Siam’s Chao Phraya kingdom never wore a European flag
Thailand, known as Siam until 1939, sits in mainland Southeast Asia between Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia, with coasts on the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. People have lived there for at least 40,000 years. Alone among its neighbours, the kingdom ruled from Bangkok since 1782 was never colonised by Europeans.
Rice farming took hold around 2000 BCE, and Ban Chiang in the northeast is the oldest known centre of copper and bronze working in Southeast Asia, active between 2000 and 1000 BCE. Iron appeared about 500 BCE. From the seventh to eleventh centuries the Mon culture of Dvaravati flourished along the Chao Phraya, with forty moated towns sharing Theravada Buddhism and Mon inscriptions, and it sent tribute missions to the Tang court in 638, 640 and 649.
Tai-speaking ancestors are traced to the Yangtze basin and drifted southwest over many centuries, mixing with Mon and Khmer neighbours so thoroughly that Thai is now seen more as a cultural identity than a genetic one. King Mangrai moved his capital to Chiang Mai in 1262, founding Lan Na, and took the Mon kingdom of Hariphunchai in 1292. Sukhothai, established in 1238, is treated as the start of Thai history, and Ayutthaya, founded in 1350, supplanted the Khmer as the regional power.
Portuguese envoys reached Ayutthaya in 1511, and Burmese armies destroyed the city in 1767. Taksin reunited the realm, but after fifteen years Rama I seized power and moved the capital to Bangkok in 1782. Through the colonial era Siam alone in Southeast Asia stayed uncolonised, though it gave up land and legal privileges under unequal treaties; King Mongkut signed the Bowring Treaty as Mongkut Rex Siamensium.
The 1932 revolution ended absolute monarchy, and the country officially became Thailand on 24 June 1939. The word Thai is often read as free man, while Siam may come from a Sanskrit word for dark or a Mon word for stranger. Today almost 66 million people live on about 513,000 square kilometres, and coups in 2006 and 2014 show how much sway the army retains.
Source: Thailand
