Many years ago, while doing research in Nakhorn Srithammarat, I was directed to a retired police officer who was more than a hundred years old but still very sharp, very knowledgeable, the go-to source for local history. This once notorious police officer was highly esteemed in Nakhorn, the kind of citizen proudly introduced to a foreign visitor. I was unable to interview the policeman on that trip, and unfortunately, on my next visit, I learned he had passed away. To my delight, a few years later, I learned that Craig J. Reynolds had begun work on a biography of that police officer, Butr Phantharak, more popularly known as Khun Phan. While Power, Protection and Magic in Thailand is a biography of Khun Phan, it is much more, delving into the historiography of the South, magical traditions, and the development of the Thai nation.
Khun Phan was born just before the turn of the twentieth century—the exact date is disputed—and passed away shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century, so his life encompasses the transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy, from premodern to modern state. He served as a police officer from 1929 to 1964, spanning the last years of the absolute monarchy through the Sarit era. He rose to the rank of police major general and became commander of Division 8, in Nakhorn Srithammarat, the province of his birth. After his retirement, he served briefly as a member of parliament from Nakhorn Srithammarat, then spent his later years as a source of folk wisdom and magical insight for the Nakhorn community.
After presenting a concise biography of Khun Phan, Reynolds sets out a deeper context by examining Thai history as it relates to the mid-South and Nakhorn Srithammarat. He argues that Thai histories have focused on the monarchy, with scholars praising it for saving Siam from colonialism and for its wise leadership until the 1970s, and other scholars since that time seeking to reconstruct a more nuanced history, yet still with the monarchy at the center. There have been few alternatives, save social histories. Locally centered histories have been written by local public intellectuals, so that they have not gotten the attention they deserve, nor been integrated into a larger national framework. Reynolds seeks to fill this gap by situating the history of the mid-South more firmly in the national narrative. In addition to setting out such a historiography in some detail, by analyzing Khun Phan's career as he rotated from one province to another, while finding his world of policing and banditry remarkably similar in each place, Reynolds makes the point that local cosmos do share much in common, and can be fitted into a larger frame.
Khun Phan was a police officer at a time when nakleng—tough men who followed a type of social code—were common on both sides of the law. The bandits were often leaders of gangs and would steal from other villages while protecting their own. Nakleng police officers would take the law into their own hands, to protect their areas against bandits, so that each side followed a similar code of behavior. We see this same pattern throughout the areas where Khun Phan served, as he was often tasked with eliminating such nakleng and their gangs. In most cases, he acted quite ruthlessly—he had the word “executioner” tattooed across his knuckles, and “he prided himself on his right and ability to take human life” (p. 27). Because the nakleng on each side were armed similarly and behaved similarly, both bandits and police officers would seek out every advantage, including magical powers.
Reynolds sets out the nature of such magical practices and their use in Thai society, again highlighting the similarity of these practices across local areas. Khun Phan became adept at magical practices, strengthening his will, intimidating his enemies, and, he believed, making him resistant to the magic and violence of others. Later in life, he was frequently consulted for his knowledge of such magic, even by local politicians and officials.
Reynolds concludes by noting that “the social world . . . [Khun Phan] inhabited as he moved from post to post and town to town breaks down the distinctions between local, regional, and national that bedevil the entrenched categories that fragment writing about Thailand's past”—he succeeded everywhere he was sent and he succeeded in the national institution that enforced national law (p. 151). He did so in part because “the writ of central government stopped at the edge of the village and people relied on local forms of security unregulated by institutional constraints” (p. 157).
While the implications of these conclusions are manifold, two seem particularly important. First, while it may be true that Khun Phan succeeded everywhere he was sent, there is no record in the book of Khun Phan serving in Bangkok. He did rise to the rank of major general and commander of Division 8, but we do know that he was not promoted to top positions in Bangkok. Khun Phan and his techniques made him a success in the hinterlands, but not at the center, even during a period when notorious police officers thrived under Police General Phao. Marrying the nakleng cosmos of the hinterlands to the institutional and political structures of the center to achieve success at the national level was no easy task.
Second, scholars have generally argued that the modernizing reforms at the end of the nineteenth century, or the standardization of provincial administration during the first two decades of the twentieth century, brought about a form of internal colonialism in Thailand, asserting the control of the center over the provinces. Yet, if central government power did not extend into the villages, if the power of the national police relied on the local cosmos and not national institutions and national law, then neither centralization nor internal colonialism extended to the vast majority of the Thai population living in villages until the Sarit period. The separation of police styles and police officers in Bangkok and the provinces reflects the slow pace of centralization and internal colonialism.
Reynolds's ability to link the biography of Khun Phan to a wide range of key themes in Thai studies should give it a broad-based appeal to historians, anthropologists, and social scientists. Reynolds also makes comparative references to other Southeast Asian nations, and more broadly. Written in clear, straightforward language, the book is also readily accessible to readers with different levels of expertise on Thailand.
