For Honour and The King: The Siamese Cadet School from the 1900s to 1920

Abstract

This paper investigates the Siamese cadet school's instillation of loyalty to the king, religion, and nation to its cadets from the 1900s to the 1920s. This work suggests that the fact that the reformed Siamese army policy of not engaging in military operations outside the kingdom resulted in the characteristic of its ideology. The fact that the Siamese armed forces were functioned to protect the throne and internal securities, loyalty to the king, religion, and the nation, became a core idea of military ideology. As a place to produce prospective commissioned officers, the Siamese cadet school played an important role to inculcate such ideology to its students. It emphasized the pride and honor of being a soldier was the duty to protect the king, religion, and the nation. The process of ideology inculcation in the school was done through entrance examinations, teaching ethics and geography, extracurricular activities, laws, and royal visits. All these activities were gradually intensified from the 1900s to 1920. To demonstrate the argument, this work employs a historical approach as a research framework, analysing and contextualizing historical documents. The Royal Government Gazette, the cadet school's curriculum and books, and Senasueksa lae Phaewitthayasat, a military magazine, were all used as evidence.

Keywords: The Siamese army, military ideology, the Siamese cadet school, Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy