Playing Welsh in Nineteenth-century Siam: Anna leonowens and Her Son Louis's Adventures in Re-presentation in the Kingdom of Siam

Since the mid-nineteenth century, Siam had seen an increasing number of British visitors, including the English, the Scots and the Irish. The presence of the Welsh remained largely unknown until it was first associated with the story of Anna Leonowens, a governess at the Siamese Court (1862–7), who claimed to be born in Caernarfon to an English army captain and his Welsh wife. Modern scholarship has debunked this false account, showing that Anna was an Anglo-Indian ancestry. Anna left Siam for good in 1867. Her son Louis Leonowens (1856–1919), returned to Siam in 1881 as a teak merchant in northern Siam for the British-owned Borneo Company, and later founded his own company, but unlike his mother, Louis never claimed a Welsh identity. This article uses the case of Anna and her son to explore aspects of Welsh identity in the context of the British presence in Southeast Asia. It casts light on British society in Siam and the ideas and hierarchies of race and class within the expatriate community.