The Project Gutenberg EBook of Siam—Land of Free Men, by H. G. Deignan

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Title: Siam—Land of Free Men

Author: H. G. Deignan

Release Date: January 16, 2014 [EBook #44679]

Language: English

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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES NUMBER EIGHT

SIAM—LAND OF FREE MEN

                                 By
                            H. G. DEIGNAN

(Publication 3703)

CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FEBRUARY 5, 1943

                      The Lord Baltimore Press
                      BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.

CONTENTS

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

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

  1. 1, Gorge of the Me Ping
     2, Ancient wall at Chiengmai
  2. 1, A monolith in the Me Ping gorge
     2, Boat being pulled upstream through the rapids by ropes
  3. 1, The "mai kwao," tree that yields gum resin
     2, Transplanting young rice plants
  4. 1, Fishing from the roadsides after the rains
     2, Water buffalo
  5. 1, A primitive type of cart
     2, Elephants breaking up a log jam
  6. 1, Small river boats, and bamboo water wheel
     2, A temple
  7. 1, A reliquary
     2, The high altar of a Buddhist shrine
  8. 1, Royalty visits Chiengmai
     2, A princely funeral at Chiengmai

TEXT FIGURE

1. Map of Siam

[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Map of Siam.]

SIAM—LAND OF FREE MEN

                           By H. G. DEIGNAN
                Associate Curator, Division of Birds
                       U. S. National Museum

(WITH 8 PLATES)

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, Môn, 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 mêlée 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 Môn, 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.[1]

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[2] 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.

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

[2] 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