Plaek Phibunsongkhram

Plaek Phibunsongkhram led Thailand for most of two decades, allied it with Japan, declared war on the Allies, and was back as prime minister within a few years of the war ending. He was an artillery officer who joined the People's Party in Paris and took the military side of the 1932 revolution, becoming prime minister in 1938. His programme was nationalist modernisation on the Italian and Japanese model: the country was renamed from Siam to Thailand in 1939 to assert the primacy of the Thai majority, cultural mandates prescribed hats, forks and the national anthem, Chinese schools and newspapers were closed, and a personality cult was built around him. He fought a short war with Vichy France over Laotian and Cambodian territory and won it with Japanese mediation. When Japan invaded in December 1941 he ordered a ceasefire within hours and joined the Axis; the Thai ambassador in Washington refused to deliver the declaration of war, which is a large part of why Thailand escaped occupation status in 1945. Removed in 1944, tried as a war criminal and acquitted, he returned by coup in 1948 and ruled until another coup removed him in 1957. He died in Japan. The name Thailand has stuck, though it was briefly reversed to Siam between 1945 and 1948 and then changed back by him. His cultural mandates reached as far as instructing citizens not to chew betel and to greet each other with sawasdee, which was coined for the purpose and is now universal. In his second period he allied with the United States, joined SEATO and let the country become a base for American operations in the region.

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