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British Expansion and Rule in South-East Asia

A. J. Stockwell

in The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century

British expansion in South-East Asia was shaped by the well-being of India, opportunities in China, and international, particularly Anglo-French, rivalry. From the late eighteenth century, British ... More

British expansion in South-East Asia was shaped by the well-being of India, opportunities in China, and international, particularly Anglo-French, rivalry. From the late eighteenth century, British commerce in South-East Asia became enmeshed with British commerce in India; from the late nineteenth century, the development of agriculture and mining tied South-East Asian economies more closely to industrial and finance capitalism in Britain. The advances into ‘Further India’ during 1786–c.1830 are shown. It specifically addresses maritime South-East Asia and Britain in mainland South-East Asia. In addition, the free trade imperialism and turbulent frontiers in Malaya and Borneo, Burma, and Siam during c.1830–c.1870 are reported. It then considers imperialism and colonialism during c.1870–1914. As the British pursued their interests and extended their power in South-East Asia, the demarcation between those areas falling within Britain's formal Empire and those remaining outside it became indistinct.Less

Introduction: The Allure of Ambiguity: The “West” and the Making of Thai Identities

Rachel Harrison

in The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand

This introductory chapter investigates the ways of drawing Siam/Thailand into potential comparative debate with a broader, global field via an engagement with postcolonial thought. It examines the ... More

This introductory chapter investigates the ways of drawing Siam/Thailand into potential comparative debate with a broader, global field via an engagement with postcolonial thought. It examines the issues at play in the ambiguous allure that the West has generated for Siam/Thailand in the development of new cultural identities post-1850.Less

The Ambiguities of Semicolonial Power in Thailand

Peter A. Jackson

in The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand

This chapter examines the history of Siamese/Thai attitudes to the West in relation to the situation of both colonized and other nominally independent societies. Drawing on postcolonial ... More

This chapter examines the history of Siamese/Thai attitudes to the West in relation to the situation of both colonized and other nominally independent societies. Drawing on postcolonial understandings of power, culture, and knowledge, it argues that while Siam/Thailand occupied a subordinate position in the Western-dominated world order, it was never a direct colony. The chapter also argues that the notion of semicolonialism provides an avenue to open a dialogue with postcolonial studies while recognizing the ambiguities of Western power in the Thai context.Less

Competitive Colonialisms: Siam and the Malay Muslim South

Tamara Loos

in The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand

This chapter examines how Siam's modernity developed in relation to areas on the Malay Peninsula, focusing on the role played by King Chulalongkorn and his closest advisors. The catalyst for ... More

This chapter examines how Siam's modernity developed in relation to areas on the Malay Peninsula, focusing on the role played by King Chulalongkorn and his closest advisors. The catalyst for Bangkok's centralization of control over territory was nineteenth-century European imperialism. Siam's leaders felt that the country's autonomy was under siege by imperial Britain and France, so they centralized and strengthened its provincial administration. The chapter argues that the decision by Siam's rulers to incorporate certain territories on the Malay Peninsula but not others, and the particular reforms pursued, were imbued with motives that went far beyond the original concern for Siam's independence, let alone survival. It entailed the direct administration of autonomously ruled Malay Muslim states and involved several other measures that appear characteristically imperial.Less

Afterword: Postcolonial Theories and Thai Semicolonial Hybridities

Peter A. Jackson

in The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand

This concluding chapter discusses postcolonial theories of cultural hybridity to delineate some of the main forms of Siamese/Thai responses to the West. It compares Nestor García Canclini's account ... More

This concluding chapter discusses postcolonial theories of cultural hybridity to delineate some of the main forms of Siamese/Thai responses to the West. It compares Nestor García Canclini's account of the hybrid mestizaje discourse of Latin American Hispanic elites as a mode of hegemonic rule to the nineteenth-century Siamese elite discourse of siwilai (“civilized”). In contrast, at the international level in which Siam's rulers were subordinate to the West, the chapter draws on Homi Bhabha to read siwilai as a hybrid discourse manifesting Thai elites' subaltern resistance to Western imperialism. Both Bhabha's and García Canclini's different accounts of postcolonial cultural hybridity are needed to explain all these patterns of Thai–Western cultural mixing.Less

“A Politie of Civill and Military Power”: Diplomacy, War, and Expansion

Philip J. Stern

in The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India

This chapter shows how the political system detailed in the previous chapters responded to unprecedented challenges to its authority and integrity, beginning in the early 1680s. A rebellion led by ... More

This chapter shows how the political system detailed in the previous chapters responded to unprecedented challenges to its authority and integrity, beginning in the early 1680s. A rebellion led by its own soldiers at Bombay, a Dutch-backed coup at Banten in Java, and growing impositions on its jurisdiction from Asian powers led Company leadership to a much more aggressive posture in defense of its network of fortified settlements and the rights and privileges that network was intended to protect. The Company sought to secure its colonies and establish new settlements, ideally through diplomacy, most notably at Bengkulu in Sumatra, but also through two wars, one in Siam and another in Bengal, which ultimately resulted in the grant of zamindari rights for the government of Calcutta. Through all this, Company governors’ guiding concern was not territorial aggrandizement or imperial expansion, but the integrity of its rights and jurisdiction, particularly over English subjects in Asia.Less

The Politics of Space I: Siam-Ratchaprasong from Above

Serhat Ünaldi

in Working towards the Monarchy: The Politics of Space in Downtown Bangkok

Siam-Ratchaprasong is the major center of Thailand’s royalist-led capitalist development and of its inherent contradictions. A birds-eye view on its architecture reveals just how much orientations ... More

Siam-Ratchaprasong is the major center of Thailand’s royalist-led capitalist development and of its inherent contradictions. A birds-eye view on its architecture reveals just how much orientations towards the monarchy have shaped this stretch of land in the heart of Bangkok. Case studies of Sra Pathum Palace, the private palace of the king’s family, and of the controversial destruction of Phetchabun Palace, the former residence of a prince from a family line rival to that of the king, illustrate how developers in the Siam-Ratchaprasong area have been working towards the monarchy through space. However, a third case study shows how local business owners have become religious patrons themselves by setting up Hindu shrines at Ratchaprasong intersection. Their popularity often outshines that of more established royal places of worship. The weakening of the royal monopoly over religious sponsorship is indicative of the threat posed to the monarchy by capitalists.Less

Men of the Feast: Saranrom

Gary L. Atkins

in Imagining Gay Paradise: Bali, Bangkok, and Cyber-Singapore

Prince Vajiravudh left England in the early 1900s to return to Siam, including a month long tour of the USA. His refusal to pursue relationships with women distressed his mother the queen. At his ... More

Prince Vajiravudh left England in the early 1900s to return to Siam, including a month long tour of the USA. His refusal to pursue relationships with women distressed his mother the queen. At his palace of Saranrom, Vajiravudh would imagine and create his own island home populated by young men who were not from the royal family. At Saranrom, he would begin to deploy the strategy he would use to link the oppositional narratives he now needed both to write and to live.Less

Bordering Malaya’s ‘Benighted Lands’: Frontiers of Race and Colonialism on the Malay Peninsula, 1887–1902

Amrita Malhi

in Challenging Cosmopolitanism: Coercion, Mobility and Displacement in Islamic Asia

From 1891 to 1895, the Pahang War disrupted Britain’s enclosure of territory on the Malay Peninsula. Fought in response to an uprising by up to 700 rebels in Pahang, the war was not only a means for ... More

From 1891 to 1895, the Pahang War disrupted Britain’s enclosure of territory on the Malay Peninsula. Fought in response to an uprising by up to 700 rebels in Pahang, the war was not only a means for controlling damage to British interests but also an arena for a subtle, geopolitical contest between Britain and Siam for the Siamese tributaries, including Kelantan and Terengganu. During this period Terengganu, sheltered by legal and territorial constructs that kept the Siamese frontier open until 1902, was becoming a hub for perang sabil (‘holy war’) against British and Siamese ‘competitive colonialisms’. Known to be providing discursive, human, and other political resources to the Pahang rebels, Terengganu came to be portrayed as a ‘wild’ and ‘benighted’ place by Pahang’s British Resident Hugh Clifford, an important broker of the colonial race-thinking deployed as a means for controlling and taming the frontier.Less

The Politics of Space II: Siam-Ratchaprasong from Below

Serhat Ünaldi

in Working towards the Monarchy: The Politics of Space in Downtown Bangkok

At street level, Siam-Ratchaprasong becomes a site of artful engagement with urban space, a site where the disciplining measures of dominant institutions are contested and subverted but also accepted ... More

At street level, Siam-Ratchaprasong becomes a site of artful engagement with urban space, a site where the disciplining measures of dominant institutions are contested and subverted but also accepted and supported. The slum community Chumchon Lang Wat Pathumwanaram demonstrates that people who are working towards or against the monarchy might live in the same neighborhood. Splits run deep not just between but through classes. Another case, that of illegal street vendors at Siam Square, illustrates that resistance does not necessarily challenge the status quo but may be marked by its intelligent manipulation. Some groups at Siam-Ratchaprasong, however, have started to actively work against the monarchy. Anti-royal graffiti drawn by red shirt protesters on a construction hoarding at Ratchaprasong intersection show how strong opposition to the monarchy has become at this site where the unequal distribution of charismatic benefits in Thailand assumes material form.Less

Conserving Smallholder Society

Tomas Larsson

in Land and Loyalty: Security and the Development of Property Rights in Thailand

This chapter examines the continued evolution of land rights as the threat of colonization diminished with the outbreak of World War I, along with the emergence of Thai nationalism as a political ... More

This chapter examines the continued evolution of land rights as the threat of colonization diminished with the outbreak of World War I, along with the emergence of Thai nationalism as a political force and the impact of the Great Depression on rural society. Before discussing the interaction between the parallel development of nationalism and property rights in land in Thailand, the chapter considers the role of Japan in the continued evolution of Siamese land policy and law. It also discusses the land-titling law passed by Parliament in 1936 and goes on to analyze how the new political forces and historical experiences reinforced rather than challenged the status quo in regards to rural land rights in Thailand. The chapter concludes by comparing the impact of the Great Depression in Burma and Siam to illustrate the significance of the legacy of institutional underdevelopment.Less

In and Chun

Joseph Andrew Orser

in The Lives of Chang and Eng: Siam's Twins in Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter focuses on the life of conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker, more famously known as the “Siamese twins,” in the United States. It first provides a background on the twins' birth and ... More

This chapter focuses on the life of conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker, more famously known as the “Siamese twins,” in the United States. It first provides a background on the twins' birth and childhood in Siam before turning to a discussion of their arrival in Boston in the summer of 1829, courtesy of British merchant Robert Hunter and American sea captain Abel Coffin. It then considers how Chang and Eng became instruments that enabled the American public to get a fuller picture of Siam, and how Siam and the twins came to occupy a prominent spot in the way Americans imagined the Orient. It also examines how the twins' condition raised physical questions about the human anatomy and metaphysical questions about the nature of the self. Finally, the chapter assesses the impact of phrenology and physiognomy on the medical men who examined Chang and Eng.Less

The System of the World

Robert K. Batchelor

in London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689

Chapter five concludes by analyzing the Asian roots of the Glorious and Newtonian Revolutions in politics and science, what many have seen as ‘the birth of the modern.’ A crisis in the East India ... More

Chapter five concludes by analyzing the Asian roots of the Glorious and Newtonian Revolutions in politics and science, what many have seen as ‘the birth of the modern.’ A crisis in the East India Company trade, brought on in part by attempts by Siam, Russia and the Mughals to consolidate their own power, encouraged a search for translatable ideas about sovereignty, science and cosmology. The result of this was the dual Newtonian and Glorious ‘revolutions,’ in which cosmological and absolutist centrality were replaced by an awareness of the limited nature of systemic phenomena and the need for appropriate translation strategies between these. These developments in London, Oxford and Cambridge, gave the Glorious and Newtonian revolutions a global and ‘modern’ character as systems for comprehending the world. The Newtonian and the Glorious revolutions ultimately sealed off the question of causality by relations at a distance as unknowable in favor of more provincial claims to truth, but the dual revolutions were the culmination of efforts over a century and a half to build London into a global city through the creation of practices and institutions for translation, interpretation and measurement.Less

Portraits That Matter: King Chulalongkorn Objects and the Sacred World of Thai-ness

Irene Stengs

in Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality

This chapter addresses the role of mass-produced portraits of the Siamese King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868–1910) in a personality cult that emerged in the 1990s among the urban Thai middle class ... More

This chapter addresses the role of mass-produced portraits of the Siamese King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868–1910) in a personality cult that emerged in the 1990s among the urban Thai middle class in response to hopes and anxieties about Thai identity in a globalizing world. The portraits are understood as having sought out their owners themselves, even though they are typically obtained as gifts or bought from door-to-door venders, and as capable of exerting agency and providing support and security.Less

Making Jesuit Science Travel

in Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China

This chapter focuses on the entry of a new Jesuit man of science, the apologetic voyager, into the China mission field, French Jesuits first entered the China mission en masse in 1688, their ranks ... More

This chapter focuses on the entry of a new Jesuit man of science, the apologetic voyager, into the China mission field, French Jesuits first entered the China mission en masse in 1688, their ranks increasing rapidly towards the century's close. Traveling eastward under the aegis of the Sun King, they simultaneously broke with Portugal's well-established right of ecclesiastical patronage over the Asian missions and dispensed with the persona of the missionary mathematician by helping themselves to a corporate identity only recently manufactured by the Bourbon monarchy. This chapter examines the making of the Voyage de Siam (1686), a book that was edited by Guy Tachard and harnessed the traditional apologetic functions of Jesuit mission history and the activities of Parisian academicians to the expressive possibilities of the travelogue. In following the passage of the Voyage de Siam from script to print, the chapter evaluates the strategies with which French Jesuit missionaries first asserted themselves as “knowledgeable men” sent by the Parisian Académie des sciences to “make observations in foreign lands.”Less