10 The Eclipse of the Astrologers: King Mongkut, His Successors, and the Reformation of Law in Thailand ANDREW J. HARDING You will do your best endeavour for knowledge of English language, science and literature, and not conversion to Christianity; as the followers of Buddha are mostly aware of the powerfulness of truth and virtue, as well as the followers of Christ, and are desirous to have facility of English language and literature more than new religions. King Mongkut’s Letter to Anna Leonowens, 1862 IKING MONGKUT’ S H OBBY I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical. Arthur C. Clarke In this chapter I wish to explore in a speculative vein a few notions arising from a long view of the development of law in Thailand from the time of King Mongkut through the reform period under his successors, which I hope would have implica- tions for approaches to comparative legal studies in Asia generally: there are certainly some resonances, but also a considerable measure of unique experience, which continues to be relevant to any appraisal of law in contemporary Thailand. What I hope to show, without expressly arguing the case, but perhaps by means of the example discussed, is that a legal historical approach is very fruitful as an exercise in comparative law, and also as instruction in the processes of law and development. More particularly, a longer view of legal change informs our under- standing of ‘other’ legal systems; at times challenging the immediacy and minutiae of contemporary studies. Further, while transplantation is so exhaustively debated today, this analysis demonstrates the longevity of the debates and suggests how relatively little has changed in the practice of legal borrowing. Let me state first that the title is derived from an incident concerning King Mong- kut’s astrologers, which we could see as a paradigm of the kind of modernisation that Asian comparative legal scholarship has to confront. This incident occurred in The author is very grateful for many helpful observations on earlier drafts by Kanaphon Chanhom, Mary Kilcline Cody, Andrew Huxley, William Neilson, Sarah Biddulph, Amanda Whiting, Pip Nicholson, Simon Pitt and participants at seminars/lectures at Melbourne and Leiden Universities and SOAS in September and November 2007. He is particularly grateful to Kanaphon Chanhom for drawing attention to a number of factual errors and important evidence omitted in the earlier drafts. Examining Practice, Interrogating Theory Siam in 1868 and is known as the Wako incident.1 In this chapter Wako is seen as a pivotal event in the modernisation process generally, having very strong implica- tions for legal development up to the present time. The central character in the story is King Mongkut (Rama IV, 1851–1868) him- self, a man who spent 27 years as a monk before becoming King of Siam in 1851 at the age of 47.2 The accession of King Mongkut is reckoned by many to represent a turning point in the history, and one might say particularly the legal history, of Siam, law reform being both symbolically and practically the cornerstone of modernisa- tion. Mongkut was an intellectual and a religious man, and even if he had never become King or featured in the absurdly exotic representations in celluloid of his employment of the somewhat irritating but idealistic Anna Leonowens as his children’s governess,3 he would probably have gone down in history as a reformer of the Buddhist sangha, and the leader of a modernising movement that reconciled a return to Buddhist orthodoxy with a general acceptance of western science and rationality.4 As Preedee Kasemsup correctly states “there were conflicting desires to preserve the national cultural tradition and at the same time to achieve an enormous progress. The most important personage representing both desires was King Mongkut.”5 Mongkut therefore appears as a complex but key personality in the history of Siam, no less than a truly great king. In many respects, despite huge changes since his death, it is the world of Mongkut that Thai people still, psychologically, inhabit. Although he did not engage in the extensive law reform that characterised the reign of his son and successor King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, 1868–1910) and was later completed by Chulalongkorn’s sons King Vajiravudh (Rama VI, 1910–1927) and King Prajadhipok (Rama VII, 1927–1935), Mongkut laid the groundwork in many ways, not least by the enactment of hundreds of Royal Ordinances, for the emergence of his country as the progressive, successful, culturally rich, yet also politically unstable and in many ways deeply puzzling one we now know as Thailand. 1 Thongchai ‘Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 1994), pp. 37–61. 2 See, further, O. Frankfurter, ‘King Mongkut’ in The Siam Society Fiftieth Anniversary Commem- orative Publication: Selected Articles from the Siam Society Journal (Siam Society, Bangkok, 1954), vol. 1, pp. 191–207; P.W. Thornely, History of a Transition (Observer Press, Bangkok, 1923). 3 The King and I (1956), based on the 1951 Rogers and Hammerstein musical of the same name; Anna and the King (1999). For an historical account, see Leslie Smith Dow, Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond the King and I (Pottersfield Press, Lawrencetown Beach, 1991). 4 Peter A. Jackson, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict: The Political Functions of Urban Thai Buddhism (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1989). 5 Preedee Kasemsup, ‘Reception of Law in Thailand — a Buddhist Society’ in Masaji Chiba, Asian Indigenous Law: In Interaction with Received Law (KPI, London and New York, 1986), pp. 267– 300. See also Seni Pramoj, ‘King Mongkut as a Legislator’ in Selected Articles from the Siam Society Journal (Siam Society, Bangkok, 1959), vol. 4, pp. 203–237. R. Lingat, ‘Evolution of the Conception of Law in Burma and Siam’ (1950) 38 Journal of Siamese Society pp. 9–31, at p. 10; Prince Dani Nivat, ‘The Old Siamese Conception of the Monarchy’ in The Siam Society Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Publication: Selected Articles from the Siam Society Journal (Siam Society, Bang- kok, 1954), vol. 2, pp. 160–175, at p. 163. 308.