Siam (Central Thailand)
In 1767 the city of Ayutthaya, which had been the capital of Siam for more than 400 years, fell to a Burmese invasion. The capital and countryside were devastated. Thousands of people were killed and thousands more—including nobles, intellectuals, artists, and artisans—were captured and taken back to Burma.
Eventually a military leader became king and began to restore order. He set up a new capital across the river from today’s Bangkok. Though progress was made during his reign in reconstituting the kingdom and recovering commercial prosperity, resistance developed. He was deposed and executed. The new king, later called Rama I, moved the capital to Bangkok and began construction of both the palace and the royal temple, in which was enshrined the legendary Emerald Buddha. The long formal name given to the new capital celebrated it as the seat of the Emerald Buddha.
Siam grew secure and prosperous. Trade continued to expand, above all with China. Chinese junks brought in tea, silk, dishes, foods, and thousands of Chinese workers. Siamese junks carried to China exports such as rice, sugar, tin, dyestuffs, and junks themselves, as Bangkok had a thriving ship-building industry.
Familiarity with things Western increased. The first Westerners and Western products had come to Siam in the sixteenth century, and there was an exchange of embassies with France in the 1680s. An English envoy visiting the home of a Siamese official in 1822 found that “the window-curtains consisted of a handsome English chintz,” and “the room was lighted by a pair of good cut-glass English chandeliers.”
The period from about 1850 to 1925 saw exceptionally rapid change. New technologies such as printing, photography, telegraph and telephone, and the railroad, and new ideas brought home by students returning from study abroad, began to transform society, culture, and the arts.
Siam managed to avoid being taken over by a Western colonial power, as all the other countries of Southeast Asia were. But the struggle to counter the Western threat had to continue. Modernization was pushed on many fronts, combined with efforts, such as staging elaborate displays at the World’s Fairs, to show the world that Siam was a progressive and highly cultured place.
