RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 82 KING MONGKUT OF SIAM AND HIS TREATY WITH BRITAIN ROBERT BRUCE* When Sir John Bowring sailed up the river to Bangkok in March 1855 he was asked by King Mongkut not to fire a salute lest the citizens be alarmed. Sir John, Governor of Hong Kong and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in the Far East, reluctantly agreed to postpone the ceremonial explosion from the Rattler's guns until the anxious citizens had been given one day's warning. The Siamese had cause for concern. The Burmese, their traditional enemies, had been conquered by the British; and a dozen years before the Bowring mission the great Chinese Empire had been defeated by the British navy. On their eastern frontier, the Siamese watched with alarm the French encroachment on Cochin-China and their own dominion of Cambodia. To the south of the Isthmus of Kra British power was spreading into the Malay States, including Kedah, a feudatory of Siam. But their fears were to prove unfounded. The Bowring mission to Bangkok was completely successful for both British and Siamese. On April 18th, 1855, a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, an agreement which was to secure for Siam, alone in south-east Asia, independence from colonial rule and which set her on the long, painful road of modernisation. Force had been used to 'open' China. In the same year as Bowring's peaceful mission to Bangkok Commodore Perry's American warships were demanding commerce and navigation rights of the Japanese. Even after the Treaty of Nanking had * This article, entitled "King Mongkut of Siam", appeared in History Today for October 1968. The original text, slightly extended, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor. Mr. Bruce lectured to the Hong Kong Branch on this subject in February 1968. Mr. Bruce is at present a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, U.S.A. He served eight years as Representative of the British Council in Thailand and later filled the same post in Hong Kong where he was a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society. Mr. Bruce was also one time Director of the Government School of Chinese Language at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 134 H. J. LETHBRIDGE of its history64. The Hong Kong government utilised a number of Chinese associations that had developed independently, gave official status to a few and drew them for the convenience of administration into its orbit. In doing so, to some degree it had to forego total control over the Chinese population and share such control with a small number of Chinese notables. Both benefited from the arrangement. This system has been called one of 'indirect rule' but I feel the phrase conceals more than it reveals, for a committee such as the District Watch could on occasion shape government policy. Government had to play along with a number of Chinese committees for without their support the regulation of the Chinese masses would have been at best an uncertain matter. The heaping of honours on a small number of Chinese notables was, surely, a recognition of the key part they played in promoting stability rather than prizes given for their alienation from Chinese society. Such prominent Chinese, as I have suggested, were as much watchdogs for the Chinese community, and especially the Chinese bourgeoisie, as barking dogs for the colonial government. NOTES 1 Lennox A. Mills, British Rule in Eastern Asia, London, Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 398. 2 i.e., Sir Shouson Chow, Sir Robert Kotewall, Lo Man-kam, Dr. Li Shu-fan, and William Ngartsee Thomas Tam. 3 S. F. Balfour states that Hong Kong Island was owned originally by the Tang (Têng) clan of the New Territories: 'Hong Kong Before the British', Tien Hsia Monthly, vol. xi, 1941, p. 464. A translation of a Chinese notice printed in the Friend of China, 24 July 1858, reads: Tung Wing-Fook-Tong (sic) of the Sun-on district, was formerly sole proprietor of the Island of Hong Kong, and of the hills and coast of the North Side of the Harbour under the general name of Tsin Shat-Choy.... Lately Tung Wing-Fook-Tong petitioned the Magistrate of Sun-on to examine Tung's claim to Tsin Shat-Choy and the Magistrate issued a proclamation declaring that Tung Wing-Fook-Tong is the real owner of the Property. The editor asseverated 'as to his having been a Lord of this Isle, as well as of Tsim-shat-choy, —in a word, we do not believe a word of it'. Barbara Ward writes of fishermen that for reasons probably mainly connected with their spatial mobility and the lack of land, these fishermen do not have a developed lineage system nor any real concept of one'. See Barbara Ward, 'Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong: Their Post-peasant economy', in Maurice Freedman, ed., Social Organisation: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, London, Frank Cass, 1967, p. 278. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 22 LEIGH WRIGHT tongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire. When the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms, and left there to decompose. The town was in a condition of squalid wretchedness—the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes. Brunei was by the 19th century then one of those decaying Malay-Muslim sultanates of Southeast Asia about which the historian Lennox Mills noted,12 The rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppressive; individually brave they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes ... The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipation at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak subjects... III The political map of Southeast Asia was determined largely by imperialist interests and considerations of the last century. In most instances boundaries and demarkations were the results of international rivalries involving two or more European powers, with only now and then a consideration of the interests of indigenous states. In Borneo this principle does not apply entirely. The boundaries of the states of Eastern Malaysia, formerly British Borneo (Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak), are the result not so much of international rivalry as of the rivalry between Englishmen. This rivalry was centered in commercial circles in Borneo and England and involved the Foreign and Colonial ministries in Whitehall. By the 19th century Britain's chief interest in the area was strategic: to protect her commercial routes to China.13 She was concerned firstly, with the location of a suitable naval station along the eastern flank of the South China Sea, and secondly, with the assumption of political control over the northwestern coast of Borneo so as to prevent those areas falling to a European rival. Britain was not worried about the relatively weak Dutch and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 27 Hooker, MB, 1969, "The East India Company and the Crown 1773 - 1858', Ma-laya Law Review 11 Hui-Chen Wang Li, 1959, The Traditional Chinese Clan Rules, J J Augustin Publisher, New York Hunter, Guy, 1966, Southeast Asia: Race, Culture and Nation, Institute of Race Relations, London Open University Press Jackson, JC, 1968, Planters and Speculators: Chinese and European Agricultural Enterprise in Malaya 1786 - 1821, Oxford University Press, London, New York Jones, S W, 1953, Public Administration in Malaya, London and New York Kaye, John William, 1853, The Administration of the East India Company, A History of Indian Progress, Kitab Mahal, Allahabad, Delhi Keay John, 1993, The Honourable Company, A History of the English East India Company, Harper Collins Publishers, London Khoo Kay Kim, 1966, 'The Origins of British Rule in Malaya', IMBRAS, xxxix, no 1, 52-91 Khoo, Kay Kim, (1972) 1975, The Western Malay States 1850 - 1873. The Effects of Commercial Development on Malay Politics, Oxford University Press, Bangunan Loke Yew, Kuala Lumpur Mak, Lau Fong, 1981, The Sociology of Secret Societies, A Study of Chinese Secret Societies in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, Oxford University Press, East Asian Social Science Monographs Maxwell, Sir George, (c 1943 Mimeograph) Problems of Administration in British Malaya, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York Maxwell, P B, 1859, 'The Law of England in Penang, Malacca and Singapore', JA, ns iii, 26 - 55 Mills, LA, 1966, British Malaya 1824 - 67, Kuala Lumpur Mills LA, 1942, British Rule In Eastern Asia, Oxford University Press, London ================================================================================