Warfare and Depopulation of the Trans-Mekong Basinsom who wished to institute a proceeding against his patron would be
transferred to being phrai luang.^11 These were methods for luring more
able-bodied men to submit to centralized authority because being phrai
luang appeared to be harder than being phrai som. For example, some-
times the former had to travel to the capital to deliver their service to the
court while the latter could do it within the vicinity of their hometown.
Siam’s records show that forcibly resettling people from the defeated
polities into Siam’s domain was one of the most important tasks car-
ried out by Siamese troops. After Taksin had defeated his political rivals
in Phitsanulok and Nakhon Ratchasima, his army evacuated a large
number of people from the two provinces to resettle in Thonburi.^12 The
Nong Chronicle from Cambodia states that following Taksin’s campaign
in Cambodia in 1771–72, Cambodia lost 10,000 people, with a large
number of them dying during the war.^13 French missionary records
also indicate that the Thonburi expedition against Vientiane and
Champassak in 1778 carried back about 3,000 Laotians to resettle in the
central Chao Phraya region.^14
By the First Reign of the Chakri dynasty, when Siam’s capital was
moved from Thonburi to Bangkok, an effort to enforce manpower mo-
bilisation remained a major task of the king. Rama I (r. 1782–1809) tried
to encourage the locally based officials to carry out the sak lek, registra-
tion by tattooing able-bodied men. In 1783, one year after Rama I had
ascended the throne, Siam despatched an order to various chaomuang
to sak lek in their areas, for Bangkok needed to mobilize labour for the
construction of the new capital.^15
Following the invasions in Laos and Cambodia an effort was made to
expand the administrative links with the local elites in these border areas.
In 1783, about 10,000 Khmers and 5,000 Laotians were levied to dig a
- Akin, The Organisation of Thai Society, 58.
- “Chotmaihet khong phuak bathluang farangset”, 93–94.
- “Nong Chronicle”, in Prachum Phongsawadan Part 1 , 143–44; See also “Chotmaihet
raiwan thap samai krung thonburi” [Records Concerning the Expeditions in the
Thonburi Period] in Prachum Phongsawadan Part 66 : 145. - “Chotmaihet khong phuak bathluang farangset”, in Prachum Phongsawadan Part
39, 149–50. - Prince Thiphakorawongse, Phraratchaphongsawadan krung rattanakosin ratchakan
thi nung [The Dynastic Chronicle of the First Reign of the Chakri Dynasty],
(Hereafter PKRR I) (Bangkok: Khurusapha, 1983): 44–45.