How Thailand Resisted Colonization

8/22/2026 at 7:27:46 AM

Entertaining and educational historical narrative, much of it was new to me. The main idea is that kings of Siam willingly and actively embraced European culture and modernization efforts, unlike other countries in Asia which resisted and implemented them reactively, often by force.

This included imposing unified national language and cultural homogeneity across their territory, with centralized government, laws, administration. The other side of that is the suppression of regional languages and culture, as it happened during European nation-building with Welsh, Gaelic, Breton, Occitan, Alsatian, German and Italian dialects. Similarly in China, Japan, and elsewhere.

The building of telegraph lines, railways, and schools helped solidify nation state authority. I wonder how that relates to the internet, as a tool of communication as well as social control and centralizing power.

A way to summarize how Thailand resisted colonization is that it colonized itself, and successfully adapted culturally to the wave of Europeanization and modern global order of nation states.

by lioeters

8/22/2026 at 3:22:01 PM

> A way to summarize how Thailand resisted colonization is that it colonized itself, and successfully adapted culturally to the wave of Europeanization and modern global order of nation states.

That feels true only inasmuch as adapting a bit to the realities of the nineteeth century and strengthening the state is synonymous with colonization, which I don't think it is really.

Thailand remained an absolute monarchy throughout the colonial period, studiously avoided converting to Christianity, wide adoption of European languages or even orthography, and did not become a major trade partner even after signing agreements favourable to Europeans. It abolished serfdom and introduced national education and railways at its own pace decades after the initial trade agreement and its culture remained rural and Buddhist. Modern international Bangkok and its financial centre is the result of changes that took place long after the colonial era, built around palaces, temples and canals that predated it.

The article downplays that Thais were also more powerful than their Lao or Cambodian neighbours to the point they treated them like colonies themselves (hence why the French could claim to be "protectors" of Laos, and why their colonizing of Laos and Cambodia was a defeat for Siam, but not a critical one). So its not surprising they were able to command more respect from Europeans, particularly when they were pragmatic and diplomatic enough to give those de facto colonies up to the more powerful colonizer. The parts of Siam that stayed independent to become modern day Thailand also formed a neat buffer between what was French Indochina and English India/Burma

by notahacker

8/22/2026 at 8:08:39 PM

However:

The European colonial powers were not all over the world to enforce "European cultural values". They were there to extract minerals, lumber, labor, and agricultural produce for as little a price they could pay.

by profsummergig

8/23/2026 at 7:09:52 AM

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Brita...

Also,

Napier enforced the British prohibition of suttee, or sati practice. This was the custom of a widow's burning herself to death on the funeral pyre of her husband. While rarer during the time Napier ruled Sindh,[20] these immolations were, Napier judged, motivated by profits for the priests; when told of an actual sati about to take place, he informed those involved that he would stop the sacrifice. The priests complained that this was a customary religious rite, and that customs of a nation should be respected. As recounted by his brother William, he famously replied:

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Napier_(British_Army_o...

by Gud

8/24/2026 at 8:50:43 PM

I forgot to mention another reason earlier: Rape. European colonial powers were also all over the world so that their men could have easy access to rape without consequences. (Read up, e.g., Columbus' diaries.)

by profsummergig

8/23/2026 at 4:23:46 PM

I'm sure that after General Dyer gave the orders to fire at a bunch of defenseless people (including women and children), he faced a shooting squad himself. Or when Churchill starved Bengal, he passed away from lack of nutrition. Or when the British-controlled police beat up non-violent protesters with steel-tipped rods, they also got a dose of the baton. Or when the survivors of the 3.5 million strong who served in both the world wars for the British returned, when they didn't get anything in return, common British soldiers suffered the same fate.

Nobody's denying the subcontinent had its faults. But holding a few instances of positive work by the British doesn't nullify the millionfold negative stuff.

I'm not going to give you sources. You can research on your own. Every bit of British history in the subcontinent shows that the "customs" were nothing but a ruse to justify the loot and a fig leaf, at best, to cover up quite a lot of injustice.

by soundward

8/22/2026 at 2:23:12 PM

It very definitely patterned its behavior on colonizer to survive - even becoming a local-sphere colonizer itself, interestingly. Definitely a case of "if you can't beat 'em, (temporarily) join 'em."

by PeterHolzwarth

8/22/2026 at 3:15:12 PM

Why did you state temporarily?

by HappyPanacea

8/22/2026 at 5:57:36 PM

Because we’re discussing civilizations and cultures whose histories stretch back millennia. The European colonial project lasted about a hundred years, and we’re still in the early days of the aftermath given the timeframes we’re discussing. When we’re as far from the present moment as the kingdom described on the stele in the article was from the moment of its discovery, we can talk about the durability of any of this, but at the moment, any impression of permanence is the myopia of the present.

by roughly

8/22/2026 at 6:21:01 PM

From what you write it appears to me that you have never been to Thailand.

by raffael_de

8/22/2026 at 12:49:22 PM

Japan did the same. And its colonies (Taiwan, Korea) became similar sucesses inheriting the institutions and infrastructure.

by cineticdaffodil

8/22/2026 at 5:52:00 PM

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by lazyninja987

8/22/2026 at 8:31:50 AM

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.

by KingMob

8/22/2026 at 2:08:12 PM

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.

by markkitti

8/22/2026 at 3:58:19 PM

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.

by KingMob

8/22/2026 at 5:38:55 PM

> Why did they suddenly need a buffer zone?

I confess my ignorance in this specific matter, but when somebody leaves something on the table it means that it costs too much to take it.

by pmontra

8/22/2026 at 4:06:40 PM

The English? Surely we’re talking about the British?

by bbg2401

8/22/2026 at 10:53:56 AM

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.

by esperent

8/22/2026 at 12:26:09 PM

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.

by devilbunny

8/22/2026 at 1:39:49 PM

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.

by roenxi

8/22/2026 at 7:15:10 AM

Always interesting to read how something very difficult was done very well. Understanding the West's true and purported motivations, bending their own culture - choosing what to adopt or not and how - without breaking, ceding some land, and it all working out in the end. Quite remarkable.

There's a lot of stuff there that needed to succeed in several different ways (technical, local population, foreign image) to work, and it did.

by ahartmetz

8/22/2026 at 4:14:46 PM

> it all working out in the end

This seems a little too glib to me. Certainly Siam was a success in relative terms, but it seems to me they still adopted Western culture partly under duress. I suppose it's academic at this point, but I wonder how quickly they would have chosen to assimilate without the imminent threat of colonization.

by fwipsy

8/23/2026 at 6:54:43 PM

Oh for sure, the success if you want to call it that was to successfully implement the least bad option. Though it does seem that the king saw some good in Western culture, so at least from his POV it was presumably not all about losing their culture, but partially also an improvement.

What I find admirable is managing this mess of grey areas.

by ahartmetz

8/22/2026 at 2:15:48 PM

Comparing this article's description of Siam definitely not getting colonized:

> In the face of overwhelming military force, Chulalongkorn ceded the territory, making a necessary concession to preserve the kingdom as a whole. Siam was forced to cede territory to the French in what is now Laos and Cambodia, creating much of the modern borders of Thailand. The French established a demilitarized zone along the Mekong, and the Siamese had to pay an indemnity of three million francs. European powers readily resorted to gunboat diplomacy but even here, France felt compelled to frame its demands in terms of legitimate Vietnamese territorial claims rather than naked conquest.

> Between 1893 and 1909, Siam would cede around 40 percent of its territory to France and Britain. But the strategic retreat meant Chulalongkorn preserved what mattered most: the political independence of Siam’s core territories.

with its contrasting description of Burma definitely getting colonized:

> Following its defeats in the Anglo-Burmese Wars of 1824–26 and 1852, Burma had been forced to surrender four provinces, pay a crippling £1 million indemnity (about $160 million today), and accept the presence of a British overseer with veto power over the king’s decisions.

...

> When Britain manufactured border disputes to complete Burma’s annexation in 1885, Mindon’s modernization efforts provided no protection against a colonial power that was, by that point, committed to conquest.

It rather seems to me like Siam was about two decades into a process that would usually take a few decades more, but got a respite due to World War I distracting the colonizers. (Maybe an even better counterexample to the article's thesis that adopting the trappings of Western civilization protected against invasion by European powers.)

by yorwba

8/22/2026 at 5:54:41 PM

Absolutely this. Thais love saying they've never been colonized, but conveniently forget to mention that 40% of their territory was colonized and permanently lost.

by flyingshelf

8/23/2026 at 1:14:48 AM

The article gives way too much weight to charm, reform and image management, and basically no weight to the fact that both the French and British agreed that having a neutral buffer state was in both their best interests. See the Anglo-French Declaration of January 1896.

> Weak institutions built by colonists fell apart after twentieth-century decolonizations, contributing to the deaths of millions of people across Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Burma.

This is a really problematic narrative. Thailand was basically a junior partner in the American military aggression in the region, which is what was most responsible for those deaths. Something like 80% of all USAF air strikes over North Vietnam originated from bases in Thailand. There were tens of thousands of American service members serving in Thailand in the late 1960s, more than in South Vietnam. The B52s bombing Cambodia flew from U-Tapao. Thais even served in the war, mostly in Laos.

by ElProlactin

8/23/2026 at 10:02:22 AM

If they needed a neutral buffer state, why did they keep making it smaller? Really, they just needed to avoid getting surprised by the other being too quick to colonize and presenting a fait accompli before they got the opportunity to grab some bits for themselves.

The declaration of 1896 was followed up by the Entente Cordiale of 1904, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Entente_Cordiale that divided Siam into spheres of influence, "disclaiming all idea of annexing any Siamese territory." Of course this was preceded by France annexing some Siamese territory earlier in 1904 and followed by France in 1907 and Britain in 1909 annexing even more territory.

There's really no need to explain a supposedly unusual reluctance by colonial powers to encroach on Siam, when they were doing just that, at their usual pace. It's not like they could roll in with tanks (that hadn't been invented yet) and take over the entire country in a few days. It took centuries to expand their empires to their maximum size, they could afford a few decades more. (Or so they thought. Then the tides turned towards decolonization.)

by yorwba

8/23/2026 at 5:49:32 PM

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by ElProlactin

8/24/2026 at 9:37:04 AM

A great read. One change not mentioned in the article is a ban of chopsticks and transition to a fork and a knife. To this day, Thailand remains the only South East country using forks instead of chop sticks.

by crazybonkersai

8/23/2026 at 6:31:03 AM

Thailand's rapid modernization and giving up 40% of its territory gave it time to embrace guns and a modern military. Sadly the widespread adoption of guns during this time period has a lasting impact today. Thailand has the highest number of gun deaths per capita of any asian country today. Resisting colonization in Thailand and overthrowing colonization in the US have embracing fire arms in common.

by sinoue

8/22/2026 at 2:19:00 PM

From Works in Progress, a media company promoting economic growth.

I'm sure a credible argument could be made in the opposite direction with a different case study - i.e. celebrating their own identity even if it bemuses international markets / imperialists (Japan and manga/anime for example).

Of course, it's an interesting study, but do all remember to resist the temptation to take too much from it!

by tmgldn

8/21/2026 at 9:33:10 PM

It depends whether one considers Thailand to have been part of informal empire or not, much like the British influence over Portugal, Chile and Argentina.

Either way, Thailand was also a Cold War hold out. It bordered Cambodia, Laos and Burma, and Vietnam by sea, all of which became Communist-run. The west helped prop it up.

There is a whole other argument about Thailand's current relationship with the west, which is complex to say the least.

by nephihaha

8/22/2026 at 8:53:44 AM

They decided to “nation-state”. The border theory doesn’t hold since colonial nations border each other pretty much everywhere else.

The reality is, a nation state (a la french model) is much more powerful than the primitive kingdom structure or any other structure really. Most of these kingdoms/empires didn’t have education for the masses or mass levies.

by csomar

8/22/2026 at 9:04:46 AM

All of Thailand's neighbours to the north fell to Communism. There was a major attempt to make Malaya (as was) Communist as well, which failed.

However, I'm sceptical of the term nation state. I don't consider France to be a homogenous nation, since it contains areas like Brittany, Alsace and Basque areas. Likewise, Thailand has some indigenous minorities.

by nephihaha

8/22/2026 at 10:56:26 AM

> Likewise, Thailand has some indigenous minorities

I don't think I've ever been in a country that doesn't have indigenous minorities so I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. Maybe a very small country like Iceland could claim not to have any indigenous minorities? Otherwise they basically all do.

by esperent

8/22/2026 at 11:40:11 AM

Put it this way. I am Scottish, and when people say somewhere like the UK is a "nation state", I'm sceptical. Scottish attitudes towards the UK range from total attachment to total alienation, but with the majority maintaining some level of Scottish national identity within that. I've met people from France who did not consider themselves French but to be Breton, Basque, Corsican etc as their national identity.

I don't know much about Thailand's minorities, but if it is anything like some Asian countries such as Nepal or the Philippines, its national identity is probably more complex.

You're right to mention Iceland, although by area it isn't that small! Remote island nations probably qualify better as nation states than conglomerates such as Thailand and France.

by nephihaha

8/22/2026 at 1:34:10 PM

>people from France who did not consider themselves French but to be Breton, Basque, Corsican

Corsicans, sure. But, in my experience, for Bretons and Basques it is very rare for them to deny their French identity in the way that plenty of Scots deny their Britishness. For whatever reason, the layered-identity model actually seems to work in France.

by bluebarbet

8/22/2026 at 12:47:20 PM

You can always break some UK laws and find out whether you are ruled from London. Expensive experiment for sure, but I'm certain of the outcome.

Likewise, the Catalans (a region in Spain) recently found out whether they belong to the nation state Spain. Their seditious "leaders" were thrown into prison by Spain.

by stephbook

8/22/2026 at 3:29:22 PM

You are confusing two separate issues here. Apart from the fact Scotland has its own legal system within the UK, we are talking about whether it is a nation. In terms of people's identity, it is not really a full nation state. The Scots, and to a lesser extent the Welsh, have a complex relationship with Britishness. That's before we get to Northern Ireland which was arguably the most politically unstable region in western Europe within living memory.

The UK is not a federal system like the USA, and so there is very little that counts as UK law as such. Even within Dublin, back when it was in the UK, the Easter Rebels of 1916 were mostly processed within Ireland itself.

Portugal and Andorra have a better case for being nation states than Spain does. I definitely would not call Spain a nation state. Or China or Russia. Being able to throw people in a prison does not prove it is a nation state. The Catalans are a nation as are the Basques.

by nephihaha

8/22/2026 at 4:48:44 PM

> The UK is not a federal system like the USA, and so there is very little that counts as UK law as such.

This seems quite far-fetched. Parliamentary sovereignty alone would be unthinkable in the US model, where US federal legislatures have fairly delimited powers that they cannot arbitrarily change. The Scottish government, for example, essentially exists at the whim of Westminster and (in this iteration) was only created a few decades ago.

by vinay427

8/23/2026 at 7:35:49 AM

Scots law is actually a separate issue from the current Scottish Parliament, in fact it was used as one of the arguments for having one. I remember it being set up: I voted for it.

The UK constitution, if it can be called such, is made up of numerous contradictory documents, but Scotland retaining its own legal system was one of those. It has some everyday features not found elsewhere in the UK like procurator fiscal, and until recently the "not proven" verdict. (I was at a murder case a couple of years ago where the panel (accused) was given a "not proven" verdict.)

by nephihaha

8/22/2026 at 3:39:25 PM

It's a simple formula:

def do_i_belong_to(country):

    return this.army * this.commitment_level < country.army * country.commitment_level

by consensus1

8/22/2026 at 2:38:33 PM

Your example demonstrates that the UK meets the definition of a state but not necessarily the definition a nation (shared culture/identity).

by ThrowawayR2

8/22/2026 at 3:38:01 PM

The UK is a state, but arguable as a nation from certain points of view. It is not a federal system as some think it is. In fact, even the relatively recent UK supreme court may very well be unconstitutional.

France has been more heavy-handed with uniting its nation, but even it has issues. Spain is possibly looser than the UK, at least outside the sporting arena.

by nephihaha

8/22/2026 at 2:21:39 PM

I think I should be more precise, a Modern nation state. One that imposes laws afar to all minorities/regions, establish some institutions (medical/education/tax/etc..) and raise an army (check some african countries armies or the lack thereof).

The reason why I mentioned the french is because they were the first to modernize at a significant scale (which enabled them to take over all of Europe?) during their revolution.

by csomar

8/22/2026 at 3:51:45 PM

The French never took over all of Europe. Though they came as close as anyone did. France was a large state, but within easy reach of a number of much smaller ones such as the German and Italian states. The Russian and the British Empires managed to defeat them, although geography complicated things in both cases.

France did and does retain some odd ideas about its colonies. It took a long while to realise that most of the people in Algeria didn't consider themselves an integral part of France. Their Pacific possessions are seen as France as well.

by nephihaha

8/22/2026 at 5:36:46 PM

They have a saying here in Thailand:

Siam was never colonized by Europe, it was colonized by Bangkok.

by joeguilmette

8/22/2026 at 2:37:42 PM

Interesting article!

I was curious as to the debate surrounding the authenticity of the Ram Khamhaeng stele, but with a quick search was not able to find a definitive answer...

by pcrh

8/22/2026 at 2:12:28 PM

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by mycall

8/22/2026 at 12:47:37 PM

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by cineticdaffodil

8/22/2026 at 4:39:35 PM

What about an article about Eritrea? It's a country from eastern Africa that's never been colonized and it's one of the poorest country on earth.

by TacticalCoder

8/22/2026 at 5:13:46 PM

De facto conquered by Italy, then run by the British later on. From Wikipedia [^0]:

> In the 16th century, the decades long attempt to conquer the Highlands by the Ottomans would result in failure forcing them to offer a peace treaty where they were limited to the Eritrean coastline. In May 1865, much of the coastal lowlands came under the rule of the Khedivate of Egypt, until it was transferred to Italy in February 1885. Beginning in 1885–1890, Italian troops systematically spread out from Massawa toward the highlands, eventually resulting in the formation of the colony of Italian Eritrea in 1889, establishing the present-day boundaries of the country. Italian rule continued until 1942, when Eritrea was placed under British Military Administration during World War II; following a UN General Assembly decision in 1952, Eritrea would govern itself with a local Eritrean parliament, but for foreign affairs and defense, it would enter into federal status with Ethiopia for ten years. However, in 1962, the government of Ethiopia annulled the Eritrean parliament and formally annexed Eritrea. The Eritrean secessionist movement organized the Eritrean Liberation Front in 1961 and fought the Eritrean War of Independence until Eritrea gained de facto independence in 1991. Eritrea gained de jure independence in 1993 after an independence referendum.

[^0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea

The only two African countries that weren't colonized were Ethiopia and Liberia, and both of those are technicalities. Italy tried for Ethiopia and failed at first but succeeded, briefly, under Mussolini; Liberia was a country created by the United States to send African slaves in the US that wanted freedom "back to Africa"

by nunez

8/22/2026 at 5:51:03 PM

Note that all this modernization was not driven by any internal desire to adopt western ideals and concepts, but at the point of British and French guns. The marriage of loudly professed noble ideals and naked looting was and remains the hallmark of the western civilizational project - we’ve not so much sold the world on the merits of modernity as looted their houses and then blamed them for not recognizing the wisdom of putting locks on their doors lest uncivilized people take advantage of their naïveté.

by roughly

8/22/2026 at 6:17:48 PM

Confusing how a group resolves internal heterogenity with how it deals with outsiders reveals a misunderstanding. There is nothing particularly contradictory on issues such as a separation of church and state or republicanism with foreign policy. In fact they're entirely different categories!

by corimaith

8/22/2026 at 6:25:39 PM

Yes, except the West consistently used its professed internal principles to justify its external actions, and also didn’t adhere to those principles particularly well or consistently internally either. If one believes the principles to be sound - if one thinks the world would be a better place were they applied universally - then the western colonial project ought to be more widely recognized as a source of shame, but any time one discusses the “triumph of modernity” over the last two centuries, that hypocrisy is either ignored or justified and the march of progress is treated as some kind of universal law or natural process, as opposed to an act of widespread violence. We still treat people who don’t adhere to our notions of modernity as backwards, and we still fail to acknowledge the violence by which we enforce our lofty ideals.

by roughly

8/22/2026 at 8:04:47 PM

You'd have to specific about which ideas are being used to justify colonialism and where their lineage is, racism after all was one such justification, yet it was rooted more in classical antiquity era thinking than debates regarding German Idealism. Economic interests are another, but once again, that's pretty explicit and consistent.

by corimaith

8/23/2026 at 12:39:04 AM

I mean, it’s in the article. The Siamese Kingdom put on the trappings of western modernity because the lack thereof was being used as an explicit justification for colonization under a “save the savages” type zeitgeist.

by roughly

8/22/2026 at 6:27:17 PM

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by vee-kay