Background of Royal Army Thailand

The Royal Army Thailand was established in 1887. The First Army,
headquartered in Bangkok, was responsible for the country's western and
central provinces and the capital city. Besides that, the northeastern quadrant
was the territorial home of the Second Army, and its regional headquarters were
in Nakhon Ratchasima. The region of the Third Army, with headquarters in
Phitsanulok, consisted of the northern and northwestern parts of the kingdom.
The Fourth Army's region was southern Thailand, its headquarters were in
Nakhon Si Thammarat.
The chief of armed forces is Raja Bhumibol Adulydej. After that, the their
Defences Minister is Jeneral Prawit Wongsuwan and the Supreme Commander
is Jeneral Songkiti Jaggabatra.Then, their qualification to enter the army force
was age 21 years until 49 years old. 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) under the reforms of Admiral Prince Abhakara
Kiartiwongse. Siam's increasing focus on centralised military force to deter
European invasion came at the cost of the former decentralised military and
political arrangements, beginning a trend towards centralised military power that
would continue into the 20th-century Thai history. Despite the growing Siamese
military strength, Siam's independence during much of the late 19th century 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 off
against another, 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 war of 1893, which paved the way for an uneasy
peace between Siam and France in the region for the next forty years. French
Indochina's Governor-General had sent an envoy toBangkok to bring Laos under
French rule, backed by the threat of French military force. 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. Spurred on by the

expulsion of French merchants on suspicion of opium smuggling, and the

suicide of a French diplomat returning from Siam, French took the Siamese
refusal to concede its eastern territories as a case for war.
In 1893 the French ordered their navy to sail up the Chao Phraya river towards
Bangkok. With their guns now trained on the Siamese royal palace, the French
delivered an ultimatum to the Siamese to hand over the disputed territories and
to pay indemnities for the fighting so far. When Siam did not immediately
comply unconditionally to the ultimatum, the French blockaded the Siamese
coast. Unable to respond at sea or on land, in the end the Siamese submitted
fully to the French conditions, finding no support from the British. The conflict
led to the signature of the Franco-Siamese Treaty shortly afterwards, in which
the Siamese conceded Laos to France, an act that led to the significant expansion
of French Indochina.
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. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 produced a
compromise, largely in Britain's favour, between Britain and Siam over the
disputed territories in the north of Malaya. Siam's next conflict was its two-year
involvement in the First World War, fighting on the side of the Entente Powers,
the only independent Asian nation with land forces in Europe during the Great
War. 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.