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Thailand: A French drawing of two Siamese galleys racing in the 1680s.

The French embassy was established in the Siamese capital Ayutthaya in 1685.

In this drawing, a royal barge is illustrated in the foreground while King Somdet Phra Narai the Great (Somdet Phra Ramathibodi III) looks on from the shore.

The Siamese, or Thais, moved from their ancestral home in southern China into mainland Southeast Asia around the 10th century CE. Prior to this, Indianized kingdoms such as the Mon, Khmer and Malay kingdoms ruled the region. The Thais established their own states starting with Sukhothai, Chiang Saen, Chiang Mai and Lanna Kingdom, before the founding of the Ayutthaya kingdom. These states fought each other and were under constant threat from the Khmers, Burma and Vietnam.

Much later, the European colonial powers threatened in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but Thailand survived as the only Southeast Asian state to avoid colonial rule. After the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand endured 60 years of almost permanent military rule before the establishment of a democratic elected-government system.