Modern Coinage of Thailand
ALL OF THE KINGS of the current Thai dynasty are named Rama, plus their other long Thai names, which incorporate titles. The current King of Thailand is Rama X.
Modern Thailand was created by the work of King Rama V. Part of his longer name was Chulalongkorn. Over his 42-year reign he put a western style government in place, including a western style military and a western style finance system, had railroads built, schools, international trade, etc.
Like Japan, but not as much. Mostly because in Japan the power of the nobility was definitively destroyed. Not so much in Thailand. They got about half way there. Nobles always put their personal requirements first.
If you are an absolute monarch, and there are barons out there with their own power base, they will never stop trying to get more. You have to either make a deal or you have to destroy them. In Japan they destroyed them. In Siam they made deals.
The country was called Siam at that time, referring to the territory itself, which was essentially a little multiethnic empire ruled by a dominant ethnic group. Because there was an ethnic class society, disfavored ethnic groups had an automatic grievance, which could lead to disaffection, which could be exploited by outside interests.
The French, for example, used local animosities to peel Laos and Cambodia from the Siamese Empire. Then they turned around and incorporated those countries into the commercial operation that was French Indochina. No national self-determination for them, in the 19th century.
“One of the last things he did was to reform the currency, making it decimal.”
Territory in the Malay Peninsula went similarly to the British. The Thai overlords were not habitually nice to the subject populations, and the subject
