In Siam with the Yanks

The Americans in Thailand deserve full credit for offering a fair and honest appraisal of themselves in “Americans in Thailand”, an exhaustive and valuable compendium of the men and women from the Land of the Free who made their mark on the Land of Smiles. It includes the “ugly” variety right alongside the worthy Yankee heroes who’ve earned mentions in the annals of Thai history.

The launch party for the profusely illustrated, 300-page book missed Independence Day by four months, but its authors and editors might still have been forgiven for waving around the Stars and Stripes – Americans have much to be proud about in the world. The fact that they do not do so is one of this collection’s most pleasant surprises. And there are quite a few others. 

Most Thais and expatriates can list a good number of Americans who’ve come to prominence in Thailand, from the missionary Dan Beach Bradley and pioneering entrepreneur Robert Hunter (of Chang and Eng fame) to the CIA spooks-turned-groundbreaking businessmen Jim Thompson and Alexander MacDonald, to the esteemed author William Warren and the royally favoured tycoon Bill Heinecke.

They’re all fully profiled in “Americans in Thailand” alongside shorter visits with the endless succession of writers who’ve found their muses here. You have Graham Greene, who described the original “Ugly American”, Carol Hollinger (“Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind”) and Jack Reynolds, who wrote “A Woman of Bangkok”, the original bar-girl novel. Also included are the prominent journalists who burnished their reputations using Bangkok as a base.

But there are scores of names that will be unfamiliar to most people, even to their own countrymen. I knew nothing about the founder of the Neilson Hays Library, for example, or Edward Strobel, the general adviser who guided Rama V’s hand in dealing with slavery, gambling and European colonialists. 

There are dozens of notable people like this who are little noted elsewhere. Genevieve Caulfield established the Bangkok School for the Blind. Architect Robert Boughey designed Q House and the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Harry “Heine” Aderholt was the brigadier general who kept Air America flying.

As to the US war in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, Thai-American relations get a detailed and candid examination in the chapter called “Armed Americans”. Once revealed, the truth about the two nations’ cooperation during that period, it begins, “proved to be both the glue which strengthened it and the centrifuge that eventually pulled it apart”.

Among other surprises, I didn’t know that Ulysses Grant spent five days in Siam in 1879, during a world tour following his presidency. The Civil War victor was in Singapore when King Chulalongkorn invited him to pay a visit and is quoted as subsequently saying that, of all the places thus far on his voyage, “I have seen nothing that has interested me more than Siam.”

But perhaps the most laudatory revelation of all comes right at the beginning of the book. Contributing writer Robert Horn came across a letter from court official Dit Bunnag to President James Monroe showing that the first Americans to visit Siam were likely Captain Stephen Williams and his ship’s crew. Williams came in search of sugar in 1818 – three years earlier than the history books currently place the first American arrival – and went home with an order for Yankee flintlock rifles.

Joining Robert Horn on the book’s roster of writers are journalists past and present Nicholas Grossman (also mentioned as editor), Denis Gray, Jeff Hodson, Wesley Hsu and the lone non-American, Jim Algie (like me, a Canadian), a former Nation staff member and still occasional contributor. Credit is shared with archivist Grissarin Chungsiriwat, William Warren, Purnama Pawa and Theerawat Pojvibulsiri.

There are a few disappointments with “Americans in Thailand”, mainly that the writing doesn’t glisten as it should for a subject like this. The prose in general is as flat as the Central Plain to which Westerners were once restricted. Only occasionally does a clever turn of phrase light up the eye. Famous or notorious, the book’s subjects have ample colour in their biographies to inspire a bit of poetry at least. More starry spangles, a little more of the rockets’ red glare, would have been welcome.

Didier Millet, deservedly seen as a “prestige” publisher, has done better in the past, including with the cover illustration, another sophomoric collage of heads clipped from photos, of the type used on the otherwise excellent “Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946”. You have to go to the very end of the book to find the heads identified by number.

While in the neighbourhood, you’re apt to find the index awry in some instances. William Warren, for example, isn’t always where he’s supposed to be. And the broad brushwork of the chapters prevents readers from quickly locating any specific individual. It would have been helpful to list the people covered in each chapter in the table of contents up front. 

As with “Chronicle of Thailand”, the Bangkok Post (founded by Alex MacDonald) and its archives played a primary role in the creation of “Americans in Thailand”. Again, and certainly despite the small flaws just mentioned, the newspaper company must be congratulated on an eminently collectible resource and an immensely engaging history.

 

Americans in Thailand 

By various authors

Published by Didier Millet, 2014

Available at leading bookshops, Bt1,300 (hardback)

 

Reviewed by Paul Dorsey