Monumental Warfare

In the absence of war, ancient Thai-Burmese conflicts are relived and revived through statue-building. The King Bayinnaung statue glowers down malevolently on the Thai border town of Mai Sai from higher ground in Tachilek, Burma just across from the river that marks the frontier. His bronze likeness also stands atop a hill at Burma’s southernmost Victoria Point, surveying Thailand’s Ranong Province across the estuary. The long-dead monarch is revered in Burma as a great warrior-king who conquered Siam. Thais, however, remember Bayinnaung as a brutal foreign invader who, on capturing Ayudhaya in 1569, looted the Siamese capital of its treasure, white elephants and many thousands of slaves. The provocative Burmese monument to the conquest of Siam is not a relic from a period of heightened tensions between the two countries. It was unveiled in 1996 as cooperation and business links between Bangkok and Rangoon were stronger than at any period since before World War II. Thai businessmen were throwing money at tourism and fishing ventures. The state-owned Petroleum Authority of Thailand had signed two deals for Burmese natural gas. There was significant Thai involvement in strong-arming recalcitrant rebel groups into ceasefires with Rangoon. Thai parastatal banks financed several Burmese infrastructure projects and Bangkok was a vocal supporter of Burma’s entry into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The statue in Tachelik presented a symbolism entirely at odds with the official spirit of fraternal cooperation between Bangkok and Rangoon, but perhaps served as an appropriate Burmese metaphor for the two countries’ tense, mutually distrustful relationship. Thailand had no equivalent provocative monument—statues of Siamese warrior-kings have all been built miles from its borders. In cold war terms it might be said that there existed a "statue gap." In the wake of a border skirmish in Chiang Rai province in February 2001 (that culminated in Burmese and Thai artillery units shelling each other from positions in Tachelik and Mae Sai), Burma’s state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper ran a series of "historical" articles by authors such as Tekkatho Myat Thu and Kappiya Kankaung that in glowing terms detailed King Bayinnaung’s conquest of Ayudhaya in 1569 and his magnanimous acts following victory while scorning Ayudhaya’s rulers for reneging on promises. "He was the king who had physical and moral courage and safeguarded justice," wrote Kappiya Kankaung of Bayinnaung. "Myanma hero King Bayintnaung [sic] behaved like the sun and fire in defeating [and] crushing Siam (Ayudhaya), which broke its promises and rose in rebellion." The February 2001 border incident provided the Third Army commander at the time, Lt-Gen Wattanachai Chaimuenwong, with an opportunity to correct the statue gap and so achieve monument-parity. He initiated a project to erect a statue of King Naresuan and a "victory pagoda" at Ban Payangpataek, Mae Sai district. "We want to pay gratitude to King Naresuan who brought us victory in the fight against the Burmese troops," said Lt-Gen Wattanachai in reference to his plan to build a statue of the revered Thai king. "Without King Naresuan the Great, Thais would have no land in which to live," he said. The monarch is celebrated for freeing Ayudhaya from Burmese control in 1584 then winning a series of battles that cemented Siam’s independence and expanded its territory. History is not quite so simple. In pre nation-state times there was a shortage of manpower, not land. Wars were fought for control of slaves and white elephants (which signified universal monarch status). There were no centralized governments, only a collection of larger and smaller kingdoms, each centered on a major city. Neither rulers nor their subjects had much sense of common national identity. Smaller mini-states entered into alliances with larger mini-states and paid tribute—but alliances changed fluidly depending on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the bigger states. The kingdom of Lanna, which was centered in what is now Chiang Mai, frequently switched between being allied with various Burmese dynasties and with Ayudhaya. For subjects of Lanna, inhabitants from the Thai central plains, who spoke an almost unintelligible dialect and used a different writing system, were almost as foreign as the Burmese. When Bayinnaung conquered Siam, his chief ally was Thammaraja, the ruler of Phitsanulok, who was installed as vassal chief of Ayudhaya. On Thammaraja’s death, his son, Pra Naret, known as the black prince, was crowned King Naresuan. The son of a man instrumental in Bayinnaung capturing and sacking Ayudhaya turned against the Pego court three years after Bayinnaung’s death. Naresuan later took one of Bayinnaung’s granddaughters as a wife. Naresuan’s rebellion probably had more to do with palace intrigues than nationalist fervor.