Thailand’s Modern Contacts with European Powers

Thailand’s modern contacts with the West began during the reign of King Rama III(1824-1851) These modern contacts demonstrates remarkably Thai fears and suspicions of the West. Experience during the late Seventeenth Century made the Thai rulers feel that diplomatic or trade relations with European powers would jeopardize their control over the country. But the motivation of the Thais in their policy towards the West remained the same. Their aim was to maintain national independence and the integrity of the kingdom. Their strategies and tactics were to maintain a state of equilibrium between contending outside forces. They also engaged in playing off one power against the other.

Among the Western relations, Great Britain was regarded by the Thai rulers as the most threatening power to Thailand’s security. Unlike in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Great Britain’s policy in South-East Asia was to trade with a gun in one hand. Britain had already nibbled away at the edges of the Thai Empire. In 1785 it as Penang, in 1800 Province Wellesley. The power of this colonialist state became manifestly clear in the British victories over Burma in 1826. As a result of the Anglo-Burmese war, Great Britain took the provinces of Martaban, Tavoy, and Tenasserim, which both Burma and Thailand claimed. The Thai government of King Rama III  desired to keep this power at as great a distance as possible without antagonizing it. The makers of Thai foreign policy thought that the only way to achieve this goal was by compromise.

A policy of compromise was conducted by King Rama III in 1826, when he signed a treaty of commerce with the British East India Company. Captain Henry Burney was sent to Bangkok by the Governor-General of India, to negotiate and conclude this treaty. In granting trade concessions to the English, the treaty permitted English merchants to buy and sell as they pleased without interference by the Thai king. Prior to this period, the foreign merchants were not allowed to sell o private individuals the cargo they imported, nor to purchase return cargoes. The king claimed the exclusive rights of purchase and sale in both cases. By that treaty, the East India Company also secured an understanding that the Thais would respect the independence of Perak, and would not W go and obstruct or interrupt” commerce in Kelantan or Trengganu, while the Company promised not to “go and molest” those states. But the Thais denied the Company a satisfactory agreement over Kedah which remained a source if friction for many years.

The Thai rulers had granted trade and territorial(in Malaya) concessions in Burney’s Treaty because they believed it politically expedient to do so. They seem to have viewed the treaty as a political necessity. The agreements represented nothing more than what they thought had to be conceded in order to preserve the country’s independence. One Thai scholar recalls this concession with bitterness:

In 1826 a certain Captain Burney came to Bangkok bringing the credentials of the English East Company to which were added conditions and requirements in the peaceful form of a draft treaty drawn up ready for the King to sign. In itself it was an ultimatum for Thailand to accept, or lese face war. Rama II was expert enough in handling foreign affairs. He saw no alternative but to embrace the lesser danger in order to escape the graver one.

After granting commercial concessions to the English, the Thais feared the political implications of exclusive relations with Great Britain, and they wished to use other powers to counterbalance Britain. They inherited a policy of playing off one power against the other which was pursued by King Narai in the Seventeenth Century. The makers of foreign policy in Bangkok were receptive to such an approach. It was observed by the United States envoy to Thailand, Edmund Roberts:

The present king(Rama IIIX is very desirous of encouraging commerce to enter his ports, and the perplexities and endless changes which formerly annoyed them, are now removed. As long as the present king lives, this wise policy will be pursued.

The Thais turned to the United States as a source of counterbalance against Britain. This attendant prospect was signaled in a report from the American consul at Batavia to the State Department. The report made it clear that King Rama III “expressed wishes to increase the American trade with Siam, and a willingness to yield all facilities to that end.” The Thais were in favor of the Americans because the latter rarely came to Thailand and had no colonial empire in the Far East. When Edmund Roberts was sent to Thailand in 1883, Thai policy to use the Americans to counteract the British showed some prospect of achieving its objectives. In that year Thailand signed a “treaty of Amity and Commerce” with the United States.

The Thais did not fear the political implications of relations with the United States. The United States President made it clear to Edmund Roberts that the sending of his mission to Cochin-China, Thailand and Muscat, was “ for the purpose of effecting treaties which should place our commerce in those countries on an equality with that enjoyed by the most favored nations.” Given this American attitude, King Rama III and his advisers, as Edmunds Roberts wrote in his memoirs, W openly expressed much gratification, that an American made-of-war had arrived with an envoy, for the purpose of forming a treaty of amity and commerce.” Thai friendly disposition towards the Americans was further indicated, when the king} who preferred the Americans to any other foreigners, ordered Thai officials to provide the American envoy with extraordinary accommodation. This encouraged the American envoy to exclaim that”…no embassy from a foreign country ever had so favorable and honorable  a reception as ours, marked at the same time with the most extraordinary dispatch ever known.” The king also ordered Phra Klang, the Thai Minister of Commerce and Foreign Affairs, to facilitate the speedy conclusion of the Thai-American treaty. With this comparatively favorable attitude by Thailand, Edmund Roberts took only twenty two days before signing the treaty of amity and commerce with Thailand. The time spent for negotiating this treaty was shorter than that for the Burney’s treaty of 1826. The latter treaty was concluded after a long negotiation of seven months.

The Thai rulers wished to bring not only the United States but also France into the game of the balance of power in Thailand. In opting for this decision, the Thais seem to have forgotten the time of the revolution in Ayutthaya in 1688, when French intrigue resulted in the banishment of the Europeans. The Thai approach to France was evident in 1840, when the Thai government made its view explicit to the French consul in Singapore that Thailand would be eager to see the development of French commerce in Thailand. France did not send any envoy to Thailand. After the French were expelled from the contry in 1688, they had sought to preserve religious and mercantile interests in Vietnam but not in Thailand.

With the presence of American and English commercial interests in Thailand, the balance of power was believed to be maintained. Each sought to prevent the other from gaining a dominant position. Accordingly, the government of King Rama III succeeded in meeting a new and apparently great external treat from the Western powers.

The policy of balance of power was followed by King Mongkut (Rama 1V), who reigned from 1851 to 1863. King Mongkut succeeded in conducting a foreign policy for maintaining Thailand’s independence. As such, his skillful diplomacy is worth studying for, as Hall has observed} “ It is perhaps not too much to say that Siam owed much to Mongkut more than anyone else the fact that she preserve her independence when by the end of the Nineteenth Century all the other states of South-East Asia had come under European control.”

At the beginning of Mongkut’s reign, the Thais increasingly feared that their very existence as a nation was at stake. British imperial expansionism was in full flood. The Thais had no way of knowing that the British in Burma would not expand eastward beyond the Burmese border. In 1852, the year following’s assumption of the crown, the British stared their second Burma War by which the annexed Pegu.

Dictated by his fear of Britain, King Mongkut took an initiative to appease the British. In 1855, in line with this policy of appeasement, the king concluded a treaty of friendship and commerce with Great Britain, through which Thailand lost its judicial freedom. British consular jurisdiction was established in Bangkok and thereby extra-territoriality descended upon Thailand for the first time in its modern history. The treaty also prescribed an import and export tariff which gve Britain greater security for freedom of commerce.

Mongkut’s policy to give commercial and judicial concession was based on fear rather than on respect and admiration. The king and his advisers regarded the English as “ rapacious tyrants who were seizing on the whole of Asia.” They granted such concessions not because they liked the English, but because they feared them. To prevent the British from making further demands, King Mongkut showed the same astuteness as had his brother., King Rama III, in conducting a policy of seeking balance and counterweight in foreign associations. He approached the United States and France, whose naval capability was believed to match that of Great Britain. In 1856 King Mongkut signed a treaty of friendship and commerce with both the United States and France.

Before signing the treaty with the United States, the makers of foreign policy in Bangkok were impressed with the American attitude towards Thailand. Townsend Harris, who was sent to Thailand to conclude this treaty, stated the good feeling of the United States government towards Thailand and its general desire only for justice and mutually beneficial relations. Ruling out any American desire for territorial concession from Thailand, Harris contrasted his country’s policy with that of Great Britain. The Thai rulers were told that the United States had no colony in the East, nor did it desire any. The form of the American government, Harris stated, forbade the holding of colonies. His mission to Thailand was assigned solely for establishing a commercial relationship.

Satisfied with this American attitude, The Thai Prime Minister (Kalahom), in his diplomatic initiative to use the United States to counter-balance Great Britain, stated that “ We love the Americans, for they have never done us or any one else in the East any injury.” The Americans, he further appreciated, were not seeking conquest in the East, and American missionaries had been of vast value to the Thais, teaching many valuable arts. While admiring and respecting the Americans, Phra Klang, the Thai Minister of Commerce and Foreign Affairs, proposed to Harris that”…we would like to have an article in the treay providing, that in case of any trouble with any western power(Great Britain) the United States would act as umpire.” But Phra Klang’s demand for such political commitment from the United States met with a negative response. Harris thanked him for the proposal and assured him that no such provision would be necessary because the United States felt it an obligation of friendship to comply with any such request. Harris’s reluctant attitude led the Thais to conclude a Thai-American treaty, in which the Thais made concessions to the Americans similar to those made to the British.

Thailand then turned to France, whose envoy, M. de Montigny, was waiting at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River for the departure of the American envoy. Prior to the arrival of the French mission, Thailand had already shown a disposition to negotiate a commercial treaty with France at the close of 1851. The government of France, accordingly, empowered Admiral Lapierre,  who commanded the naval station of Reunion Island and Indo-China, to treat with the government of Thailand on the basis of the most-favored nation, being guided by commercial treaties already negotiated with Cochin-China and Muscat. Lapierre never fulfilled his mission, however, because war with Russia intervened before he could visit Bangkok. France then waited until 1856. In this year Montigny was commissioned to visit Bangkok and to negotiate a treaty. His mission also included a visit to Cambodia and Annam.

In making an approach to France, the Thais knew very well that the French mixed commercial and religious with political interests in the Far East. To accommodate the French commercial interests, the Thais signed a treaty of trade and commerce, the provisions of which were similar to those obtained by the United States and Great Britain. As Montigny’s mission to Thailand was bound up with the activities of French missionaries in that area, the Thais gave considerable freedom to French missionaries to carry on their work in Thailand. In the course of negotiations with the French envoy, the Thais went so far as to prefer France for a neighbor. To this end, they proposed that Thailand would cede the island of Koh Door(Pulo Condore) to France. For his part, the French envoy took advantage of the Thai desire to use French power to counteract that of Great Britain by putting a French counter-proposal  that Thailand, who feared Britain, should accept a French protectorate. To this counter-proposal the Thais did not agree. In reference to this episode of Franco-Thai negotiations, King Mongkut, in a long letter of March 4} 1867 to the head of the embassy that he had dispatched to Paris, wrote:

When Montigny came here he tried to turn Siam into a French protectorate by seduction, using as his argument the dangers of British domination. The Siamese were not to be easily seduced, however, and he spent some time here employing various methods of allurement.

 Fear of the English did not drive King Mongkut more closely into the arms of the French. The king tried his utmost to avoid being dependent solely on France. Instead, he made further attempts to attract the attention of other European powers and signed treaties of friendship and commerce with them. These powers include Denmark, Portugal} Holland, Prussia, Belgium, Italy, Norway and Sweden.

Before the end of King Mongkut’s reign, France constituted the most threat to Thailand’s security. French imperialism accentuated the threat coming from the east, “ for in building her empire France had behaved towards Siam much as a powerful Vietnamese emperor might have done and had made the same demands. In 1862 France concluded a treaty with King of Vietnam(Annam), which ceded Cochin-China. It began to extent into Cambodia, which had long been a subject of contention between Thailand and Vietnam.

After the defeat of Vietnam, the French put forward the theory that they were the heirs to Vietnamese claims. In 1863, the French concluded a treay with the King of Cambodia by which he recognized French suzerainty. From the Thai point of view, this treaty was exacted by force and against the wish of both Cambodia and Thailand.

In the wake of this French aggression in the east, King Mongkut found  it difficult to maintain Thailand’s long-standing political and strategic interests in Cambodia. In the west, Thailand still faced Britain as a threatening power. Under these circumstances, King Mongkut dared not try to play off Britain against France for fear that it would provide Britain with a good chance to colonize Thailand. The King then had two choices, either to directly negotiate with France or to demand assistance from Britain at the risk of the loss of Thailand’s independence. Referring to these two choices, the king, in consultation with his diplomats in Paris, wrote in this manner:

“…it is for us to decide what we are going to do; whether to swim up-river to make friends with the crocodile(France) or swim out to sea and hang on to the whale(Britain)…”

 With strong pressure diplomatically and militarily from France, the king finally made the first choice. In 1867 he agreed to a treaty whereby Thailand gave up its rights in Cambodia in return for French recognition of Thailand’s control of two Cambodian provinces of Siemreap and Battambang. These two provinces, though nominally Cambodian territory, had in fact been in Thai hands since 1795.

Hesitating to employ the tactics of playing off Britain against France, the king felt it necessary to sacrifice Thailand’s  former power and influence over Cambodia for the sake of its independence or “ to keep ourselves within our house and home”, in his own words.

One year after Thailand granted territorial concession to France, King Mongkut died. His son, Prince Chulalongkorn, ascended to the throne in 1868. Like his father, King Chulalongkorn realized that the two real threats to Thailand was Great Britain and France. Although the king tried to maintain a correct balance between the two powers, he increasingly felt that France was the greatest menace of the two. In 1883, the whole of Vietnam was brought under complete French protection. From then on, the French expansionists looked to the west and began to advance the thory that the Laotian provinces east of the Mekong River, having occasionally been vassals of Vietnam, should be restored to that kingdom. To put this theory into practice, the French employed both diplomacy and force to achieve their expansionist policy.

The Thais, too, had their own theory that Thailand had been in possession of these territories as far back as 1866 at least. To protect Thai interest in Laos, the Thai proposed to refer the matter to international arbitration, but the French government was unwilling to accept this. Rejecting a solution to the Laotian problem by peaceful means, the French in 1893, Strengthened by gunboat diplomacy, forced the Thais to renounce all claims to all territory on the east bank of the Mekong and to all islands in that river. Although Thailand complied with all French demands promptly, the French continued to occupy Chantabun (Chanthaburi), which had a greater strategic importance. In order to terminate this occupation, King Chulalongkorn signed the Covention of 1904} by which Thailand ceded further territories on the west bank of the Mekong.

King Chulalongkorn’s policy of territorial concession was not able to stop France territorial advance.  The French moved out from Chantabun to occupy the nearby town of Trat, where their nuisance value was as high as ever. To terminate France’ s occupation of Trat, King Chulalongkorn signed the treaty of 1907, ceding to France the provinces of Battambang and Siemreap.

King Chulalongkorn’s failure to maintain Thailand’s territorial integrity owed much ho his failure to engage another power to counter-balance France. The King asked for diplomatic and military assistance from Great Britain. But the latter did not consider Thai possessions in Laos and Cambodia worth the risk of war with France. During the Franco-Thai political crisis, London on several occasions urged the decision-makers in Bangkok not to hesitate to yield to French demands.

After the end of the Franco-Thai political crisis, King Chulalongkorn still hoped to use Britain to counter-balance France. This was evident in his intention to further strengthen friendly relations with Great Britain. In 1909 he voluntarily ceded to Britain the four Malay provinces of Kelantan, Trengganu, Perlis and Kedah. The King also altered the country’s internal life to match that of Great Britain. Students sent abroad for advanced study usually went to England. The school system was a copy of the English system. The absence of text-books in the native language made it imperative to adopt a European Language as the medium of higher education. English consequently became the second language used by educated Thais. Thailand’s financial policy and trade interests also leaned towards the British.

King Chulalongkorn clearly played the British and the French against each other, while looking towards Russia, Japan, and Germany as possible alternative countervailing powers. The policy of balance of power was also implemented by employing Western advisers to assist in the modernization of the country. These advisers were selected from different countries for specific assignments so that they would not be in a position to exercise excessive influence. The diverse interests and loyalties engendered by a widespread dispersal of Thai students going overseas also assisted in preventing any single Western country from gaining a dominant position in the affairs of the kingdom.

The reluctance of Great Britain and France to come into direct confrontation with each other constituted a critical factor that saved Thailand from Western domination. King Chulalongkorn is generally credited with having saved his country because he successfully played the British off against the French, or vice versa.  He relinquished part of Thailand’s territory to the British and the French and, as a consequence, created a balance of power through which he could maintain Thailand’s independence.

 A policy of balance of power peristed even during world War I. Thailand eventually entered the war on the Allies’ side, although it was initially more sympathetic to Germany, which had never violated Thailand’s territorial integrity. In 1914, King Vajiravuth(Rama VI) was in favor of a position of neutrality despite the attitude of some of his German educated advisers, who supported the German side. But after Ameica’s entry into the war in 1917, the king realized who the eventual winner would be and gave up a “sitting-on-the-fence” position by declaring war against German and Austria, on the pretext of opposing their unrestricted practice of submarine warfare. At the end of the war, the foreign policy of being “the friend of all” and later “ the friend of the victor” brought great benefits to the Thai kingdom. By participating in the war, Thailand gained international recognition. With the assistance of an American adviser, Francis B. Sayre, and United States cooperation, Thailand was able to negotiate with the European powers for freedom from extra-territoriality and from foreign financial control. From world war I onwards, Thai-American relations became closer.

The world power structure changed in 1905 when Japan won the Russo-Japanese War. Thailand recognized that Japan might play an important role in Asia and, consequently, began to look to Japan as a possible balance to Great Britain and France in the region.  . Thailand’s practice of bringing Japan to the game of the balance of power assumed notably significance after the revolution of which changed the form of government from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional system.

After the revolution of 1932, a Greater Thai movement developed in Bangkok. This movement aimed at incorporating into the kingdom of Thailand all territories inhabited by people of T’ai race. There was also an attendant irredentist movement for the reclamation of all territories that had at any time formed part of the kingdom. Side by side with these two related movements there emerged an economic nationalism. Since these movements affected both British and French interests, the Thais became fearful of retaliation and sought re-insurance with the Japanese.

Subsequently chapters examines how the first Phibunsonggram government(1938-1944) brought Japan into the game of balance of power in Thailand, in particular to preserve and enhance Thailand’s political and strategic interests in Indo-China.