Literally everyone of its neighboring countries was colonized by the West for centuries except them. How were they able to succeed in maintaining their independence when everyone around them took years of political struggle to be free?
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Because those surrounding colonies were controlled by Britain (e.g. Myanmar) and France (e.g. Vietnam) who were in competition with each other and desired a buffer zone between their colonies and that buffer zone was basically the valley that makes up a good portion of Thailand.
They played France and Britain against each other and allowed each to have some commercial interests. They did keep a large standing army and were ready to ally themselves to both, and neither UK not France were particularly motivated to wage a war there – note that Cambodia, immediately to the east (and an open plains all the way to Bangkok ) became a French protectorate by choice/colony by administrative wrangling and not through military action, so France was pretty content to keep it that way.
I read a article about this. The King at the time played both sides. When dealing with the British he would drop hints that he was on very good terms with the French and if he was ever attacked that he could count on them for support. When dealing with the French he told them how he was on very god terms with the English and if attacked if attacked that they would come to his support. That is the short version, but basically he very shrewdly played both sides against each other.
The secret to mass colonial conquest is political opportunism; exploiting divisions and weakness in the nations government in order to seize de facto control without ever really needing to actually literally conquer the country. Even when they fought wars the main goal was usually just siezing the capital/government (i.e. no need to take other cities/provinces etc). The result is that nations that managed to maintain strong and/or unified governments tended to resist far better than otherwise. Until eventually decades later a weak gov came along. In Thailands case they just never really had a poorly situated enough government to allow ready foreign takeover as well as being well situated in a buffer position between the french and english.
Burma is a great case that probably shouldn’t have been able to be conquered (it’s jungle terrain made operating in the country near impossible in the era) but a succession crisis led to an unpopular monarch and divided government. Seeing weakness the British pounced, declaring to the people they just wanted to replace the king, while also winning over (bribing?) the prime minister into getting the army not to resist.
They basically just went upriver in boats to the capital and the king surrendered to them out of hand.
Who says they weren’t? They ceded considerable amounts of territory, trade and legal concesssions, in a similar manner to China.
There was really no reason to colonize Thailand.
1. Siam (Thailand’s western name at the time) didn’t have a lot of resources the colonizers wanted.
2. They bordered several different colonies. So anybody that took them over would now have competing countries on multiple fronts around them.
3. Leadership was very active in diplomacy. They gave up rights, resources, and land to colonizers, and also worked w/ them a lot so they became advocates for Siam back home.
Overall the reward ratio was super low for Thailand, and the colonizers could get whatever they wanted through diplomacy anyway. Eventually Thailand would have fallen but traditional colonization fell out of favor after WWII.
On top of other good comments mentioning diplomacy and acting as a buffer state, Thai/Siamese rulers smartly “westernized” their rule, for example by abolishing slavery, centralizing their governance and “mapping” their country with clear claims as to what was considered Siam/Thailand proper, adopting Western clothes…
These snuffed out a lot of the usual justifications that existed for colonization (barbarians needing civilization, land being up for grab because of unclear sovereignty…), and made it harder for imperialists to justify outright conquering. Sure, none of these was a hard stop to colonization, but they were real hindrances that combined with other factors to prevent Thailand from being fully colonized.
12,898 declassified files on the CIA’s website suggest that Thailand has not been free from the effects of western influence.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/search/site/Thailand
Mac tried to do this in It’s Always Sunny but failed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9EYt_f12wo
the King went to Oxford or something and from that westernized thailand
So when other forces came through town he was able to negotiate and do business with them
they were able to get what the want and make money so there was no need to take over
plus they were all afraid of muay thai fighting….. dananana na na naaa
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