Thailand, 1977 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 26 March 1977 a group of military officers attempted a coup in Thailand against the ultra rightist civilian government of Prime Minister Thanin Kraivichien, which the military had itself installed after the bloody crushing of the student democracy movement in the October 1976 Thammasat University massacre. The attempt, associated with General Chalard Hiranyasiri, sought to seize power but was quickly suppressed by forces loyal to the ruling National Administrative Reform Council dominated by Admiral Sangad Chaloryu and General Kriangsak Chamanan. General Chalard was captured and executed, a rare instance of a Thai coup plotter being put to death.
Prime Minister Thanin survived this attempt, but his rigid and repressive government had alienated much of the military establishment, and in October 1977, just months later, the same senior officers who had put down the March coup themselves overthrew Thanin in a successful coup, installing General Kriangsak as prime minister and continuing Thailand's long cycle of military dominated politics.
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
80003261977- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-800-1977-03-26
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Prime Minister Thanin Kraivichien survived the March 1977 coup attempt but was overthrown by the military that October.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. 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 →