Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qs9v7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T15:50:42.813Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Early Modern Siam as a Mainly Urban Society*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2017

CHRIS BAKER  and
PASUK PHONGPAICHIT
CHRIS BAKER
Affiliation:
Independent scholar
PASUK PHONGPAICHIT
Affiliation:
Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand Email: chrispasuk@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Early modern Siam is usually portrayed as a predominantly rural, peasant society. This picture is assumed from the worldwide trend of rural-to-urban transition, rather than from study of Siam itself. The available sources have a striking lack of any evidence on rural society. This article explores the possibility that this absence may reflect a real-world difference, not just perception. Unlike in temperate zones, enough food could be produced without dedicating the efforts of a majority of the population to agriculture. Rice could be grown by part-time ‘commuter’ agriculture, and other foods found by everyday hunting and gathering. Cultural preference based on the instinct for survival may have reinforced an affinity for urban residence. The scant data on Siam's demography suggest the majority of the population lived in urban places. Descriptions of the capital portray a commercial and industrial centre, capable of employing many in non-agricultural pursuits. The state systems for raising resources were tailored to an urban rather than a rural society. While the scarcity of data on early Siam makes any ‘proof’ impossible, the thesis that Siam was a predominantly urban society is worth exploring. From the early eighteenth century on, Siam was subject to a process of ‘ruralization’ that created the familiar peasant society that historians have projected back into the past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 51 , Special Issue 2: New Directions in Social and Economic History: Essays in Honour of David Washbrook , March 2017 , pp. 235 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Joya Chatterji and Prasannan Parthasarathi for inviting us to attend a conference with many people we had not seen for 30 years, and to David Washbrook for making the conference possible. In the development of the article, we are grateful to Kaoru Sugihara, Chatthip Nartsupha, Maurizio Peleggi, the participants in the Thai-Japanese Seminar 2014, and five anonymous readers.

References

1 The definitions applied here are simple. In a predominantly rural society, the majority of people are engaged in the production of food and other primary goods through arable agriculture and animal husbandry, and they live either in small congregations which are termed villages or in an even more dispersed pattern of isolated ranches, homesteads, or plantations. In a predominantly urban society, most people congregate in larger settlements known as towns or cities and work at something other than the production of primary goods.

2 Users of this term range from the popular historian Christian, David, This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity, Great Barrington: Berkshire Publishing, 2008 Google Scholar, to a ‘scientific’ work such as Grinin, Leonid E., ‘Production Revolutions and Periodization of History: A Comparative and Theoretic-mathematical Approach’, Social Evolution and History, vol. 6, no. 2, 2007, pp. 75–121 Google Scholar.

3 On trade, the major contributors have been Dhiravat na Pombejra, through his thesis ‘A Political History of Siam under the Prasatthong Dynasty 1629–1688’, PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1988, and numerous articles, and Ruangsilp, Bhawan, Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, c. 1604–1765, Leiden: Brill, 2007 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On kingship and warfare, key contributors are Wyatt, David K., Thailand: A Short History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984 Google Scholar, and Chutintaranond, Sunait (with Tun, Than), On Both Sides of the Tenasserim Range: History of Siamese Burmese Relations, Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 1995 Google Scholar, and numerous works in Thai. Charnvit Kasetsiri has contributed to both traditions through his The Rise of Ayudhya: A History of Siam in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976, and several edited works on the trading economy.

4 Wyatt, Thailand; Terwiel, Barend J., Thailand's Political History: From the 13th Century to Recent Times, Bangkok: River Books, 2005 Google Scholar.

5 Lieberman, Victor, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, Vol. I: Integration on the Mainland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, especially pp. 248–258, 294–299, 336–337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Chatthip Nartsupha provides a description of the Thai village in the early nineteenth century, but in the chapter title claims the description is valid for the era ‘under the sakdina system, 1455–1855’ without citing any sources from the pre-Bangkok era. (Sakdina denotes a numerical rank ranging from 5 for a slave to 10,000 for a senior noble.) Nidhi Eoseewong discusses early Ayutthaya agriculture using only one Japanese source (about rice varities). Charnvit Kasetsiri imagines a rice bowl around early Ayutthaya without any source. The fact that these three outstanding historians felt obliged to evoke a rural society without any substantiation shows the power of the agrarian systems approach. See Nartsupha, Chatthip, The Thai Village Economy in the Past, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999 Google Scholar, Chapter 2; Charnvit, The Rise of Ayutthaya, pp. 78–79; Pathiya, Akhom and Eoseewong, Nidhi, Siramthepnakhon: ruam khwam riang wa duai prawatisat ayutthaya ton ton (Siramthepnakhon: Collected Papers on the History of Early Ayutthaya), Bangkok: Sinlapa Watthanatham, 1984, pp. 98–100 Google Scholar.

7 Vickery, Michael, ‘The Constitution of Ayutthaya: An Investigation into the Three Seals Code’ in Thai Law: Buddhist Law: Essays on the Legal History of Thailand, Laos and Burma, Huxley, Andrew (ed.), Bangkok: White Orchid, 1996, p. 139 Google Scholar.

8 Reid, Anthony, ‘Introduction: A Time and Place’ in Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era, Reid, A. (ed.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 6–8 Google Scholar; Lieberman, Victor, ‘Wallerstein's System and the International Context of Early Modern Southeast Asian History’, Journal of Asian History, vol. 24, 1990, pp. 70–90 Google Scholar.

9 Cushman, Richard D., The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya: A Synoptic Translation, Bangkok: Siam Society, 2000, pp. 77, 333, 417Google Scholar. The passages mentioning paddy or rice fields (sometimes several times over a few pages) can be found starting at: pp. 3, 4, 33, 38, 47, 77, 96, 104, 112, 115, 126, 130, 140, 144, 161, 238, 283, 346, 373, and 423. All these passages are from the later phitsadan chronicles, none from the Luang Prasoet version. There is no mention of agrarian topics in Jeremias Van Vliet's history, believed to be based on local chronicles (see Baker, Chris, na Pombejra, Dhiravat, Van Der Kraan, Alfons, and Wyatt, David K. (eds), Van Vliet's Siam, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005, pp. 195–244 Google Scholar), or in the ‘Vickery Chronicle’, a text not included in Cushman's translation, now officially titled as the Wachirayan Library Edition in its extended version (see Winai Pongsripian, ‘Phraratcha phongsawadan krung si ayutthaya chabap ho phra samut wachirayan (chabap plik mai lek tabian 222 2/k 104)’ (The Wachirayan Library Edition of the Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya, no. 222 2/k 104) in 100 ekkasan samkhan sapsara prawatisat thai (100 Important Documents, the Essence of Thai History), no. 13, Bangkok: Thailand Research Fund, 2012, pp. 49–167).

10 ‘Phra ayakan laksana betset’ (Miscellaneous Laws), Clauses 1–75, in Kotmai tra sam duang (Three Seals Code), Bangkok: Khurusapha, 2nd printing, 1994, Vol. 3, pp. 94–129.

11 Ishii, Yoneo, ‘The Thai Thammasat (with a Note on the Lao Thammasat)’ in The Laws of South-East Asia, Hooker, M. B. (ed.), Singapore: Butterworths, 1986, Vol. 1, p. 180 Google Scholar.

12 Mayoury Ngaosyvathn, ‘An Introduction to the Laws of Khun Borom’ and Ritchu, Sarup, ‘Legal Manuscripts from Southern Thailand’ in Thai Law: Buddhist Law, Huxley, Andrew (ed.), Wichienkeeo, Aroonrut and Wijeyewardene, Gehan (tr. and ed.), The Laws of King Mangrai, Canberra: R. Davis Fund, 1986 Google Scholar.

13 Ibrahim, Muhammad Rabi' ibn Muhammad, The Ship of Sulaiman, John O'Kane (tr.), London: Routledge, 1972 Google Scholar; Borschberg, Peter (ed.), The Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre: Security, Trade and Society in 16th- and 17th-century Southeast Asia, Singapore: NUS Press, 2014 Google Scholar; Smithies, Michael, ‘Jacques de Bourges (c.1630–1714) and Siam’ in Seventeenth Century Siamese Explorations, Smithies, M. (ed.), Bangkok: Siam Society, 2012, pp. 17–48 Google Scholar.

14 In his long description of Siam, Van Vliet notes only that people ‘cultivate all sorts of grains, especially rice’: Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, p. 168.

15 Muhammad Rabi, The Ship of Sulaiman, p. 47.

16 Baker, Chris and Phongpaichit, Pasuk (tr. and ed.), The Tale of Khun Chang Khun Phaen, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2010, pp. 386, 609–610, 1175Google Scholar. The tale probably originated around 1600 and was passed down in oral tradition until it was written down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

17 Some examples of Ayutthaya and early Bangkok murals showing vignettes of urban life include: Wat Bang Khae Yai, Amphawa (children at play, pounding rice), Wat Chong Nonsi, Bangkok (street scenes), Wat Dusidaram, Thonburi (urban landscape), Wat Nang Nong, Bangkok (riverside, flirtation), Wat Ko Kaeo Suwannaram, Phetburi (river scenes), Wat Rakhang, Thonburi (markets, construction), Wat Pradu Songtham, Ayutthaya (urban festival), Wat Rachasittharam, Thonburi (drinking party, prisoners), Wat Mai Thepnimit, Thonburi (house of pleasure). Examples of travellers crossing the wilderness include Wat Bang Khae Yai, Wat Chong Nonsi, Wat Dusidaram, and Wat Khongkaram, Ratchaburi.

18 Ginsburg, Henry, ‘Ayutthaya Painting’ in The Kingdom of Siam: The Art of Central Thailand, 1350–1800, McGill, Forrest (ed.), San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2005 Google Scholar. Fine Arts Department, Thailand, Samutphap traiphum chabap krung si ayutthaya chabap krung thonburi (Illustrated Manuscripts of the Three Worlds, Ayutthaya and Thonburi editions), Bangkok: Fine Arts Department, 2004 Google Scholar.

19 Other examples of Chinese motifs are found at Wat Phutthaisawan, Ayutthaya; Wat Mai Thepnimit, Thonburi; Wat Khongkaram, Ratchaburi; Wat Chang Yai, Ayutthaya; Wat Dusidaram, Thonburi; and Wat Tapon Noi, Chanthaburi, where two Siamese carpenters saw a plank in front of a display of chrysanthemums. A few murals also use Persian motifs for foliage, for example, Wat Mai Chumphon, Nakhon Luang.

20 Lingat, R., ‘Note sur la revision de lois siamoises en 1805’, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 23, no. 1, 1929, p. 23 Google Scholar.

21 Paknam, No Na, ‘Jitrakam samai ayutthaya’ (Ayutthaya Era Painting), Muang Boran, vol. 13, no. 1, January–March, 1987 Google Scholar. But this explanation begs the question of why no concept of landscape painting took root.

22 The classic account is Overton, Mark, Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500–1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Muhammad Rabi, The Ship of Sulaiman, pp. 153–154.

24 de La Loubère, Simon, A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam, London: 1793, pp. 17–19 Google Scholar.

25 Heeck, Gijsbert, A Traveler in Siam in the Year 1655, Terwiel, Barend J. (tr. and ed.), Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2008, p. 51 Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 51.

27 Ishii, Yoneo, The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia: Translations from the Tôsen Fusetsu-gaki, 1674–1723, Singapore: ISEAS, 1998, p. 56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Gervaise, Nicolas, The Natural and Political History of the Kingdom of Siam, Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998 [1688], p. 20 Google Scholar.

29 Japanese folk museums, such as those at Sakata, Uwa or Tono, display an extraordinary array of equipment for rice cultivation. Thai folk museums display fish traps of many shapes and sizes.

30 Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, pp. 8, 12.

31 de Choisy, Abbé, Journal of a Voyage to Siam, 1685–1686, translated and introduced by Smithies, Michael, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993 [1687], p. 170 Google Scholar.

32 Muhammad Rabi, The Ship of Sulaiman, pp. 72–73.

33 Diogo de Couto quoted in Breazeale, K., ‘Portuguese Impressions of Ayutthaya’ in 500 Years of Thai-Portuguese Relations: A Festschrift, Smithies, M. (ed.), Bangkok: Siam Society, 2011, p. 54 Google Scholar.

34 This fecundity stretches back into the past. Archaeologists have noted that the advent of agriculture in Southeast Asia was much less dramatic than in the temperate zone because the prior economy of hunting and gathering was so productive. Agriculture was accommodated within hunting and gathering, rather than supplanting it. Bennet Bronson commented on the metal age, ‘No farmers in any region outside southern and eastern Asia could produce as much food with as little labor from the same amount of land.’ Bronson, Bennet, ‘The Extraction of Natural Resources in Early Thailand’ in Culture and Environment in Thailand: A Symposium of the Siam Society, Bangkok: Siam Society, 1989, p. 295 Google Scholar. See also the account of the site of Khok Phanom Di in Higham, Charles and Thosarat, Rachanie, Early Thailand: From Prehistory to Sukhothai, Bangkok: River Books, 2012, pp. 51–69 Google Scholar.

35 Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, p. 107.

36 Heeck, A Traveler in Siam, p. 57.

37 Cornelis Van Neijenrode, ‘Account and Description of the State of Affairs in the Kingdom[s] of Siam and Cambodia (1621)’, Han ten Brummelhuis (ed.), unpublished manuscript, p. 8.

38 La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 35.

39 Around Ayutthaya, thung lumphli was to the north, thung prachet to the west, thung hantra to the northeast, and so on.

40 Cushman, The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya, pp. 96, 104–105.

41 Ibid., p. 104.

42 Turpin, F. H., A History of the Kingdom of Siam, Bangkok: White Lotus, 1997 [1771], p. 105 Google Scholar.

43 Cushman, The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya, pp. 423–424.

44 The ministry was much smaller than others, with a minister and 31 officials, most in very junior ranks, only one having 1,000 sakdina. The most common element in official titles, which reflected function, was phochana, the royal word for food. Other terms included chang (granary), khaosan (paddy), and liang (feed or feast). Kotmai tra sam duang, Vol. 1, pp. 231–232.

45 Van Neijenrode, ‘Account and Description’, p. 10.

46 This yield estimate is for the Central region in 1921–24. Earlier estimates were higher, and Ingram reported that average yield was falling as poorer quality land was taken into cultivation. We have no way of estimating yields in the Ayutthaya era. Halving the yield figure increases the radius of the circle to 15 kilometres. The yield and consumption data come from James Ingram, C., Economic Change in Thailand 1850–1970, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 48–49, 64Google Scholar.

47 Tachard, Guy, Voyage to Siam Performed by Six Jesuits Sent by the French King to the Indies and China in the Year 1685, Bangkok: White Orchid, 1981 [1688], p. 193 Google Scholar.

48 Choisy, Journal of a Voyage to Siam, pp. 152, 172.

49 For a discussion of this source, see Baker, Chris, ‘Note on the Testimonies and the Description of Ayutthaya ’, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 99, 2011, pp. 72–80 Google Scholar.

50 ‘In front of three wats—Wat Samo, Wat Khanun, and Wat Khanan—people from Ang Thong, Lopburi, Mueang In, Mueang Phrom, Mueang Sing, Mueang San, and Mueang Suphan bring paddy by boats, large and small, to moor and sell there. Villagers around those three wat have set up mills to mill the rice for sale to people of the capital and to liquor distillers. In the junk season they mill rice to sell as provisions for the Chinese on junks’: Baker, Chris, ‘Markets and Production in the City of Ayutthaya before 1767: Translation and Analysis of Part of the Description of Ayutthaya ’, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 99, 2011, pp. 40–42 Google Scholar.

51 La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 19.

52 As a proportion of the estimated annual supply of the city of Ayutthaya, exports to Batavia averaged 3.3 per cent between 1624–26, 1.9 per cent between 1642–52, and 0.4 per cent between 1664–94. Outside these years, little or no rice was exported. Our calculations from data in Smith, George V., The Dutch in Seventeenth Century Thailand, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1977, pp. 53–67, 82Google Scholar.

53 This pattern may have developed long ago. Archaeology from the mid first millennium CE has found a pattern of moated towns, each with a scattering of villages within a few kilometres’ radius. See Saraya, Dhida, ‘State Formation in the Lower Tha Chin-Mae Klong Basin: The Historical Development of the Ancient City of Nakhon Pathom’ in Culture and Environment in Thailand: A Symposium of the Siam Society, Bangkok: Siam Society, 1989, pp. 177–181 Google Scholar.

54 Baker and Pasuk, The Tale of Khun Chang Khun Phaen, pp. 40–48, 472.

55 Stott, Philip, ‘Mu'ang and Pa: Elite Views of Nature in Thailand’ in Thai Constructions of Knowledge, Chitakasem, Manas and Turton, Andrew (eds), London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1991, p. 146 Google Scholar.

56 The classic study is McNeill, William H., Plagues and Peoples, Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976 Google Scholar.

57 Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, pp. 199–200.

58 La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 11. It is not clear the extent of the area containing this population. However, since the figure was based on the conscription rolls, and since armies never seem to have been conscripted from tributary areas down the peninsula, the area probably corresponds to the definition of Siam used here (see above, penultimate paragraph of introduction).

59 Prince Dilok gave a total of 7 million, including 3 million in ‘Lower Siam’, which was roughly coextensive with Siam in late Ayutthaya, plus 2 million in the south and another 2 million in the north and northeast combined. Bowring estimated 4.5 to 5 million for the whole country, which would have given around 2 million in ‘Lower Siam’ following Prince Dilok's breakdown. Crawfurd, Malloch, Pallegoix, and others made estimates which are in the same range. See Bowring, Sir John, The Kingdom and People of Siam, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1969 [1857], p. 81 Google Scholar; Nabarath, Prince Dilok, Siam's Rural Economy under King Chulalongkorn, Bangkok: White Lotus, 2000 [1908], Chapter 3Google Scholar; Terwiel, B. J., Through Travellers’ Eyes: An Approach to Early Nineteenth Century Thai History, Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol, 1989 Google Scholar. For a discussion of these and other estimates, see Amornrat Bunnag, ‘Population Change in Bangkok Period Siam (1782–1960): Estimates and Scenarios’, PhD thesis, Mahidol University, Bangkok, 2012, Chapter 4.

60 Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680: Vol. 2, Expansion and Crisis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 69–73 Google Scholar. For comparison, London's population was estimated at 350,000 in 1650, Paris at 420,000 in 1634, Venice at 150,000 in 1630, and Osaka at 220,000 in 1650.

61 Anderson, John, English Intercourse with Siam in the Seventeenth Century, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., 1890, p. 69 Google Scholar.

62 As related by Choisy, Journal of a Voyage to Siam, p. 148.

63 The figure was recorded in de Voogd, The Dutchmen in Ancient Ayuthiya, 1956, quoted by Sternstein, Larry, ‘“Krung Kao”: The Old Capital of Ayutthaya’, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 53, no. 1, 1965, p. 98, fn. 60Google Scholar. The dissenter was Count Forbin who mocked the comparison to Paris and claimed Ayutthaya was ‘hardly so big as our towns in France of the fourth and fifth rate’: see Michael Smithies (ed.), The Siamese Memoirs of Count Claude de Forbin 1685–1688, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, p. 49. But then Forbin sneered at everything about Siam.

64 Reid cited Sternstein ‘“Krung Kao”’, which reproduced the maps from La Loubère and Choisy.

65 Baker, Chris, ‘Final Part of the Description of Ayutthaya with Remarks on Defence, Policing, Infrastructure, and Sacred Sites’, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 102, 2014, pp. 186, 189–192Google Scholar.

66 Baker, ‘Markets and Production’, p. 41.

67 Michel, W. and Terwiel, B. J. (eds), Kaempfer Werke IV: Heutiges Japan, München: Iudicium Verlag, 2001, pp. 42, 503–507, 520, 524Google Scholar; Kaempfer, Engelbert, A Description of the Kingdom of Siam 1690, Bangkok: Orchid Press, 1998 [1727], p. 49 Google Scholar.

68 La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 6.

69 Kotmai tra sam duang, Vol. 1, pp. 318–327. The list includes: seven first-class towns; seven second-class towns, and 33 third-class towns, a total 47, four of which were outside Siam as defined here. One, Kamphran, could not be located and was probably in the lower Pasak valley.

70 The foreigners did not visit these places, but compiled the lists from informants in the capital, so these are places known as ‘major towns’ by people in the capital. Michael Smithies collected the place names in seventeenth-century writings and maps by European visitors (Choisy, Chaumont, Tachard, Gervaise, La Loubère, de Bourges, Schouten, Van Vliet, Placide): see M. Smithies, ‘Seventeenth Century Siam: Its Extent and Urban Centres’ in Smithies (ed.), Seventeenth Century Siamese Explorations, pp. 1–15. Adding some that Smithies failed to identify and some from texts he did not cover (Heeck, Ship of Sulaiman, Valentyn, de Coutre) gives a total of 65 places.

71 Nakhon Si Thammarat had a long-standing connection to Ayutthaya, and at times acted as a subordinate administrative centre controlling other parts of the lower peninsula. Chumphon, Chaiya, and Phatthalung also appear in the official list of administrative centres. The foreigners’ lists of southern towns under Ayutthaya vary greatly, some including only places in the middle peninsula, and others extending down to Johore.

72 Some European visitors included Martaban, Moulmein, and Tavoy which were intermittently under Ayutthaya's influence in the seventeenth century. They do not appear in the official list of administrative centres in the Three Seals Code.

73 Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, pp. 33–34; La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 4. Choisy gave an account of its products: ‘Pitsanuloke has many elephants teeth, rice, saltpeter, rhinoceros horns, skins of wild animals like buffaloes, deer, tigers, etc., and the red gum from which Spanish wax is made, sugar-canes, onions, tobacco, wax, honey, links [torches] made of pitch and oil, wood for building ships, cotton, sappan wood, etc.’: see Choisy, Journal of a Voyage to Siam, p. 233.

74 Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, pp. 33–34.

75 La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 4.

76 Mauris Collis, Siamese White, London: Faber and Faber, 1982, p. 42.

77 Choisy, Journal of a Voyage to Siam, p. 191.

78 See, for example, Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, pp. 33–41; Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, pp. 108–109; La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, pp. 4–5; Caron, E. and Schouten, J., The Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam (1671), Villiers, John (ed.), Bangkok: Siam Society, 1986, p. 124 Google Scholar.

79 Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, p. 31.

80 All the named places are shown on the maps in Baker and Pasuk, The Tale of Khun Chang Khun Phaen, pp. 848, 850, 852.

81 ‘Nirat Nakhon Sawan’ in Wannakam samai Ayutthaya (Ayutthaya-era Literature), Vol. 2, Bangkok: Fine Arts Department, 1987, pp. 784–95.

82 Heeck, A Traveler in Siam, p. 44. Engelbert Kaempfer also noted that this stretch of the river was ‘pretty well inhabited’, but added that below Bangkok down to the sea ‘there is nothing but Forests, Desarts and morasses’: Kaempfer, A Description of the Kingdom of Siam, p. 78.

83 Heeck, A Traveler in Siam, p. 53.

84 Ibid., pp. 44–45.

85 Caron and Schouten, The Mighty Kingdoms, p. 108.

86 Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, p. 168.

87 Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, p. 98.

88 La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 71.

89 Van Neijenrode, ‘Account and Description’, pp. 9–11.

90 Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, p. 158.

91 Choisy, Journal of a Voyage to Siam, p. 171.

92 See Baker, ‘Markets and Production’.

93 See Miscellaneous Laws, clauses 43, 52, 54, 61, 62, 63, in Kotmai tra sam duang, Vol. 3, pp. 110, 114–117, 120; Tomosugi, Takashi, A Structural Analysis of Thai Economic History: Case Study of a Northern Chao Phraya Delta Village, Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1980, pp. 108–114 Google Scholar.

94 Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, p. 121; La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 93.

95 Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, p. 100.

96 Terwiel, Thailand's Political History, pp. 87–91, 101.

97 For an overview of state revenues, see La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, pp. 93–95, and Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, pp. 112, 148–149. In the estimate of revenues made by Siamese war prisoners taken to Burma in 1767, the figure for land revenues is unfortunately missing; see Khamhaikan chao krung kao (Testimony of the Inhabitants of the Old Capital), Bangkok: Chotmaihet, 2001 [1924], pp. 260–261.

98 Schouten mentioned ‘the inland trade, carried on by his [i.e., the king's] Factors in the city Iudica [Ayutthaya], or elsewhere’ (Caron and Schouten, The Mighty Kingdoms, p. 130), and La Loubère reported that King Narai ‘is not contented with selling by Whole-sale, he has some Shops in the Baazars or markets, to sell by Re-tail. The principal thing that he sells to his subjects is Cotton-cloath; he sends them into his Magazines of the Provinces’ (La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 94). Choisy added that Narai controlled the trade in betel leaf and areca nut (Choisy, Journal of a Voyage to Siam, p. 186).

99 Phasuk, Santanee and Stott, Philip, Royal Siamese Maps: War and Trade in Nineteenth Century Thailand, Bangkok: River Books, 2004, pp. 98, 114, 123Google Scholar, etc.

100 Baker et al., Van Vliet's Siam, p. 149. These systems were probably based on earlier models from China.

101 La Loubère, A New Historical Relation, p. 11.

102 Gervaise, The Natural and Political History, pp. 98–99.

103 Viraphol, Sarasin, Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade 1652–1853, Boston: Council of East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1977, Chapter 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 Sarasin, Tribute and Profit, p. 88.

105 Old Royal Decrees 44, Kotmai tra sam duang, Vol. 5, pp. 120–121.

106 Busakorn Lailert, ‘The Ban Phlu Luang Dynasty 1688–1767: A Study of the Thai Monarchy During the Closing Years of the Ayutthaya Period’, PhD thesis, School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, 1972, pp. 74–77, 292–329.

107 See Phongpaichit, Pasuk and Baker, Chris, Thailand: Economy and Politics, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995 Google Scholar, Chapters 2 and 3; Elson, Robert, The End of the Peasantry in Southeast Asia: A Social and Economic History of Peasant Livelihood, 1800–1990s, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.