This chapter documents the conservative reaction against the progressive, middle-class models of good manners that had prevailed since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932. The 1950s had witnessed a tense and complex struggle between royalists and anti-royalists. A military coup in 1957 brought an end to this struggle and marked the monarchy’s symbolic return to the centre of the Thai polity. It also ended twenty-five years of attempts, begun by the People’s Party, to develop constitutional rule and a representative democracy. The conservative political turn was also felt in the area of manners. Conservative writers connected to the Palace and the Ministry of Education promoted a return to more courtly styles of conduct that emphasized respect for superiors and recognition of the social hierarchy. The main target of manners discourse was the children and the youth in Thailand’s expanded compulsory education system

This chapter looks at the history of prostration in Thailand. The practice appears to have been adopted from the Angkorean Empire of the Khmers and was used at the Kingdom of Ayutthaya. It examines the modes of etiquette that were required in royal audiences for both Thais and foreign visitors. The chapter argues that by the nineteenth century Europeans regarded such practices as slavish and 'uncivilized'. This led, in 1873, to the young new king, Chulalongkorn, issuing a famous edict abolishing the custom of prostration and replacing it with European modes of paying respect such as bowing. But while in public functions involving Europeans the new modes of paying respect were observed, privately the custom of prostration before one’s superiors continued with little change.

This chapter argues that since the October 1973 student-led demonstrations which overthrew the military regime, the consensus surrounding the ideal of the gentleperson (phu di) has broken down. The political instability of the period since 1973, with repeated coups, bloody crackdowns, wild swings from relatively liberal, open government to reactionary conservative military regimes, and the frequent ripping up of constitutions and drafting of new ones, reflected the entry of the middle class and the rural and urban lower classes onto the political scene and the challenge they posed to the political domination of the military, bureaucracy, and the monarchy. Just as there was no consensus over how the country was to be governed, in the period following October 1973 there was great contention over appropriate conduct. Changes in government were typically followed by official moral and behavioural campaigns. The long-reigning King Bhumibol came to represent the ideal of the gentleperson. His death in 2016 symbolized the passing of a particular kind of civility.