Overview
The Kingdom of Thailand or Siam has Burma and Laos on the north, Laos, and Cambodia to the east, the Andaman Sea on the west and the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia to the south. Tourism is one of the leading sectors of Thailand with the country being classified as a newly industrialized economy.
Most of the natives of Siam came down from Southwestern China ages ago. It is believed that the region came to be known as Siam due to Portuguese. The area was ruled by the Mon dynasty, Khmer Empire, and kings from the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. The native Thai states were also established alongside but they were strife with internal wars and battles. Due to King Chulalongkorn from the House of Chakri, Siam was never under any European colonial rule through the 19th and the 20th century so much so that the region was declared as neutral territory by the British. Monarchy ended in Siam in 1932 but it was followed by a military rule that existed for 60 years. It was only in the 1990s that the people of the country were able to elect their representatives to the democratic government. In recent years, there was another coup by the Royal Thai Army in 2014 and today it is being ruled by a military dictatorship.
