National Civil Service Day in Thailand

Thailands Civil Service has gone through a process of development from the time of the old Kingdom of Sukhothai (late thirteenth century). The bureaucracy was formally organized on the premise that it existed to serve the King. The staff comprised close relatives of the King and commoners who rose to high ranking posts on their own merits or through the King personal patronage. The Thais bureaucracy continued relatively unchanged until the second half of the nineteenth century when threats from colonial powers forced first King Mongkut and then his son King Chulalongkorn (1868- 1910) to make major changes to strengthen internal unity in order to face this external challenge. Commemorates the enactment of the first Civil Service Act in 1928.