Was Siam Colonized?

“Thailand” means “land of the free”. The phrase was coined by HM King Rama VI (1881-1925) to celebrate the fact that the country had escaped colonization by the French and the British. The name of the country was officially changed from Siam to Thailand in 1939 in a wave of patriotic fervor. Officially and by overwhelming popular opinion “Siam was NEVER colonized.”

That is not to say the country escaped unscathed.

In 1860 the Siamese Empire consisted of the central region that had been the Ayutthaya Kingdom until April 7, 1767 when the city was sacked by the armies of Ava (Burma). But the Burmese withdrew and did not colonize Siam. The kingdom was restored by King Taksin the Great almost immediately.

From 1800 to 1860 there were five levels by which city-states and principalities were attached to Siam. Some areas were semi-independent with military protection agreements, others were vassal states, and some were attached through historical loyalty. It was complicated. But the total area of the Siamese Empire included everything from the Shan States to Penang, all of Laos, and Cambodia. Siam was the largest entity in mainland South East Asia.

Then came the French and the British. Both of these European empires wanted access to China. Since the front door to China along the Pacific coast was hard to penetrate, the French wanted in the back door, up the Mekong River into the southern region of China. Step by step the French acquired the whole Mekong watershed, by disconnecting Bangkok from its allies and by naked gunboat threats. The British were after trade rights and protections of its privileges and colonies. They acquired Muslim sultanates from Siam in exchange for various agreements, and the Shan states for a promise to guard Siam from any more French warships.

By 1914 Siam had lost half the territory once attached to it. Half its empire was colonized, but technically not the central part and the city-states in the Northern Lanna and North Eastern Isan regions that were Siamized and incorporated into the centralized administration run from Bangkok. Thus ended the dream of having all Tai people united in one country. [Resource: Wyatt, D, 1984. Thailand: A Short History. London: Yale University Press and Bangkok: Thai Watana Panich Co. Also see my essay “Protestant Influence in Siam” under the heading Life in Thailand on this website].

Then on December 8, 1941 Japan began its attempted conquest of South East Asia, including an air attack on Thailand’s military base in Prachuap Kiri Khan. Technically, Japan negotiated a military agreement to gain access through Thailand to Burma and India. Records show that the Japanese gained access to anything they wanted. This was not colonization, the propaganda of the times insisted, but the end of European colonization.

This raises the question of what Thailand’s patriots mean by “free”. How is “free” different from something less than that. It looks to me like the key elements are that the Chakri dynasty has not been removed (as the British did in Burma), the government is still in Bangkok and includes no acknowledged major non-Thai interference, and Buddhism is the identifying characteristic of the culture. In Thailand “free” means these three institutions are intact.