History of Phuket
is the largest island in modern Thailand, locating in Southern Thailand on the western coast in the Andaman Sea. Historically at the fringe of Thai sphere of influence, Phuket has a unique place in Thai history, as its natural maritime wilderness hid lucrative tin resources that attracted both locals and foreigners who competed for control over the island, also a battleground for intensive Burmese–Siamese Wars, later becoming a Hokkien Chinese labor immigration entrepôt in tin mining industry and eventually a world tourism hub.
Historiography
Locating on the southern frontier of Thai sphere of influence, far from Thai historical centers such as Ayutthaya and Bangkok, closer to the Malay archipelago, events in Phuket were rarely recorded by the mainstream official royal Siamese chronicles. Native records about Phuket are scarce and none of them described events prior to the eighteenth century. Most of early history of Phuket can only be constructed from Western records by various foreigners such as the Dutch, the British and the French, who occasionally visited or had businesses in the Phuket island in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Dearth of Phuket indigenous records may be attributed to the Burmese destruction of all settlements on Phuket in 1810, which presumably destroyed any historical documents and clues of the island.The oldest extant native Thai historiography about the history of Phuket is dated to 1841, a small excerpt recounting a list of governors of Thalang or Phuket from around mid-eighteenth century to that time. Phraya Thalang Roek the governor of Thalang, relying on oral accounts of some elderly people of Phuket, provided a slightly more detailed account of History of Phuket, published by Prince Damrong in 1914 as Phongsawadan Mueang Thalang.
Gerolamo Emilio Gerini, an Italian man known by Siamese title Phra Sarasat Phonlakhan, served as a military instructor at Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy from 1897 to 1905. Gerini studied Siamese history and culture, composing Historical Retrospect of Junkceylon Island in 1905, the first modern historical narration of Phuket, republished in 1986 under Siam Society.
Names of Phuket
For most of its history, Phuket was known as "Junkceylon" in Western sources. The term Junkceylon came from Portuguese attested terms Jonsalam, Jonsalan or Junsalão of the sixteenth century. These terms were derived from the Malay term "Ujong Salang", meaning the "Cape of Salang", referring to the southern tip of the island. The name "Salang" was apparently related to native calling of the island "Chalang" or Thalang", which was adopted by the Thais to call the island. The name Salang, Chalang or Thalang did not have translatable meanings in both Thai and Malay languages, in which Gerini theorized to be derived from indigenous Austroasiatic language spoken by Semang Negrito people of the Malay peninsula. Merong Mahawangsa the Chronicles of Kedah, dated to late eighteenth century to early nineteenth century, called Phuket "Pulau Salang" or "Island of Salang".The name "Phuket" came from the Malay term Bukit, substantiated into Thai term "Phukej" from Phu and Kej, meaning "Diamond Mountain", which was related to Siamese title of the governors of Thalang "Phraya Phetkhiri". Thalang and Phukej are two distinct settlements on the island. Thalang was the preferred term by pre-modern Siamese government as it was the main administrative center, locating in various shifting places in the center-northern part of the island, while Phukej began as a small settlement on the southern half of the island around late eighteenth century under jurisdiction of Thalang. With the foundation of modern Phukej town in 1827, the Phukej city grew rapidly and exponentially as a tin mining hub, attracting Hokkien Chinese tin mine laborers. After mid-nineteenth century, Phukej became the preferred term to call the island. Official spelling changed from Phukej to Phuket in early twentieth century.
Early history
Nakhon Si Thammarat
There are two Tamnan or histories, Tamnan Mueang Nakhon Si Thammarat and Tamnan Phrathat Mueang Nakhon Si Thammarat, which provide semi-legendary narration of history of the area of Southern Thailand from thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, believed to be composed around the later half of the seventeenth century, discovered by modern Thai historian Prince Damrong and published during the 1930s. According to these Theravadin Buddhist Tamnans, King Si Thammasok established the city of Nakhon Si Thammarat as the center of his new Nakhon Si Thammarat Kingdom around mid-thirteenth century. With the foundation, King Si Thammasok also organized twelve Naksat zodiac satellite cities to be under the rule of Nakhon Si Thammarat. The term Naksat, from Sanskrit Nakshatra, referred instead to the Chinese zodiac.File:Seal_Nakhon_Si_Thammarat.svg|thumb|160x160px|Modern seal of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province depicting Phrathat surrounded by the twelve Naksat zodiacs.
Twelve Naksat satellite cities subordinating to Nakhon Si Thammarat, each assigned with a zodiac emblem, are Saiburi, Pattani, Kelantan, Pahang, Kedah, Phatthalung, Trang, Chumphon, Banthay Smoe, Sa U-Lau, Takua Pa and Kraburi. These cities covered modern area from Southern Thailand to northern Malaysian states. In one version, Takua Pa was replaced with "Takua-Thalang", which could either mean Takua Pa or Thalang, suggesting that the Phuket area was under control of Nakhon Si Thammarat Kingdom, as did much of Southern Thailand. However, this seventeenth-century account lacks supporting collaborative evidences from other sources.
Sukhothai and Early Ayutthaya
In the Ramkhamhaeng Stele, dated to 1292, Nakhon Si Thammarat is named as one of subordinate cities of Sukhothai Kingdom. The Tamnan suggests that a King of Sukhothai had come to subjugate Nakhon Si Thammarat. Therefore, the Thai Sukhothai kingdom had at least some influences over Southern Thai region in the fourteenth century but it is dubious that Sukhothai had solidified control over Southern Thailand or Malay peninsula as a whole.Nakhon Si Thammarat and Southern Thailand was incorporated into Ayutthaya kingdom by fifteenth century. Towns on the Andaman Coast were not mentioned in the list of peripheral cities in Phra Aiyakarn Tamnaeng Na Thaharn Huamueang, which was complied in under King Trailokkanat, which included Nakhon Si Thammarat, Chumphon, Chaiya and Phatthalung as Ayutthayan authority was concentrated on Gulf of Siam side of Malay peninsula. According to Jeremias van Vliet's Chronicles of the Ayuthian Dynasty, King Borommaracha III of Ayutthaya went on his leisure journey to "Tjongh Tjelungh" where he died, presumably in 1491. Fernão Mendes Pinto passed by the port of "Juncalan" in 1539. Pinto called the Tenasserim Coast the "Coast of Juncalan". In 1580, Ralph Fitch passed by "Junsalaon" on his sea journey from Pegu to Malacca.
Earliest recognized inhabitants of Phuket seemed to be the Malays. Orang Laut sea nomads, called Saletters in Dutch sources, also patrolled the area. In October 1592, Edmund Baker from the fleet of Sir James Lancaster visited the "kingdome of Junsaloam", where Baker sent a Portuguese man to speak to the inhabitants in Malay language; "Here we sent our souldier, which the captaine of the aforesaid galion had left behind him with us, because he had the Malaian language to deale with the people for pitch,". This was the first recorded encounter between visitor and native inhabitant of Phuket.
Dutch activities in Phuket
Arrival of the Dutch in Phuket
was abundant in tin, which had been exported from various seaports of the Malay peninsula, attracting foreign merchants to trade tin in exchange for their goods. In the early seventeenth century, there had been a flourishing trans-Indian Ocean trade, in which South Indian merchants from Coromandel Coast would trade for tin in the Malay peninsula in exchange for Indian textiles brought with them. In the aftermath of Dutch conquest of Malacca in 1641, Malacca served as the foothold for expansion of Dutch commercial power in the region. As tin became a key commodity, the Dutch sought to take control and monopolize over this trans-Indian Ocean tin trade, at the expense of their competitors the South Indian and Acehnese merchants, through treaties and agreements with local rulers.By the reign of King Prasat Thong in mid-seventeenth century, there were many Southern Siamese ports that exported tin including Nakhon Si Thammarat, Chumphon, Chaiya, Phunphin, Thalang and Bangkhli, on both coasts of Southern Siam, of which Thalang and Bangkhli were on the Andaman Coast. Dutch East India Company sought to make treaties with local Asian governments, either through diplomacy or forced naval blockade, to obtain tin export monopolies to their benefits. Dutch sources described governors of Thalang and Bangkhli as "viceroys" who held autonomous powers, capable of conducting independent diplomatic ventures with the Dutch. The Dutch established VOC factory at Nakhon Si Thammarat or Ligor in 1642, primarily for acquiring tin for export and had earlier concluded a treaty with Kedah in 1642. The Dutch concluded separate treaties with the governor of Thalang in March 1643 and the governor of Bangkhli in January 1645, in which local tin miners were forced to sell tin only to the Dutch, who suppressed the price low, not to South Indian merchants, in exchange for Indian textiles brought in by the Dutch. Any tin miners who were caught selling tin to other parties were to be punished by seizure of their tin goods. Furthermore, any Dutch traders committing criminal offenses in Thalang and Bangkhli would not be subjected to native Siamese legal system but the opperhoofd from Ayutthaya would come to judge instead, a partial form of extraterritoriality.
Ayutthaya struggles to control technically autonomous towns like Thalang and Bangkhli, which were under nominal authority of Nakhon Si Thammarat or Ligor, the Mueang Ek or first-level principal city of Southern Siam. The governor of Thalang even independently sent letters to Jeremias van Vliet the Governor of Dutch Malacca in 1644–1645. In 1645, King Prasat Thong appointed a new governor of Ligor and, through him, summoned the Thalang governor to Ayutthaya for the fourth time without success. The Ligor governor sought to control Thalang. In 1654, the Ligor governor divided Thalang island into two administrative parts, upsetting Okphra Phetkhiri the governor of Thalang. Okphra Phetkhiri, through Tenasserim, complained his case to Ayutthaya. The result was that the Ligor governor was replaced by the governor of Tenasserim as the new governor of Ligor.
Tin export monopoly is the Dutch way of conducting businesses in the area, using local governments and law enforcement to ensure their benefits. South Indian and Acehnese merchants were legally barred from buying tin in these ports. Dutch tin export monopoly generated resentment among local population, who were eager to sell tin to South Indian merchants who offered higher prices. The Dutch soon found out that local authorities barely honored the treaties, as their competitors South Indian and Acehnese merchants continued to buy tin in these ports.