Postcards of Old Siam

It's always wonderful to have the certainty of how knowledge can reach us from every direction.

You can also learn from postcards.

I am of the middle generation, perhaps. The one who, as a teen, still loved to send and receive postcards. Before social media retired this habit.

It's a shame because it was a mix of different skills.

There was the choice of the image to send, the ability to condense the summary of a trip into a few lines, often the search for the postbox from which to send, and above all the waiting. Now we are not able to tolerate the delay of a few seconds between our message and the reply, on social media, everything is consumed in short moments, but at the time you could have waited even months and months before receiving or knowing that it had arrived. a postcard.

I still keep them all in a drawer.

 

There are those who have made this love a passion and even books.

The first book I got in my hands was about old postcards of Jakarta, written by collector Scott Merrilleess. Eventually, we met, became friends, and exchanged our respective books.

Since then, wherever I went, I have never stopped looking for these types of books. You learn a lot from them.

 

This time I want to tell you about Thailand, a country very dear to me even if it is the one I have visited the least – indeed, to be exact, I crossed the border from Malaysia one afternoon.

But for years I have been spending my time with part of the Thai community in Rome, with the Embassy, the cultural events that have been organized here in Rome, and above all seeing the photographic books on this splendid land, too often the victim of bad prejudices.

The book I'm talking about is called “Postcards of Old SIAM”, written by Bonnie Davis and first published for Marshall Cavendish in 1987.

Leafing through its pages takes a trip back in time, precisely in 1883, when the Royal Siamese Post Office was inaugurated and with it the first postcards.

Although it is not certain the date of the first postcards with images: the early 1880s remain the most probable.

The book covers a span of time from the last years of King Chulalongkorn's Kingdom to the early 1930s, during the end of King Prajadhipok's Kingdom.

The first images, both photographic and painted, from the early 1880s, are the typical illustrations found in the earliest books on Siam written by foreigners, which frequently tended to group together with the cultures of India, Burma, Indochina, Malaysia, and Siam.

They were the classic orientalist images to entertain and tickle the curiosity of Westerners towards these distant exotic lands.

For the first two years the Royal Siamese Post Office worked in collaboration with the British Consulate until in 1885 it became part of the Universal Postal Union (UPU).

As mentioned, the first postcards were printed in Europe, colored and orientalist style. Then in the 1990s, they began to depict typical scenes from the Kingdom or from the daily life of the Siam people.

The first postmarks date back to 1900, and many of them show the photographs of Robert Lenz and J. Antonio, who were among the first to open a photographic studio in Bangkok.

This passage is interesting because it coincides with the advent of photography in Thailand, they are linked.

It seems that the first photographs circulated because every year foreign residents called photographers from Europe to be photographed and send that photo as a wish for Christmas.

It had become customary to add a photograph on the greeting mails to be sent to their families in Europe, in addition to the postage stamp.

Obviously, to enjoy these European photographers was, first of all, King Mongkut, Rama IV, who reigned until 1868. The King loved to be portrayed and then sent pictures of him to the circle of friends which included nobles and rulers in Europe.

Photography and postcards were born at the same time, to represent this land.

The first postcards dated from the early 1880s / 1890s

 

Here are some pictures and stories behind them that struck me.

 

The first concerns the city of Bangkok.

It's interesting to see what the famous capital was like in the early 1900s.

Klong Somtet area is depicted in its everyday life, with the houses open to the front on the river and the atap roofs. Usually, the warehouses were open on the riverside. The whole city was made up of canals in which the boats kept their business non-stop, that's why the houses all faced the shore, to facilitate business directly from the boats.

The canals were crossed by bridges to allow people to cross the banks, one of the oldest and most famous was the Tapan Han Bridge, also called “Sapan Hun” (Sapan means bridge in Thai): this bridge, which no longer exists, is It was among the first to be built and was completely made of wood with sales shops throughout its structure, a truly unique feature, which seems to have been inspired by some bridges seen in Europe by Siam travelers.

With the new Fourth Reign of King Chulalongkorn, many new canals and roads were built, more modern. But it was still possible to see the Floating Houses, as happened to the daughter of a foreign diplomat in 1898, amazed to see a house move on the water. But, as she was told, it was not uncommon for these huge houseboats to break their moorings at night to get lost in the canals while families slept inside.

Klong Somtet, c.1900s

Another very interesting story is that inherent to Siam women.

In addition to places, the Siam people were among the main subjects of the first postcards.

Very often they were photographs taken in the studio, as in all the first photographs of the time in Asia and Southeast Asia.

And, more often than not, it was village women who were portrayed, rather than noblewomen, precisely to accentuate the exotic character.

What is striking is the short haircut. Already at the time there was a lot of focus on the charm and beauty of Siam women, despite – it is written – that male haircut was not very attractive for Western men.

But there was a reason. It seems that this type of haircut became a habit during one of the many wars of the past, where women dressed as male soldiers to deceive the enemy into believing that there were many more men in the villages than in reality.

It was only with the Fourth Kingdom that King Chulalongkorn's wives and daughters returned to grow long hair, while his queens still maintained the style of short hair.

“Young Siamese Woman” (c. 1900)

“Siamese Beauty” (c. 1900)

Village women were often portrayed in large numbers, because then the men had several wives, and all of them lived in one house, in the villages, with wives, daughters and sisters and aunts not yet married.

The clothes were very simple, often the women wore only the upper garment called Sabai, which covered the breasts and one shoulder.

In this way, they were recognized by the Lao women, who dressed in a dark western blouse and the typical blue skirt with white stripes.

Let's not forget that a part of Laos, at that time, was annexed to the Siam territory and many Laos people lived in Thailand.

“Women of Siam” (c. 1890)

In some of these postcards, women are depicted in their daily activities, so we learn that, during the rainy seasons, the Siam people stored rainwater in large clay vessels called “klong jars”, to be used during the dry seasons (an activity that is still used in some rural areas where water is scarce).

“Siamese Girl” (c. 1900)

 

In the portraits, the women pose in their simple beauty with the classic panung, the lower garment that is shaped, rolled and tucked between the legs.

“Siamese Girl” (c. 1900)

Then there is a whole series of photo-postcards relating to tribal peoples.

It's one of the sections I love the most.

They are called the Hill Tribe People.

As often happens, the tribal populations live in the hilly and isolated parts, with completely different lifestyles and clothes.

The first postcards date back to the late 1800s and try to document the great ethnic variety within the Siam territory.

Each of them wears traditional clothes that are still used during religious ceremonies and festivals.

In those centuries the tribal populations moved freely between Burma, China, and Laos, rejecting any concept of “border”.

In the late 1800s, these tribal groups wove their own heavy clothing, often black in color with very colorful embroidery, and women carried weapons with them like men. Both men and women wore turbans or very heavy headdresses to face the cold of the mountains, and – apart from footwear – certain traditional clothes are still worn today by some tribal groups.

It is written that many of them washed their bodies only on the last day of the year as a sign of good luck.

“Hill Tribe People" (c. 1890)

 

"Hill Tribe People" (c. 1900)

Education was also a subject of representation.

A classroom is photographed in a postcard from 1900. Until the late 1800s, only royals and children of the upper class could attend schools, and only boys, while the children of ordinary people received lessons from monks in monasteries.

To have the first school for girls, it is necessary to thank the wife of a missionary; moreover, mothers had to pay so that their daughters could attend school, and very often girls were taken into the house to work.

“School in Siam” (c. 1900)

The work, however, was mostly that of the fields made up of effort and collaboration with faithful buffaloes.

“A rural farmhouse” (late 1890s)

About the monks, in many postcards they are called “bonzes”, but this term was mainly used by foreigners or by those who wrote about Siam. But, even today, this term is rarely used, as is that of “priests”.

The monks have been the subject of many photographs and postcards, especially regarding their pilgrimages of prayer, walking barefoot and with umbrellas for the rain. Many of them left in search of the forest for meditation, but at the time it was enough to go not so far out of Bangkok to be immersed in the jungle.

“Bonzes en Voyage” (Bonzi traveling) (c. 1900)

A final word I spend on dance, which is one of the things that enchant me the most in Thailand.

In a postcard from 1905, Siamese dancers from the drama Manhora, an indigenous dance from Southern Thailand, is immortalized.

They wear bird clothes and tell the story of the Princess who came down to earth to become human.

It is noted that dancers are barefoot, as it was customary to remove the shoes when entering the house – however in the very early days no one wore footwear.

In another postcard the Ramakien dance is represented, the Siam version of the Ramayana, one of the most represented epic dances, even if – given its  length – it was rarely danced in all its duration.

Indeed, it is written that this dance could last even for days, and those who waited for it often only looked at parts of it and then returned home and continued the watching the next day.

In case the dances were hosted in the Royal court, the female dancers also performed in the male roles, in the case the performance took place in the ladies' quarters because only the King was admitted in this area.

“Siamese Dancers” (c. 1905)

"Siamese Classical Dancers" (c. 1900)

A few postcards were enough to bring out these stories. So, I will never stop recommending these types of books to you.  They seem to be arguments for collectors, but they are not. They are always doors that open onto cultures and traditions. 

We just have to wait for the postcard to reach us.

Are we still capable of knowing how to wait?

In my opinion, it's worth it.

 

See you at the next time-travel.

 

"Postcards of Old SIAM", Text by Bonnie Davis (Marshall Cavendish, 2005)

Italian version