1. For most Americans Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I, first performed in 1951, and later released as a film starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr in 1956, provides their only information about Thailand's history. These productions were based on the memoirs of an English governess who came to the court of Rama IV, also known as Mongkut, in 1862 to teach English to the absolute monarch's children (Stockwell 2000). Mongkut and on his son and successor, Chulalongkorn, successfully resisted the encroachments of the European powers then carving up Southeast Asia by astutely employing French, English, Dutch, and American advisors to help them maintain their independence. By the time of Chulalongkorn's death in 1910 Thailand (then kn
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