Ananda Mahidol
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| King Ananda Mahidol (Rama VIII) |
|---|
| Born |
| September 20, 1925 Heidelberg, Germany |
King Ananda Mahidol or Rama VIII (long royal name: Phrabat Somdej Phra Paramenthara Maha Ananda Mahidol Phra Athama Ramathibodinthra พระบาทสมเด็จพระปรเมนทรมหาอานันทมหิดล พระอัฐมรามาธิบดินทร (roughly "HM King Ananda Mahidol, the Eighth Ruler") (September 20, 1925 - June 9, 1946) was the eighth king of the Chakri dynasty of Thailand.
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Early life
Prince Ananda Mahidol Mahidol (Mom Chao Ananda Mahidol Mahidol — หม่อมเจ้า อานันทมหิดล มหิดล) was born in Heidelberg, Germany. He was the first son of Prince Mahidol Adulyadej of Songkhla (son of King Chulalongkorn) and Mom Sangwal (last title Somdej Phra Sri Nakarindhara Boromaratchachonnani) who were studying there at the time. King Vajiravhud, his uncle, sent a telegram on October 13 1925 auspiciously naming him "Ananda Mahidol" (อานันทมหิดล), meaning "the joy of Mahidol". ("Ananda Mahidol" is one word and is his first name. It is pronounced "Ananta Mahidon". When he held his birth rank of "Mom Chao" -- the lowest rank of Thai princes, he used the surname of "Mahidol" from his father; his name at this point was thus "Mom Chao Ananda Mahidol Mahidol").
He followed his parents to Paris, Lausanne, and then to Massachusetts when, in 1927, another uncle, King Prajadhipok issued a royal edict exalting him to the higher princely class of Phra Worawong Ther Phra Ong Chao. (This edict also benefited other "Mom Chao" who were the children of Chao Fa and their commoner wives, among them his elder sister Mom Chao Galyani Vadhana and his younger brother who, upon his birth later in the year, was born Phra Worawong Ther Phra Ong Chao Bhumibol Adulyadej).
The family returned to Thailand in 1928 after Prince Mahidol finished his medical studies at Harvard University. Prince Mahidol died in his early 40s in 1929, when Ananda Mahidol was just 4 years old. His widowed mother was thus left to raise her family alone.
A coup d'etat in 1932 ended the absolute monarchy and raised the possibility that King Prajadhipok might abdicate. Queen Savang Vadhana, his grandmother, was concerned about Prince Ananda Mahidol's safety, since he was one of the likely heirs to the throne. It was then suggested that the Mahidol family again move to Lausanne. The official reason given was for the health and further education of the princes. They left Thailand in 1933 and Prince Ananda Mahidol spent most of his youth in Switzerland.
However, when King Prajadhipok's abdication appeared imminent, the Prince's mother was approached by a member of government, asking for her opinion about Ananda Mahidol becoming the next Thai monarch.
Circumstance of succession
In fact, it was an interesting turn in the history of succession when King Prajadhipok (Rama VII) abdicated in 1934 due to political quarrels with the new quasi-democratic government as well as health problems, and abstained from exercising his right to name a successor. By that time, the crown had already passed from Prince Mahidol's line to that of his half-brothers when his eldest full brother, Crown Prince Vajirunahis, died as a teenager during King Chulalongkorn's reign. A half-brother, Prince Vajiravhud replaced Prince Vajirunahis as the Crown Prince, and Vajiravhud's mother was later made Queen Regent when King Chulalongkorn left for a European tour. The implication of these was that the princes born to the same mother as Prince Vajiravhud (Queen Sri Pacharindra) thus had higher claim to the throne than other princes. This was what took place on the death of King Vajiravhud — the crown was passed to his youngest brother, Prince Prajadhipok.
Offering the throne to Prince Prajadhipok was not without a debate. In doing so, another strong candidate was bypassed: Prince Chulachakrapongse, son of the late Field Marshal Prince Chakrapongsepoovanat of Phitsanulok, who before his death had been the heir-apparent to King Vajiravhud. It was questioned whether the Succession Law enacted by King Vajiravhud actually barred Prince Chakrapongsepoovanat (and for that matter, Prince Chulachakrapongse) from succession on the ground that he married a foreigner (Russian). However, his marriage took place before this law was enacted and had been endorsed by King Chulalongkorn himself. There was no clear resolution, but in the end the young nephew was passed over and Prince Prajadhipok was enthroned.
When King Prajadhipok later abdicated, since he was the last remaining son of Queen Sri Pacharindra, the crown went back to the sons of the Queen whose rank was next to hers: Queen Savang Vadhana, mother of the late Crown Prince Vajirunahis. Besides the late Crown Prince, she had two more sons who survived to adulthood: Prince Sommootiwongwarothai of Nakhon Si Thammarat, who had died without a son, and Prince Mahidol who, although deceased, had two living sons. It thus appeared that Prince Ananda Mahidol would be the first person in line of royal succession.
Nevertheless, the same debate over the half-foreign Prince Chulachakrapongse occurred again. It was argued that King Vajiravhud had virtually exempted the Prince's father from the ban in the Succession Law, and the crown might thus be passed to him.
Since the kingdom was now governed under a constitution, it was the Cabinet who would decide. Opinion was split on the right to succession of Prince Chulachakrapongse. A key figure was Pridi Phanomyong, who persuaded the Cabinet that the Law should be interpreted as excluding the Prince from succession, and that Prince Ananda Mahidol should be the next king. It also appeared to be convenient for the government as well to have a monarch who was only 9 years old and was attending school in Lausanne, Switzerland. On March 2, 1935 Prince Ananda Mahidol was elected by the Thai parliament and government to succeed his uncle, King Prajadhipok.
See also King Prajadhipok's circumstance of succession
Life as King
As the new King was still a child and was then studying in Switzerland, the parliament appointed Colonel Prince Anuwatjaturong, Lieutenant Commander Prince Artit Thip-apa, and Chao Phraya Yommaraj (Pun Sukhum) as his regents.
At age 13, he visited Thailand for the first time as monarch, accompanied by his mother and his younger brother Bhumibol Adulyadej. Only after the end of World War II did he return, in December 1945, with a degree in Law, for a second visit. Despite his youth and inexperience, he quickly won the hearts of the Thai people, who had continued to revere the monarchy through the upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s. He was a handsome young man and Thais were delighted to have their King amongst them once again. One of his well-remembered activities was a highly successful visit to Bangkok's China Town (Yawaraj - เยาวราช), which was calculated to defuse the post-war tensions that lingered between the ethnic Chinese and the Thais.
Foreign observers, however, believed that Ananda Mahidol did not really want to be King and felt his reign would not last long. Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the British commander in South-East Asia, visited Bangkok in January 1946 and described the King as "a frightened, short-sighted boy, his sloping shoulders and thin chest behung with gorgeous diamond-studded decorations, altogether a pathetic and lonely figure." At a public function, Mountbatten wrote, "his nervousness increased to such an alarming extent, that I came very close to support him in case he passed out."
A mysterious death
On June 9, 1946, the King was found shot dead in his bedroom in the Grand Palace, only four days before he was scheduled to return to Switzerland to finish his doctoral degree in Law at the University of Lausanne. His brother Bhumibol Adulyadej succeeded him. Ananda Mahidol was never crowned as king, but his brother posthumously gave him the full royal title of the nine-fold umbrella.
The King's death is still a mystery. Since this subject is never openly discussed in Thailand, the best current account is in William Stevenson's The Revolutionary King, written with the co-operation of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. This account exculpates those executed and suggests that Ananada Mahidol was murdered by Tsuji Masanobu, a former Japanese intelligence officer who had been active in Thailand during the war.
The official explanation today is that the King shot himself accidentally while cleaning his gun. But it is clear from Stevenson's account that Ananda Mahidol cannot have killed himself, either by suicide (as is sometimes suggested) or accidentally. He was found lying on his back in his bed, not wearing his glasses, without which he was almost blind. He had a small bullet wound in his forehead and a somewhat larger exit wound in the back of his head. His gun, a Colt .45 given to him as a gift by an American Army officer, was not nearby. The Colt.45 is not a gun prone to accidental discharge - it will fire only if considerable pressure is applied to the safety plate at the back of the butt at the same time as the trigger is depressed. The Colt is also a heavy pistol and difficult to use by a person without training. It would have been virtually impossible for Ananda Mahidol, a frail 20-year-old, to lie on his back and shoot himself in the forehead with such a pistol. If he had done so, the impact would have blown his skull apart, not caused the small wound seen by many witnesses. No cartridge casing was found, and subsequent inquiries ordered by King Bhumipol, but suppressed by later governments, found that the Colt had not been fired.
If Ananda Mahidol did not kill himself, he must have been murdered. It must therefore be asked who stood to benefit from his death. The most obvious beneficiary was his brother Bhumipol, who was next in line to the throne. The possibility that the current King murdered his brother is so shocking as to be unthinkable, let alone mentionable, in modern Thailand, but it was commonly rumoured during the 1950s. The possibility can, however, be dismissed on several grounds. First, if, as seems clear, the King's own pistol was not the murder weapon, Bhumipol would have had to obtain and use another gun, then successfully conceal it in the few seconds before other witnesses arrived on the scene. Secondly, all accounts agree that Bhumipol was summoned to the King's bedchamber by their mother, who was first on the scene. Third and most importantly, Ananda Mahidol and Bhumipol were very close, and Bhumipol had absolutely no desire to be King (according to some accounts, he still does not have). His only desire was to return to his quiet life in Switzerland.
The King's murderer must therefore have come from outside the Royal Palace. Here there is no shortage of suspects. Thai politics at this time was dominated by two figures who had led the 1932 revolution against the absolute monarchy, but who had subsequently fallen out. These were Field Marshal Pibulsonggram, who had been the pro-Japanese dictator of Thailand during World War II but who in 1946 was seeking to rehabilitate himself as a client of the United States, and Pridi Phanomyong, a left-wing civilian politician who had been an underground British agent during the war and was regarded as a supporter of British interests. At the time of the King's death Pridi was Prime Minister, and Britain and the U.S. were conducting a clandestine battle for influence in postwar Thailand.
The role of the monarchy was of central importance to Thai politics, and the virtual vacancy of the throne which had existed since 1932 had been of great value to Pibulsonggram's wartime regime. It is possible that he saw the re-emergence of a strong monarchy under King Ananda Mahidol as a threat to his prospects of returning to power under U.S. patronage. It is therefore plausible that Pibulsonggram could have used the Japanese officer Tsuji Masanobu, who had avoided war crimes prosecution by making himself useful to the Americans, as his agent to bring about the King's death, in the hope that Bhumipol would be a more pliant King. A royal murder also served to discredit Pridi's government, to Pibulsonggram's benefit.
Alternatively, it is possible, though less likely, that Pridi saw the re-establishment of a strong monarchy as a threat to his hopes of establishing a left-wing government in Thailand. Although he was not a communist, Pridi was strongly sympathetic to the Chinese Communists, and later lived in exile in the People's Republic of China. Since Britain had a Labour government at this time, Pridi saw no contradiction between his left-wing policies and his role as a British agent. Killing the King, according to this theory, would weaken the monarchy and make a left-wing revolution easier. In the Cold War atmosphere of the 1950s, Pridi was widely named as the man behind the King's death. According to William Stevenson, King Bhumipol has said that he does not believe that Pridi was involved in the murder.
In February 1955 three of the late King's attendants; his secretary Senator Chaleo Patoomros and two pages, Nai Chit and Butr Paramasrin, were executed by Pibulsonggram's regime on charges of conspiracy to kill the King. Today it is acknowledged that these charges were baseless, but the truth of the matter remains a mystery. Given that it is nearly 60 years since Ananda Mahidol's murder, it seems unlikely that it will be solved. It is possible, however, that King Bhumipol, the only surviving witness to these events, knows the full truth and that this will be revealed after his death.
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External links
- {{cite news
|first=Philip |last=Bowring |pages= |title=Books : The Revolutionary King |date=February 10, 2005 |publisher=International Herald Tribune |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/1999/12/28/bookmar.t.php
}}
et:Rama VIII fr:Rama VIII nl:Rama VIII ja:ラーマ8世 fi:Ananda Mahidol sv:Ananda Mahidol th:พระบาทสมเด็จพระปรเมนทรมหาอานันทมหิดล zh:拉玛八世