Prisdang

Prince Prisdang Chumsai

Prince Prisdang Chumsai (Pritsdank, Prisdanka, Choomsai, Jumsai; Thai พระ วร วงศ์ เธอ พระองค์เจ้า ปฤษฎางค์ ; *  February 23, 1851 in Bangkok ; †  March 16, 1935 there ) was a Thai diplomat and writer.

education

Prince Prisdang was the youngest son of Prince Chumsai, the fourth son of King Rama III. of Siam, who died shortly after Prisdang was born on April 2, 1851. Prisdang accompanied King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) in 1871 on his first trip abroad to Singapore and stayed there for study purposes. As he performed very well, the king later sent him to England to study engineering. Prisdang was the first known Siamese (Thai) who could enjoy an education outside the country - and also achieved a brilliant degree in 1876. A short time later he returned to Siam before gaining practical experience with companies in England.

Diplomatic activity

Prisdang was first involved in diplomatic business in 1879 when he worked as an interpreter for Fanny Knox in Paris . Fanny Knox was the daughter of the English ambassador to Siam, Sir Thomas George Knox , and had married a Siamese named Phra Preecha, who, however , conflicted with the state's highest official, Chaophraya Si Suriyawong , and was executed. Fanny Knox then fled headlong from Siam and now wanted to sue the Siamese embassy in Paris for her fortune, which had been swindled by friends of Phra Preechas.

In the year following this affair, which caused a sensation in Siam, Prisdang worked for the Bunnag family and caused several unfair trade agreements to be rewritten. In 1881 he became the first Siamese ambassador to London . King Chulalongkorn also pursued the goal of making himself more independent from the still powerful Srisuriyawong and shaping his own policy towards the European powers.

crash

After England had annexed all of Burma in 1885 and France was able to assert colonial interests in Vietnam , Chulalongkorn was seriously concerned and asked Prisdang for advice on how Siam should proceed. Although Prisdang initially declined because he did not feel up to the task, the king insisted on an answer. It came too, but differently than he had imagined: Prisdang and eleven other people wrote a 60-page memorandum in which the political and cultural situation of Siam was presented and reforms were proposed. Among the authors were the princes Naris , Savastisophon and Sonabandit . The memorandum was nothing more than the laying down of the first written constitution of Siam, whereby the proposals amounted to preparing for the transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. The memorandum is known today as Ror Sor 103 , where Ror Sor stands for petition and 103 means the year of the Rattanakosin calendar. The king was furious and replied that the people were not yet ready for such a transition.

On a later occasion, Prisdang expressed clear criticism of Chulalongkorn's polygamous way of life, which angered him even more. The following year, Prisdang was called home from Europe along with the other princely signatories of the petition. However, since Prisdang was busy accepting Siam into the Universal Postal Union and taking part in the meetings in Lisbon in 1884 and in Berlin in 1885, he only returned to Siam much later. With the help of friends, he was able to find work as director of the post office and the telegraph office. In 1890 he submitted his resignation out of disappointment at not being promoted; he was sent to Japan with the Siamese Minister of War, where he escaped before receiving an answer to his request. This escape was an insult to majesty .

Prince Prisdang then traveled through Indochina, the Malay Peninsula and Burma , before settling in Ceylon , where he renounced everything worldly and lived as a Buddhist monk under the name Jinavaravaṃsa. He met King Chulalongkorn in 1897 on his way to Europe and wrote in his diary that he had asked him to return to Siam to support efforts to improve the practice of religion. In 1898 Prisdang traveled to northern India and there acquired relics of the Buddha , which he had sent to the king in Siam.

Next life

Prince Prisdang returned to Bangkok in 1911 to attend the cremation celebrations for King Chulalongkorn, who had died the previous year. At the instigation of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, he had to put down his robe and was later no longer accepted as a member of the Sangha . In his later years, Prisdang lived in poverty and wrote his autobiography, which he completed in 1929. In it, he regretted not how the petition had been drafted but how it had gotten to Chulalongkorn.

Prince Prisdang died in Bangkok on March 16, 1935, after having witnessed the introduction of the constitutional monarchy in Siam in 1932.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Times , No. 7 July 1876.
2. ↑ Manich (1977), p. 237.
3. ↑ Brailey (1989), p. 14.
4. ↑ Brailey (1989), p. 18.
5. ^ The Life and Time of Prince Prisdang. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (last accessed on May 5, 2011) 

literature

• Nigel Brailey: Two Views on the Eve of the Chakri Reformation. Kiscadale Publ., Whiting Bay 1989, ISBN 1-870838-25-4 .
• Manich Jumsai : Prince Prisdang's Files in his Diplomatic Activities in Europe, 1880-1886. Chalermnite, Bangkok 1977.