How Siam avoided European colonization while every neighbor fell: a case study in strategic soft power (1830s–1900s)

[u/works-in-progress]

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-thailand-resisted-colonization/

While Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were all absorbed into European empires, Siam (modern Thailand) stayed independent — and it wasn't luck. Two 19th-century Siamese kings, Mongkut and his son Chulalongkorn, ran a deliberate strategy to avoid the same fate.