Siam: Keeping Independence Between Two Empires

Siam, now Thailand, was the only Southeast Asian state to avoid colonization, thanks to skilled diplomacy, reform and geography. King Mongkut, who reigned from 1851 to 1868, accepted the Bowring Treaty with Britain in 1855, which opened trade and granted extraterritoriality, deciding that concessions were better than war. His son Chulalongkorn, who reigned from 1868 to 1910, modernized the state by creating a centralized bureaucracy, building railways and telegraphs, reforming the army and gradually abolishing slavery.

Siam still paid a price. After the Paknam Incident of 1893, when French gunboats forced their way up the river to Bangkok, Siam ceded territory east of the Mekong to France, and in 1909 it ceded four Malay states to Britain. In 1896 Britain and France agreed to guarantee the independence of Siam's central Chao Phraya valley, partly because both preferred a buffer state between British Burma and French Indochina.