Greater Thai Movement(01) Luang Vichitr Vadakarn

Greater Thai Movement(01)

In the meantime, during the first Administration of  PM Phibunsonggram (in the period between 1938 to 1944), there existed also a racial and cultural movement in Thailand. This was a “Greater Thai Movement” or “Pan-Thaiism” which had developed after the 1932 revolution.

Luang Vichitr Vadakarn

 Director-General of the Department of Fine Arts

The originator and chief protagonist of this movement

This movement aimed at incorporating into the Kingdom of Thailand all territories inhabited by peoples of T’ai origin. The areas principally involved were the Lao protectorate of French Indo-China, the Shan States of Burma, parts of Yunnan in China and Tonkin in French Indo-China. Carried to its logical extreme the demands could even have included Assam in British India.

Greater Thai Movement(02)Luang Vichitr's "Bangrachan"

Greater Thai Movement(02)

Luang Vichitr's "Bangrachan" has been one

of the most popular patriotic plays in Thailand

The originator and chief protagonist of this movement was Luang Vichitr Vadakarn, Director-General of the Department of Fine Arts and a member without portfolio of the Cabinet.

He composed music, wrote plays, designed ballets and posed as an authority par excellence. The main purpose of his artistic production was to kindle the fire of patriotism within the heart of his fellow-countrymen.

Greater Thai Movement(03)The patriotic song "Rak Muang Thai (Love Thailand)

Greater Thai Movement(03)

The Greater Thai Movement gave voice to the aspirations of those who were beginning to think of a cultural, if not of a national, unity among the scattered sections of the T’ai family of people. In 1935 Luang Vichitr put forward his theory.

The patriotic song "Rak Muang Thai (Love Thailand)

composed by Luang Vichitr

…the Thai peoples, who sprang from one and the same racial stock, speak varieties of one and the same parent language and profess all of them the same form of Buddhist faith, are said to have been forced southwards by their enemies from southern-western China, where, centuries ago, they had founded a kingdom of their own. They are represented today by the Shans…; by the Laos…; and by the Siamese…the total number of this distinct racial group…between 20 and 30 millions of which about 12 millions(excluding Chinese) form the population of Siam.

This movement also dad a politico-military aspect which became manifest after the collapse of France in June 1940 and the consequent vigorous pressing of Thai territorial claims upon Indo-China.

Luang Vichitr wanted all the T’ai speaking regions of Asia outside Thailand—whether under French, British or Chinese rule—to come under the sway of Bangkok and he reinforced his racial and cultural argument by the contention that Thailand “ must become a Power or Perish.” He based his contention upon what he alleged to be the opinion of Premier Phibunsonggram.

Greater Thai Movement(04)A patriotic book "Lueat Suphan"(Suphan's Blood)

Greater Thai Movement(04)

He expounded his credo in the course of a lecture which he delivered before a gathering of instructors and students of the Military Education Department of the General Staff of the Army on October 17} 1940. He declared:



A lot of books

written by Luang Vichitr

A patriotic book "Lueat Suphan"(Suphan's Blood)
written by Luang Vichitr

“What the Prime Minister said was true. When the present war is over, there would be no small nations in the world, all would be merged into big ones. So there were only two ways left for us to choose, either to become a Power or be swallowed up by some other Power.

“ If we got back our lost territory, then we could have the hope of becoming a Power, for, besides increasing the areas of our territory and increasing the population, we should be able to get into contact with those vast regions inhabited by Thais to the North of Sipsong Chuthai ( a territory now forming part of Northern Vietnam), where there were 24 million people of Thai blood and Thai descent, who still considered themselves Thais and spoke the Thai language.”

So Luang Vichitr dreamed of a Thai Empire extending from China in the North to the Malay Peninsula in the South, and from Vietnam on the East to Burma on the West, and such an empire would be constituted by adding to the present Kingdom not merely a portion of French Indo-China, but the Shan States under British protection and also other situated in Southern China.