Prince Prisdang was a complex person to say the least. A family member of King Chulalongkorn and Siam's first ambassador to Europe in the late 19th century, "his life", as one of the world's pre-eminent scholars of Thai history Tamara Loos writes, "buzzes like a hub of frenetic political activity, linking together the spokes of Thai nationalism, European imperialism, Buddhist universalism, and transnational anti-imperialism".
Despite the obvious criticism that this is another royal biography or a "great man" study and could possibly be seen as unimaginative and old-fashioned, there is very little to fault in this book. First, it is not a typical "great man" biography. Indeed, Prisdang was no great man, and his fascinating and complex life does not simply add to the list of sources for the study of Siamese royalty. Indeed, his quick rise, fall from grace, travels and adventures abroad show that Prisdang's life questions the very notion of the inspiring life of noble men. It shows that being a member of the royal family was often a great burden for many people and Prisdang not only benefited from his position, but suffered greatly.
BONES AROUND MY NECK: The Life And Exile Of A Prince Provocateur by Tamara Loos Cornell University Press 2016 US$27 on Amazon
He had a quick rise to prominence in Siam's burgeoning foreign service corps. However, after rumours of a scandal and questionable financial impropriety (his large debts at London jewellers and tailors among other acts) he was nearly driven to suicide. He couldn't get a job in Saigon, was spied upon in Malaysia, was refused ordination in Battambang, was not given a moment's peace on an island off the coast of Sri Lanka where he escaped as a monk, lived much of his life in exile, and then had to live on an old houseboat even while in Bangkok!
Prisdang's life is important, because it shows that there is no such thing as a great man. No man is an island. This book is not really a biography of a single person, but is the story of a complex web of individuals whose relationships helped form an emerging nation state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Prisdang could never actually act alone. He had to negotiate for housing, for a living stipend, for travel funds, and even for ordination rights. He had little freedom and rarely the resources one might assume a royal family member would have. Showing readers the complex lives of the royalty, especially the royalty that were at the forefront of international affairs, communication technology and emerging political and social theoretical developments is important for adding nuance to the study of history in Southeast Asia and beyond. This study is not of a great man, but shows the importance of studying failures.
I would also stress the importance of this book in connection to the growing body of literature on "go-betweens" -- translators, travellers and middlemen in the field of history more broadly. I found this book in simpatico with books like Natalie Zemon Davis' Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds, Kathleen M. Brown's Good Wives, Nasty Wenches And Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, And Power In Colonial Virginia and Alexander X. Byrd's Captives And Voyagers: Black Migrants Across The Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World. In this way, this book is not just important for Thai studies but for methods in the study of history and the very nature of historical agency in general. This is seen particularly well in Prisdang's relation to Chao Phraya Surasakmontri and the French explorer Auguste Pavie.
A tale of a disgraced sibling of a Siamese king seems like an obscure subject for an entire book. However, the author shows that this isn't the case at all. Indeed, the study of Prince Prisdang is really the study of how diplomacy, travel, colonisation and power (and, as Loos emphasises, the effectiveness of Siamese "social disciplining" among the elite) worked in all of South and Southeast Asia during this period (as well as the South China littoral as Prisdang obviously had close contacts in Hong Kong and Shanghai).
We learn through this study about the French in Indochina, the British in Sri Lanka and what would become Malaysia, archaeology and politics in Nepal, the international Buddhist movement and pan-Theravada movement of this time, the theosophists, and how court finance, romance and politics were constantly intertwined. I read this book as a history not of a single Siamese political figure, but as an in-depth history of Southeast Asia, as well as a book essential for Buddhist studies. As the author states, the "subjective experience of global imperialism" is often overlooked and this study is a good corrective.
Finally, this book is not just a history. It makes serious contributions, especially in the conclusion, to the major issue of lèse-majesté in Thailand. The issue of royal family politics, succession, intrigue, rumour, scandal and exile is just as important today (if not more so) as it was in the 1890s and 1910s. This "history" should be essential reading for students and scholars of modern Thai politics, royalty and international relations.
Justin McDaniel is a Professor of Buddhist Studies and the chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His books on Thailand include Gathering Leaves And Lifting Words, The Lovelorn Ghost And The Magic Monk, Architects Of Buddhist Leisure, and other works on Lao and Thai manuscripts, Buddhist narrative and ritual studies.
