•The exploitation of Western weaponry was more pronounced in the Menambasin, where the movement towards the creation of a single territorial entity under Ayutthaya's domination was already well in train.
•Indeed, some scholars have already discerned the genesis of the wider cultural-political unity which lies at the heart of the modern Thai state.
•Three hundred years earlier the terms 'Syam' and 'Tai' may have referred only to the people of Sukothai, but now when outsiders spoke of 'Syam‘ they clearly meant Ayutthaya and the territory under its control. Local sources, which differentiate between the 'Tai' of Ayutthaya, the 'Tai Yuan‘ of LanNa and the Lao of LanSang, also point to an emerging 'Siamese‘ identity, and sixteenth-century Portuguese descriptions make a clear distinction between Lao traders and the Siamese.
•The European presence in Ayutthaya simply fed into this continuing process of state development, mainly due to the military technology they introduced at a time when Ayutthayankings were attempting to assert their superiority over often reluctant vassals.