Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and long called Siam, fills the heart of mainland Southeast Asia between Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia, opening on the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea, sixty-six million people round the capital Bangkok. Men have lived here forty thousand years; Mon, Khmer and Malay peoples came first, and Tai migrants drifted down between the eighth and tenth centuries. Sukhothai is counted the first Thai kingdom, Lan Na and Ayutthaya followed, and Ayutthaya, founded in 1350, ruled in place of the Khmer until Burmese armies destroyed it in 1767. Taksin gathered the fragments into Thonburi, Rama I founded the Chakri line and set Bangkok as capital in 1782, and Chulalongkorn built a centralised absolute monarchy. Alone in the region Siam dodged colonisation, paying in ceded provinces, trade rights and extraterritorial courts, joined the Allies in the First World War, and turned constitutional by revolution in 1932. A Buddhist kingdom of rice, rivers and ports, it reached 1945 unoccupied and unbroken.

Key facts

The Sukhothai Kingdom is regarded as the beginning of Thai history, followed by Lan Na and Ayutthaya, founded in 1350

Ayutthaya fell to Burmese Konbaung forces in 1767; Taksin reunified the land and Rama I moved the capital to Bangkok in 1782

Siam was the only Southeast Asian country to escape European colonisation, though it ceded lands and rights by unequal treaties

King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) centralised an absolute monarchy; the 1932 revolution made it constitutional

Siam joined the First World War on the Allied side and was renamed Thailand in the nationalist era

Thailand

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