Irredentism :Thai Nationalist Feelings(02)
In the New Map of Asia published in 1919, Herbert Adams Gibbons correctly predicted what would happen in the future relations between Thailand and France. He wrote:
French policy towards Siam has had the opposite effect to that which it was intended to have. The French thought they were extending their influence in the peninsular, and making a greater Indo-China. They could afford to trample upon Siam’s feeling and ignore Siam’s rights. But the Siamese were rendered bitter enemies instead of being cultivated as useful friend for the future. Extension of her colonial domination at the expense of Siam will mean one day for France the necessity of getting out of Indo-China together. If she does not go without resistance, the Siamese will help in putting her out.
Gibbons made this prediction more than a decade before cordial relations between Thailand and Japan were established. Hence it is far from true to say that Thai territorial demands on Indo-China were put forward at the instigation of Japan. The demands had their ultimate origin in the old irredentist feeling against France, though the Japanese did not neglect to intensify and exploit that feeling to suit their own purposes.
The other and less prominent side of the irredentist movement arose from the transfer by Thailand to Great Britain, under the terms of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, of the former’s sovereignty over the four Malay States of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Tengganu.
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