Dr. Jan Dressler

Jan Dressler graduated in 2010 with an M.A. in Languages and Cultures of Southeast Asia (major) and Public Law and Anthropology (minors) from the Asia-Africa-Institute of the University of Hamburg.

After being awarded a scholarship from the State Graduate Funding Program of the City of Hamburg (HmbNFG), Jan Dressler pursued research for a dissertation project on “The Development of Siamese Viceroyalty, 1782-1885“, which he successfully completed in 2024.

Between 1782 and 1885, six princes of the Chakri Dynasty—three brothers, one son, one uncle, and one cousin of the reigning monarchs—occupied the exalted position of uparatcha (P. uparājā) or wang na, the traditional office of the crown prince or viceroy within the institutional framework of the premodern Siamese monarchy. Although during the late Ayutthaya period (1688-1767), the first signs of a developmental trajectory towards a decrease in functional differentiation between the offices of king and crown prince had already become manifest already, it was immediately after the establishment of the Chakri Dynasty in 1782, that this trend was officially recognized by an increase in the apanage of the viceroy as well as the ranks and numbers of officials attached to the institution. From a fortified palace complex in the capital city of Bangkok, which housed a bureaucracy carefully modeled on the royal court and its administrative apparatus, these viceroys assisted their sovereigns in deliberating and implementing government policies. The notion of the Siamese state as being ruled by two kings, an impression shared by Siamese subjects and foreign observers alike, became a recurring topic in nineteenth-century descriptions of the kingdom’s governmental structure. Despite the inherent potential for conflict posed by the existence of multiple centers of legitimate authority—and notwithstanding occasional actual struggles for the control of resources and prestige—this peculiar institutional arrangement was repeatedly reinstated and maintained for over a century.

To reconstruct the ideal normative foundations of the institution of uparājā—particularly its origin and purpose—and to reposition the viceregal office within its nineteenth-century Siamese cultural context, information was drawn from a wide range of primary sources, including traditional treatises on statecraft and historiography, the Tipiṭaka and its commentaries, as well as once-popular works of religious edification such as the Mahāvaṃsa and Rasavāhinī. Special emphasis was placed on the examination of Buddhist scripture of Southeast Asian provenance, notably the Paññāsa-Jātaka, Sivijaya-Jātaka, Rājovāda-Jātaka, and, most significantly, the Lokaneyyapakaraṇa.

Against this backdrop, the development of the viceregal institution, from the late eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries, as shaped through the agency of internal actors and external forces, was documented on a substantially expanded evidential foundation. The required extensive research in European and Southeast Asian museums, libraries, and archives was made possible by generous travel bursaries provided by the DAAD and the École française d'Extrême-Orient.

This research project complements previous studies on the evolution of Siamese viceroyalty by drawing on key concepts of institutional theory, particularly the indicators of institutionalization as originally defined by Samuel Huntington (1968) and later expanded and reformulated by Klaus Goetz and Guy Peters (1999).

Current research and writing projects explore the following topics:

(1) King Taksin’s pursuit of spiritual attainment and the relationship between monarchy and  saṅgha during the late Thonburi period;

(2) The circulation of Pali manuscripts among Theravāda Buddhist polities in the nineteenth century;

(3) The institutionalized practices of deliberation between state authorities and the saṅgha, as well as the significance of scripture in the formulation of policy.