A Question of Expediency: Britain, the United States and Thailand, 1941–42

Abstract

This passage was written on 27 March 1945 by Major Andrew Gilchrist, a Foreign Office official serving with the Special Operations Executive in Thailand. It neatly demonstrates the manner in which the wartime debate within and between the various Allied bureaucracies responsible for Thailand's post war status appeared to be dominated by the circumstances of Thailand's rapid capitulation to Japan in December 1941. Subsequently, diametrically opposed interpretations of these unhappy events were employed both by Britain to legitimize her wartime plans to re-establish a degree of control over Thailand, and also by the United States to justify her attempts to thwart perceived British aggrandizement in Southeast Asia. Yet despite the clear importance of the events of 1941 for Thailand's relations with the Allies, her place in the outbreak of the Pacific War is not yet fully understood.