When Europe was colonsing the world, the Kingdom of Siam found itself sandwiched between British Burma and French Indo-China (Vietnam). Soon it lost Laos and Cambodia to the French.

The monarch of Siam, King Rama the 5th realised that Siam couldn’t fight back militarily against technologically advanced Europeans. Hence he devised some ways to keep the sovereignty.

The justification Europeans used to invade and colonise a land was to bring “civilization” to those lands. Rama V Europeanised Siam by himself to give it legitimacy in the eyes of Europeans. He adopted Western clothing, sent his children to study in Europe to learn their ways.

He made Siam into a country according to the European definition. i.e. into a “Nation State”. Borders of Kingdoms used to always be hazy and not clearly established. He noticed European obsession with drawing borders and also usurping lands which didn’t have a defined border.

So, he got British cartographers to clearly draw Siam’s borders and publish them. Since if a territory is not on a map, it was up for grabs to any European power.

He then got Western press to write positively about Siam for years, about how great the King and his reforms were. This removed the justification in the minds of European people for invasion and colonisation on the pretext of the land being ‘uncivilized’.

He also played the card of being a buffer State between British and French territories in Asia, and preventing their direct conflict.

In my opinion, he seems to have studied the geopolitical situations of the time well and taken steps to maintain sovereignty at all costs. But Thailand did end up getting Europeanised to a degree. But less so than a colonised country like Bharat.

(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread originally tweeted by Vijay @dharma__vijaya on June 26, 2022.)