Article

Medals connected with Siam

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Medals connected with Siam

E. Wodak’s 1951 article catalogues a small group of commemorative medals struck in France to mark diplomatic encounters between Siam and the French court, spanning from the embassy of King Narai to Louis XIV in 1686 to King Chulalongkorn’s visit to the Paris mint in 1897. The piece addresses the numismatic problem posed by the scarcity of documentary records for Siamese medals, relying instead on physical specimens in the author’s own collection and on the earlier description by J. Haas (1880).

Summary

Wodak’s central concern is the documentation of Siamese medals produced outside the kingdom, a category he notes is “numerous but difficult to deal with owing to the lack of records and references” (p. 176). The article proceeds through four principal medals, each tied to a specific Franco-Siamese diplomatic event. The earliest, a copper medal of 1686, commemorates the audience granted to Siamese ambassadors by Louis XIV following the successful second embassy dispatched under the influence of the Greek-born Prime Minister Constantine Phaulkon. Wodak draws on Haas’s 1880 description and wood-engraving for this piece, noting that two examples reside in the Louvre and one in Bangkok, while a smaller variant of 41 mm diameter also exists (pp. 176–177).

The remaining three medals are described from the author’s own specimens. A silver medal of 1861 marks the reception of King Mongkut’s ambassadors by Napoleon III at Fontainebleau on 27 June of that year; an identical bronze version was presented to the Bangkok Museum by Prince Wan Waithayakon, Thailand’s ambassador to the United States (pp. 177–178). A silver medal of 1897 commemorates Chulalongkorn’s visit to the Paris mint, where the king expressed interest in modernising Siamese coinage and ultimately discontinued the issue of bullet coins (p. 178). Finally, a set of medals in silver and bronze of 1898 marks the king’s return to Siam, with a smaller bronze variant of 37.5 mm that Wodak attributes to a Bangkok workshop on the basis of its less precise die work (pp. 178–180).

Key Findings

  • The 1686 copper medal (73 mm, 172 g) was struck in very limited number; two are held in the Louvre and one in Bangkok. A smaller variant measures 41 mm and weighs 28.7 g (pp. 176–177).
  • The 1861 silver medal (72 mm, 204.4 g) bears the inscription “RECEPTION DES AMBASSADEURS DES ROI DE SIAM AU PALAIS DE FONTAINEBLEU 27 JUIN 1861”; an identical bronze exists in the Bangkok Museum (pp. 177–178).
  • The 1897 Paris mint medal (41 mm, 39.8 g) records Chulalongkorn’s visit on 16 September 1897 and carries the mint’s founding date M.DCC.LXX (p. 178).
  • The 1898 return-to-Siam medals exist in 50 mm silver (69.6 g) and bronze (66.3 g), plus a 33 mm silver version (15.25 g); a 37.5 mm bronze (23 g) with a blank reverse was likely produced in Bangkok (pp. 178–180).
  • King Narai’s reign (1657–1688) is the only pre-Bangkok Dynasty period for which bullet-coin marks can be identified, making his era of particular interest to coin collectors (p. 177).

Conclusion

Wodak’s definitive takeaway is that the Franco-Siamese medal group, though small in number, provides a tangible numismatic record of diplomatic modernisation in Siam across two centuries—from the early modern embassy of Narai’s court to the late nineteenth-century reform of coinage under Chulalongkorn—filling a gap left by the general absence of archival documentation for Siamese medals.

Context

  • The article is grounded in the author’s personal medal collection, supplemented by Haas’s 1880 Shanghai publication for the 1686 medal; no institutional archive is cited.
  • The study contributes to the small body of numismatic literature on Siamese commemorative issues, a field Wodak himself identifies as underdocumented.

References