Kingdom in Crisis

Andrew MacGregor Marshall, A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand’s Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century.

London: Zed Books, 2014. Pp. viii, 220; note on names, map, notes, bibliography, index.

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The long-awaited publication of Andrew MacG. Marshall’s book occasions two reviews, from very different angles, from Patrick Jory and Lee Jones.

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Reviewed by Patrick Jory.

It is well known that Thailand has been in the throes of a debilitating political crisis since 2005. But what is the real cause of that crisis?This is the question that Andrew MacGregor Marshall attempts to answer in this provocative, much-awaited book, A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand’s Struggle for Democracy. A clue to the argument is in the book’s title: it is a crisis of a “kingdom”, or, more specifically, Thailand’s monarchy.

Marshall, a former Reuters journalist, has for some years now been the foremost commentator on the taboo subject of the role of the monarchy in Thailand’s politics. He has been a particularly active user of on-line media to get his ideas across to the public. He “broke” the story of the Wikileaks cables that dealt with Thailand, in which senior figures in the Thai establishment discuss, among other things, the involvement of Queen Sirikit in the 2006 coup and their antipathy towards Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. He has written and published on-line the extended essays, “Thai Story”and “The Tragedy of King Bhumibol”, which broach some of the material that is presented in A Kingdom in Crisis. His Facebook page is a go-to site for news on members of the Thai royal family, and he has a large number of followers on Twitter. A Kingdom in Crisis represents the fullest expression of the views that Marshall has been making known in recent years.

His argument is that at the heart of the political crisis that has convulsed Thailand since 2005 is a bitterly fought but undeclared struggle over the succession to the throne.

The remainder of this review is available here.

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Reviewed by Lee Jones.

Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s A Kingdom in Crisis has been eagerly and long awaited by many Thailand watchers. Having resigned from a senior Reuters post in 2011 to publish a series of articles on Thailand’s political crisis based on leaked US diplomatic documents, “AMM” has become a vociferous critic of Thai elites and especially the monarchy, developing a wide following on social media. A Kingdom in Crisis was anticipated as the definitive statement of AMM’s most controversial thesis: that “an unacknowledged conflict over royal succession is at the heart of Thailand’s twenty-first political crisis” (page 3). However, despite its many merits, the book does not quite clinch this argument.

A Kingdom in Crisis is a bold, uncompromising and highly critical survey of Thailand’s ongoing political crisis. The focus, however, is squarely on the monarchy, rather than on its place within Thailand’s broader polity and political economy. The first nine chapters all relate to the period before 2000, delving into ancient history to underscore the brutality of the absolutist monarchy and the normality of power struggles over the succession. Only three chapters then deal with the current conjuncture and make AMM’s central argument. The background is, of course, interesting and useful, and although it may contain little new for Thailand specialists, to collate the truly damning history of the Thai monarchy in an accessible manner is a worthy endeavour.This is particularly true in a context in which even mere academic commentary on the monarchy’s ancient history risks prosecution and hefty jail sentences under Thailand’s deeply obnoxious lèse majesté laws.

The remainder of this review is available here.