Siam

Revisiting the Vietnamese Annexation of Cambodia (8): Who Exactly was Fighting Whom?

There is an extremely important text for the conflict in the 1830s between “Vietnam,” “Siam” and “Cambodia” that I have never seen an historian use before, and that is the The Strategy for Pacifying the Siamese Raiders and Thuận Bandits (Tiễu bình Tiêm khấu Thuận phỉ phương lược 勦平暹寇順匪方略).

This text contains very detailed information about the conflict between “Vietnam,” “Siam” and “Cambodia” in the early 1830s; much more detailed information than the Nguyễn Dynasty chronicles, The Veritable Records of Đại Nam (Đại Nam thực lục 大南寔錄), contains.

And from those details, one can gain very interesting insights into that conflict.

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Revisiting the Vietnamese Annexation of Cambodia (6): A Siamese Report on Clothing

Following up on the previous post, there is another source that mentions Cambodian officials and people wearing Vietnamese clothing – a Thai source known as The Battle between An Nam and Siam (Anam Sayam yut อานามสยามยุทธ).

This work was first published in 1907, and then republished in 1971, and was compiled by K. S. R. Kulap Kritsananon, a writer and publisher.

Kulap was a unique figure in that he was a commoner who wrote about history at a time when most historical writings were produced by people in the royal government. However, Kulap supposedly had access to the documents that had been earlier collected by Chao Phraya Bodindecha, one of the main Siamese military officials in the first half of the nineteenth century, and a figure who played a major role in the conflicts between Siam and the Nguyễn Dynasty at that time. (For more on this, see Craig Reynold’s “The Case of K.S.R.Kulap: A Challenge to Royal Historical Writing in Late Nineteenth Century Thailand.”)

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Rama VII Discovers Hawaiian History at the Coconut Hut

King Prajadhipok and Queen Rambhai Barni of Siam visited Honolulu in 1931 for only about 24 hours. That is not enough time to really gain an understanding of a new place, and we don’t know what the king and queen really learned during the course of their short visit.

However, in reading the newspaper accounts about their visit today, it is amazing to see how directly the king and queen were exposed to the realities of Hawaii under American rule. In fact, the first instance of this exposure occurred not long after they arrived.

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