Pridi phanomyong biography of abraham

The years of relationship between Thailand and the United States started when the latter was still very young.

Coming to Bangkok next month is Great and Good Friends, an exhibition that brings curated collections of historic gifts exchanged between the Thai monarch and noblemen and the US presidents to the eyes of the Thai people.

The exhibition is itself a gift from America to the people of Thailand, says US Ambassador to Thailand Glyn T Davies.

The Great and Good Friends exhibition will feature 79 items from 10 Smithsonian presidential libraries from around the US. Mr Davies said these items had never before been exhibited outside the United States, and many items are difficult to be seen even on American shores.

The showcase starts with a letter from "Phaja Surivongmontri" (Dit Bunnag) to US president James Monroe dated August 15, , which is the earliest known correspondence between the governments of Siam and the United States.

In , the United States was still "a young and small republic with little political experience beyong the Atlantic Ocean", as the ambassador puts it, and while the Chakri Dynasty was also young, a US sea ship entered the port of Bangkok seeking to buy sugar.

Not only sugar was brought back, but also the letter sent to the president through sea captain Stephen Williams, which proposed continued trade, contact and cooperation,m initiating the historic friendship.

"I think it is really interesting that it was really Siam, or Thailand, reaching out to the United States actually. That's very beautiful," the ambassador said.

"We are the opposite side of the world; it's not very likely that we should become in contact and become foreign allies."

The title Great and Good Friends actually came from the term president Abraham Lincoln used to address His Majes

FacebookTwitter

By Kerri Lawrence  |  National Archives News

WASHINGTON, March 23, — A new exhibition that opened this week in Bangkok, Thailand, highlights years of United States-Thai friendship and features more than 40 records and gifts loaned from the National Archives and Records Administration.

The items exchanged between Thai royalty and American Presidents—including ceremonial letters, head-of-state gifts, and an foot facsimile of the U.S.-Siam Treaty—have never before been exhibited outside the United States. They will be featured among manuscripts, musical instruments, textiles, and other 19th-century artifacts loaned from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution.

The “Great and Good Friends: Years of U.S.-Thai Friendship” exhibit opened on March 21, , at the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok, Thailand, and continues through June 30, United States Ambassador to Thailand Glyn Davies had the idea for the exhibition. 

He explained that in President Abraham Lincoln politely declined King Mongkut's offer of elephants. Lincoln did accept other gifts “in accordance with Your Majesty's desire as tokens of your goodwill and friendship for the American People.”

Lincoln promised the King that these treasures would be placed among the archives of the Government, “where they would remain forever as tokens of mutual esteem and pacific dispositions more honorable to both nations than any trophies of conquest could be.”

“More than years later, we are pleased to share these and other historic treasures, and are honored to partner with the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Meridian International, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Queen Sirikit Museum on the ‘Great and Good Friends’ exhibit,” Ferriero said. 

One National Archives record on loan for the exhibit includes the letter from King Mongkut to President James Buchanan in , offering the gift of elephants “. . . to be l

THE SMALLEST of the 79 artefacts on view in the exhibition “Great and Good Friends” – gifts exchanged between Thai monarchs and American presidents and their delegates over two centuries – is a golden cigarette case. Roughly square at about eight centimetres, it bears the Royal Cypher of King Ananda Mahidol.
And yet this smallest of tokens of affection played a significant role in rebuilding trust and friendship between the nations towards the end of World War II.

Pridi Banomyong, as regent, sent this gold cigarette case bearing King Ananda’s cypher to President Franklin Roosevelt as World War II drew to a close.

On behalf of the young King Ananda, Rama VIII, then studying in Switzerland and for whom he was serving as regent, Pridi Banomyong sent the cigarette case to President Franklin Roosevelt, who was rarely seen without a cigarette (usually lodged in a long, slender holder). 
“It was a message of peace,” US Ambassador Glyn Davies said last Wednesday as he opened the exhibition. “This is a power of gift to shape a history.”
Of course the Japanese army was occupying Siam at the time and in had coerced its prime minister into declaring war on America and the Allies. Then in , two agents of the US Office of Strategic Services sneaked into the Kingdom to meet Pridi, who had established Seri Thai (the Free Thai underground resistance movement). Pridi gave the Americans the cigarette case for Roosevelt, a signal that the King sought peace.
The message was clear, but the gift remained a secret for nearly 30 years. 

The United States and Thailand are this year celebrating the bicentennial of friendship, and the exhibition – continuing through June – is one of several observances planned.
It features portraits of the two countries’ heads of state, gold nielloware, garments, textiles, religious items, weaponry, basketry and musical instruments.
Davi

By Bob Bergin

It is a great story, and well known that in January Thailand’s ambassador to the United States refused to deliver Thailand’s declaration of war to the U.S. government. As a result, there was never a state of war between the two countries. But that is not exactly how things happened.

Thailand declared war on Great Britain and the United States on January 25, The British responded by declaring war on Thailand; the U.S. government ignored Thailand’s declaration of war.

In Thailand’s Secret War, his definitive history of the OSS, SOE, and Free Thai in World War II, Professor E. Bruce Reynolds cites a January State Department document that explains the reasoning behind the U.S. decision that “the USA not dignify the action of the present Japanese-controlled government of Thailand by a formal declaration of war, but treat Thailand as an occupied territory.” That decision had far-reaching consequences for Thailand when the war ended and for both Thailand and the United States for the rest of the 20th century.

On the British decision to declare war on Thailand, Reynolds quotes an unnamed British official: “Either the Thais are children and should be subject to control after the war or they are rogues and should be punished for taking the side of the Japanese.” This difference in British and American attitudes toward Thailand set the stage “for policy conflicts that would persist until the war’s end and beyond.”

The story of the undelivered Thai declaration of war started with the man who would have delivered it, Seni Pramot, Thailand’s ambassador to the United States. Reynolds notes, “Seni subsequently claimed that Bangkok had instructed him by telegram to deliver the war declaration to the State Department, but he dramatically informed [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull of his unwillingness to do so in a face-to-face meeting in the latter’s office. There is nothing in Hull’s office diary or other State Dep