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Thailand The Crisis of 1893
The steady encroachment of the two most aggressive European
powers in the region, Britain and France, gravely threatened Siam
during the last years of the nineteenth century. To the west,
Britain completed its conquest of Burma in 1885 with the
annexation of Upper Burma and the involuntary abdication of
Burma's last king, Thibaw. To the south, the British were firmly
established in the major Muslim states of the Malay Peninsula.
Even more than Britain, France posed a serious danger to
Siamese independence. The French occupied Cochinchina (southern
Vietnam, around the Mekong Delta) in 1863. From there they
extended their influence into Cambodia, over which Vietnam and
Siam had long been struggling for control. Assuming Vietnam's
traditional interests, France obliged the Cambodian king,
Norodom, to accept a French protectorate. Siam formally
relinquished its claim to Cambodia four years later, in return
for French recognition of Siamese sovereignty over the Cambodian
provinces of Siem Reap and Battambang.
The French dreamed of outflanking their British rivals by
developing a trade route to the supposed riches of southwestern
China through the Mekong Valley. This seemed possible once France
had assumed complete control over Vietnam in the 1880s. The small
Laotian kingdoms, under Siamese suzerainty, were the keys to this
dream. The French claimed these territories, arguing that areas
previously under Vietnamese control should now come under the
French, the new rulers of Vietnam.
Auguste Pavie, French vice consul in Luang Prabang in 1886,
was the chief agent in furthering French interests in Laos. His
intrigues, which took advantage of Siamese weakness in the region
and periodic invasions by Chinese rebels from Yunnan Province,
increased tensions between Bangkok and Paris. When fighting broke
out between French and Siamese forces in Laos in April 1893, the
French sent gunboats to blockade Bangkok. At gunpoint, the
Siamese agreed to the cession of Laos. Britain's acquiescence in
French expansionism was evident in a treaty signed by the two
countries in 1896 recognizing a border between French territory
in Laos and British territory in Upper Burma.
French pressure on Siam continued, however, and in 1907
Chulalongkorn was forced to surrender Battambang and Siem Reap to
French-occupied Cambodia. Two years later, Siam relinquished its
claims to the northern Malay states of Kelantan, Trengganu,
Kedah, and Perlis to the British in exchange for legal
jurisdiction over British subjects on its soil and a large loan
for railroad construction. In terms of territory under its
control, Siam was now much diminished. Its independence, however,
had been preserved as a useful and generally stable buffer state
between French and British territories.
(see
fig. 6).
Chulalongkorn's son and successor, Vajiravudh (Rama VI, 1910-
25), had received his education in Britain. As much as the theme
of modernization had typified the policies of his father,
Vajiravudh's reign was characterized by support of nationalism.
The king wrote extensively on nationalist themes. He also
organized and financed a military auxiliary, the Wild Tiger
Corps, which he looked on as a means of spreading nationalist
fervor.
Thai nationalist attitudes at all levels of society were
colored by anti-Chinese sentiment. For centuries members of the
Chinese community had dominated domestic commerce and had been
employed as agents for the royal trade monopoly. With the rise of
European economic influence many Chinese entrepreneurs had
shifted to opium traffic and tax collecting, both despised
occupations. In addition, Chinese millers and middlemen in the
rice trade were blamed for the economic recession that gripped
Siam for nearly a decade after 1905. Accusations of bribery of
high officials, wars between the Chinese secret societies, and
use of oppressive practices to extract taxes also served to
inflame Thai opinion against the Chinese community at a time when
it was expanding rapidly as a result of increased immigration
from China. By 1910 nearly 10 percent of Thailand's population
was Chinese. Whereas earlier immigrants had intermarried with the
Thai, the new arrivals frequently came with families and resisted
assimilation into Thai society. Chinese nationalism, encouraged
by Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Chinese revolution, had also
begun to develop, parallel with Thai nationalism. The Chinese
community even supported a separate school system for its
children. Legislation in 1909 requiring adoption of surnames was
in large part directed against the Chinese community, whose
members would be faced with the choice of forsaking their Chinese
identity or accepting the status of foreigners. Many of them made
the accommodation and opted to become Thai--if in name only.
Those who did not became even more alienated from the rest of
Thai society
(see The Non-Tai Minorities
, ch. 2).
To the consternation of his advisers, who still smarted from
Siam's territorial losses to France, Vajiravudh declared war on
Germany and took Siam into World War I on the side of the Allies,
sending a token expeditionary force to the Western front. This
limited participation, however, won Siam favorable amendments to
its treaties with France and Britain at the end of the war and
also gained a windfall in impounded German shipping for its
merchant marine. Siam took part in the Versailles peace
conference in 1919 and was a founding member of the League of
Nations.
Data as of September 1987
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