Treaty of Amity and Commerce, with General Regulations and Tariff of Export and Inland Duties (Thai: หนังสือสัญญาทางพระราชไมตรีประเทศอเมริกันแลประเทศสยาม) was a treaty between Siam or Rattanakosin Kingdom under King Mongkut or King Rama IV and the United States during the presidency of Franklin Pierce. The treaty was signed at Bangkok on May 29, 1856 during the diplomatic mission of the American envoy Townsend Harris to Siam. This American–Siamese Harris Treaty of 1856 was modeled after the preceding Anglo–Siamese Bowring Treaty of 1855 and was one of many Bowring-type unequal treaties that Siam concluded with Western nations in mid-nineteenth century.
After conclusion of the Anglo–Siamese Burney Treaty in 1826, Siam also concluded the similar American–Siamese Roberts Treaty in 1833, which, in parallel to the Burney Treaty, abolished Siam's royal monopoly on Western trades in favor of free trade for the Americans. However, Siam still levied the so-called measurement duties. The British and the American people in Siam were still subjected to traditional Siamese legal and judiciary system. American attempt to send Joseph Balestier to revise the treaty with Siam in 1850 ended badly. With the rise of influence of the British Empire in the Far East and ascension of King Mongkut, who had been well-disposed towards Westerners, the British plenipotentiary Sir John Bowring managed to conclude the eponymous Bowring Treaty in April 1855, which abolished the measurement duties, reduced Siam's import duty to flat three-percent and established British extraterritorial jurisdiction in Siam.
Simultaneously, the United States had been working on the opening of the secluded Tokugawa Japan. Townsend Harris the American merchant, who had been venturing in the Far East, was appointed as the American Consul General to Japan. In order to procure the same Siamese concessions as Britain for the United States, Townsend Harris proposed to William L. Marcy the Secretary of State that Harris himself would go to make a new treaty with Siam on his journey to Japan. Harris' plan to Siam was approved in September 1855. Townsend Harris arrived in Siam in April 1856 but his negotiation with the Siamese plenipotentiaries was delayed for a month due to Siam being busy dealing with the British envoy Harry Parkes. After some hassle, the American–Siamese Harris Treaty was concluded on May 29, 1856. This Harris Treaty was nearly identical to the Bowring Treaty word-by-word and article-by-article, as both contained twelve articles, with only some alterations. Main provisions of the treaty were;
Establishment of American consular and extraterritorial jurisdiction in Siam Abolition of Siamese measurement duties and stipulation of low three-percent import duty for American merchants Permission for the Americans to own lands and settle in the designated area surrounding Bangkok After conclusion of this American–Siamese Treaty, Charles William Bradley, the American Consul at Ningpo, who was then in Hong Kong, brought the treaty to the Department of State. President James Buchanan ratified the treaty on March 16, 1857. Charles W. Bradley then brought the ratified treaty to Bangkok, where the ratifications were exchanged on June 15, 1857.
Unlike the treaties that Siam had made with Britain and France, Siam's treaty terms with the United States remained mostly unchanged through six decades as the United States did not engage in any territorial or sovereignty disputes with Siam. By 1909, there were only 155 American citizens in Siam, most of whom were Protestant missionaries. American political and commercial interests in Siam had remained negligible up to that time. Following the American entry into World War I on the Allies side, Siam did the same in 1917 in order to procure revision and abrogation of the unequal treaties Siam had earlier made with Western nations. In 1920, Phraya Praphakarawong Chai Bunnag, the Siamese Minister at Washington D.C., negotiated with Frank Polk, the Secretary of State, resulting in the American–Siamese Treaty of December 1920, during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, which abolished most of American extraterritorial jurisdiction and three-percent import duty for the Americans in Siam.
History of American–Siamese relations
Traditional Siamese commercial and legal systems Since the fifteenth century, in the Ayutthaya period, the Siamese royal court held a monopoly over Western trade. All incoming Western merchant vessels could only trade through Phra Khlang Sinkha (Thai: พระคลังสินค้า) or the Royal Warehouse, who would determine the price and collect duties on the import articles. Western merchants could not import merchandise to directly and privately trade with the local Siamese. This royal Siamese monopoly over Western trade had been generating a great amount of revenue for the Siamese government at the expense of the Western merchants. For import, Westerners were subjected to two duties; the eight-percent import duty, which was collected in kind not in cash and the measurement duty, which was collected proportionally according to the measured width of the vessel. For export, Western merchants could only purchase valuable restricted goods from the Phra Khlang Sinkha, who would again set price, not buying directly from the Siamese. The Western merchants were also subjected to export duties.
Traditional Siamese legal and judiciary systems were based on the Classical Indian legal system, taking as a model the Indian texts including the secular Arthashastra statecraft treatise and the religious Manusmṛti or the Law of Manu. Judiciary tortures, trial by ordeal and public humiliation were common practice. Presumption of guilt, in which the defendants were presumed guilty until proven innocent, prevailed, in contrast to presumption of innocence in Western judicial systems. When a suspected criminal did not confess, the Siamese investigators applied judiciary physical tortures known as Charit Nakhonban or Nakhonban creed, including flogging with rattan canes, being bound in cangues, being tied up and thrown into water, being exposed to the heat of daylight and being slapped in the mouth. To testify, sometimes defendants and plaintiffs alike were made to dive into water and walk into fire. Western visitors had been horrified at this Indo–Siamese judicial system, which they sought to dissociate themselves from.
Portugal was the first Western nation to establish official relations with Siam in the Rattanakosin Period. In 1820, the Portuguese envoy Carlos Manuel da Silveira arrived in Bangkok to conclude the Luso–Siamese Agreement of 1820, which allowed establishment of the Portuguese Consulate in Bangkok. Portugal became the first Western nation to have a consulate in Siam. However, the Portuguese Consulate was solely of commercial purpose and the Portuguese Consul was not yet accorded with extraterritorial powers over Portuguese subjects in Siam. Unlike the British, who would soon arrive, the Portuguese did not seek to challenge nor dismantle the existing traditional Siamese rules and systems.
The British, in contrast, saw the traditional Siamese royal monopoly as an obstacle, depriving the British merchants of due benefits. With the era of mercantilism gone, the British saw 'free trade' as the better alternative against the Asian monopoly systems. In 1821, the British Indian Government sent John Crawfurd as the delegate of British East India Company to procure a free trade agreement with Siam. Crawfurd arrived in Bangkok in March 1822 and faced difficulties due to the general Siamese distrust of Westerners and the language barrier. By that time, not a single person in Siam knew the English language. During the conversations, Crawfurd's English speech was interpreted into Malay and then into Portuguese and then into Thai language. Crawfurd proposed to Phraya Suriyawong Montri, personal name Dit Bunnag, the Phrakhlang or Siamese Minister of Trade and Foreign Affairs, that Siam should streamline and simplify the import, export and measurement duties, which accounted for about one-tenth of Siamese state revenue, into one single duty that would be collected only once. Perplexed, Crawfurd left Siam empty-handed without obtaining any free trades. However, Crawfurd's mission to Siam was not fruitless as it paved way for subsequent British diplomatic advances on Siam.
British prevail over Burma, Siam's traditional enemy, during the First Anglo–Burmese War, changed Siamese worldview. The Siamese came to the conclusion that further resisting British demands might subject Siam to the same fate as Burma. British Indian Government tried again by sending Henry Burney, who could speak Malay, to obtain a free trade treaty from Siam. Henry Burney arrived in Bangkok in November 1825. King Rama III or King Nangklao of Siam assigned Chaophraya Phrakhlang Dit Bunnag to negotiate with Burney. The Treaty between Siam and Great Britain, known in Thai historiography as the Burney Treaty, was concluded on 20 June 1826.
Article VI of this Burney Treaty granted free trade to the British, who were allowed to trade anywhere with anybody in Siam, abolishing the monopoly of Phra Khlang Sinkha. However, the Additional Articles concerning British trade in Siam, signed in January 1827, favored Siam. All custom duties were coalesced into one single "measurement duty", which would be paid only once according to the width of the incoming merchant ships, measured by Siamese officials. The rate was fixed at 1,700 ticals for each Siamese fathom in breadth. This notorious measurement duty would be the point of contention, which both the British and the Americans would seek to dismantle.
Both John Crawfurd and Henry Burney proposed appointment of a British resident agent in Siam, to which the Siamese rejected, saying that establishment of such British Consulate in Siam would be a contravention of Siam's sovereignty, even though Siam had granted the Portuguese to have their consulate but the Siamese saw the Portuguese case as a bad example. Both Crawfurd and Burney did not push forward extraterritoriality as the primary concern and Siam took this opportunity to assert its jurisdiction over British subjects in Siam. Article I of the Burney Treaty stated that "The Siamese shall settle every matter within the Siamese boundaries according to their own will and customs", while the Article I of the Additional Articles stated that all British subjects in Siam, including the Europeans, the Asiatics and the British vessels, were to conform to Siamese laws.
Arrival of the Americans in Siam The Second Great Awakening, which focused on Christian revival, personal conversion, emotional experiences and preaching of the Gospel, resulted in missionary movements in the United States. Five Williams College students of the revival movement gathered in the Haystack Prayer Meeting in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1806, discussing the prospect of sending American missionaries to preach in Asia,The Haystack Prayer Meeting: A Brief Account of Its Origin and Spirit, Together with a List of Missionaries who Have Gone Out from Williams College and Williamstown; Also a Bibliography of Pamphlets and Books Relating to the Men and Times of the Haystack Meeting, 1906. where the people had been mostly oblivious to Protestantism. Samuel John Mills, the leader of the movement, soon acquired volunteers as missionaries to found the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions or ABCFM in 1810, the first-ever American missionary organization, which had a Congregationalist origin. The first area of interest for these earliest American missionaries was the British India. In 1812, the ABCFM sent its first group of missionaries to British India, among them Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann Hasseltine Judson, to British India.