Anglo-Siamese War

"Anglo-Thai War" redirects here. For the war between the United Kingdom and Thailand in 1942–1945, see Thailand in World War II.
Anglo-Siamese War
Date1687–1688
Location
Mergui and Coromandel coast
Result Siam closed to Company traders
No peace treaty signed
Belligerents
Ayutthaya Kingdom (Siam)
Governorship of Tenasserim and Siamese garrison of Mergui
English defectors		 1600–1707 East India Company
Commanders and leaders
King Narai
Constantine Phaulkon
Governor of Tenasserim Executed
Balat of
Tenasserim Executed
Samuel White (defected)
Richard Burnaby (defected) †		 1600–1707 Elihu Yale
1600–1707 Anthony Weltden
Strength
Shore batteries and Siamese troops from Tenasserim and Mergui 2 warships (Curtana and James), East India Company troops
Casualties and losses
Light

James sunk
60 traders killed[1]

Many English civilians killed.

The Anglo-Siamese War (or Anglo-Thai War[2]) was a brief state of war that existed between the English East India Company and Kingdom of Siam in 1687–88.[3] Siam officially declared war against the Company in August 1687. No peace treaty was ever signed to end the war, but the Siamese revolution of 1688 rendered the issue moot.[4]

The war resulted in part from the jostling of the great powers—England, the United Provinces and France—for trading influence in Siam. The immediate casus belli was the dispute between Siam and the Company over the actions of the Siamese officials at Mergui (Myeik), which the English considered piracy, and the English response, which included a naval blockade of Mergui. With the exception of the fighting at Mergui on 14 June 1687—which amounted to a massacre of English sailors on shore by the Siamese—the actual war was confined to commerce raiding.

1686 map of Siam. Mergui is labelled Mirgin.
  1. ^ John Anderson, English Intercourse with Siam in the Seventeenth Century (London: 1890).
  2. ^ Om Prakash, The New Cambridge History of India, Volume 2, Part 5: European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 289.
  3. ^ "Anglo-Siamese War", in G. C. Kohn, Dictionary of Wars, rev. ed. (Routledge, 2013), p. 21.
  4. ^ D. G. E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia, 4th ed. (Macmillan, 1981), pp. 392–397.