It was the elite of Mongkut’s generation who consciously adopted the alternative concept and its rules and practices, including the methods of marking boundary lines in the modern sense and the use of maps. Although differences in conceptions still prevailed at other levels of the community, particularly among those people along the frontier, it was not long before the Bangkok regime tightened its control over the borders and by clever tactics-playing on the ignorance of local subjects by employing a traditional ritual of allegiance, for example-stipulated practices which half a century earlier it had not known.