Educating Ananda
How the British tried — and failed — to turn Thailand’s boy king into an English gentleman
On 2 March 1935, in a low-key ceremony in the Thai embassy in London, King Prajadhipok, Rama VII of the Kingdom of Siam, abdicated his throne. Siam’s monarchy was in crisis. A nine-year-old prince living in Switzerland who had never been expected to become king was named Rama VIII of Siam. His name was Ananda Mahidol.
Here is a British news report about Siam’s new “boy king”:
Ananda was the eldest son of Prince Mahidol, who was one of more than 90 children of the famed King Chulalongkorn, Rama V of Thailand.
Ananda’s mother was a commoner, Sangwan Talapat, born in 1900 to impoverished parents in Nonthaburi near Bangkok. By the time Sangwan was 10 both her parents and an elder sister and brother had all died, leaving her an orphan with one younger brother. Through some fortunate family connections she moved into the outer orbit of the royal court, and after an accident with a sewing needle she was sent to stay in the home of the palace surgeon, who encouraged her to become a nurse.
At the age of just 13 she enrolled at Siriraj Hospital’s School for Midwifery and Nursing. She met Mahidol in Boston in 1918 after winning a scholarship to further her nursing studies in the United States.
In the rigid class caste system of Siam, the royals would never have approved Mahidol’s marriage to Sangwan if they believed he or his offspring had any prospect of becoming king.
But due to multiple royal deaths, King Prajadhipok’s abdication and post-revolutionary Siamese politics, Ananda was chosen as king in 1935. By this time his father Mahidol was dead and he was living with his mother Sangwan, his older sister Princess Galyani and his younger brother Prince Bhumibol in the Swiss town of Lausanne.
Sangwan appeared conflicted about her eldest son suddenly becoming Siam’s new monarch. As this New York Times news report shows, when asked whether she wanted her son to be king, her answer was deeply ambivalent:
If you were a mother, how would you feel about it?
According to his elder sister Galyani in a 1987 memoir, Ananda was initially reluctant and wrote a list of all the reasons he didn’t want to rule Siam:
He did not wish to be king because (1) he was only a child, (2) he knew nothing, (3) he was lazy, (4) the Chair (how he referred to the throne) was too high, and he could not sit still and could therefore fall off it… (5) wherever he went he would have to use the umbrella and could not enjoy the sun, (6) too many people in front and behind him wherever he went and he could not run.
When he was interviewed in his Swiss classroom, Ananda also said he wasn’t interested in being king.
Interviewer: Does it interest you?
Ananda: No.
Interviewer: Why?
Ananda: It just doesn’t interest me.
Interviewer: What does interest you?
Ananda: Playing!
Sangwan was hated by Siam’s old elite, as a low-born interloper who should never have been allowed into the royal family. She was later turned into a saint by the palace.
The truth, of course, is more complex.
She was a determined and opinionated woman in an era when women were expected not to have opinions, and a commoner in an era when social class counted for everything. This explains much of the hostility against her.
But she was also an overbearing mother who infantilised her children, and this would have far reaching consequences for Thailand, a country where ordinary people are also treated as infants.
One of the most pervasive myths about Thai history is that the Kingdom of Siam was never colonised, thanks to the enlightened leadership of the monarchy which skilfully exploited the rivalry of Britain and France to ensure the country was never invaded.
In fact, after the British governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring, signed a treaty with the Thai monarchy in 1855, Siam essentially became a semi-colony of the British empire. Under Chulalongkorn, the Thai palace tried to reinvent itself as a British-style monarchy, and adopted numerous European royal ceremonial customs, including bearskin hats totally unsuited to the Thai climate.
In the early decades of the 20th century, the British supplied many of the advisors and bureaucrats who kept the Thai monarchy functioning. The revolution of 1932 took the British by surprise, but they did their best to retain influence over Siam, and continued to regard the country as being in their “sphere of influence” although not a formal colony.
So when Ananda Mahidol unexpectedly became king of Siam, the British were determined to give him an English education.
Ananda’s uncle Vajiravudh, King Rama VI of Siam, had been given military training at England’s Royal Military College in Sandhurst, and had briefly been made an officer in a British military regiment, the Durham Light Infantry. He then studied law and history at an Oxford college, Christ Church. Although Oxford and Cambridge universities claimed to be institutions educating the best scholars, in fact they were places where even mediocre members of the elite could get a degree.
Prajadhipok, King Rama VII, also had a very English education. He was sent to Eton College, the boarding school for the British elite, in 1906 at the age of 12, and then to England’s Woolwich Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1913. He was briefly employed as a British military officer in the Royal Horse Artillery.
This was one of the ways the British empire tried to influence allied countries — by ensuring their rulers were educated as English gentlemen. When Ananda Mahidol unexpectedly became king of Siam in 1935, the British wanted to ensure that he, too, would have a thoroughly English education.
In 1935, it remained very unclear whether Siam’s monarchy would survive at all. But in 1938, King Ananda made plans to visit Siam with his mother Sangwan and his brother Bhumibol. Meanwhile, tensions were mounting in Europe, with the rise of Nazi Germany and its Asian ally Japan. Suddenly, the British saw the importance of ensuring that Ananda grew up as an English gentleman, rather than an admirer of the Nazis or imperial Japan.
Britain’s plans were set out in a foreign ministry memo:
It is desired that the King should enter Eton as soon as possible and that after leaving school his education should consist of 6 months naval training, 18 months at Sandhurst, 6 months attachment to a British regiment and 6 months at Oxford. He must return to Bangkok at age of 20 for his coronation.
With these instructions, Britain’s ambassador to Siam, Sir Josiah Crosby, met Prince Aditya Dibabha Abhakara, the head of the “regency council” reigning on behalf of King Ananda, on 31 August 1938. He recorded their conversation in a “very confidential” cable the following day. Crosby stressed :
the very great importance from the British point of view of … doing everything in our power at this turning point in the life of the youthful king, to see to it that, when he attains his majority [becomes an adult], he shall bear the stamp of a British training upon him and, like his predecessors, make it one of his chief objects to maintain those close relations between Britain and Siam which have existed for so long and which, unhappily, are being threatened to-day as they never were before. In view both of past traditions and of the present international situation in the Far East, I feel that it would be nothing short of a calamity if His Majesty were to be sent elsewhere than than England for his education, and we may be sure that our enemies would make great capital out of such a thing if it came to pass.
Crosby asked about various logistical issues relating to Ananda’s education, and explained that his interlocutor, Prince Aditya, could be considered staunchly British, having received a thoroughly English education himself:
It will be useful if I state that Prince Aditya was at school at Harrow, that on leaving school he entered our Navy but was obliged to abandon the idea of a naval career for reasons of health, and that he afterwards went Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his anglophile [pro-British] leanings I have had abundant proof.
Crosby thought the issue was so important that he sent another letter to Stephen Gaselee, whose official job was “Librarian and Keeper of the Papers at the Foreign Office” and who had extensive contacts among the upper-class English education establishment. Crosby wrote that it was “of the utmost importance” that young King Ananda “should come to us”:
During September 1938, the British empire’s archaic bureaucracy began creaking into action. Britain’s foreign minister, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, the 1st Earl of Halifax, send a letter to Claude Aurelius Elliott, the headmaster of Eton College. He pointed out that Ananda spoke very little English — he had grown up speaking French — and as an added inducement to get the king accepted, noted that Ananda’s predecessor Prajadhipok had donated a small garden to the school:
The same day, Halifax wrote to the vice chancellor of Oxford University, seeking a place for Ananda after he had graduated from Eton. He noted:
We consider that it is highly desirable on political grounds that His Majesty should be educated in this country…
The following day, Eton’s headmaster replied:
Soon afterwards, the dean of Christchurch College, Oxford, told Britain’s foreign minister that Ananda would be accepted as an undergraduate there after he completed his studies at Eton:
Another letter soon followed from the vice chancellor of Oxford University, also assuring the Earl of Halifax that there would be no difficulty for Ananda to study at Oxford. But with war against the Nazis increasingly inevitable, he added that “it looks as though these terrible happenings will make this answer unnecessary”:
British diplomats were pleased, although not surprised — this was the way England worked. A handwritten note on a diplomatic file from September 1938 states: “As anticipated, there appears to be no difficulty about Eton & Oxford”:
The British Foreign Office was now able to reply to Bangkok ambassador Sir Josiah Crosby, telling him all the necessary preparations were in place for King Ananda to study at Eton and Oxford:
Meanwhile, Britain’s Royal Navy had also been asked whether King Ananda could be accepted as an officer upon completion of his academic studies. They proposed that the young king should be given the honorary rank of lieutenant and should serve six months at sea with the British fleet:
This development, too, was communicated to Sir Josiah Crosby in Bangkok:
By early October, Crosby replied that Prince Aditya was very happy about the assurances he had been given, but was also anxious to know whether Ananda would be allowed to attend the Sandhurst military academy and spend some time with a British army regiment:
The British army duly obliged — Ananda would be welcome to spend two terms at Sandhurst and then six months attached to an English infantry battalion:
Crosby replied on 24 October saying that Prince Aditya was delighted with the plans that had been made, but cautioning that “the ultimate decision as to where the King will be educated must rest with the Government and with His Majesty’s mother”. He added that “Mr Pepys”, King Ananda’s English teacher, was accompanying the royal party to Siam”:
By November, however, a problem had emerged. Some senior members of the royal court, perhaps with the support of Ananda’s mother Sangwan, suggested an alternative proposal. Instead of going to Eton, they said, Ananda should be sent to an English-speaking school in Switzerland.
The palace chamberlain in Bangkok somehow knew the Switzerland correspondent of the British Daily Mail newspaper, James Challinor, who had recommended an establishment called Chillon College.
The headmaster wrote an obsequious letter to diplomat Sir Alexander Cadogan in London asking for Foreign Office help in getting King Ananda as a pupil, and noting that Cadogan’s son Ambrose had been a pupil at Chillon.
Across the top of the letter in the Foreign Office files, a worried British diplomat has scrawled: “Does anyone know anything about the educational plans for the King of Siam?”
Diplomats began scrambling to find out whether the proposed Chillon College would give Ananda an appropriately English education.
“For your information I would say that we are not at present entirely convinced that Chillon College would in fact be suitable,” wrote R.G. Howe of the Foreign Office’s Far Eastern Department to ambassador Crosby in Bangkok. But he added that if a school in England was out of the question, “it would be preferable for His Majesty to be educated at an English school abroad rather than to be deprived of all English influence in his education.”
One of the issues was that Ananda’s grandmother Queen Savang Vadhana, who had been one of King Chulangkorn’s senior queens — and his half sister too — seemed to be opposed to the young monarch attending Eton. Crosby reported this back to London, along with a new proposal from Prince Aditya that Ananda should be educated by a private tutor in England until he entered the British Royal Navy at the age of 17. Meanwhile, Ananda’s younger brother Prince Bhumibol would be educated at Eton.
But the Foreign Office in London was still trying to subtly find out whether Chillon College would be suitable. Cadogan wrote to a British diplomat based at the League of Nations (forerunner of today’s United Nations), asking for “general gossip” on whether King Ananda would have a “really sound English education if he went there.”
Meanwhile, the headmaster of Britain’s elite Eton College was growing impatient. He was keeping a place free for King Ananda, but this meant that some upper-class British applicants had to be turned away, and the pressure was becoming difficult to manage. He implored the Foreign Office to provide some clarity on whether Ananda would come to Eton:
British diplomats were unable to give a sensible answer — they were still trying to negotiate the unfamiliar world of Siamese internal politics. The Earl of Halifax, Britain’s foreign minister during an extraordinarily dangerous period in world affairs, took the time to respond personally to the headmaster of Eton, asking for the place for King Ananda to be kept open.
Slightly annoyed, the headmaster wrote back to the foreign minister noting that it has too late for King Ananda to come to Eton for the upcoming term, but he would reserve a place for the following term.
Meanwhile, there were increasing signs of divisions in Bangkok. Some members of the government — in particular navy chief Admiral Sindhu Songgramjaya — believed Germany and Japan were better allies than the declining and meddling British empire. They were trying to prevent King Ananda becoming brainwashed by the English.
They strengthened their argument by citing the views of Ananda’s mother Sangwan who believed that Ananda was a sickly and unhealthy boy, who would struggle in the robust physical culture of Eton. Sangwan and Ananda’s grandmother Savang believed the young monarch was “not strong enough” for an elite British school which emphasised physical hardship and endurance, and where bullying was rife. Sindhu also argued that young Ananda would not be shown sufficient respect at Eton by the British authorities. Crosby alerted London to these problems on 6 November 1938:
The following day, Crosby sent a longer note, warning that Admiral Sindhu was under the influence of fascist nations and hostile to England. Exhibiting the casual racism that infected the British empire, Crosby said he suspected that Sindhu was “one of those irreconcilable Orientals, often found elsewhere but comparatively rare among the tolerant [i.e. compliant] Siamese, whose enormous inferiority complex leads them to detest the West in general and the British Empire in particular.”
Crosby warned that the Siamese navy was sympathetic towards imperial Japan and could not be counted on to support Britain if war erupted in Asia, and added that many Thais saw Britain’s failure to stop the relentless expansionism of Japan as a sign of weakness. He lamented that this situation was worsened by the fact that Nazi and Japanese propaganda was widely published in Siam, overwhelming the “feeble” efforts of Britain’s Official News Service which was broadcast from a Reuters transmitter in the English town of Rugby.
He asked for Britain to “exhibit our strength” in Siam by sending a large naval force to impress the Thais.
I am convinced that some such thing, and nothing else, is required if we are going to recapture with the Siamese a degree of their confidence in that British might which they used to take almost as much for granted as the daily rising of the sun. As it is they are beginning, as I have said, to doubt our capacity to defend ourselves, and the Japanese and others like them neglect no opportunity of deriding us for our weakness.
An exasperated Foreign Office official wrote in a handwritten note on the official file:
It will be most unfortunate if Luang Sindhu blocks the plan for King Ananda to be educated in this country. I feel however that the attitude of the King’s mother will probably be decisive & it seems quite likely that his indifferent health will prevent him from going to Eton for a little time yet.
On 6 December 1938, at a peculiarly British event — the annual Bangkok ball for those who had studied at Oxford and Cambridge universities — ambassador Sir Josiah Crosby had another conversation with Prince Aditya. The prince told him that Siam’s cabinet had just agreed that Ananda would be sent to England for his education, but not to Eton — “chiefly because it was feared that he was not strong enough for public school life, but also because no precedent was known for the attendance at such a school of a reigning Sovereign”.
Prince Bhumibol, meanwhile, would be sent to Eton unlike this brother. “He is said to be physically stronger than His Majesty and to be a lad of character; Mr Pepys, the King’s tutor, tells me that he is very intelligent,” wrote Crosby. The implication was that Bhumibol was a much more sturdy, reliable and “English” boy than the allegedly effeminate and sickly Ananda.
But despite Ananda’s shortcomings, Crosby wrote, “the King’s modest bearing and gentle demeanour continue to endear him to all classes”.
In a postscript, Crosby wrote that he had just met Pridi Banomyong — referred to as “Luang Pradist” — who expressed “great relief” that Ananda would be educated in England, “for it would be very regrettable if His Majesty, a constitutional monarch, were to be educated in one of the totalitarian States, where he would be subjected to influences that were obviously undesirable”.
Pridi said that Ananda’s mother Sangwan was concerned that he had “weak lungs” and “was very apprehensive lest the English climate prove too rigorous for him at his present age”:
A Foreign Office memo recorded all of this approvingly, adding that the headmaster of Eton would have to be updated. A diplomat noted that because Ananda would have an English governess and an English-language tutor, “there ought to be no doubt about his ability to talk English in a year or two’s time”.
The foreign minister duly sent a letter to the headmaster of Eton, apologising for the news that King Ananda would not attend the school, but promising that Prince Bhumibol would become a pupil:
The Foreign Office wrote to Crosby in Bangkok to tell him everything appeared to be proceeding according to plan:
In a follow-up letter in early January 1939, the Foreign Office told Crosby that Eton College had been informed that King Ananda would not be sent to study there, but that it was hoped Prince Bhumibol would be enrolled as a pupil:
Crosby replied, enclosing a message from Prince Aditya:
The Foreign Office also wrote to Crosby in January 1939 to tell him that they were negotiating with Reuters to have its news distributed in Siam. They warned, however, that Reuters news lacked “the propagandist twist that is given to the German and Japanese messages”.
Meanwhile, rather belatedly, a British diplomat attached to the League of Nations finally replied with some information on Chillon College in Switzerland. Frank Walters reported that Chillon had not fully recovered from a large fire that destroyed its original buildings, and recommended an alternative school in Switzerland, the Alpine College, which was “really first rate as regards both the class of boys that are there and the tone which prevails”:
The Foreign Office politely replied with thanks, adding that the information would no longer be required. They were confident that Ananda was coming to England.
On 13 January 1939, Ananda left Siam with his mother and siblings to return to Switzerland, on the ocean liner Selandia. The British congratulated themselves that the visit had “proved to be a wise measure”, and “the welcome extended to His Majesty was spontaneous and sincere”. But they noted a further delay in plans to bring Ananda to England — for reasons of health, his mother wanted him to remain in Switzerland for another year or two:
In a letter to London on 20 January, Crosby tried to decipher the reasons for Sangwan’s reluctance to move Ananda to England. He noted the various medical excuses — the latest of which was that the young king suffered from “curvature of the spine” — and added that Sangwan believed it was inappropriate for a reigning monarch to be educated at a school like Eton. Sangwan was also concerned that in England, she and Ananda might be unduly influenced by the former King Prajadhipok, now living in exile in a country estate near London:
By February, Eton housemaster H.K. Marsden was rather impatiently asking the foreign minister whether he was still expected to keep a place open for King Ananda. His letter made clear he had never been “enthusiastic” about the proposal in the first place:
This led to a flurry of letters from Britain’s foreign minister the Earl of Halifax to Marsden and the headmaster of Eton:
Meanwhile, as soon as King Ananda and family left Siam, the government launched a crackdown against members of the royal family they accused of plotting a royalist counter-revolution. This caused panic among British diplomats, who suddenly became desperate to hide the fact that they had been trying to influence the education of King Ananda.
Over the spring and summer of 1939, the efforts of British diplomats to ensure Ananda received an English education became increasingly irrelevant. With a belligerent Nazi Germany seizing ever more territory in Europe, war was becoming inevitable. The Thai government, concerned that Switzerland could be invaded, tried once again to get King Ananda to return to Bangkok. Once again, Sangwan rejected the request.
In an exasperated confidential cable at the end of August, Crosby said Sangwan was “a very obstinate lady”. A handwritten note in the Foreign Office files said there were even rumours in Bangkok that Ananda might have to abdicate due to his failure to return:
A week after Crosby’s cable, the inevitable happened: Europe was engulfed by war.
Switzerland remained neutral, as war raged all around it. King Ananda stayed there through the whole conflict, with his mother and siblings, in the peculiarly peaceful bubble of Lausanne.
In December 1941, Japanese troops invaded Thailand, and the country quickly surrendered. On 25 January 1942, the Thai government declared war on Britain and the United States.
By mid-February 1942, Singapore had fallen to the Japanese. Facing the loss of its entire Far Eastern empire, Britain was confronting bigger problems than the need to secure the loyalty of the young Thai king.
But a few cables during the war showed that the British were still keen on ensuring that the Thai monarchy remained an ally. An exchange of telegrams in 1943 discussed rumours that Ananda and Sangwan were “pro-British”.
All of these documents are available in the British National Archives in Kew, London. But a handwritten note, written years later and accidentally left among the documents, makes clear the sensitivities of the discussion.
It says:
The present King of Thailand who, though a constitutional monarch, has considerable influence, is the brother of the King here referred to.
The death of the late King is still shrouded in mystery & the Royal Family are very sensitive to references to him.
This jacket [file] should certainly be withheld.
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Part II of this article is here.
