Constantine Phaulkon

Died: 1688

Constantine Phaulkon was a Greek employee of the English East India Company who became for a time in the late 17th century the chief advisor to the Siamese king.

Phaulkon married a Japanese Christian and, taking up residence in the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya, became chief advisor to King Narai. Once English and Dutch pressures on the king began to become troublesome, however, he called for aid from the French East India Company, resulting in armed conflict between allied French and Siamese forces, and English ones, in the streets of Bangkok; the French occupied the city, and in 1688 Phaulkon was arrested and later killed, and Narai was succeeded by Phra Phetracha. The French were convinced to quit their occupation of the city, however, before long.

His Japanese wife survived him, and later became head of the royal kitchens.^[1]

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References

Warren Cohen, East Asia at the Center, Columbia University Press (2000), 206.

↑ William Wray, “The Seventeenth-century Japanese Diaspora: Questions of Boundary and Policy,” in Ina Baghdiantz McCabe et al (eds.), Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks, Oxford: Berg (2005), 87.

[1] William Wray, “The Seventeenth-century Japanese Diaspora: Questions of Boundary and Policy,” in Ina Baghdiantz McCabe et al (eds.), Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks, Oxford: Berg (2005), 87.

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