An interesting and standard narrative for how Thailand avoided colonization. There's a lot to commend it.

The biggest criticism I usually see of this narrative is that the British and the French may have also seen Thailand as a neutral buffer zone between their respective empires. By staying out of Thailand, they reduced the risk of conflict between them, supposedly.

I have no idea how valid this idea is, or how much of a factor it would have been, I'm not a historian.

▲

markkitti 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The two narratives are not mutually exclusive. In contrast to other parts of the world, the English and French would have just divided the territory with arbitrary lines. Why did they suddenly need a buffer zone?

Rather as this history describes, the Thai monarchy and government appears to have modernized (Westernized?) just in time to be able thread a needle between two empires, playing them off each other to maintain independence.

It is worth noting that the word "Thai" has come to mean "free" in the eponymous language. Thailand literally means "land od the free".

Note that this history conveniently ends before World War II.

	▲	bbg2401 24 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The English? Surely we’re talking about the British?
	▲	KingMob 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I didn't mean to imply they were mutually exclusive. If anything, I suspect the reality is a mixture. -- I have to ask, though, where are you getting the idea that ไทย ("Thai") also translates to "free", or that it's pre-WW2? Google Translate doesn't list that as a translation for "free" at all, and thai-language.com mostly lists that in the context of the Free Thai movement ([a WW2 anti-Japanese resistance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Thai_Movement)). There's probably some subtleties I'm missing, but it really seems like a niche definition.

▲

esperent 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've also seen this suggested before, often enough and by historians that I'd say it's at least a well known theory. The fact that this article doesn't even mention it makes me a but suspicious that it's biased.

Of course the reality of nation state politics is complex and there's never going to be a single "true" theory.

My suspicion here is that the buffer theory takes agency away from the Thai and makes it seem like just luck, while this article does the opposite, and the reality is probably a big mess somewhere in between those.

	▲	devilbunny 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If Siam realized that there was value in being a buffer, rather than a warzone, and made the changes necessary to become that buffer so that accepting it as such was better for the colonial powers than trying to take it, that’s not taking away agency; that’s standard politics for small states nestled between major powers.

▲

roenxi 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That sounds like a viewpoint that would be vulnerable to just accepting everything that is as preordained. Every country's destiny is heavily influenced by their neighbours.

It is by no means a given that Britain and France would see a need for a neutral buffer zone given that the home countries of the two powers only had a small channel separating them in Europe. They'd be used to the idea of sharing a border. We can all but guarantee that both of them had people looking at the map every so often and asking if it made sense to officially add Siam to the imperial holdings.