British Plans for the Upper Siamese-Malay Peninsula Over the Nineteenth Century

Jun 28, 2024

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British Plans for the Upper Siamese-Malay Peninsula Over the Nineteenth Century

In this lecture, I reconstruct British plans during the nineteenth century to join its territories in Malaya and Burma by annexing the upper portion of the Siamese-Malay Peninsula. Most sharing my interests in Anglo-Siamese, and Siamese-Malay relations tend to concentrate on disputes between the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century over Kedah, Upper Perak, Patani, Kelantan and Terengganu. I argue that more can—and should—be written about what primary and secondary sources reveal about developments earlier in the nineteenth century concerning portions of the peninsula between present-day Penang and British Burma. This story reveals much about Siam and Britain as competing colonial powers—and that both shared concerns about growing French influence. I reconsider the importance of Bangkok’s claims over the peninsula, its military campaigns and related population movements, and treaties signed between Siam and a range of western powers on these geopolitical maneuverings. All these explain examples of mapping mischief and cartographic craftiness in a range of nineteenth century British maps.

About the speaker

Christopher M. Joll is a New Zealand religious anthropologist and historian who lived and worked in Thailand for 20 years before relocating to Aotearoa/New Zealand, in March 2020. His principal ethnographic subjects are Thailand’s large and diverse Muslim minorities, but his research interests are inter-disciplinary (anthropology, linguistics, history, theology, and Islamic studies), inter-religious (Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism), and trans-national (Thailand, and Muslim-majority Southeast Asia). Since 2009, he has held a number of research positions in Thailand, Malaysia, and New Zealand. In addition to working (remotely) as a research fellow at the Center of Excellence for Muslim Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University (in Bangkok), he is also an adjunct research fellow at the Religious Studies Program, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. His first monograph, Muslim Merit-making in Thailand’s Far-south (Springer, 2011), explored the impact of language change and religious reform among bilingual urban Malays. In addition to contributing to a number of edited volumes published by academic presses, his scholarly articles have appeared in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Critical Asia Studies, Indonesia and the Malay World, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Manusya Journal of Humanities, Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, Studia Islamika, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian Studies, and TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia.

When

Thursday, 3 October 2024 at 19:00

Where

Lecture Room, 4/Floor, The Siam Society

Admission

Members and Students (to undergraduate level) — Free of charge
Non-Members — THB 300

For more information, please contact

To book your place, please contact Khun Pinthip at 02 661 6470-3 ext 203 or pinthip@thesiamsociety.org

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