Phraya Chakkri (hereafter to be styled as King Rama I) had scarcely
assumed his new dignity when Bodaw Phra, King of Burma, attempted a
new conquest of Siam. King Rama's military ability was such that the
Burmese were finally everywhere defeated and, with the abandonment of
Mergui and Tavoy by the Siamese in 1792, the recurrent wars between
the two powers may be said to have ended for good. With the foreign
danger averted, the King was able to organize his government, the seat
of which was transferred from Tonburi to Bangkok, on the left bank of
the river, where he constructed a fortified city.
Rama II became involved in war at the beginning of his reign. In 1786,
the regent of the now effete Kingdom of Cambodia had formally
recognized Siamese suzerainty and had sent the infant King to reside
at Bangkok, while he continued to rule the state under Siam's aegis.
Annam, to the east, however, made identical claims to supremacy and
when, in 1809, the Annamese King attempted to enforce his demands, an
army was sent from Bangkok to repel him. The brief campaign ended with
Rama's annexation of the Cambodian province of Phratabong, while the
rest of the country became a dependency of Annam.
Upon this King's death in 1825, the throne was usurped by one of his
sons by a lesser wife, while the legitimate heir, Chao Fa Mongkut, a
young man of twenty-one, retired to the safety of the Buddhist
monkhood. The reign of Rama III is chiefly notable for Siam's
resumption of political relations with the nations of the West. In
1833, a treaty drawn up between Siam and the United States of America
represented the first formal tie between this country and any Asiatic
power.
Toward the end of the reign, Cambodian politics again caused bad blood
between Siam and Annam. A youth named Norodom, a son of the Cambodian
King, had some time since been brought to Bangkok and reared at the
Siamese Court. Upon his father's death, he was declared by Siam to be
the rightful heir and, supported by a Siamese army, returned to
Cambodia to gain the throne and, despite former agreements, to place
the country again under Siamese protection.
During his years of retirement, Chao Fa Mongkut, the King's half
brother, had assiduously devoted himself to the study of the English
language, the sciences, and the manners, customs, and systems of
government of foreign lands; at the same time, he missed no
opportunity to meet and converse with European travelers. Coming to
the throne as Rama IV in 1851, at the age of 47, he brought to his
task a remarkable degree of enlightenment, which resulted in throwing
the country open to foreign trade and intercourse, in the introduction
of such arts as printing and shipbuilding, in the construction of
roads and canals, in laying the foundations for systems of education
and public health, and in numerous other reforms directed toward
increasing the public welfare. His love of learning was indirectly
responsible for his death for, visiting a mountain peak to observe an
eclipse in 1868, he contracted the illness from which he died in that
year.
The program of modernization initiated by King Rama IV was continued
and expanded by his son, the great Chulalongkon (Rama V). Among the
important reforms instituted during this reign were the abolition of
debt slavery, the establishment of law courts, the construction of
railways, the spread of education, regulation of the conditions of
military service, and radical changes in methods of revenue and rural
administration. The appointment of trained officials under organized
control in place of ignorant provincial governors and hereditary
chieftains welded the loose agglomeration of feudatory dependencies
into the modern, homogeneous state.
In the year 1863, Norodom, whom Siam had placed upon the Cambodian
throne, made a treaty with France, now master of Annam, by which he
accepted French protection; at almost the same time he made an exactly
similar compact with Siam. Thus each country found itself responsible
for the protection of Cambodia against any possible aggressor, while
each was given the sole right of dictating the foreign policy of that
state. So absurd a situation could not last and, after 4 years of
negotiation, Siam was compelled to yield to the French thesis of their
superior rights as successors to the Annamese kings, to abrogate her
treaty of 1863, and to abandon all claim to suzerainty over Cambodia.
Soon after Siam's withdrawal from Cambodia, the unofficial advocates
of colonialism in France began to advance the idea that certain
Siamese provinces east of the river Me Khong, having at one time
formed a part of Annam, should be restored to that Kingdom, now a
French protectorate. There is no historical basis for this claim,
which was at first unsupported even in Paris, but when the colonial
party added the argument that the unnavigable Me Khong, as one of the
future trade routes of Southwest China, must at all costs be acquired
by France, the French Government formally demanded of Bangkok the
provinces in question. The Siamese replied by suggesting that the
disputed territory be regarded as neutral until such time as the
frontier could be properly demarcated and this was agreed upon but
merely led to further trouble, each side accusing the other of
violating the compact. Siam asked for arbitration, which was declined
by the French. When, in 1893, bloody collisions occurred along the
border, French gunboats, dispatched from Saigon, ascended the Chao
Phraya, despite efforts of the Siamese naval forces to bar the way. In
consequence of Siamese resistance, the French greatly increased their
demands, now insisting that Siam give up all territory east of the Me
Khong (including about half of the rich province of Luang Phrabang, to
which no French claim had ever previously been laid). After 10 days of
blockade, the Siamese had no choice but to accept a humiliating treaty
which, among other concessions, required immediate evacuation of her
eastern outposts and the payment of an indemnity; as a guarantee,
France established a military occupation of the southeastern province,
of Chanthabun, which was to continue long after all the terms had been
fulfilled.
Relations between the two countries were far from improved by this
episode and, during the following years, abuses in the exercise of
French extraterritorial rights were a fertile source of provocation.
In fact, despite every effort to avoid unfortunate incidents, the
Government of Siam found itself spending all its energies in replying
to diplomatic representations and to demands for inquiries,
explanations, and reparations.
As the French demands increased in numbers and severity, there was no
longer any question that Siam's national survival was at stake. But,
in 1896, Great Britain, at last alarmed by France's growing strength
in southern Asia and unwilling to have her approach too near the
eastern confines of India, intervened. High feelings were aroused in
both countries but, after lengthy negotiations, an agreement was
concluded in the same year, by which Siam's autonomy was guaranteed
that she might serve as a buffer between the rival empires.
Thereafter, relations between France and Siam tended to improve. It
was not, however, until 1907, that, in return for yet another
"rectification of the boundary," the French agreed to revise their
extraterritorial rights and to remove the garrison from Chanthabun. A
second convention of the same year resulted in Siam's restoring to
Cambodia the province of Phratabong, which she had held since 1809,
and receiving in exchange a part of the territory yielded in 1904 and
obtaining a recognition of Siamese jurisdiction over Asiatic French
subjects. Altogether, in warding off the European neighbor, Siam had
been compelled to sacrifice no less than 90,000 square miles of her
eastern lands.