Military history of Thailand
[1] In 1592, Nanda Bayin king of Toungoo ordered his son Mingyi Swa to attack Ayutthaya Naresuan encamped his armies at Yuddhahatthi.
Ultimately, internal political dissent, in part fed by concerns over Chinese influence, brought the deposition of Taksin and the establishment of General Chakri as Rama I in 1782 and the founding of the Rattanakosin Kingdom with its new capital city at Bangkok.
[6] Conflict with Burma was renewed in the two campaigns of the Burmo-Siamese war (1785–86), seeing initial Burmese successes in both years turned around by decisive Siamese victories.
The accession of Rama II in 1809 saw a final Burmese invasion, the Thalang campaign, attempting to take advantage of the succession of power.
The British victories over Burma in 1826 set the stage for a century in which the military history of Thailand was to be dominated by the threat of European colonialism.
[9] Meanwhile, the visible military weaknesses of China in the First and Second Opium Wars with Britain and later France between the 1830s and 1860s encouraged Siam to reject Chinese suzerainty in the 1850s.
Siam, however, was under military and trade pressure itself from the European powers, and as King Rama III reportedly said on his deathbed in 1851: "We will have no more wars with Burma and Vietnam.
By 1887, Siam had permanent military commands, again in the European fashion, and by the end of the century, Siam had also acquired a Royal Navy from 1875 with a Danish naval reserve officer, Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu in charge, and after his departure in 1902 with the Thai noble title Phraya Chonlayutthayothin (Thai: พระยาชลยุทธโยธินทร์) under the reforms of Admiral Prince Abhakara Kiartiwongse.
Despite the growing Siamese military strength, Siam's independence during much of the late-19th century hinged on the ongoing rivalry between Britain and France across the region, especially in the search for lucrative trade routes into the Chinese hinterlands.
By developing an increasing sophisticated military force and playing one colonial rival against the other, successive Siamese monarchs were able to maintain an uneasy truce until the 1890s.
The closing act of this struggle was the French occupation of eastern Thai territory in the Franco-Siamese conflict of 1893, which paved the way for an uneasy peace between Siam and France in the region for the next forty years.
The Siamese government, mistakenly believing that they would be supported by the British, refused to concede their territories east of the Mekong River and instead reinforced their military and administrative presence there.
In 1904 the French and the British put aside their differences with the Entente Cordiale, which ended their dispute over routes in southern Asia and also removed the Siamese option for using one colonial power as military protection against another.
[14] The result of this intervention in 1917 was the revision or complete cancellation of some of the unequal trade treaties with the United States, France, and the British Empire – but not the return of the bulk of the disputed Siamese territories lost in the previous century.
Like other regional actors, Thailand – under military rule following the coup of 1932 and led by Prime Minister Major-General Plaek Pibulsonggram (popularly known as "Phibun") – was to exploit the changes in power caused by the fall of France and the expansion of Japan to attempt to offset the losses of the previous century.
Thailand's considerable investment in her army, based on a mixture of British and German equipment, and her air force – a blend of Japanese and American aircraft – was about to be put to use.
In early January 1941, the Thai Army launched a land offensive, swiftly taking Laos whilst entering into a more challenging battle for Cambodia where the pursuit of French units there proved more difficult.
During the second phase, Japan took advantage of the weakening British hold on the region to invade Siam, seeing the country as an obstacle on the route south to British-held Malaya and its vital oil supplies, and northwest to Burma.
Later that month Phibun signed a mutual offensive-defensive alliance pact with Japan[18] giving the Japanese full access to Thai railways, roads, airfields, naval bases, warehouses, communications systems, and barracks.
[19][18][20] By the final stages of the war, however, the weakening position of Japan across the region and the Japanese requisition of supplies and materiel reduced the military benefits to Siam, turning an unequal alliance into an increasingly obvious occupation.
The sympathies of the civilian political elite, moved perceptibly against the Phibun regime and the military, forcing the prime minister from office in June 1944.
Thailand's military history in the post-war period was dominated by the growth of Communism across the region, which rapidly became one of the fault lines in the Cold War.
By 1975 relations between Bangkok and Washington had soured; eventually all US military personnel and bases were forced to withdraw and direct Thai involvement in the conflict came to an end.
A general election in December 2007 restored a civilian government, but the issue of the Thai military's frequent involvement in domestic politics remains.
The Thai military maintains strong regional relations under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) organisation, illustrated by the annual Cobra Gold exercises, the latest in 2018, involving soldiers from Thailand, the US, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia.
