The policy of balance of power was followed by King Mongkut (Rama
IV), who reigned from 1851 to 1868.
King Mongkut succeeded in conduction a foreign policy for
maintaining Thailand’s independence. As such, his skillful diplomacy is worth studying for, as Hall has observed, “ It is perhaps not
too much to say that Siam owed much to Mongkut more than anyone else the fact
that she preserved her independence when by the end of the Nineteenth Century
all the other states of South-East Asia had come under European control.”
At the beginning of King Mongkut’s reign, the Thais
increasingly feared that their very existence as a nation was at stake.
British imperial expansionism was in full flood. The Thais
had no way of knowing that the British in Burma would not expand eastward
beyond the Burmese border.
In 1852, the year following King Mongkut’s assumption of the
crown, the British started their second Burma War by which they annexed Pegu.
Dictated by his fear of Great Britain, King Mongkut took an
initiative to appease the British. In 1855, in line with this policy of
appeasement, the king concluded a treaty of friendship and commerce with Great
Britain, through which Thailand lost its judicial freedom.
British consular jurisdiction was established in Bangkok and
thereby extra-territoriality descended upon Thailand for the first time in its
modern history.
The treaty also prescribed an import and export tariff which
gave Great Britain greater security for freedom of commerce.
King Mongkut’s Policy
to give commercial and judicial concessions was based on fear rather than on
respect and admiration.
The king and his advisers regarded the English as” rapacious
tyrants who were seizing on the whole of Asia.”
They granted such concessions not because they liked the
English, but because they feared them. To prevent the English from making
further demands, King Mongkut showed the same astuteness as his brother, King
Rama III, in conducting a policy of seeking balance and counterweight in
foreign associations.
He approached the United States and France, whose naval
capability was believed to match that of Great Britain.
In 1856 King Mongkut signed a treaty of friendship and
commerce with both the United States and France.
Before signing the treaty with the United States, the makers
of foreign policy in Bangkok were impressed with the American attitude towards
Thailand.
Townsend Harris, who was sent to Thailand to conclude this
treaty, stated the good feeling of the United States government towards
Thailand and its general desire only for justice and mutually beneficial
relations.
Ruling out any American desire for territorial concession
from Thailand, Harris contrasted his country’s policy with that of Great
Britain.
The Thai rulers were
told that the United States had no colony in the East, nor did it desire any.
The form of the American government, Harris stated, forbade the holding of
colonies. His mission to Thailand was assigned solely for establishing a
commercial relationship.
Satisfied with this American attitude, the Thai Prime
Minister(Phra Kalahom), in his diplomatic initiative to use the United States
to counter-balance Great Britain, stated that ” We love the Americans, for they have
never done us or any one else in the East any injury.”
The Americans, he further appreciated, were not seeking
conquest in the East, and American missionaries had been of vast value to the
Thais, teaching many valuable arts.
While admiring and respecting the American, Phra Khlang, the
Thai Minister of Commerce and Foreign Affairs, proposed to Harris that”…we
would like to have an article in the treaty providing that in case of any
trouble with any western power(Great Britain) the United States would act as
umpire.”
But Phra Khlang’s demand for such political commitment from
the United States met with a negative response.
Harris thanked him for the proposal and assured him that no
such provision would be necessary because the United States felt it an
obligation of friendship to comply with any such request.
Harris’ reluctant attitude led the Thais to conclude a
Thai-American treaty, in which the Thais made concessions to the Americans similar
to those made to the British.
Thailand then turned to France, whose envoy, M. de Montigny,
was waiting at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River for the departure of the American
envoy.
Prior to the arrival of the French mission, Thailand had
already shown a disposition to negotiate a commercial treaty with France at the
close of 1851.
The government of France, accordingly, empowered Admiral
Lapierre, who commanded the naval station of Reunion Island and Indo-China, to
treat with the government of Thailand on the basis of the most-favored nation,
being guided by commercial treaties already negotiated with Cochin-China and
Muscat.
Lapierre never fulfilled his mission, however, because war
with Russia intervened before he could visit Bangkok. ]
France then waited until 1856. In this year Montigny was
commissioned to visit Bangkok and to negotiate a treaty. His mission also
included a visit to Cambodia and Annam.
In making an approach to France, the Thais knew very well
that the French mixed commercial and religious with political interests in the
Far East.
To accommodate the French commercial interests, the Thais
signed a treaty of trade and commerce, the provisions of which were similar to
those obtained by the United States and Great Britain.
As Montigny’s mission to Thailand was bound up with the
activities of French missionaries in that area, the Thais gave considerable
freedom to French missionaries to carry on their work in Thailand.
In the course of negotiations with the French envoy, the
Thais went so far as to prefer France for a neighbor.
To this end, they proposed that Thailand would cede the
island of Koh Door (Pulo Condore) to France.
For his part, the French envoy took advantage of the Thai
desire to use French power to counteract that of Great Britain by putting a
French counter-proposal that Thailand, who feared Britain, should accept a
French protectorate.
To this counter-proposal the Thais did not agree. In
reference to this episode of Franco-Thai negotiations, King Mongkut, in a long
letter of March 4, 1867 to the head of the embassy that he had dispatched to
Paris, wrote:
When Montigny came here he tried to turn Siam into a French
protectorate by seduction, using as his argument the dangers of British
domination. The Siamese were not to be easily seduced, however, and he spent
some time here employing various method of allurement.
Fear of the English did not drive King Mongkut more closely
into the arms of the French. The king tried his utmost to avoid being dependent
solely on France.
Instead, he made further attempts to attract the attention
of other European powers and signed treaties of friendship and commerce with
them.
These powers included Denmark, Portugal, Holland, Prussia, Belgium, Italy, Norway and
Sweden.
Before the end of King Mongkut’s reign, France constituted
the most threat to Thailand’s security. French imperialism accentuated the
threat coming from the east,” for in building her empire France had behaved
towards Siam much as a powerful Vietnamese emperor might have done and had made
the same demands.”
In 1862 France concluded a treaty with King of Vietnam(Annan),
which ceded Cochin-China. It began to extend into Cambodia, which had long been
a subject of contention between Thailand and Vietnam.
After the defeat of Vietnam, the French put forward the
theory that they were the heirs to Vietnamese claims.
In 1863, the French concluded a treaty with the King of
Cambodia by which he recognized French suzerainty.
From the Thai point of view, this treaty was exacted by force and against the wishes of
both Cambodia and Thailand.
In the wake of this French aggression in the east, King
Mongkut found it difficult to maintain Thailand’s long-standing political and
strategic interests in Cambodia.
In the west, Thailand still faced Great Britain as a threatening power. Under
these circumstances, King Mongkut dared not try to play off Great Britain
against France for fear that it would provide Great Britain with a good change
to colonize Thailand.
The king then had two choices, either to directly negotiate
with France or to demand assistance from Great Britain at the risk of the loss
of Thailand’s independence.
Referring to these two choices, the king, in consultation
with his diplomats in Paris, wrote in this manner: “…it is for us to decide
what we are going to do; whether to swim up-river to make friends with the
crocodile(France) or swim out to sea and hang on to the whale(Great Britain)…”
With strong pressure
diplomatically and militarily from France, the King finally made the first
choice. In 1867 he agreed to a treaty whereby Thailand gave up its rights in
Cambodia in return for French recognition of Thailand’s control of two
Cambodian provinces of Siemreap and Battambang.
These two provinces, though nominally Cambodian territory,
had in fact been in Thai hands since 1795.
Hesitating to employ the tactic of playing off Great Britain
against France, the King felt it necessary to sacrifice Thailand’s former power
and influence over Cambodia for the sake of its independence or ” to keep
ourselves within our house and home”’ in his own words.
