Chulalongkorn

Chulalongkorn was born in 1853 as the son of Mongkut, Siam's fourth Chakri king. In 1868, he travelled with his father to Prachuap Khiri Khan Province to observe a solar eclipse on 18 August; both contracted malaria on the trip, and Mongkut died, leaving the throne to a teenager. Chulalongkorn reigned from 1 October 1868 until his death in 1910, a span defined by governmental and social reforms designed to modernise Siam while preserving its independence amid British and French colonial pressure on all sides. His reign weathered the 1893 Franco-Siamese crisis and the Haw wars, and though he made territorial concessions to both empires, his policies kept Siam from becoming a colony. He died in 1910, posthumously honoured as King Chulalongkorn the Great and remembered as Phra Piya Maharat - the Great Beloved King.