The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

AMERJC:\I'i DIPLOMATS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 41
knife and another was unable to send his annual trade report because
the clerk carrying his notes bad been run down by a tugboat, while the
American Consul in Brunei barely escaped alive when the American
Consulate was attacked and burned to the ground. 4
Southeast Asia was not an area of primary concern to the United
States in the nineteenth century.
Even the geography of the region
continued to mystify Washington; despatches intended for Syria arrived
in Siam, the reports of the consular agent in Rangoon, Burma, were
occasionally filed under Brunei, Borneo (although administratively the
Rangoon post was under Calcutta), and one of the Brunei despatches
bears the State Department margin notation "See to this as to what
Country or Empire it belongs."s
Southeast Asia remained a backwater of American diplomacy, but
Siam emerged as the most important post in this relatively unimportant
region. By the last decade of the century Siam was the only remaining
independent state in Southeast Asia, and relations with the rest of
Southeast Asia were handled as much through tbe European colonial
capitals as through diplomnts in the region. The salary of the Bangkok
post is a rough measure of its stat us: until 1865 the American consul
l
4) Banglwl1Despatches, May 28, 1861, and October 22, 1875.
The story of the Brunei Consulate is one of the most bizarre episodes in
American diplomatic history. Although a post was authorized as early as
18 55 it was only filled from 18 64 to 186 8, under the aegis of the expansionist
and Asian-oriented Secretary of State William Seward. In addition to the
burning of the consulate, the consul, one Capt. C. Lee Moses of Saco, Maine,
was involved in abortive schemes of empire, purported threats from headhunters,
and various other harrowing experiences. The post had no salary and, as
there was no American trade, no income from consular fees, and the destitute
Moses was finally reduced to sending desperate threats and appeals to
Washington. In reply he was fired, and having accepted the charity of friends
to send bis family back to the United States he made his way to Bangkok,
where he took passage on an unseaworthy ship which was never beard from
again. For details of the episode see United States Department of State,
Despatches j1·om United States Consuls in Bnmei, 1862-1868 (microfilm), and
Bangkok Despatches, August 13, 1869.
5) Bangkok Despatches, July 10, 1872; Brunei Despatches, April land December
31, 1865.