The Pridi Banomyong Library Rare Book Room, Thammasat University, Tha Prachan campus, owns a number of rare and useful items of potential interest to students and researchers.
Among them is the book Siam: The Realm of the White Elephant (Siam: Das Reich des weissen Elefanten) (1899) by Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg.
Hesse-Wartegg was an Austrian travel writer, born in Vienna.
His book portrays Siam during the reign of King Chulalongkorn.
The TU Library collection also includes circulating copies of the book in the original German language version.
A well-researched article by Associate Professor Aratee Kaewsumrit, Ph.D. of the Department of Western Languages, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, was published in the Humanities Review Journal, Year 40, Issue 1 (January-June) 2018.
One critic writing in 1986 stated that Siam: The Realm of the White Elephant offers unreliable ethnographic information about Siam and the Siamese.
This is because the author, who advocated German colonial policy, saw Siam in a Eurocentric, distorted way.
According to this viewpoint, Hesse-Wartegg was a nineteenth century creator of an imaginary geography and ethnology.
However, other German-language researchers have a higher opinion of Hesse-Wartegg’s writings, arguing that he praised Siam.
Hesse-Wartegg was a scientist as well as a travel writer.
In addition to Siam, his published accounts of travel included trips to Korea, China and Japan, Shantung and German China, and Samoa.
Before publishing his book on Siam, Hesse-Wartegg had already written several articles on the Kingdom in magazines and newspapers from 1896 onwards.
He arrived in Bangkok by ship from Singapore in 1894 and visited Ayutthaya before traveling to Hong Kong and arriving in Shanghai.
At the time, Siam had begun to develop into a significant site for German overseas trade, rivaling long-established British commercial concerns.
Germany recognized the risk of its trade with Siam being affected if Siam lost its independence. Siam sought to develop trade with Germany, which, unlike England and France, had not as yet tried to colonize Siam.
Foreign experts and celebrities from Siam and Germany exchanged visits, culminating with a visit by King Chulalongkorn to Germany as part of his European trips in 1897 and 1907.
Siam: The Realm of the White Elephant is just over 250 pages long.
It is divided into 35 chapters on topics such as:
- the life of the Siamese people
- religion and superstition
- art and festivals
- animals and the natural world
- modernization efforts
- and politics.
Hesse-Wartegg claimed that King Chulalongkorn’s trip to Europe in 1897
provoked completely unjustified attacks in a section of the foreign press.
His book and articles attempted to reply with a more accurate view of Siam.
He described the natural world as well as royal palaces and temples in Bangkok.
His vocabulary was conventional in terms of evoking exotic aspects for German readers of Bangkok, which is said to be
- fairy-like
- picturesque
- fantastic
- splendid
- magnificent
- delicious
- original
- and strange.
Hesse-Wartegg suggested that Bangkok at the end of the 1800s was like a fairy tale or dream. He asserted:
Once upon a time there was a king who lived in a fairy palace made of the most beautiful marble and crystal; he had a thousand of the most lovely women and two thousand slaves, all ready to fulfill his slightest wish. He lived in splendor and glory; his seven-fold crown shone and sparkled with diamonds; his precious garments were completely covered with rubies, and like him, his maids also owned the most precious jewelry. […]. A wide river flowed through the city, and on its back floated thousands and thousands of boats.
Further out, however, in the area surrounding the city, elephants and tigers lived […]
He argued that the splendor of the Siamese royal court surpasses that of the courts of China, Japan and India.
He described a royal cremation ceremony, a Royal Barge Procession, and noted that Siam was among the few nations in which original customs are still thoroughly preserved.
He believed that Westerners can only see comparable festivities in large opera theaters where they are put onstage.
Hesse-Wartegg married an American opera singer, so he had a good idea of what could be seen in opera houses of his day.
He also compared Siam to A Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age.
However, he criticized the supposed waste of money and labor that accompanied lavish Siamese court festivities.
He considered the Siamese way of governing as moral crouching before the will and whims of the king.
Despite this comment, Hesse-Wartegg esteemed King Rama V as one of the best-loved rulers in Siamese history, as well as being one of the greatest and most enlightened princes.
He admired King Chulalongkorn’s efforts to modernize Siam through reforms based on the European model, while also preserving traditional Siamese culture.
In this way, Siam was superior to Japan circa 1900.
According to Hesse-Wartegg, Japan opened itself to Western culture, but allowed its old traditions to be lost.
In the arts, Hesse-Wartegg appreciated Siamese music and dance but considered the arts and crafts and dramatic art in Siam as less developed than in Japan, India or China.
Hesse-Wartegg also had a mixed view of Siamese religious life, although he admired the splendor of Buddhist temples. He complained:
True piety seems to be little present, neither among the priests nor among the believers.
They bow and prostrate themselves before the altar, clap their hands and kneel down when praying, but perhaps immediately afterwards they chew betel, smoke or start a fun conversation with their neighbors. Yes, the temples are even used for games. […]. Buddhism is definitely in decline in Siam, despite all the splendor of the temples and all the offerings, there is indifference to religion, and the only real desire seems to be to gain admission to Buddhist bliss from their deity through gifts and acts pleasing to the Buddha that have nothing to do with religion. […] No wonder that almost a twentieth of the entire male population of Siam is in the monasteries and that thousands of men enter the priesthood on various occasions. If someone has food worries, lacks sufficient income, wants to separate from a wife who is bothersome to him, is work-shy, or wants to escape military service or the enslavement and oppression of the mandarins, he quickly gets himself admitted to a monastery. No special prerequisites are required for this, in fact in most cases joining a monastery is a real family celebration and is perhaps celebrated by the whole village.
Legally, Hesse-Wartegg asserted, transparent justice in court proceedings, honesty, and wisdom was lacking among Siamese judges in 1899.
These faults point to a lack of a true culture in Siam, according to the Eurocentric, prejudiced author.
Nevertheless, King Chulalongkorn’s informed interest in European culture and civilization was seen as a potential source for reform.
Until then, Hesse-Wartegg charged, Siam was merely a halfway civilized nation.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)