Tunku Badlishah Sultan Abdul Hamid Halim Shah, A Postscript to the Bangkok-Kedah Personalised Relations

Abstract

For well over a century, close personal ties underlay relations between the rulers of Kedah and Siam. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Kedah emerged as Siam’s most favoured Malay tributary, and the state’s rulers pursued parallel agendas of socio-economic and administrative modernization. That special tie ended abruptly in 1909 when Siam signed a treaty ceding the Kedah to Great Britain, but Tunku Badlishah, a key figure in the Kedah administration, was a naturalized citizen of Siam and had close personal ties with King Vajiravudh. After the latter’s death in 1925, the relationship faded away, but Badlishah’s Thai background continued to influence his career in various ways even after he became Sultan in 1943. His reign coincided with Malaya’s push for independence, and he became a key figure in pressing for a continuing leadership role for Malaya’s sultans and a retention of traditional authority.