Research & Article

The extent of the Kingdom of Siam and its provinces and towns in the seventeenth century was a matter of some disagreement among the principal observers from the Netherlands and France when one compares the texts and maps of the period. This leaves aside local considerations of the conception of a boundary, recently and pertinently discussed by Thongchai Winichakul (1994). An examination is made here of the records of Schouten and Van Vliet, and of de Bourges, Chaumont, Choisy, Tachard, Gervaise and La Loubere, and for comparative purposes, the maps of Placide and that which appeared in La Loubere will be considered. Unfortunately it has not been possible to consult Cornelis van Neijenrode's text, written between 1617 and 1621, and only published in 1871 in Dutch.