Siam Under Siege is the first book to offer a comprehensive portrait of the six critical decades from 1882 until 1941, during which modern Thailand existed in a state of threat and intimidation from her neighbor to the east, French Indochina. Despite having signed and fully complied with a series of extortionate treaties with France in 1893, 1904, and 1907, each of which saw her lose long-held prized territories, Siam continued to be denied the normal border which each of these agreements should have guaranteed. As late as 1941, France persisted in treating the Mekong, theoretically the international border between them, as her own private possession, her officials arbitrarily interfering with Siam's rights of travel, commerce, and communication.