A strong argument can be made that the Thai state has been highly internationalized for a very long time. This is in part a function of the breadth and depth of regional trade and migration networks in the pre-European colonial period, many of which integrally involved Thai dynasties (Reid 1988; 1993). David Wyatt argues that the Ayutthaya-based monarchies had a distinctly cosmopolitan flavour, incorporating substantial numbers of governmental representatives from a variety of Asian trading partners, and representation of foreign interests within the royal court continued into the Bangkok period as well (Wyatt 1984). Hans-Dieter Evers has gone so far as to declare the Bangkok-based Siamese dynasty founded in the late eighteenth century to be a fundamentally trade-based regime (Evers 1987). The importance of trade, in turn, strengthened the importance of foreign merchants and advisers within the royal court. The incursions of the British and other European powers into nineteenth-century Southeast Asia contributed to further internationalization of the Thai state, particularly after the signing of the Bowring Treaty in 1855. The reforms of the Thai state launched in this context led to not only a dramatic overhaul of the existing bureaucracy but to the employment of enormous numbers of European advisers. William Siffin, for example, notes that during Rama V’s reign (1868–1910) there were a total of 549 foreign officials who served in the Thai government, most of these serving after 1880. In 1909 alone, there were some 319 foreigners serving in the Thai government, including 6 general advisers, the general financial agent of the government, 21 legal advisers and assistants, 13 director-generals of departments or equivalent, 23 assistant director-generals, and 69 persons engaged in administrative work just below the level of the departmental management (Siffin 1966: 96–7). The role of these advisers in influencing Thai state policies and in representing the interests of metropolitan capital within Thailand has been extensively discussed elsewhere and need not be addressed here. Suffice it to say that their presence manifests the internationalization of capital, while their successful accommodation by Thai elites—who were able to collaborate with them in projects of mutual benefit—speaks to the ways in which the state became internationalized around shared transnational interests (Suehiro 1989; Chaiyan 1994; Thongchai 1994).