Hey, welcome back everyone. Lhaslam-Uncomery reporting for duty, China History Podcast episode 262.

Part 4 this time of yet another patented CHP mini-series in the making, this time featuring an overview of the history of the Thai Chinese people.

We're only riding a horse and admiring these flowers, so to speak, no deep-sea diver suit required for this.

Alexander Pope wrote in 1709, quote,

A little learning is a dangerous thing, end quote.

But he wasn't referring to Chinese history, I'm sure, where, if I may humbly say, a little

learning is much better than no learning at all.

So I hope you're enjoying this series up to now, the story keeps getting better I assure you.

Like all the histories of the worldwide Chinese diaspora and especially in Southeast Asia, there's a lot of compelling and delightful history there to appreciate,

and this is just a little of it.

We'll focus today on the events of this tumultuous period that I'm sure all of us are already quite familiar with,

this involves the well-known societal and national earthquakes that started

happening in China right about mid-century,

that unbeknownst to those living at that time

would still reverberate into the 20-20s,

two and a half centuries later.

Last time we finished off with King Rama the first,

overthrowing Tuxin the Great,

and this first Chakri dynasty king

got to be the one to usher in the 19th century. So not to belabor this point, but again, Britain, the Netherlands, France, and others.

Well, they're going to have the time of their lives exploiting that military technology gap between themselves and the nation stretching from the China seas to the Bay of Bengal.

And though Siam famously never gets colonized to the Bay of Bengal, and though Siam famously never gets colonized to the extent that their neighbors

...