The Thai army officer and prime minister Sarit Thanarat (1908-1963) overthrew the government of Phibun Songkhram in 1957 and was responsible for initiating major programs of economic development and social welfare.

The son of Maj. Luang Rüangdetanan (Thongdi Thanarat), an army officer whose career was spent mainly on the eastern frontier and who is remembered for his translations from Cambodian, Sarit was born in Bangkok on June 16, 1908. His youth was spent with maternal relatives in the remote frontier district of Mukdahan in Nakhon Phanom Province, an experience which gave him a lifelong interest in and affinity for the Lao provinces of northeast Thailand. He attended a monastery school in Bangkok and entered the royal military academy in 1919. Completing his studies there only in 1928, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1929.

Sarit at first rose slowly in the army ranks. The first decade of his military career was...