Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast AsiaThe fall of Ayudhya had a devastating impact on Siamese society and
on the country’s politico-economic position. The central Chao Phraya
Basin was largely deserted and its commercial and agricultural activities
were severely disrupted. The country faced a serious famine that was
further aggravated by droughts and floods. Indeed, the number of people
who died of starvation in the first year of King Taksin’s reign was prob-
ably higher than that of those who were killed in the war with Burma.^6
Manpower was a key element not only of statecraft in general but also
of Siam’s recovery. It provided labour for the generation of revenue and
for the mobilization of the army and the centre’s consequent control over
the outlying princes and nobles. Therefore, warfare and forced resettle-
ment of people from the weaker states along the Mekong Basin were
instrumental in Siam’s reassertion of its politico-economic hegemony in
the region. The weak states did not only lose their manpower, but were
also subjugated under Siamese rulers. The forced evacuees provided
both corvée labour for agricultural and military activities, and suai,
head tax in kind or in money. Suai were comprised of valuable local and
forest products, such as rhinoceros horn, ivory, gold, spices, etc. These
products constituted a significant part of Siam’s maritime trade in the
early nineteenth century.^7
It should be stressed that this process transcended the Mekong
River. Before the advent of western concepts of bounded nation-states
in Southeast Asia, the Mekong River was not perceived as a boundary to
the power of Siamese rulers. Instead, Siam attempted to extend its influ-
ence into the Lao kingdoms and Cambodia, making the trans-Mekong
region a major source of manpower for Siamese economic development.
However, the presence of the Vietnamese created difficulties for the
Thai consolidation of power over Cambodia and elsewhere as well as
other parts of the Mekong region. As will be shown, the increasing ten-
- “Chotmaihet khong phuak bathluang farangset nai phaendin phrachao ekathat,
khrang krung thonburi lae khrang krung rattanakosin ton ton” [Records of the
French Missionaries during the Periods of King Ekathat, Thonburi, and the Early
Bangkok], in Prachum Phongsawadan Part 39 (Collected Chronicles) (Bangkok,
Khurusapha, 1968): 193. - See more in Puangthong Rungswasdisab, “Siam and the Contest for Control of the
Trans-Mekong Trading Networks from the Late Eighteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth
Centuries”, in Nola Cooke & Li Tana (eds), Water Frontier: Commerce and the
Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750–1880, (Singapore: Singapore University
Press, 2004): 101–18.