In the first place this essay has shown that many historians
have failed to critically appraise Bowring's remarks
on the treaty he himself negotiated. The envoy's excessive
claims seem to have been slavishly accepted; British imperialist
bias seems to have blinded historians and to have prevented
a judicious and balanced assessment of the economic
effects of the treaty. A second reason why the treaty's economic
effects have been misjudged is the fact that most historians
take 1850 as the base from which to judge the performance
of the Thai economy. It is argued here that between
1845 and 1855 the Siamese economy had been in recession
and that this has generally not been taken into account.
For these two reasons a false picutre of the economic effects
of Bowring's Treaty has come to be accepted.
As a result of the introduction of an indigenous fiftyyear
perspective we may now safely abandon the idea of an
instant total revolution of the Siamese financial base. Also
the idea that those most prominent in the negotiations sacrificed
their incomes may be laid to rest. The Bowring Treaty
simply made the Thai market more accessible to European
traders; it did not immediately revolutionise the Thai system
of revenue collection, it did not lift tax burdens, did not destroy
the system of tax farms and "monopolies". The demise
of the traditional taxation system would come much later.
The long-term effects were indeed revolutionary, but that was
partly because of the inflexibility of the internal tax farm
system, not its early abolition.