Book review: The Kings of Ayutthaya

Anyone who wants to do serious historical research with regard to Siam is confronted with the same problem. When the Burmese destroyed the Siamese capital Ayutthaya in 1767, the country's archives and most important libraries also went up in flames. This makes it damn hard to correctly reconstruct, let alone interpret, the history of Siam before 1767.

Fortunately, myths and legends were preserved in the collective memory, but these questionable sources are of course not enough to write down a historically correct story. Nevertheless, with his new book, published last year, Robert Smith hasThe Kings of Ayutthaya – A Creative Retelling of Siamese History' made a not wholly undeserving effort to do exactly this.

Robert Smith, a versatile author who has lived in Phitsanulok for several years, is not his first with this book. He now seems to focus mainly on dynastic stories from Southeast Asia. King Naresuan the Great,  The Rise and Fall of the Toungoo Empire – which will soon be reissued as The Kings of the Toungoo Empire - The Tiger King of Siam en The Kings of Angkor already prove his solid historical interest in these colorful principalities.

Fortunately for the reader, the author has opted for a chronological narrative because even to someone with a solid academic historical training like your servant, the dynastic story of the kingdom of Ayutthaya and its predecessor Sukhothai often seems like a historically inextricable tangle, a buzzing hornet's nest of deadly intrigue. and equally bloody coups in which so many murders take place that it is hard to keep up.

In a lucid but unfortunately also - certainly in the early stages - in an apocryphal way, Robert Smith depicts comprehensibly how the Ayutthaya empire arose from Sukhothai, which was torn off from the Khmer, and how both empires, in a period spanning more than half a millennium, have left their mark on the already very turbulent history of Southeast Asia. For centuries, Ayutthaya was an important factor of power in the region that should be taken into account rather than ignored or irritated.

From the usually limited and often ethnocentrically colored historical view of most Farang, one could summarize the history of the kingdom of Ayutthaya in one sentence: Princes and kings with often unpronounceable names committed even more unpronounceable atrocities to come to power and above all to stay… . Fortunately, it is not all simple and Robert Smith knows how to clarify the often very dark sides of this history with a sense of nuance, a surprising amount of understanding and an eye for drama. Of course, this also almost inevitably reflects on the role that foreign trading powers such as the Portuguese, the French and especially the Dutch have played in opening up this part of the world. Whether it is all 100% historically correct, however, I leave in the middle.

As a convinced republican, I do not like autocratically ruling absolutist monarchs, but at the same time I am fascinated by how, driven by ambition, ambition or because of the beautiful eyes of a charming woman, they have put their fate and the future of their people at risk . The Kings of Ayutthaya – A Creative Retelling of Siamese History not only outlines the history, myths and legends of Siam, but also illustrates how its cultural heritage and institutional institutions have molded this country into the nation it is today and how - all too often by fire and sword - unity was forged from diversity .

One can only conclude that the foundations of present-day Thailand were laid in Ayutthaya. Although I shudder slightly from my education when I read that it is about the creative retelling of history and I have my doubts about the historicity of some of the facts quoted, I remain of the opinion that this very fluent reading paperback, can be a good opportunity for the interested reader to delve further into the rich and above all fascinating history of the region. The Kings of Ayutthaya is History that should be taken with a – tiny – grain of salt…

The Kings of Ayutthaya – A Creative Retelling of Siamese History by Robert Smith is published by Silkworm Books (2017)

• ISBN: 9786162151347
• Cost: 595 Bath