[
    {
        "id": 205786,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1969",
        "page_number": 92,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "86 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nmonopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. \n\nNext came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. \n\nIn the next two decades, especially in the \"forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. \n\nSir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. \n\n\"In conducting these negotiations\", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.'",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    {
        "id": 205787,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1969",
        "page_number": 93,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n87\n\nPursuing this conciliatory line Brooke came to Bangkok determined to win the confidence of the Siamese and to allay their fears. He wrote to a friend:\n\n\"I shall not seek to make a treaty in a hurry. I shall try to remove apprehensions and obstacles and pave the way for the future. The King is old and a usurper; he has two legitimate brothers, clever and enlightened, who ought to be raised to the throne.... A treaty extorted by force would be but a wasted bit of parchment... The Prince Chow-fa Mongkut is an educated man, reads and writes English and knows something of our literature and science\".2\n\nWith such admirable sentiments Rajah Brooke arrived at the mouth of the Menam. Everything went wrong. The Sphinx ran aground attempting to cross the bar at Paknam. When he met the Praklang (the Foreign Minister), every point he raised was opposed. Was there any need for a treaty? What was wrong with the Burney treaty of 1826? When Brooke asked for more freedom of trade the Praklang replied that trade was already free. As for the British having a Consul at Bangkok and being exempt from Siamese law, both proposals were unnecessary and improper. Later talks with the Siamese Ministers made no more progress. They asked Brooke to put his points in writing but letters between the two sides made no more progress than conversations. It was clear that the Siamese did not want a treaty or any improvement in trade or diplomacy with Britain.\n\nThe Brooke mission was obviously failing. And as frustration grew Sir James's conciliatory attitude changed. Finally he advised force. In a dispatch to the Foreign Minister he wrote:\n\n“Should these just demands firmly urged be refused, a force should be present immediately to enforce them by a rapid destruction of the defences of the river which would place us in possession of the capital and by restoring us to our proper position of command, retrieve the past and ensure peace for the future, with all its advantages of a growing and most important commerce.\"3\n\nBrooke alleged, with some justice, that the Burney Treaty had been broken by the Siamese. Monopolies had been restored, trade was no longer free and taxes on British vessels had increased. In",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205788,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1969",
        "page_number": 94,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "88\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nany case, he argued, trade had dwindled and it was in the interests of the Siamese to accept a new treaty which would expand trade.\n\nThe White Rajah never met the King. He sailed away with nothing but indignation. He had not openly threatened the Siamese with force but had hinted as much. The old King and his Ministers were not impressed but they must have harboured fears of reprisals as there were so many precedents. In October that year Brooke, addressing himself to Lord Palmerston, evoked high principles in the fine Victorian manner in support of his call for force:\n\n\"Justice — compassion — interest — dignity — and a consistent course of policy appear to me to call for decisive measures to be taken without delay.\"\n\nAnd in a letter to a friend:\n\n\"The Siamese must be taught a lesson... our policy should be commanding and our power exerted when necessary. My policy in Sarawak has been high-handed against evil-doers and there, and in England and in Siam, there are bad to be punished as well as good to be cared for.\"\n\nMercifully for Siam, Brooke's gun-boat policy was not accepted in London but he did perceive the solution in spite of his call for force. The old King, Rama III, must soon die and there was good prospect that his half-brother Prince Mongkut would succeed him. In that event, Brooke said, the prospect of a new relation with Britain was bright.\n\nThe Sphinx and the Nemesis had scarcely left the Menam in September, 1850 when an American mission arrived. It was led by a certain Joseph Balestier, a not very successful American merchant of Singapore who came with a letter from his President. If the Brooke mission was a failure, Balestier's was even worse. Bowring comments:\n\n\"Mr. Balestier had not been fortunate in his commercial operations as a merchant at Singapore and it may be doubted whether the nomination of a commercial gentleman whose history was well known to the King and nobles at Bangkok was judicious; it was certainly not deemed complimentary to the proud Siamese authorities.\"4",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205793,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1969",
        "page_number": 99,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n93\n\nThe new King imported printing presses, mainly for the publication of Buddhist writings. He encouraged monks to teach in the monasteries. He continued his own studies, particularly of astronomy and acquired telescopes and other scientific equipment. Some ten years after he became King he took the unprecedented step of employing a foreign woman, the celebrated Anna Leonowens, to act as governess and tutor to his numerous children.\n\nKing Mongkut built roads, canals and bridges. New Wats and new palaces were constructed at his command. He encouraged ship-building and personally supervised the building of the first steam-boat on the Menam, importing an engine from England. He abolished the corvée forced labour required for land or other privileges and replaced it by taxation. There was no limit to his energy or his delight in innovation, but in one respect King Mongkut saw no need for change.\n\nHe kept an enormous harem in his Palace. Having been celibate for twenty-seven years he now set about building the biggest Royal Family of the Chakri Dynasty. In the \"Inside\" of the Palace there was a veritable city of women - reports say three thousand or more. They were mostly servants, 'Amazons' for guards, officials, maids and so on, but Mongkut acquired thirty-two wives and by the time he died, aged sixty-four, he had eighty-two children. Some accounts put the number of wives and concubines much higher. Townshend Harris, the American envoy who concluded a treaty with Siam in 1856 - following the British success in 1855 - commented in his dispatches to Washington: \"After some twenty years spent in the rigid celibacy of the priesthood the King gives up a large portion of his time to voluptuous pleasures....\n\nhe is indulging himself in a manner equally repugnant to decency and the laws of his religion of which he was a stern supporter while in the priesthood.\" It was, of course, a custom and one required especially of the monarch, but it is a little surprising that the reforming zeal of the King did not extend to his prodigious practice of polygamy.\n\nOf all his reforms the most significant was in his relations with the West. As soon as he became King a new attitude was revealed. He indicated willingness to have a return visit from the disappointed Brooke of Sarawak. Could Sir James come, he said, a little later to allow for the prolonged cremation ceremonies",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205796,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1969",
        "page_number": 102,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "96 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nlive in Bangkok and buy or rent property there, and within a distance from the capital measured by how far a local boat could travel within twenty-four hours. Beyond that the Siamese could not undertake to ensure their safe protection. British subjects, who must register with their Consul and carry identity documents, could observe their own religion and build churches. This provision was scarcely necessary when we recall Mongkut's welcome to the missionaries. The treaty also specified that British subjects could employ Siamese servants. \n\nBritish ships-of-war were allowed to sail up the Menam as far as Paknam about twenty miles from Bangkok - but no further without special permission. If an ambassador were to arrive he could sail all the way to the capital in his warship. \n\nThen followed the commercial articles. The monopolies of the King and his nobles were abolished and trade was made free. British merchants might buy from the producer direct and sell their imports to anyone without interference. The duties levied on ships according to their size were abolished, and all imports were to be subject to a tax of three per cent. Exports were to be taxed once only; the amount of the duty being specified in a schedule attached to the treaty. Opium was to be admitted without duty and sold to a single merchant. The export of rice was now permitted for the first time, but the treaty provided for a ban on its export and on the export of salt and fish - in times of scarcity. Permission was given to British companies to build ships in Siam. Article 10 was a \"most favoured nation\" clause: Bowring had the foresight to expect that other countries would follow the British example and he insisted that the terms they obtained would never be better than those he had just secured. Lastly, there was provision for the revision of the treaty in ten \n\nyears. \n\nEveryone was happy and especially King Mongkut. Bowring was received in Royal audience formally and for several hours in private. He visited the Second King, Mongkut's equally gifted younger brother, who held this peculiarly Siamese post of deputy monarch. Mongkut wrote a personal letter to Queen Victoria and entrusted it to Parkes who was to take back the text of the treaty to London for ratification. Elaborate gifts were collected for the Queen. The King was in excellent spirits, delighting in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    }
]