Bones around My Neck

Abstract

Bones around My Neck: The Life and Exile of a Prince Provocateur narrates the story of Prince Prisdang Chumsai (1852-1935). He served as Siam's first diplomat to Europe during the most dramatic moment of Siam's political history, when its independence was threatened by European imperialism. Despite serving with patriotic zeal, he suffered irreparable social and political ruin based on rumors about fiscal corruption, sexual immorality, and political treason. In Bones around My Neck, Tamara Loos pursues the truth behind these rumors, which chased Prisdang out of Siam. Her book recounts the personal and political adventures of an unwitting provocateur who caused a commotion in every country he inhabited. His drama offers more than a story about Siamese politics: it also casts in high relief the subjective experience of global imperialism. Telling this history from the vantage point of a remarkable individual grounds and animates the historical abstractions of imperialism, Buddhist universalism, and the transformation of Siam into a modern state.

Relics in Transition: Material Mediations in Changing Worlds

“…While the "Prince-Priest" defended his small share as a fair exchange of gifts (he had presented albums of rare Siamese stamps to Peppé), it sealed the prospect of his immediate return to Siam. 57 Dr. Hoey's self-congratulatory note on this occasion reveals a heady mix of the diplomatic and religious concerns of the British Empire. With constant slippages between an ancient and long-forgotten past and an imperial present, the note attempts to present the British Empire as the new imperial benefactor of Buddhists, and pitches the empire's credentials for religious tolerance on a much higher scale than that displayed by Buddhist monarchs of the ancient past.…”

“…These plans, however, backfired badly. 32 In 1897, the interactions of the Siamese king with the local Buddhist monks in Colombo and Kandy were marred by an "awkward slippage of cultural and linguistic idioms." 33 In Colombo, dialogues between Chulalongkorn, in full European attire, and the local monks began in hesitant Pāli and ultimately broke down to a point where the king was reported to have expressed, in English, his inability to comprehend whether the monks spoke Pāli or Sinhalese.…”