he sent a mission to China offering to resume diplomatic relations, but
only on a basis of formal equality. This was rejected by Beijing, which
in 1875 and again in 1878 demanded dispatch of a Siamese tribute
mission. The Siamese again procrastinated, but in 1882 Chula-
longkorn finally notified the Qing court that Siam repudiated any
tributary obligation to China.^14
The Siamese decision was taken for a variety of reasons that
principally had to do with Siam’s evolving national identity, and the
regional power configuration. One issue was security. The seizure by
France of southern Vietnam (Cochinchina), and imposition of a pro-
tectorate over Cambodia (until then tributary to Bangkok) in 1863,
had convinced Mongkut that only Britain, as the most powerful nation
in the region, could protect Siam from further French incursions. From
then on, until the rise of Japan in the late 1930s, friendship with
Britain remained a keystone of Siamese foreign policy, despite British
seizure of territory in Burma and Malaya formerly tributary to
Bangkok.
This security dimension becomes more evident when Chula-
longkorn’s break with China in 1882 is compared with the response of
Emperor Tu Duc of Vietnam to French encroachments. Despite
signing a treaty with France in 1874 accepting French protection, five
years later the Vietnamese emperor requested China to fulfil her obli-
gations as suzerain power by suppressing Chinese bandits—known as
the Black Flags—in the border area. The real threat, however, came
from France, and as the Siamese well understood, any appeal to China
to protect Vietnam from France would be useless. For this reason
Bangkok had already turned elsewhere for powerful friends. But the
Siamese could more easily do this because they conceived the world as
in perpetual flux, with new centres of power arising from time to time.
The Vietnamese, ambivalent though their relationship was with
China, found it more difficult to free themselves from their commit-
ment to the Chinese world order, for that order also constituted their
own view of the world.
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia