Part 1: What the hell's a Siam?
Say hello to the lovely little country of Siam. What will soon be known as Thailand.
“Who’s a cute widdle country? You are! Yes you are!”
Siam might not look like much, but don’t be fooled: the Siamese are plucky bastards. During the 19th century Siam was the only country in South-East Asia to keep its independence. Although they had to give up land to the British and the French, Siam has so far managed to avoid becoming a colony of any European great power.
In 1932, our country went through a bloodless revolution that reduced the powers of the monarch and gave it its first constitution. The after-effects of this coup are still felt today. Siam in 1933 is an unstable country. We might expect a coup attempt in the future.
Siam is surrounded by French Indochina to the east, Britain to the south and the British Raj to the west. None of these are countries we want to mess with at the moment. Also of note is Japan, which is doing quite a bit of saber-rattling at the moment. They might become a bit of an issue at some point in the future.
Fear our snappy dress-sense! Fear it!
This is our government. I’ve already moved us one step closer to democracy, but foreign analysts still see us as a dictatorship. We only have one choice for most minister positions right now.
Buddhists with Beakers
Siam's armies and industries are decades behind the times. If we’re going to survive as a nation, we’re gonna have to innovate, and fast. Luckily, most of our tech teams are relatively competent.
We get to work on our two new projects: “Beeping thingy that makes us do science better” and “Better food-grow-ification methods” (scientists are not good at naming things). Let’s hope we can keep funding our research teams. If only we had some blueprints…
They say love conquers all, but I'd like to have some guns as a plan B.
This is our army: four divisions of 1921 infantry with one cavalry detachment and one engineer brigade. We also have two destroyers, a tactical bomber squad and a fighter squad. Most nearby great powers would be able to beat us in their sleep if we went to war now. We’ll have to expand our army and use our terrain wisely if we’re going to have even a chance of winning a war.
That globe isn't going to warm itself.
A professor of economics was once asked to give a summary of Siam’s industrial capacity. His response: “What the hell’s a Siam?” That’s our industry in a nutshell. We have a few railroads and some factories, but not nearly enough. I order some factories to be built in Bangkok (the only place where I can actually build industry).
We have a lot of dissent and not a lot of money. Luckily, there’s a solution to both of those problems: have our industry produce loads of goods, then sell those goods to the dissenters! We get rich, and the dissenters are too busy playing with their new toys to notice. It’s masterstrokes like this that will turn our country into a great empire!
