pi. But by now Desfarges was turning against Phaulkon, as a result of long conversations with a disaffected agent of the French East India Company and a priest of the Society of Foreign Missions, who thoroughly understood how much resentment Phaulkon had aroused and who had no use for Phaulkon’s Jesuit connections. Desfarges refused to take his troops any farther than Ayutthaya.
Some friends told Phaulkon that he was in great danger and should flee, but he refused. According to stories recorded by the Dutch, he stayed away from the palace for a few days but then went again on May 19. His silver palanquin came home empty. He was tortured to extract a confession and details of his treasures, which would be confiscated, but there were not many treasures because he had invested most of his money in shares of the French East India Company. He was beheaded on June 4, and his body was cut in half and put in a shallow grave from which dogs soon dug it up. By that time Pra Pi already had been killed, and his head thrown before the horrified Narai: “There’s your king.” On July 9 Narai’s brothers were beaten to death with sandalwood staves; it was the custom that no royal blood was ever spilled. Narai died on July 11, and Phetracha assumed the throne with a minimum of opposition. The Dutch went a few miles upriver to greet him when he came downriver to Ayutthaya on August 1 in a splendid procession of barges that also bore the body of King Narai.
The French troops still were in their fortifications at Bangkok. Another ship had arrived in August with two hundred fresh soldiers. Still other ships had come in from outposts and patrols against piracy to reinforce Bangkok. A Siamese flag flew over the Bangkok fortifications. But no one wanted the French there, and although the Siamese soldiers were less well trained and well armed than the French, they were much more numerous. The new king was willing to let the French go quietly. They started downriver on November 2. The new king signed a commercial treaty with the Dutch on November 14. On December 26 some of the French stopped at Melaka. Siam was a swamp, the commanders said. The people were brutal. They very much hoped that their king would not want to have anything more to do with them. And he didn’t.