Bowring Treaty

Bowring Treaty
04/18/1855 AD treaty with

In 1854, John Bowring, the Governor of Hong Kong in the name of Queen Victoria, came to Siam to negotiate a treaty.

For the first time Siam had to deal seriously with international laws. Prayurawongse negotiated on the behalf of the Siamese. The result was the Bowring Treaty between the two nations.

The main principle of the treaty was to abolish the Royal Storage (พระคลังสินค้า), which since Ayutthaya's times held the monopoly on foreign trade. The Royal Storage had been the source of Ayutthaya's prosperity as it collected immense taxation on foreign traders, including the taxation according to the width of the galleon and the tithe. Western products had to go through a series of tax barriers to reach Siamese people.

The Europeans had been attempting to undo this monopoly for a long time but no serious measures had been taken. For Siamese people, trading with foreigners subjected them to severe punishment by the government. The taxation was partially reduced in the Burney Treaty. However, in the world of nineteenth-century liberalism, government control over trade was swiftly disappearing.

The abolition of such trade barriers replaced Siamese commerce with free trade. Import taxation was reduced to 3% and could only be collected once. This, of course, was a blow on the national revenue. However, this led to dramatic growth of commercial sectors as common people gained access to foreign trade. People rushed to acquire vast, previously empty fields to grow rice and the competition eventually resulted in the lands ending up in the hands of nobility.

The Bowring Treaty also had a legal impact. Due to the horror of the Nakorn Bala methods of torture in judicial proceedings, the British requested not to be tried under the Siamese system, securing a grant of extraterritoriality; British subjects in Siam were therefore subject only to British law, while the Siamese in Britain enjoyed no reciprocal privilege.

Bangkok

Lattitude: 13.7525° N
Longitude: 100.4941° E
Region: South East Asia

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