Article

Thailand

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Thailand

Scope and Historical Definition

The records of the Society’s journals document Siam—now Thailand—as a political, cultural, and economic entity whose influence extended across the Malay Peninsula, the Gulf of Thailand, and into the interior highlands bordering Laos and Cambodia. The evidence spans nearly a century of observation, from the naturalist’s voyage of 1779 to the diplomatic correspondence of the 1890s, and reveals a state that was simultaneously a tributary overlord of the northern Malay polities, a centre of ancient Indianised civilisation, a frontier zone of missionary and colonial penetration, and a sovereign power negotiating its place in the nineteenth-century international order. The Society’s literature treats Siam not as a single fixed entity but as a layered palimpsest: the Khmer ruins of Puthai-saman, the Dvaravati-parallel settlements of the sixth to ninth centuries, the Srivijayan seaports of the eleventh to thirteenth, the tributary Malay states of the west coast, and the modernising Chakri court at Bangkok all coexist within the same geographical space, each documented by different observers at different moments.

Antiquities and Archaeological Synthesis

The archaeological record of southern Siam, as reconstructed from the Society’s publications, presents a sequence of cultural phases that scholars have debated and refined over several decades. H. G. Quaritch Wales, in his 1974 article reporting trial excavations at Yarang, Satingphra, and Nakhon Si Thammarat, advanced the thesis that the ancient city of Langkasuka at Yarang was a Dvaravati-parallel civilisation of the late sixth to early ninth century rather than a Srivijayan foundation [1, pp. 18–19]. The assemblage he examined—terracotta votive stupas, a stone dharmacakra (wheel of the law) five and a half inches high, a standing Buddha two feet in height in vitarka mudra (gesture of teaching), a Mahayana bas-relief approximately one foot in size, a polished granite linga (phallic emblem of Shiva) twenty inches long, and a stone door sill three feet eleven inches in length—was judged absolutely homogeneous and of a style paralleling Dvaravati rather than Srivijaya [1, pp. 18–19]. The single exception, the Mahayana bas-relief, indicated a degree of Srivijayan influence consistent with what was also appearing in Dvaravati at that time [1, p. 19].

Wales’s work at Satingphra, where three trenches within the moated enclosure encountered a single stratum of pottery deposits extending to natural sand at a depth of about three feet, yielded Sung-type glazed sherds, fine Lung-chuan celadons, greenish moulded wares possibly of Tonkin origin, white porcelains, and homogeneous local wares, but no blue and white and no Sawankalok [1, pp. 30–31]. This led him to date the town’s foundation to the eleventh century with flourishing in the twelfth and thirteenth, a century or more earlier than A. Lamb’s previous estimate [1, p. 31]. He reinterpreted Satingphra not as an outpost of Phathalung but as a Srivijayan seaport on the Inland Sea, possibly the successor to Langkasuka after a transfer of the capital around the beginning of the eleventh century [1, p. 31]. At Nakhon Si Thammarat, the absence of Srivijayan-style sculpture in the museum, the results of trenches at the Siva temple, and a new trench at Tha Rua (the remembered old port) which yielded Sung celadons and stamped domestic pottery but nothing earlier, led Wales to conclude that Nakhon was not established as a Srivijayan centre of importance before the twelfth century [1, p. 35].

Alastair Lamb’s 1964 note on Satingphra, based on a collection of bronzes, ceramics, and stone objects recovered through chance discovery by local inhabitants and held at Wat Matchemawat, Songkhla, offered a complementary perspective [2]. Lamb’s detailed ceramic comparison between Satingphra and Pengkalan Bujang in Kedah—where he had conducted extensive excavation in 1961—showed the two assemblages to be closely parallel in their major categories of Chinese celadons, white wares, stonewares, and earthenwares, but diverging in specific ways that allowed him to refine the chronology [2, pp. 77–78]. Satingphra yielded wares slightly later than the latest Pengkalan Bujang material, notably Sawankalok stoneware and a few Annamese blue-and-white fragments, while lacking the glass beads and Middle Eastern glazed wares characteristic of the west coast site [2, p. 77]. This pattern supported the interpretation that both sites were active during the same broad period but that Satingphra’s occupation extended somewhat longer, dying out as a major trading centre by around 1500 A.D. [2, pp. 77–78]. Lamb drew attention to the cosmopolitan character of the bronze assemblage, which showed stylistic influences from South India (Cola), Bengal (Pala), and possibly Java, consistent with a port engaged in wide-ranging Southeast Asian commerce [2, p. 75]. A five-chambered sandstone container found at Satingphra was identified as the nearest geographical parallel to the nine-chambered reliquary containers known from Kedah, raising the possibility that ancient Kedah and Satingphra once formed part of the same political unit [2, pp. 84–86].

The ruins of Puthai-saman, described by the French missionary G. Dabin in 1885 as a Khmer monument comparable to Angkor-vat “on a reduced scale,” provided an earlier data point in this sequence [3, p. 109]. Dabin recorded a complete square plan with a moat thirty to forty metres wide, flanked by colossal seated statues of Siva, a causeway with a dragon balustrade, and a central pyramidal structure of fitted stone blocks requiring ten men to lift a single block [3, pp. 109–112]. He noted the absence of any mortar or iron in the stonework and the presence of a Buddha statue deposited by later pious visitors [3, pp. 110–112]. Local tradition attributed the buildings to angels; Dabin, while acknowledging the limits of his own expertise, recorded what he could observe in the two hours he spent among the ruins [3, p. 112].

Description, Travel, and the Interior

The Society’s journals preserve several first-hand accounts of travel through the Siamese interior and across the Peninsula, each offering a distinct vantage point on the physical and human geography of the region. G. Dabin’s 1885 journal documents a forty-eight-day overland journey from Bangkok to Ubon in February–March 1884, undertaken to replace an invalided confrère at the Catholic station on the Seimoun [3, pp. 103–104]. The party consisted of ten bullock-carts with relays of bullocks, supplemented by horses and local porters, and the route passed through Thakien, then into an unbroken forest where the road was little more than a cart-width track obstructed by roots and ruts, before crossing a series of rivers, a low mountain range, and the open plateau of Korat to reach the Seimoun [3, pp. 104–117]. The narrative is unselfconsciously practical, recording broken wheels, missing bullocks, the search for water, and the constant vigilance against wild beasts and robbers [3, p. 104]. Dabin’s incidental observations on the political and economic geography of the region include a rudimentary Siamese custom-house system (two men in a leaf hut levying a tax at provincial borders), a provincial governor of Laotian race governing “two or three hundred houses scattered about in the forest,” and multiple Cambodian and Burmese trading caravans moving along the same routes [3, p. 107]. A particularly notable encounter was with a Cambodian mandarin—identified as the son of Phya Anuphat and second mandarin of Siem-rab—travelling with three elephants, two of which were presents for the King of Siam [3, pp. 107–108]. The text also records the presence of a French-built telegraph line running from Saigon to Bangkok, erected in 1884 along a road originally constructed by a Siamese Phya (high-ranking noble) for communication with the Cambodian provinces [3, p. 106].

Arthur Keith, a medical practitioner based in the Bangtaphan mining district, published in 1891 an account of his overland crossing of the Malay Peninsula from Koh Lak on the Gulf of Thailand to Mergui on the Andaman Sea, undertaken in June 1891 during the South-West Monsoon [4, pp. 31–41]. The crossing of the watershed at Khow Maun, approximately 750 feet above sea level, marked the transition from the dry eastern side to the rain-soaked western side of the Peninsula [4, pp. 33–34]. On the Burmese side, Keith and his companions descended through dense evergreen forest and eventually reached a large river in full flood, which they navigated on a bamboo raft through a tortuous channel, covering roughly forty miles of river to reach a point only fifteen miles distant as the crow flies [4, pp. 35–37]. The river journey brought them into contact with Siamese colonial settlements—recently established by migrants from the eastern provinces, many of whom had previously worked as miners at Bangtaphan—and with Siamese Buddhist priests who had come up from Wat Keo to collect tithes from their outlying parishioners [4, p. 38]. Keith noted the contrast between the dead, depopulated Tenasserim—reduced to 600 inhabitants and a dilapidated terrace—and the thriving Mergui with its 15,000 population, active Chinese trading community, and British administrative presence [4, pp. 40–41].

C. W. S. Kynnersley, British Consul at Penang, published two consular travelogues documenting his tours of the Siamese vassal states on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. His 1901 account of a December 1900 tour of Kedah, Trang, Tongkah (Puket), Pung-a, and the Langkawi islands argued that these states remained chronically underdeveloped because Bangkok treated them as revenue sources rather than provinces to be cultivated, extracting sixty per cent of their income while failing to invest in roads, telegraph, or other public works [5, p. 53]. At Trang, Governor Khaw Sim Bee, a Penang-born Chinese man and British subject, had suppressed secret societies, abolished gambling farms, and introduced the Burmese village headman system under which crime had “practically disappeared,” yet the telegraph line ordered from Bangkok fifteen years earlier still lay unstrung [5, pp. 52–53]. At Tongkah, the sea-level tin mines, worked by two or three thousand Hokkien Chinese, were reported to have lost $50,000 in the year [5, p. 56]. Kynnersley’s 1905 account of visits to Puket, Ghirbee, and Trang in February–March 1903 documented the rapid transformation of these states under Siamese centralisation, with particular attention to tin mining, administrative structures, and fiscal arrangements [6]. At Puket, the harbour was silting up, the town site was entirely tin land, and the principal road had been diverted to accommodate a new mine [6, p. 7]. At Trang, the population was 59,000, comprising 12,000 Malays and Sam-sams, 4,000 Chinese, and the remainder Siamese; annual revenue was approximately $120,000 against sanctioned expenditure of $80,000, with the surplus remitted to Bangkok [6, p. 15].

History and Diplomatic Relations

The Society’s literature provides substantial evidence on the tributary relationship between Bangkok and the northern Malay states, a relationship previously documented almost exclusively from Malay or English sources. Cyril Skinner’s 1983 article presents a translation of a Thai court manuscript recording the arrival of Malay tributary envoys at the Bangkok palace in October 1809, the first year of Rama II’s reign [7]. The document records the formal audience granted by Rama II to twenty-two envoys representing Kedah, Trengganu, Kelantan, and three Patani statelets (Nongchik, Palam, and Rangae), who had come to present the bunga emas (gold and silver flowers) and other tokens of respect to the new king following Rama I’s death in September 1809 [7, pp. 136–139]. The speed with which the Malay states dispatched their missions suggests they acted upon prompting from the Siamese governors at Nakhon Si Thammarat and Songkhla, through whom relations with Bangkok were normally conducted [7, p. 135]. The article situates this event within the broader context of the 1808 Patani uprising, the third major clash in less than three decades, after which Bangkok dismantled Patani as a unitary state and divided it into seven districts under the supervision of the Governor of Songkhla [7, p. 135]. The translation reveals the highly ritualised and formulaic nature of the audience: the King’s three observations—concerning the health of the envoys’ rulers and subjects, the conditions of their voyage, and instructions for any business they wished to conduct—are couched in a benevolently patronising tone that Skinner compares to the Peking court’s treatment of Lord Macartney’s mission [7, pp. 139–140]. The ceremony, conducted in the Chakraphatphiman Hall with full musical fanfare including conch shells played by court Brahmins, underscores the sacral and hierarchical dimensions of the relationship [7, p. 138].

Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian’s 1982 article examines a Thai-language manuscript of official correspondence between Kedah and Bangkok spanning 1890–1898, arguing that this decade represents the zenith of cordial Kedah-Siamese relations [8]. The correspondence reveals mutual understanding and personal intimacy between the two courts: Kedah royal children were educated in Bangkok, Sultan Abdul Hamid spoke Siamese, and the two rulers engaged in frequent reciprocal visits, including King Chulalongkorn’s 1891 tour of the Malay Peninsula which the Sultan accompanied in person [8, p. 63]. The author highlights the lengths to which Kedah rulers went to demonstrate loyalty—participating in the Brahmin-Buddhist Water of Allegiance Ceremony, promptly sending the bunga mas tribute, and offering military support during the 1893 Franco-Siamese crisis [8, p. 63]. On the Siamese side, Chulalongkorn elevated Sultan Abdul Hamid to the rank of Chao Phraya in 1896 and removed Nakhon Sri-thammarat as the intermediary overseer, a structural change that brought Kedah into direct communication with Bangkok [8, pp. 63–64]. The article’s second part translates ten letters documenting the Perlis affair: after the death of the second Raja of Perlis in February 1897, Sultan Abdul Hamid and his mother launched an intensive diplomatic offensive that succeeded when the Ministry of the Interior issued decree 1/748 on April 7, 1897, creating monthon Saiburi and appointing Sultan Abdul Hamid as its Superintendent Commissioner with supervisory authority over Kedah, Perlis, and Setul [8, pp. 80–81]. However, the final letter reveals that the arrangement was already fracturing, as the new Phraya Perlis refused to accept Kedah’s administrative authority [8, p. 81].

J. Chandran’s 1965 article examines how Britain modified its extraterritorial privileges in Siam between 1891 and 1900, a period defined by acute Anglo-French rivalry over Siamese territory and the growing administrative burden of protecting a large population of Asian-origin British subjects [9]. Chandran identifies a fundamental structural problem that distinguished Siam from China and Japan: the vast majority of “British subjects” in Siam were not Europeans but Burmese, Shan, and other Asian immigrants whose presence was a by-product of British commercial expansion in the teak forests and gem mines of northern Siam [9, p. 290]. A total of 9,281 British subjects had been registered in Siam since 1887, of whom 381 were born in Siam; countless others remained unregistered [9, pp. 301–302]. The Siamese Government, particularly under Prince Devawongse and King Chulalongkorn, exploited the Perak-Reman boundary dispute as leverage to extract concessions that the Foreign Office had been reluctant to offer voluntarily [9, p. 310]. The Anglo-Siamese Registration Agreement was signed on 29 November 1899 and the Anglo-Siamese Taxation Agreement on 20 September 1900; the latter abrogated the 1856 Schedule and, by virtue of most-favoured-nation clauses, simultaneously deprived all other Powers of their nominal land-tax privileges [9, pp. 309–311]. Chandran demonstrates that these substantive modifications occurred a full four years before the 1904 Anglo-French Entente and were driven by distinct administrative and political pressures rather than by that single diplomatic event [9, p. 290].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Siam reveals a shifting set of priorities across its publication history. The earliest contributions, such as Koenig’s 1779 voyage journal published in 1894 and Dabin’s 1885 missionary journal, reflect the naturalist’s and traveller’s impulse to catalogue and describe: Koenig’s systematic botanical, zoological, and mineralogical survey of the Malay coast from Penang through Malacca to Kedah provides one of the earliest European scientific accounts of the region’s biodiversity and indigenous practices, while Dabin’s account is framed within the broader project of French missionary penetration into the Siamese-Lao frontier interior [10, pp. 57–133], [3, pp. 103–117]. The consular travelogues of Kynnersley in 1901 and 1905 represent a distinct genre: administrative observation by a colonial officer reporting on neighbouring Siamese territory, consistently framed by comparison with British colonial practice [5, pp. 49–66], [6, pp. 7–18].

The mid-twentieth century saw a shift towards archaeological and historiographical synthesis. Wales’s 1974 article represents his mature integration of his own earlier excavations (Nakhon Siva temple, 1935; Satingphra, 1964) with new fieldwork, responding critically to the work of Wheatley, Stargardt, Lamb, and O’Connor, and advancing the argument that the Dvaravati and Srivijayan cultural spheres in the Peninsula were distinct and sequential rather than overlapping [1, pp. 13–40]. Lamb’s 1964 note, by contrast, represents an early attempt to integrate South Thai archaeological evidence into the study of pre-Islamic Malayan history, a field then dominated by west coast sites [2, pp. 74–87]. Skinner’s 1983 translation and Suwannathat-Pian’s 1982 study of Kedah-Siamese correspondence mark a further shift towards the use of primary administrative sources from the Siamese side, thereby revealing how Bangkok itself categorised, ranked, and ritualised its Malay vassals [7, pp. 135–140], [8, pp. 62–86]. Chandran’s 1965 article, drawing on unpublished Foreign Office records, challenges the then-prevailing view that the 1904 Anglo-French Entente was the proximate cause of the abandonment of extraterritorial privileges, demonstrating instead that the substantive modifications occurred earlier and were driven by distinct administrative and political pressures [9, pp. 290–313].

The 1992 institutional profile of the Siam Society by Piriya Krairiksh, published in the Society’s journal as part of a broader exchange between Southeast Asian scholarly societies, provides a useful counterpoint: it documents the parallel development of Thai domestic scholarship, including the Society’s resolution of the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription controversy by publishing arguments both pro and con, its early recognition of the Mon people’s historical role, and its assistance to the Thai-Danish Expedition in Kanchanaburi, which revealed a prehistoric culture dating earlier than 2000 B.C. and fundamentally revised understanding of Thailand’s past [11, pp. 35–36]. Together, these records illustrate how the Society’s literature on Siam evolved from descriptive travel and natural history through consular administration to archaeological synthesis and diplomatic historiography, each phase building upon and correcting the observations of its predecessors.

MBRAS Sources

Antiquities

Description and travel

History

References

  1. H.G.Q. Wales (1974). Langkasuka and Tambralinga: some archaeological notes JMBRAS 47(1): 13–40.
  2. A. Lamb (1964). Notes on Satingphra JMBRAS 37(1): 74–87.
  3. G. Dabin and W.E. Maxwell (1885). A missionary’s journey through Laos from Bangkok to Ubon (.E. Maxwell JSBRAS 15: 103–117.
  4. A. Keith (1891). An account of a journey across the Malay Peninsula from Koh Lak to Mergui JSBRAS 24: 31–41.
  5. C.W.S. Kynnersley (1901). Notes on a tour through the Siamese states on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, 1900 JSBRAS 36: 49–66.
  6. C.W.S. Kynnersley (1905). Notes of visits to Puket, Ghirbee and Trang JSBRAS 42: 7–18.
  7. C. Skinner (1983). A Malay mission to Bangkok during the reign of Rama II JMBRAS 56(2): 135–140. Read on JSTOR
  8. Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian (1982). Kedah-Siamese correspondence, 1890–1898 {with translations of 10 letters on the Perlis affairs JMBRAS 55(2): 62–86. Read on JSTOR
  9. C. (Chandran Jeshurun) Jeshurun (1965). British foreign policy and the extraterritorial question in Siam 1891–1900 JMBRAS 38(2): 290–313. Read on JSTOR
  10. J.G. Koenig (1894). Journal of a voyage from India to Siam and Malacca in 1779 JSBRAS 27: 57–133. Read on JSTOR
  11. Piriya Krairiksh (1992). A brief account of the Siam Society JMBRAS 65(2): 35–38.