Taksin

Born March 1734, in the village of Bantak, in northern Siam; died 1782, in Thonburi. Siamese general; king from 1768.

A member of the estate of the officialdom, which had close ties with commercial circles, Taksin in the early 1760’s was governor of the large province of Kamphaeng Phet. In 1767 he led the liberation struggle against the armies of the Burmese feudal lords, who occupied Siam between 1759 and 1767, and in early 1768 he was crowned king, in Thonburi’s fortress. Taksin restored a centralized Siamese state, which had fallen apart during the war with the Burmese, and reimposed Siamese rule over Cambodia and the Laotian principalities. His attempts, however, to place the Buddhist community under the secular authority and to give state protection to the merchants’ estate were opposed by the big feudal lords and the higher clergy. In 1782, when he introduced a system of tax farming, a revolt broke out in Ayutthaya Province. Taksin was executed on orders from General Chakri, who had seized the Siamese throne.