By H. G. DEIGNAN
_Associate Curator, Division of Birds_
_U. S. National Museum_
(WITH 8 PLATES)
From the earliest times the great peninsula which lies between India
and China .... has been peculiarly subject to foreign intrusion.
Successive waves of Mongolian humanity have broken over it from the
north, Dravidians from India have colonised it, Buddhist missions from
Ceylon have penetrated it, and buccaneers from the islands in the
south have invaded it. Race has fought against race, tribe against
tribe, and clan against clan. Predominant powers have arisen and
declined. Civilisations have grown up, flourished and faded. And thus
out of many and diverse elements a group of nations have been evolved,
the individuals of which, Môn, Kambodian, Annamese, Burmese, Shan,
Lao, Siamese and Malay, fundamentally much alike, but differing in
many externals, have striven during centuries for mastery over each
other, and incidentally over the countless minor tribes and clans
maintaining a precarious existence in their midst. Into this mêlée
of warring factions a new element intruded in the sixteenth century A.
D. in the shape of European enterprise. Portuguese, Dutch, French and
English all came and took part in the struggle, pushing and jostling
with the best, until the two last, having come face to face, agreed to
a cessation of strife and to a division of the disputed interests
amongst the survivors. Of these there were but three, the French, the
English, and the Siamese, and therefore Further India now finds
herself divided, as was once all Gaul, into three parts. To the east
lies the territory of French Indo-China, embracing the Annamese and
Kambodian nations and a large section of the Lao; in the west the
British Empire has absorbed the Môn, the Burmese and the Shans;
while, wedged between and occupying the lower middle part of the
subcontinent, with the isolated region of British Malaya on its
extreme south border, lies the kingdom of Siam, situated between 4°
20' and 20° 15' N. latitude, and between 96° 30' and 106° E.
longitude.[1]
So wrote Graham at a period when the Siamese held sway over a
territory of more than 200,000 square miles or an area equivalent to
the combined areas of the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and almost half of Ohio. It must not
be supposed, however, that the Thai[2] had permanently resigned
themselves to a continuation of this political division of the
peninsula. Rich provinces to which they had more or less cogent
claims, based on facts of history or ethnography, lay under foreign
rule and, with the rise of world-wide nationalism in the 1920's and
1930's a lively irredentism came into flower. This irredentism and its
accompanying nationalistic fervor have colored the policies of the
Thai Government during the decade just passed and serve to explain
many political actions which are otherwise puzzling to the western
world.
[1] Graham, W. A., Siam, vol. 1, pp. 1-2, London, 1924.
[2] Pronunciation near English "tie."