ABSTRACT
The usurper Phra-chăo Prasathong seems to have begun, shortly after he ascended the throne, in 1629, the system of royal monopolies, 1 or at least to have accentuated it, to a degree previously unknown. This mistaken policy appears to have contributed largely to drive the Indian merchants from the capital to Tenasserim and Mergui, where they had a free field for their trading operations, away from the supervision and oppression of the minions of the King. There, too, they could command by their own native craft the trade of the Coromandel Coast and of Bengal, at that time the most lucrative commerce of Siam.
