Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/392

Defeated in her efforts to lay hold of Upper Burma, she turned her eyes towards Siam as the next most convenient field for imperial exploitation. Great Britain could not view with equanimity the prospect of a powerful neighbour establishing herself along her eastern frontier, uncontrolled and ill-defined as such frontier was, and consisting of an ill-assorted patchwork of little-known tribes whose proclivities would be only too likely to lie in the direction of crooked diplomacy and intrigue; and being driven to action by the pressure of events, the Foreign Office fell back upon their panacea for every frontier ill—the creation of a buffer state. With this object in view, slices of her recently acquired Burmese territory were handed round to any one who could be found willing to take them,—China, as has already been recorded, receiving the state of Kiang Hung, and Siam being presented with the adjoining territory of Kiang Cheng. This arrangement served for a time, until the discovery was suddenly made by the explorers and historiographers of France that the rulers of Siam were in unlawful possession of territory