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Comparing this article's description of Siam definitely not getting colonized: > In the face of overwhelming military force, Chulalongkorn ceded the territory,
by yorwba 2mo ago
Comparing this article's description of Siam definitely not getting colonized:
> In the face of overwhelming military force, Chulalongkorn ceded the territory, making a necessary concession to preserve the kingdom as a whole. Siam was forced to cede territory to the French in what is now Laos and Cambodia, creating much of the modern borders of Thailand. The French established a demilitarized zone along the Mekong, and the Siamese had to pay an indemnity of three million francs. European powers readily resorted to gunboat diplomacy but even here, France felt compelled to frame its demands in terms of legitimate Vietnamese territorial claims rather than naked conquest.
> Between 1893 and 1909, Siam would cede around 40 percent of its territory to France and Britain. But the strategic retreat meant Chulalongkorn preserved what mattered most: the political independence of Siam’s core territories.
with its contrasting description of Burma definitely getting colonized:
> Following its defeats in the Anglo-Burmese Wars of 1824–26 and 1852, Burma had been forced to surrender four provinces, pay a crippling £1 million indemnity (about $160 million today), and accept the presence of a British overseer with veto power over the king’s decisions.
...
> When Britain manufactured border disputes to complete Burma’s annexation in 1885, Mindon’s modernization efforts provided no protection against a colonial power that was, by that point, committed to conquest.
It rather seems to me like Siam was about two decades into a process that would usually take a few decades more, but got a respite due to World War I distracting the colonizers. (Maybe an even better counterexample to the article's thesis that adopting the trappings of Western civilization protected against invasion by European powers.)
- flyingshelf 2mo agoAbsolutely this. Thais love saying they've never been colonized, but conveniently forget to mention that 40% of their territory was colonized and permanently lost.
- ElProlactin 2mo agoThe article gives way too much weight to charm, reform and image management, and basically no weight to the fact that both the French and British agreed that having a neutral buffer state was in both their best interests. See the Anglo-French Declaration of January 1896. > Weak institutions built by colonists fell apart after twentieth-century decolonizations, contributing to the deaths of millions of people across Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Burma. This is a really problematic narrative. Thailand was basically a junior partner in the American military aggression in the region, which is what was most responsible for those deaths. Something like 80% of all USAF air strikes over North Vietnam originated from bases in Thailand. There were tens of thousands of American service members serving in Thailand in the late 1960s, more than in South Vietnam. The B52s bombing Cambodia flew from U-Tapao. Thais even served in the war, mostly in Laos.
- yorwba 2mo agoIf they needed a neutral buffer state, why did they keep making it smaller? Really, they just needed to avoid getting surprised by the other being too quick to colonize and presenting a fait accompli before they got the opportunity to grab some bits for themselves. The declaration of 1896 was followed up by the Entente Cordiale of 1904, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Entente_Cordiale https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Entente_Cordiale that divided Siam into spheres of influence, "disclaiming all idea of annexing any Siamese territory." Of course this was preceded by France annexing some Siamese territory earlier in 1904 and followed by France in 1907 and Britain in 1909 annexing even more territory. There's really no need to explain a supposedly unusual reluctance by colonial powers to encroach on Siam, when they were doing just that, at their usual pace. It's not like they could roll in with tanks (that hadn't been invented yet) and take over the entire country in a few days. It took centuries to expand their empires to their maximum size, they could afford a few decades more. (Or so they thought. Then the tides turned towards decolonization.)
- ElProlactin 2mo ago[dead]