Sarit Thanarat
Sarit Thanarat ruled Thailand from October 1958, when he made his second coup in thirteen months, abolished the constitution, the parliament and the parties and gave himself the power to order any act he judged necessary under article 17 of an interim charter, to his death in December 1963, the field marshal who had removed Phibun in September 1957 and then removed the government he had installed. He built the Thailand of the next half-century. The monarchy was brought back to the centre after twenty-five years of the revolutionaries' eclipse, with the young King Bhumibol sent to tour the provinces and the world and the royal ceremonies restored. The word development was made the state's purpose. There was the first national plan of 1961, the national development board, the American aid and the American bases that the Vietnam war would fill. There were the highways to the north-east, the universities in the provinces, and the growth of eight per cent. There was the order that shot arsonists and Communists without trial, shut the newspapers and ran the opium trade, in which he had a share. He was born in Bangkok in 1908, the son of an army officer, grew up in his mother's Lao-speaking north-east, went through the cadet school, fought the French in Indochina in 1941 and the Shan in 1942. He rose in the coup of 1947 that brought Phibun back, becoming commander of the First Army, the Bangkok garrison, and then of the whole army in 1954, while his rival Phao ran the police. When the election of February 1957 was rigged for Phibun's party and the students marched, Sarit took their side, and in September he took the country. He was in the United States for treatment for cirrhosis when his deputy's government floundered in 1958. He came home to make the coup that ended it. He died in December 1963 at fifty-five, of the liver. The estate the courts then fought over came to a hundred and forty million dollars, with fifty mistresses and the opium money in it, which the country took as the price of what he had built. His deputy Thanom ruled for the next ten years on the same terms until the students of 1973 ended them.
- Lived: 1908 CE – 1963 CE
- Nationality: Thai
- Roles: prime minister, general, dictator
