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They shunted King Bhumibol to the side during his early years on the throne, but his stature rose dramatically after he gave support to the 1957 coup that installed Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat as prime minister.

First, arch-royalist General Sarit Thanarat seized power in a September 1957 coup, to which Bhumibol gave his blessing.

“Grasping the powers of past dictators such as Sarit Thanarat goes against logic.”

The estate of Sarit Thanarat, who seized power in a coup in 1957 and ruled for six years, was valued at $140 million when he died, a sum equivalent to more than $1 billion in today’s dollars.

From 1958 to 1963, under the authoritarian rule of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, university lecturers and other intellectuals were commonly arrested for speaking against the regime.