Background of Royal Army Thailand

The Royal Army Thailand was established in 1887.  The First Army, headquartered in Bangkok, was responsible for the country's western and central provinces and the capital city. Besides that, the northeastern quadrant was the territorial home of the Second Army, and its regional headquarters were in Nakhon Ratchasima. The region of the Third Army, with headquarters in Phitsanulok, consisted of the northern and northwestern parts of the kingdom. The Fourth Army's region was southern Thailand, its headquarters were in Nakhon Si Thammarat.

The chief of armed forces is Raja Bhumibol Adulydej. After that, the their Defences Minister is Jeneral Prawit Wongsuwan and the Supreme Commander is Jeneral Songkiti Jaggabatra.Then, their qualification to enter the army force was age 21 years until 49 years old.  Siam had also acquired a Royal Navy from 1875 with a Danish naval reserve officer; Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu in charge and after his departure in 1902 with the Thai noble title Phraya Chonlayutthayothin) under the reforms of Admiral Prince Abhakara Kiartiwongse. Siam's increasing focus on centralised military force to deter European invasion came at the cost of the former decentralised military and political arrangements, beginning a trend towards centralised military power that would continue into the 20th-century Thai history. Despite the growing Siamese military strength, Siam's independence during much of the late 19th century on the ongoing rivalry between Britain and France across the region, especially in the search for lucrative trade routes into the Chinese hinterlands. By developing an increasing sophisticated military force and playing one colonial rival off against another, successive Siamese monarchs were able to maintain an uneasy truce until the 1890s.

The closing act of this struggle was the French occupation of eastern Thai territory in the Franco-Siamese war of 1893, which paved the way for an uneasy peace between Siam and France in the region for the next forty years. French Indochina's Governor-General had sent an envoy toBangkok to bring Laos under French rule, backed by the threat of French military force. The Siamese government, mistakenly believing that they would be supported by the British, refused to concede their territories east of the Mekong river and instead reinforced their military and administrative presence there. Spurred on by the expulsion of French merchants on suspicion of opium smuggling, and the

suicide of a French diplomat returning from Siam, French took the Siamese refusal to concede its eastern territories as a case for war.

In 1893 the French ordered their navy to sail up the Chao Phraya river towards Bangkok. With their guns now trained on the Siamese royal palace, the French delivered an ultimatum to the Siamese to hand over the disputed territories and to pay indemnities for the fighting so far. When Siam did not immediately comply unconditionally to the ultimatum, the French blockaded the Siamese coast. Unable to respond at sea or on land, in the end the Siamese submitted fully to the French conditions, finding no support from the British. The conflict led to the signature of the Franco-Siamese Treaty shortly afterwards, in which the Siamese conceded Laos to France, an act that led to the significant expansion of French Indochina.

In 1904 the French and the British put aside their differences with the Entente Cordiale, which ended their dispute over routes in southern Asia and also removed the Siamese option for using one colonial power as military protection against another. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 produced a compromise, largely in Britain's favour, between Britain and Siam over the disputed territories in the north of Malaya. Siam's next conflict was its two-year involvement in the First World War, fighting on the side of the Entente Powers, the only independent Asian nation with land forces in Europe during the Great War. The result of this intervention in 1917 was the revision or complete cancellation of some of the unequal trade treaties with the United States, France and the British Empire - but not the return of the bulk of the disputed Siamese territories lost in the previous century.