Rama I

Rama I (born March 21, 1737, Ayutthaya, Siam—died Sept. 7, 1809, Bangkok) was a Siamese king (1782–1809) and founder of the Chakkri dynasty (q.v.), which reigns in Thailand.

(Read Sir Walter Scott’s 1824 Britannica essay on chivalry.)

Rama I was the son of a high court official and his part-Chinese wife. At the time of the Burmese invasion of Siam in 1766–67, he was serving as chief judge in Rat Buri province. After the fall of Ayutthaya (1767), the Thai capital, he joined the service of Taksin, the new Siamese king, and soon became the new military commander of the northern provinces (Chao Phraya Chakkri) and his most effective general. He spent most of the next decade leading Thai armies in the field that repelled the Burmese and established Siamese suzerainty over Laos, Cambodia, and the northern Malay states. Early in 1782 a rebellion in the capital against the half-insane Taksin brought him back from campaigns in Cambodia to assume the throne of Siam on April 6.

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As king, Rama I moved the capital to Bangkok and undertook a thorough renovation of all the institutions of public life. He was particularly effective in strengthening the Buddhist monkhood, for whom he convened a general synod to define the orthodox Buddhist scriptures (1788–89); and he undertook the first complete codification of Thai law (1805). He strengthened the administrative system to control a newly extensive empire, and he established Thai military supremacy throughout the central portion of the Indochinese peninsula. Rama I was a lavish patron of literature and sponsored the first full Thai version of the Indian epic Rāmāyaṇa (Thai: Ramakien) and translations of literary works from Chinese, Mon, Persian, and Javanese.

The king’s reign title was Phraphutthayotfa Chulalok: Rama I is the title posthumously conferred upon him by King Vajiravudh.