ABSTRACT
Siamese economic policy and administration in the last three decades of the absolute monarchy has long been the focus of critical scholarly analysis. The most longstanding criticism has been that the Siamese authorities in this period were almost invariably conservative and unimaginative in the use of the resources which they had at their disposal, with the result, it is alleged, that they failed to exploit the full economic potential of the kingdom in the short term or to lay the foundations for more securely based economic growth in the future. Recent years have seen the emergence of the more radical criticism that economic policy and administration in early twentieth century Siam was not simply short-sighted and unreasonably conservative, but more seriously that the very considerable economic interests and political influence of the Siamese administrative élite itself stood as a critical obstacle to the emergence of a more prosperous and economically stable Siam. The present paper has two principal objectives. First, to suggest that these criticisms are not fully sustained by a careful reading of the Siamese administrative records of the early twentieth century; second, to argue that by placing state economic policy and administration and, in some cases, the economic interests and political influence of the administrative élite at the centre of the analysis, these criticisms may even have hindered progress towards a fuller understanding of the historical origins of Siamese underdevelopment.
