ABSTRACT
A new wave of global Western imperialist expansion and struggle for hegemony was in full swing in the years between 1895 and 1905. Prominent in the Southeast Asian battlefield was the Anglo-French rivalry, in which, owing to its own unique geographic situation, Siam found itself being a buffer between British Burma and French Indo-China, and hence maintained its symbolic independence. However, the southern Siamese Malay states, including Kedah, were secured by the British to obviate the penetration of any third power by the secret Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1897. In the other parts of Malay Peninsula, British expansion was expressed in the booming export economy and the consolidation of colonial control through the construction of a modern administration, a network of communications and transport infrastructure.
