Edmund Roberts : the First US Envoy to Siam in 1833

Edmund Roberts

The first United States Envoy to Siam

who signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Siam

in 1833

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 III) 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, "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.