Some Phases of Land Utilization in Siam

Abstract

FIG. I-Decoration on panel of bullock cart, Chiengmai, northern Siam. Geographic regionalism is largely a matter of relativity. The world may be looked at as two or three regions or as any number of regions. We speak of the continent of Asia: what do we think of? Of the two great historic cultures, the Hindu and the Chinese? Of the masses of humanity in these greatest of human agglomerations ? But their size, unwieldiness, overpopulation, land hunger and famine, caste system. ancestor worship, war lords, and the like do not embrace the of all Asia. Setting aside the Near East as Eurasian rather than Asian, there are besides these two great areas of dense population two thinly populated areas, central and northern Asia and the IndoChinese peninsula. It is with the latter, or rather with one of its four subregions, Siam, that we are concerned. Here is a country where, contrary to the common picture of Asia, population is not dense. What pressure there is on natural resources is largely due to archaic methods of land utilization. The Siamese are an intelligent people. They have been long engaged in developing a state in competition with external enemies on the one hand and a tropical environment on the other. If Siamese agriculture seems inefficient from our point of view it is lengths ahead of the native agriculture of most other tropical regions.1 The frame of economic reference commonly applied to Asia as a whole does not so readily fit Siam. This is worth bearing in mind in relation to future orientations of power in Asia. If the Siamese master their own problems of internal development, they have a wonderful opportunity and a rich heritage awaiting them. From the military point of view the country is not difficult of protection. Unlike the Malay States, Java, and the Philippines, it has no great harbors; and it is rather off the beaten commercial track.2 On the other hand, it has opportunities for production of food and cotton on a large scale; it has a livable climate and timber resources to spare; but if internal leadership does not develop these resources, the pressure of external circumstances will undoubtedly be brought to bear on them.