Thailand, 1951 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 29 June 1951 dissident Royal Thai Navy officers seized Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram during a ceremony aboard the American dredge Manhattan and confined him on the warship Sri Ayutthaya, launching the coup attempt known as the Manhattan Rebellion. Negotiations between the navy rebels and the government broke down, and violent street fighting erupted in Bangkok between the navy and the army, which was backed by the air force. When aircraft bombed the Sri Ayutthaya, Phibun was able to swim to shore, and with their hostage gone the navy was forced to surrender.
The rebellion, the latest failed rising against Phibun's coup plagued second premiership after the 1948 Army General Staff plot and the 1949 Palace Rebellion, ended in a purge and drastic reduction of the navy, and set the stage for the army's consolidating Silent Coup in November 1951.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
80006291951- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-800-1951-06-29
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram was seized and briefly held hostage but escaped by swimming ashore and remained in power until 1957.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; injured. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak
Wikipedia
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →