A 'Foreign' Princess in the Siamese Court - Princess Dara Rasami the Politics of Gender and Ethnic Difference in 19th-Century Siam by Leslie Ann Woodhouse (2009).pdf

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A “Foreign” Princess in the Siamese Court: Princess Dara Rasami,
the Politics of Gender and Ethnic Difference in Nineteenth-Century Siam
by
Leslie Ann Woodhouse
B.A. (Mills College) 1990
M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 2001
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
Requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
History
in the
Graduate Division
of the
University of California, Berkeley
Committee in charge:
Professor Peter Zinoman, Chair
Professor Andrew Barshay
Professor Penelope Edwards
Spring 2009
A “Foreign” Princess in the Siamese Court: Princess Dara Rasami,
the Politics of Gender and Ethnic Identity in Nineteenth-Century Siam
Copyright 2009
by
Leslie Woodhouse
Abstract
A “Foreign” Princess in the Siamese Court: Princess Dara Rasami,
the Politics of Gender and Ethnic Identity in Nineteenth-Century Siam
by
Leslie Ann Woodhouse
Doctor of Philosophy in History
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Peter Zinoman, Chair
The reign of Siam’s King Chulalongkorn (1868-1910) is possibly the best-studied
period in Thai history: a watershed era when Siam undertook its transformation from
kingdom to nation-state within a context of intense European imperialist competition in
Southeast Asia. Yet the roles played by women in this period – particularly the women of
the Siamese palace – remain largely unexamined. The deployment of a patriarchal dynastic
model in Thai historiography, as well as an Orientalist tendency to exoticize it as a
“harem,” discount Siam’s all-female “Inner Palace” as a purely domestic space and thus
outside the arena of legitimate political activity.
This project aims to restore the domestic arena of Siam’s Inner Palace to our
understanding of traditional Siamese power structures. It does so by focusing on the life of
a woman who functions as the exception that proves the rule: a “foreign” consort named
Chao (Princess) Dara Rasami, who came to the Siamese court from the neighboring
kingdom of Lan Na in the mid-1880s. Using her nearly thirty-year career as a royal consort
as a lens for looking into the lifeways of the Inner Palace, I examine the crucial political
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and social roles played by consorts in the Siamese palace. As an ethnically different woman
from a neighboring kingdom, Dara herself acted in two important capacities. Firstly, Dara
Rasami functioned as both a hostage and a diplomat for her home kingdom in Chiang
Mai, ultimately earning a somewhat higher status for her home region under Siamese rule.
Secondly, as a representative of cultural difference within the palace, Dara’s performance
of Chiang Mai identity was encouraged as part of Siam’s “modern” discourse of “siwilai,”
or a hierarchy of civilizations of which Siamese culture was seen as the pinnacle. As such,
Dara Rasami’s story provides a fresh perspective on both the socio-political roles played
by Siamese palace women, and Siam’s responses to the intense imperialist pressures it
faced in the late nineteenth century.
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