Today is Constitution Day in Thailand, bang in the middle of calls for a rewrite of the document and demands for the role of the Thai monarch to be codified in a new Thai Constitution. The day commemorates 20 different Thai Charters that have been scrapped and re-written since the Siamese Revolution in 1932. It’s a public holiday around Thailand. But what the day commemorate?
The Thai people refer to their country as “Mueang Thai” (land of the free) but foreigners were historically accustomed to call Thailand “Siam”. The role of the monarch is also a tradition in Thailand that goes back centuries. The earliest Thai kingdoms of note were the Kingdom of Sukhothai, founded in 1238 AD, and the later Kingdom called “Ayutthaya,” which lasted from the 1300’s until it was razed by the Burmese in 1767 (something the Thais have NEVER forgotten).
But modern Thailand started with…
