: Siam: Land of Free Men by Deignan H G Herbert Girton - Thailand History

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Geography Peoples Prehistory Kingdom of Sukhothai-Sawankhalok Kingdom of Ayuthia Kingdom of Tonburi Kingdom of Siam Thailand

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SIAM--LAND OF FREE MEN

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, M?n, 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 m?l?e 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 M?n, 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.

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 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.

Graham, W. A., Siam, vol. 1, pp. 1-2, London, 1924.

Pronunciation near English "tie."

GEOGRAPHY

Whatever more or less final rectifications of frontiers result from the current war, the land of the Thai will still, for general purposes, fall into four geographic divisions of major importance: Northern, Central, Eastern, and Peninsular.

Northern Thailand, lying between the Salwin and the Me Khong, two of the world's most majestic rivers, is, for the most part, a country of roughly parallel ranges and valleys running north and south. At the heads of the flat-floored valleys, which vary in elevations above sea level from 800 feet in the southeast to 1,200 feet in the northwest, arise important streams, the Me Nan, the Me Yom, the Me Wang, and the Me Ping, which, falling through narrow defiles to debouch in the low land of Central Siam, eventually there conflow to form the Me Nam Chao Phraya, the chief artery of that division. On the alluvia of these streams, as might be expected in a country whose civilization was originally based upon riziculture, live the great bulk of the northern Thai or Lao, in a setting of rich fields and orchards. The ranges similarly rise, southeast to northwest, from low, rounded hills to imposing peaks, many of which exceed an altitude of 5,000 feet and two of which achieve more than 8,000 feet. These mountains, rising abruptly from the valley floors and, on the whole, densely forested, are scarcely inhabited by man except for scattered groups of seminomadic hill tribes, which exist there by hunting and a primitive agriculture. The northernmost province, Chiengrai, is separated from the sister provinces by a mountain wall and belongs wholly to the Me Khong drainage; it is largely a region of marshes and grassy savannas.

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