Thailand

The only Southeast Asian country never colonised, which was the result of policy rather than luck. Sukhothai and then Ayutthaya built a Theravada Buddhist kingdom that traded with China, Persia and Europe; Ayutthaya was among the largest cities in the world before Burma destroyed it in 1767, and Bangkok was founded shortly after by the Chakri dynasty that still reigns. Mongkut and Chulalongkorn in the nineteenth century did what almost no other Asian monarchy managed: they centralised the administration, abolished slavery and corvee, built railways and a modern bureaucracy, sent princes to European universities, and ceded outlying territory to Britain and France as the price of keeping the core - Siam survived partly as a buffer both powers preferred to a shared border. A bloodless coup in 1932 ended absolute monarchy. The name changed to Thailand in 1939. The country allied with Japan in the war and with the United States afterwards, hosting the airbases used over Vietnam. It has had roughly a dozen successful coups since 1932, more than any other country, and lese-majeste law makes public discussion of the monarchy legally dangerous. Bangkok is the capital and tourism a major industry. The country has about seventy-one million people. Thai is written in a script derived from Khmer and Indian models. Ayutthaya and Sukhothai are World Heritage sites. Around ninety per cent of the population is Buddhist and many men ordain briefly as monks. Rice and rubber remain major exports. The country was called Siam until 1939 and again briefly after the war. Its cuisine is among the most widely exported in the world.

• Government: Constitutional Monarchy
• Capital: Bangkok