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Siam’s Conquest of Patani and the End of Mandala Relations  ChaPTer 7 Siam’s Conquest of Patani and the end of Mandala relations, 1786–1838 Francis R. Bradley  Established scholarship on the political history of early modern Southeast Asia agrees that political entities were borderless, whether characterized as mandalas or “galactic polities.”1 These “states” revolved around charismatic leaders positioned in political centers from which they extended their power as far as their resources would allow. In this system, relations between greater and lesser political centers were a matter of constant contestation and negotiation. The relationship between Siam and Patani from the 16th to the 18th centuries falls into this category.There were periods of peaceful relations when Patani sent tribute to Ayutthaya, but there were also protracted periods of political conflict when Patani’s rulers refused to acknowledge Siamese political domination, especially in the period 1634–1694. Extrapolating upon conflicts between “states” in early modern Southeast Asia, Anthony Reid characterized warfare as a relatively non-lethal affair due to the scarcity of large, stable workforces in the region which compelled rulers to engage in low-casualty warfare in early modern times.2 Viewed in 1 Stanley Tambiah, “The Galactic Polity: The Structure of Traditional Kingdoms in Southeast Asia,” in Anthropology and the Climate of Opinion, vol. 293, ed. M. Freed (New York: Annals of the New York Academy of the Sciences, 1977), pp. 69–97; O.W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives, rev. ed, Southeast Asia Program Publications series (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). 2 Anthony Reid, Europe and Southeast Asia: The Military Balance, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies Occasional Paper, no. 16, ed. Bob Hering (Townsville: James Cook University of North Queensland, 1982), p. 1; Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, vol. 2: Expansion and Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 219–33. 0 Francis R. Bradley this way, generals and rulers competed with their enemies over the control of people, rather than land. Whether by near-constant small-scale raiding or in the clashes between great armies, the main goal of any conflict was to increase the labor force of a particular ruler at the expense of an enemy. The weaker party in a conflict often responded with quick flight into a nearby forest or mountainous region where they sought refuge until the soldiers of the invading army had satisfied themselves by carrying off as much loot as they could manage and withdrew back to their capital. Even when fighting occurred, opposing sides often went to great lengths to intimidate their enemies into surrendering, whether by amassing an overwhelming force or by shooting into the air, beating drums, or making other impressive shows of strength, rather than by defeating them through sheer force of arms.3 At other times, a contest might be decided by man-to-man combat between two opposing generals, the loser’s army thereafter submitting to the victor to be taken as captives back to the opposition’s royal court and offered to the ruler as war booty. Generals engaged in these sorts of tactics because they could scarcely afford to lose a large number of soldiers when their labor forces were in perpetual shortage. This chapter seeks to question this view of warfare in Southeast Asia by focusing upon the defeat and destruction of the Patani sultanate in the course of five wars, in 1785–1786, 1789–1791, 1808, 1831–1832, and 1838. No previous study has analyzed these conflicts and their impact on our understanding of warfare in the pre-colonial period. Because the greatest amount of source material exists for the wars of 1785–1786 and 1831–1832, I have chosen to give particular attention to these conflicts. I argue that Siam employed four main tactics to subdue Patani: massacre, slave-raiding, environmental warfare, and the expulsion of refugees to break the power of the Patani sultanate once and for all. The fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 and the escalation of warfare between Siam and Burma throughout the late 18th century not only brought about an end to traditional mandala state relations in the period, but also transformed the way in which leaders and armies chose to carry out conflicts between political centers. The fall of Patani heralded the beginning of a new phase in Siam’s political power over the lower peninsula. The triumphant extension of the Siamese political authority over the Malay tributaries ultimately coalesced...

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