Rama V’s Visit to Europe (1897)
Portugal and Siam: Two Small States in Times of Change

(Conferência dada na Universidade de Chulalongkorn, em Banguecoque, em 27 de Junho de 2007 por Miguel Castelo Branco)

1. Euro centrism: civilisation and barbarity

The European expansion beyond the geographical limits of the continent took place between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was led by Portugal and Spain. Portugal held important trading posts, fortresses and territories the length of the east and west coasts of Africa – it dominated the Eastern spice trade, had established itself in India, the Malayan Peninsula and southern China, had reached Japan and founded a huge colony to populate Brazil. Spain controlled all of Central America, vast expanses of South America and established itself in the Philippines. In the mid-seventeenth century, competition from the French, British and Dutch began to erode the maritime, commercial and military hegemony of the two Iberian states. A century and a half later, both had lost their status as great powers and were overtaken by the emerging industrial nations.

Urban, capitalist, industrialised, mechanised societies, possessing advanced military technology, the European states, conscious of their strength, imposed themselves on the other civilisations, which were predominantly agricultural and artisanal, feudal and closed. Driven by self interest and the quest for national prestige, armed with an apparent belief in the superiority of their own civilisation, the Europeans constructed a vision of the world that justified their authority right to rule the world. For the European in the second half of the nineteenth century, the West was synonymous with civilisation, the only civilisation capable of scientific thought and spiritual refinement, able to overcome natural forces and achieve progress. This Eurocentrism produced modern imperialism and colonialism, which the Europeans considered a mission that the white man was obliged to undertake in order to elevate to reason, to progress and to civilisation the other peoples on the planet. In the words of Rudyard Kipling, the white man bore the burden of teaching the other races the way of peace, dignity and freedom. In other words, the white man had the obligation to colonise.

Western philosophical culture was dominated by the idea of progress, inspired principally by the positivism of Auguste Comte, and the idea of evolution, drawn from the studies of Charles Darwin and transposed to anthropology and the study of societies. The history of humanity was thus an extension of the sphere of reason, the triumph over superstition and ignorance. The idea of evolution, in turn – the ascent of primary and primitive forms to superior levels of consciousness and control over reality – made it clear the West had reached a level without parallel in the history of the universe.

Looking outside Europe, they ordered the other cultures and peoples on the basis of European historical evolution, following the principle that historical laws were common to all of humanity and must necessarily obey the following phases:

For August Comte, the spiritual history of humankind went through three phases: the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive stage. In the theological stage, man explains phenomena through the intervention of supernatural forces; in the metaphysical stage, everything is explained through abstract ideas; lastly, in the positive or scientific stage, man is able to discover the laws that govern the universe. To each of these stages corresponds a particular kind of society: to the theological stage, a feudal and clerical society; to the metaphysical stage, a revolutionary society such as that of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and for the positive stage, an industrial and scientific society.

For Lewis Henry Morgan (1919-1881), the best known anthropologist of the evolutionary school, human evolution corresponds to three broad phases: savagery, barbarity and civilisation, each of which may be divided into three periods, ancient, intermediate and recent.

Thus the European colonisers were forced to live alongside peoples in different phases of evolution: savages and barbarians in Africa, savages in the Americas and civilised peoples in the ancient and intermediate phase of Asia. For Morgan, the civilised phase began with “the invention of an alphabet, with the use of writing”. In other words, the Chinese, Japanese, Indians and Siamese, when compared with the Europeans, would be two to three hundred years behind, since they had not yet reached the recent phase of civilisation, or rather, they had not yet unleashed the scientific and technological revolutions that Europe had begun from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onwards.

The dozens of educated travellers who passed through or lived in Siam between 1830 and 1900 carried with them this prejudiced vision of the Siamese, considering them “lazy, disorderly and childish” – “it has been well said that the Siamese habit is to work at play, and to play at work” – dominated by a chaotic, corrupt, disorganised and ignorant government. For one especially acerbic North American, “the general appearance of Bangkok is that of a large, primitive village, situated in and mostly concealed by a virgin forest of almost impenetrable density”. Around the same time, Portuguese officials who took part in embassies from the Governor-General of Macau to the court of Siam did not spare their criticism of the weak and indifferent Siamese. One of them even went so far as to write that were it not for the Chinese nothing would be done and no one would work: “the native is completely useless at volunteering for work, which he refuses to do unless necessity makes it unavoidable”.

In parallel, another kind of prejudice flooded the European vision of Siam. We call this “easy thinking” exoticism and orientalism: the woman a slave to the man, the enormous harem of the King of Siam – according to some he had two thousand, others said four thousand concubines! – these ideas filled the Europeans with sensuality and sadness because, as Westerners, they had to make do with just one wife. It was said of King Rama V that he was a divine figure, his subjects could not gaze upon him, nor could they speak his name. “To imagine the possibility of the king dying is a capital offence”, so they wrote.

However, no matter how certain they were sure their attitudes to the Siamese, they did not know what the Siamese thought of the Europeans. In the famous chronicle Our Wars with the Burmese: Thai-Burmese Conflict 1539-1767, the father of modern Siamese historiography Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, comparing the Portuguese with the Dutch and British, said that the Portuguese were obsessed with imposing Catholicism on other peoples, for which the reason the Asians were always afraid whenever they had dealings with them.

2. Two small countries between greater powers

If world power was concentrated in Europe around the end of the nineteenth century, this was shared unevenly between the states which held colonial empires. At the head, on the top rung of the great powers, the United Kingdom, dominating two thirds of Africa, South Asia, the peninsula of Muslim Malay states, Australia and Canada, as well as the key points through which the great maritime routes of world commerce passed: Gibraltar, the Cape, Suez, Singapore and the Falklands, which thus allowed them to dominate access to the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Three other great powers followed close on their heels: France, with a recent empire built in West Africa and South-East Asia, where it was building French Indochina on the remains of Vietnam; Germany and Russia – continental States, one (Germany) which owned some colonies in Africa and the Pacific; the other (Russia), possessing a huge uninterrupted empire that began in the Ural Mountains and stretched across the forests of Siberia. All had Asian ambitions, but only Great Britain and France seemed able to interfere to any effect in the future of those Asiatic states that had not yet gravitated into the Western orbit: Japan, China and Siam.

On the second rung, the medium powers: Holland, established in Insulindia (Dutch East Indies) and Suriname (Dutch Guiana), a trading power in slow decline from the eighteenth century; and Spain, once rich and powerful, now confined to Cuba and the Philippines. On a third rung, Portugal, a small power desperately struggling to retain what remained of its colonies: Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe in Africa; Goa, Daman and Diu in India, Macau in China, and East Timor. Another minor power, Belgium, had built its empire in the Congo, but received the protection of its powerful French neighbour. Portugal and Spain seemed, in the eyes of their competitors, the most vulnerable and least worthy to take their place at the colonisers’ table. Poor, rural, economically depressed countries, socially backward and conservative, politically unstable, they did not fulfil the requirements for carrying out the so-called “civilising mission”. On various occasions, the British and Germans attempted to negotiate an equitable sharing out of the Portuguese colonies. Rumours circulated constantly of an “acquisition” from Portugal or even a military fait accompli, which Portugal would never succeed in preventing. In 1890, the British Government, headed by Lord Salisbury, required Portugal to withdraw its military forces between Angola and Mozambique, that Portugal claimed as its own. Portugal, afraid of military action from its British ally, surrenders and signs the Treaty of London, ceding the territory between Angola and Mozambique. Years later, Germany signed a treaty with the United Kingdom, which determined how the Portuguese colonies would be shared out, something which only failed to transpire because of the British reluctance to guarantee the German Reich an even greater influence in the disputed southern African region. This fear in relation to Germany, had, in extremis, saved the Portuguese possessions in Africa. Humiliated and insulted, in an climate of great anxiety, Portugal witnessed a veritable explosion of colonial euphoria: military campaigns were organised in order to quell native rebellions in Angola and Mozambique; the recently created Lisbon Geographical Society promoted scientific lectures, and great celebrations were held to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Vasco da Gama’s arrival in the East. But the entire Portuguese effort did nothing to diminish the disdain of the great colonial powers. In 1900, Henry Norman had no hesitation in stating that Portugal was a little parasite feeding off the carcass of Asia, since in Macau, where the Portuguese presence still endured, there was no development, merely gaming, adulterated tea, opium and trafficking in Chinese workers sent like cattle to the sugar-cane plantations of Cuba and Brazil. The London satirical revues would publish caricatures in which Portugal was presented as a small monkey in the circus of the great powers.

Portugal was certainly an anomaly: economically colonised in Europe by British companies, dominated by British foreign policy, it survived as a colonial power thanks to the Anglo-German rivalry in the rush to rule Africa. Portugal had become in Africa, just like Siam in South-East Asia, a buffer state between the ambitions of two great powers. Portuguese fragility and humiliation thus explain why Portuguese public opinion reacted with such solidarity when in 1893, French gunboats sailed up the Chao Phya and ordered the Siamese to evacuate Western Cambodia and Laos, under threat of arms. Two unequal treaties, two surrenders, two humiliations.

After the Ultimatum, Portugal wanted to show the United Kingdom that it continued to be a trustworthy ally, bringing its foreign policy even closer to British preferences and demands. In 1916, Portugal would declare war on Germany and join the allies. While Siam did not draw closer to the France which had humiliated it, it did strengthen its ties with Great Britain. Shocked, a Portuguese official noted “it is understood that the Siamese should accept English as their official language in their foreign relations; but that the palace should take their love of Great Britain to the extreme of adorning the uniforms of their coachmen with buttons bearing the effigy of the Queen of England, is truly astonishing”. This development in Siamese foreign policy was explained by the need for a strong neighbour to protect it in the event of a conflict. For centuries, the balance of power in eastern Asia was marked by China’s power to impose peace.

However, after 1842, it was evident to all that the old Sinocentric and Confucian system that had governed Asian international relations for centuries – a system centred on a China surrounded by tributary States – was coming to an end. Attacked in succession by the British, and then French, Germans, Italians, North Americans and Japanese, the Middle Empire no longer inspired any respect whatsoever from its traditional tributaries. The same attentive observer, by way of a joke, let drop the following comment in respect of Siam’s refusal to pay the annuity due to Peking: “just a few days ago a Chinese emissary withdrew, profoundly displeased, from Bangkok, having gone there to find out the reason why since 30 years ago the kingdom of Siam ceased to pay the tribute to China (..). The answer was that it did not pay the tribute because there was no money. And China would certainly won’t go and seek it by force at the end of their black flag-bearing lances. China is well aware that France and England like her, share a border with Siam”.

Camena de Almeida, a university professor who worked in France with the best French geographer of the age, Vidal de la Blache, stated in 1906, regarding the vulnerability of a Siam subject to the Franco-British sphere of influence: “each of the European states that is present tries to obtain concessions in public works, and open more and more consulates in the main commercial centres”. However, if competition between the British and French made possible the seizure of territories that had long been Siamese, it did in the end preserve Siam’s independence. In this respect, Siam found itself, just like China, Afghanistan and Persia, in that no-man’s land between European empires that preferred to be separated by small independent powers, obeying the logic of “if we can’t have it, neither shall you”.

3. Trauma and Change

The triumph of the West in the clash with other civilisations, which gave rise to the globalised world and international society as we understand it today, was the result of the confluence of economic, technological, scientific, institutional and legal factors, but above all, factors of an organisational nature, and a matter of perspective. The Europeans had a overview; most of the peoples they subjugated had a limited horizon and outlook. The Europeans had ways to organise and apply their strength which allowed them to circumvent their adversaries. The Europeans, in effect, had a breadth of vision that allowed them to see the whole, where other civilisations seemed to be increasingly circumscribed to a specific geographical region.

It is said, incorrectly, that the Europeans only prevailed and won thanks to the military advantage they possessed. This fails to take account of the countless defeats that western armies suffered at the hands of less technologically developed peoples. By way of proof, the British defeat by the Afghans (1841-42), the Russian defeat in the Caucasus (1840-45), the crushing of the British by the Zulu in South Africa (1879), the Ethiopians’ rout of the Italians (1896) and the German defeat by the Herero of South-West Africa. What becomes clear in an analysis of the nineteenth-century conflicts between Europeans and other civilisations is that while some cultures learned how to lessen the shock effect, adapting, getting to know the enemy and surviving, others were unable to do so, and died. In other words, those who understood the extent of the danger and acquired sufficient knowledge of the danger to limit the damage, succeeded in surviving. For their part, those who took refuge in traditional responses and refused to learn about or from the European intruder, quite simply succumbed.

Europe, with the advantage, laid down the rules of the game and prescribed the requirements necessary for non-European states to join international society.

Those who persisted, against the evidence of the signs of the times – as occurred with China – in viewing at the Europeans as if they were just another nomadic tribe in the long history of incidents with barbarians who reached the Empire but then yielded to the Chinese civilisation, ended by suffering military reprisals and even exposing more clearly their weakness vis-à-vis the increasingly avaricious and intolerant Europeans.

What, then, were the Europeans demanding? Free trade in the terms practised in liberal Europe, the application of western diplomatic practices and the acceptance of “international law”, or rather, the law that the Europeans had created, to be applied to all regions on earth. Obviously these conditions were imposed, giving rise to “unequal treaties” that gave the advantages and privileges that are nowadays so shocking: extraterritoriality for European citizens living in Asian countries – Asian governments were required to guarantee the protection of European citizens and their property, and were these citizens to be tried for any crimes they had committed, they should be tried in courts under the jurisdiction of the States from which they originated – economic dominance and control of key points (ports, customs, railways), and freedom of action for Christian missionaries. But the Europeans demanded even more. They asked the Asian states to adopt governmental structures that mirrored those of the west; these should be integrated into the international system through adhesion to multilateral treaties and conventions.

For us to understand the “miracle” of Siam’s survival, leaving aside from the argument mentioned above (Siam as buffer state), three relevant factors should be borne in mind:

1) The Siamese had never considered themselves “the civilisation”, like the Chinese. Yes, they considered themselves a free people, proud of their traditions, institutions and values, but they were accustomed to dealing with peoples of different ethnic origins and religions: Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Indians, Malayans, Chinese, Japanese, Persians, Dutch, English and French. They allowed mixed marriages with foreigners who lived on the outskirts of the capital (Ayuthia, Tonburi and Bangkok), even tolerating the practice and dissemination of religions brought by these foreigners.

2) The Siamese leadership was strong, respected and of Thai ethnic origin, while the Chinese leadership was foreign.

3) The two kings of Siam who directly suffered the impact of the West (Rama IV and Rama V) were intelligent leaders, open, curious and ready to compromise. However, notwithstanding all the reforms and yielding to the West, European observers persisted in their criticism and demanded more reforms. The Portuguese consul-general in Bangkok, Frederico Pereira, a man very closely connected to the pure, unyielding “French school” of colonialism of Admiral Lanessan – the governor of the Indochina who did everything possible to make Siam follow the same path as Cambodia, that is, become another French protectorate – wrote in 1895 a brutally direct report to the governor of Macau, his immediate superior, describing Siam quite unmercilessly. It was common practice among diplomatic personnel to conceal or exaggerate facts, in keeping with the sympathies, antipathy or interests of the writers, to force favourable or hostile policies from their governments in relation to far flung corners of the planet, remote from the seats of power. In an age in which communications were practically guaranteed by mail sent by ship, the true lords of diplomacy and of war were the governors-in-chief of the European colonies.

Frederico Pereira, in favour of aggressive attitudes, wanted, no doubt, to imitate the French stance and resolve by force the innumerable conflicts of interest he waged against the Siamese authorities regarding the Chinese under the protection of the Portuguese consulate in Siam. In the report to which we allude, Pereira commented very unfavourably on the means chosen by Rama V to direct matters of State, stating that the king, governing through members of his family, was completely ignorant of the true reality of his country. Rama V had brought from Europe many counsellors to help him modernise the State. Pereira doubted the wisdom of this measure, for, referring to Rolin-Jacquemyns, he asserted: “the choice seemed good, yet he [Rolin-Jacquemyns] soon realised that to remain in the post to which he had been called, he must limit himself to giving advice that pleased the Siamese king and government (...) and that was what he did, in order to continue to receive his four thousand pounds per annum”. Continuing his reflexions, he said there was no justice, nor studies of Law, nor written laws. The judges were corrupt, public offices were bought and taxes gathered by private monopolists who resorted to all kinds of violence in order to amass treasures that rarely found their way into the State coffers. In the meantime, the army was dying of starvation and public works did not progress.

Even though Siam had done everything to satisfy European demands, it still had not succeeded in overcoming the bad will and prejudice of the European gaze. In 1882, to celebrate the centenary of Bangkok as capital, King Rama V organised the First National Exhibition of Siam. The Portuguese consul, Henrique Prostes, visited it and sent a revealing report to the Lisbon Geographical Society. On visiting the pavilions in the exhibition, he praised the traditional products – cloth, jewellery, wood, perfumes – but reserved his harshest criticism for those products which were, after all, the display by which Chulalongkorn intended to exhibit the country’s modernisation. In respect of the paintings, he affirmed: “it seems to us that the Siamese are not in their first childhood, but rather in a stage prior to it. These are like children’s work, in which portraits of the king and the royal family predominate”. He lamented the poverty of the scientific objects exhibited, the mediocrity of the photography, the exceedingly poor quality of the books on display. Not wishing to be irrevocably pessimistic, he concluded: “while this exhibition is not (...) an affirmation of progress (...) it may be considered (...) as a boundary marker set on the path of progress, so that one day one may measure the advance or the decline of this people”. In other words, for the Europeans, everything was still wide open: whether Siam should be colonised or left free and independent remained on the agenda of the Foreign Offices in Paris and London.

4. Rama V’s “Russian” model

The process of Siamese adaptation to the West led obligatorily to complex conceptual changes in the notions of State, society and man. In a long march, begun during the reign of Rama IV and which extended through the reigns of Rama V, Rama VI and Rama VII – that is, from the 1850’s until the 1930’s – the country witnessed the construction of a modern, centralised and interventionist State, the growth of a society divided into classes, and the birth of men’s equality before the law, that is to say, citizenship.

Siam went through these eight decade seeking a compromise between its roots and the need to enter into contemporaneity. It was obvious, to any observer with the slightest level of awareness, that Siam could not imitate either the British or the French systems, What Chulalongkorn did do was find the system of European government that best fitted the characteristics of his own country, thus ensuring full foreign recognition of the Siamese State.

In 1872, at the invitation of Viceroy Lord Mayo, Rama V visited India under the British Raj, and in 1896 spent three months touring Singapore and Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. In addition to the colonies, ruled with an iron fist by governors-general wielding power over colonised peoples deprived of citizenship rights, the only major European figure with whom he had a personal friendship was the Tsarevitch Nicholas Romanov, future emperor of Russia, who visited Siam in 1891. The Russian empire was an autocracy, since all power rested in the Emperor, aided by counsellors, and no other power existed outwith the figure of the sovereign: protector of the orthodox Christian faith, upholder of justice, legislator, supreme commander of the army. Nicholas’s grandfather, Alexander II, had used this immense power to implant great social and economic reforms: he freed the serfs in 1861, began the industrialisation of the empire, reformed the army, education, justice, and promoted nationalism and the cult of the figure of the emperor. At the same time, he contracted thousands of German technicians, raised capital from British and French investors, imported cutting-edge technology and started to modernise the Russian economy. It is obvious that Rama V took the Russian way as his model for modernisation. Arguably, a serious mistake is frequently made when assuming that Siam fell under the economic control of Europe, without there having been strong strategic intervention by Rama V. In our opinion, Siam bought the good will of the British, French, German and Danish capitalists, throwing open its doors to them and granting them privileges. In this way Siam acquired know-how, trained technicians and created bonds of mutual interest and obligation between the men of finance.

However opening up the country brought an influx of foreign ideas and the departure of hundreds of young Thai aristocrats for European schools and universities, causing serious internal tensions, a clash between the generations and resistence to the sudden change. The Siamese elite split into three distinct tendencies, easily identified by the Portuguese observers who sent reports from Siam to the government in Lisbon:

— The “liberal party”, defender of rapid change, fascinated by Great Britain. They wanted a representative government, a Constitution, and an end to privileges. In the 1880’s, they dominated the Siamese scene and had as their leader prince Prisdang. Prince Prisdang was in Lisbon in 1883 and made a strongly positive impression. In 1895 the Portuguese consul in Bangkok said, exaggerating the attitude of this current of liberal opinion: “all the Siamese harbour a desire to be English. That is why all the princes of Siam would secretly like England to take possession of the country, because they would be all the richer”.

— The “reformist party”, or king’s party, which defended controlled change and numbered among its leaders the princes Damrong Rajanubhab, Svasti Sobhon and Devawongse Varoprakar. This tendency finally came to the fore and held sway over the country until the constitutional revolution of 1932.

— Lastly, the conservative party, xenophobic and intransigent in its defence of a traditional and isolationist Siam. It did not have a leader as such, but was rather a state of mind which gathered together the landed upper classes, some religious leaders and members of the royal house. According to Frederico Pereira, “Siam wants the foreigners and doesn’t want the foreigners. It wants them because it gives them customs duties. It doesn’t want them because it fears new ideas and principles of justice that might put an end to their way of ruling”.

Trying to characterise the attitude of the traditionalists, he added: ”the Siamese are the elite of societies, children of the sun, grandchildren of the moon, they are so superior to the rest of mankind that mankind cannot and should not ask them to explain their actions”.

With the “liberals” under his control, the reactionaries contained and his house in order, Rama V finally made the greatest decision of his political life: to travel to Europe, speak as an equal to his counterparts and demonstrate that Siam was, at last, a country like any other, with rights and obligations in the order of nations.

5. The visit to Portugal: expectations and results

On the 14th of May, 1897, the king of Siam reached Europe on board the royal yacht. Disembarking on to Italian soil, for almost six months he travelled from south to north, from the east to the westernmost point of the continent, making contact with heads of State and government leaders, aristocrats, bankers and industrialists, men of letters and artists, as well as the common people. Never before had a non-European sovereign done such a tour. Never before had a man from another civilisation been received with such great lavishness; never before had an Asian nation put together such a well planned public relations campaign. Rama V came to Europe to show the Europeans that he was as cultured, as civilised, as experienced and as knowledgeable about the great world problems as any European head of State. He shone in Vienna, triumphed in Berlin, Saint Petersburg, Paris, London and Madrid, winning friends, eliciting praise from the press and banishing prejudice. Although he gave priority to the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Russia – Siam’s priviliged interlocutors – he did not fail to visit the Iberian Peninsula, where he was welcomed by the King of Spain between the 16th and 19th of October and, finally, by King Carlos I of Portugal, a country where he remained for two and a half days. Portugal and Spain had not been great powers for quite some time. Spain was struggling with two wars of independence in the Caribbean and South-East Asia, and was on the verge of a conflict with the United States, who in 1898 attacked Spanish military forces in Cuba and the Philippines, putting an end to five centuries of colonisation.

As for Portugal, it was living through difficult years of economic and social crisis which in 1910 led to the implantation of the Republic. Portugal’s main priority was to maintain and invest in the African colonies, especially Angola and Mozambique, with the result that Portuguese interest in eastern affairs took second place. Well informed about the possibilities of cooperation with Portugal, Rama V made a point of visiting Lisbon, perhaps paying homage to a nation that had been the first European power to reach Siam (1511), which had always respected the independence and sovereignty of this South-Eastern Asian kingdom and whose language was, for three hundred years, the lingua franca of Siamese relations with other European peoples.

In Lisbon, expectations were high. Despite some criticisim emanating from republican sectors, praise for the personality and achievements of the Asian monarch was widespread. Siam occupied, in the opinion of one radical morning paper, second place for development among the Asian nations, coming second only to Japan. On the 15th of October two emissaries from Rama V arrived in Lisbon, to see for themselves the conditions in which the monarch would be housed, prepare the programme for the visit and exchange impressions with the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs. The best hotel in Lisbon was taken over in its entirety for the Siamese royal party and decorated with precious works of art – Sèvres vases, Venetian mirrors, paintings by Murillo, Dürer and Rembrandt, as well as eighteenth-century French furniture. Lisbon put on her most festive trappings to honour the illustrious visitor, but it was acknowledged that the country would appear, in Rama V’s eyes, considerably less powerful than the great nations through which he had passed: “the reception we are offering the king cannot, of course, match in opulence and pomp those held for him by France and England (...). Our august guest will notice straightaway that we are very small in comparison with the astonishing grandeur of our history”.

The only non-European king that Lisbon had seen, two years before, was Gungunhana, king of the last great independent Bantu kingdom, defeated by Portuguese troops and brought to Lisbon as proof of their victory over the black revolt in the south of Mozambique. It was expected that Rama V would be an exotic king, covered in jewels and sumptuously robed. “The whole population of Lisbon, in a promiscuous intermingling of the classes, came out into the street that day (...) impelled by that curiosity so characteristic of the Lisbonese (...)”. However, when he stepped down from the special train that had brought him from the border with Spain, the population’s surprise was complete: “Chulalongkorn is of medium height, but well proportioned. He’s dry and nervous. One can read intelligence and energy in his brilliant black gaze. He has a proud expression, haughty, as befits a monarch who is absolute master of the life and destinies of his vassals”. The Siamese king and the princes who accompanied him wore uniforms laden with insignia and medals and thus resembled any other European monarch. Four thousand men from the navy, army and Royal Guard stood to attention in the streets, bands played military marches and the artillery fired gun salutes in welcome while Rama V and King Carlos I drove through the streets of central Lisbon in an antique coach dating from the eighteenth century. That night there was a banquet in the Portuguese royal palace, with 120 guests, orchestra and a spectacle and, on the following morning, the king received the corps of diplomats accredited to Lisbon. On the second day of the visit, a serious breach of protocol occurred. Hoping to offer the visitor a great popular celebration, the mayor of Cascais organised a huge firework display in homage to Chulalongkorn. Twelve thousand people awaited the king, bands played the Siamese national anthem and many soldiers lined the streets of this summer resort. However, when the show began, the king displayed profound displeasure when an enormous white elephant exploded in fiery girandoles. Believing that they were paying their respects, the organisers had committed an unpardonable breach of protocol, since the white elephant was not just the symbol on the Siamese flag, but an object of veneration by the Siamese. After several months of touring, tired and ill, Rama V cannot have found the innocent joke in the least amusing. He cancelled the lunch he had arranged with the king of Portugal on the following day in Sintra: “His Majesty apologises for being unable to accept the lunch in the Castelo da Pena and expresses his thanks for the brilliant reception that he was given in Cascais, from which he has taken away the most unforgettable memories”. On the morning of the 23rd of October he did not leave the hotel, but by the afternoon he was already affable and smiling, having taken his leave of the king of Portugal at the railway station. The visit was, however, doomed to suffer yet another mishap. On coming out of the tunnel in the central station of Lisbon, the train derailed and it was necessary to wait four more hours before the damage was repaired. Chulalongkorn left Portugal somewhat surprised, but, nonetheless, sent amicable telegrams to the Portuguese king and government and made a generous donation to the poor of Lisbon, as well as sending gifts to the staff of the Hotel in which he had lodged.

In 1907, he returned to Europe, but he did not visit Russia – already undermined by revolution and greatly lacking in international prestige after the defeat by the Japanese in 1905 – or Portugal. Portugal was entering a phase of great agitation. King Carlos I would fall, riddled with the bullets of republican assassins in 1908, the republican revolution would kill the monarcy on the 5th of October of 1910. Eighteen days later, Rama V would die in Bangkok.

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