So wrote Graham at a period when the Siamese held sway over a territory of more than 200,000 square miles or an area equivalent to the combined areas of the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and almost half of Ohio. It must not be supposed, however, that the Thai[2] had permanently resigned themselves to a continuation of this political division of the peninsula. Rich provinces to which they had more or less cogent claims, based on facts of history or ethnography, lay under foreign rule and, with the rise of world-wide nationalism in the 1920's and 1930's a lively irredentism came into flower. This irredentism and its accompanying nationalistic fervor have colored the policies of the Thai Government during the decade just passed and serve to explain many political actions which are otherwise puzzling to the western world.
[1] Graham, W. A., Siam, vol. 1, pp. 1-2, London, 1924.
[2] Pronunciation near English "tie."
GEOGRAPHY
Whatever more or less final rectifications of frontiers result from the current war, the land of the Thai will still, for general purposes, fall into four geographic divisions of major importance: Northern, Central, Eastern, and Peninsular.
Northern Thailand, lying between the Salwin and the Me Khong, two of the world's most majestic rivers, is, for the most part, a country of roughly parallel ranges and valleys running north and south. At the heads of the flat-floored valleys, which vary in elevations above sea level from 800 feet in the southeast to 1,200 feet in the northwest, arise important streams, the Me Nan, the Me Yom, the Me Wang, and the Me Ping, which, falling through narrow defiles to debouch in the low land of Central Siam, eventually there conflow to form the Me Nam Chao Phraya, the chief artery of that division. On the alluvia of these streams, as might be expected in a country whose civilization was originally based upon riziculture, live the great bulk of the northern Thai or Lao, in a setting of rich fields and orchards. The ranges similarly rise, southeast to northwest, from low, rounded hills to imposing peaks, many of which exceed an altitude of 5,000 feet and two of which achieve more than 8,000 feet. These mountains, rising abruptly from the valley floors and, on the whole, densely forested, are scarcely inhabited by man except for scattered groups of seminomadic hill tribes, which exist there by hunting and a primitive agriculture. The northernmost province, Chiengrai, is separated from the sister provinces by a mountain wall and belongs wholly to the Me Khong drainage; it is largely a region of marshes and grassy savannas.
Central Siam, the heart of Thailand, is the vast alluvial plain of the Chao Phraya and may be described as 55,000 square miles of almost unbrokenly monotonous scenery. The level of the land is but little higher than that of the sea and, during the dry season, tidal influence is plainly evident as much as 50 miles from the river's mouth. Alluvial deposits, brought in the season of floods from the northern hills, are, however, raising this level at an astonishing rate; geological evidence shows that within comparatively recent times a great part of the plain was covered by the sea and even now the northern shores of the Gulf of Siam, at the mouth of the Chao Phraya, are advancing seaward at a rate of almost a foot a year. Its rich soil, its abundance of watercourses, both natural and artificial, and its comparatively dense population combine to make it one of the most eminently suitable areas of the world for the production of fine rice.
As Central Siam is the heart of the Kingdom, the royal city of Bangkok or Krungthep is the very core of that heart. Situated on the banks of the Chao Phraya, some 20 miles from its mouth, this metropolis, whose history goes back not earlier than the mid-eighteenth century A.D., is the center for scholarship and the arts, the filter through which pass all goods and ideas received by the interior from the outside world, and the nucleus of one of the most highly centralized of national governments. Its citizenry of some 800,000 represents no less than 5 percent of the total population of the country.
Eastern Thailand is a huge, shallow, elevated basin, tilted toward the east, so that while its western rim stands 1,000 feet above the sea, its eastern rim is formed by low hills. The plateau is watered by the system of the Me Nam Mun, a tributary of the Me Khong. A poverty-ridden country of unproductive soil and adverse climatic conditions, it supports indifferently well a comparatively limited population.
Peninsular Siam is the narrow, northern two-thirds of the Malay Peninsula, sharply divided longitudinally by a mountain chain which passes down its whole length. It is a country rich in forests, cattle, fisheries, mines, and agriculture, and possessed of great natural beauty in the countless islets off its shores, its beaches lined with palms and casuarinas, and the verdure of it mountain-backed landscapes. Most of the developed natural wealth of the Kingdom is found in this portion, which has fine systems of highways and railroads.