For a Greater Realm - Punyaphan Klykoom

The only country to escape colonialism in Southeast Asia, Thailand on the eve of the Second World War was a kingdom deep in the throes of militarism, led by a charismatic strongman obsessed with questions of national greatness and dreams of empire. In 1940 the Thais took advantage of France’s metropolitan defeat to fulfill revanchist yearnings by demanding the return of ‘lost provinces’ in Laos and Cambodia that had been ceded to Indochina half a century earlier. What followed was a border war with Vichy that culminated in Japanese mediation and the territories’ return.Contrary to what most histories of the Pacific War would suggest, Japanese forces landing in peninsular Thailand on their way to Singapore found themselves opposed by local garrisons, one of which held out well beyond the ceasefire that Bangkok eventually ordered.But armistice soon turned into alliance in the wake of Japanese successes of 1942, with the Thais declaring war on Britain and the United States. Driven yet again by expansionist ambitions, the Thais mounted an invasion of Burma’s eastern Shan States, coming into contact with the Chinese army. A renewed offensive in January 1943 saw Thai troops reach the borders of Yunnan. The Thai army also began an occupation of northern Malaya that same year.A change of government in 1944 made possible by Axis setbacks in Europe and the Pacific brought to the fore a new government secretly controlled by an anti-Japanese resistance movement under whose dire
více informací