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Another breather update for you all.

Part Thirty-Eight: Meanwhile in Southeast Asia

Britain:
By the mid-19th century, the United Kingdom already had a strong presence in Southeast Asia. In the years after the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain established control over the Johor Straits and much of the southern end of the Malay Peninsula. In the Anglo-Burmese War in the 1820s, the British took the Tenasserim region from Burma. These possessions satisfied the United Kingdom for the next half century and the British established peaceful relations with the kingdoms of Burma and Siam. However, in the 1850s, the British East India Company began to support a local insurgency in the Pattani kingdom which London had recognized as under the influence of the king of Siam. The Siamese discovered this and sent a letter of protest to the East India Company and cracked down on the insurgents. By the time the dispute reached Parliament, the East India Company officials had turned the Siamese protest into a casus belli for the United Kingdom and Parliament declared war on Siam in 1854.

The Anglo-Siamese War lasted for just over one year. While Bangkok was repeatedly blockaded by Great Britain, the capture of smaller towns in southern Siam was difficult due to the lack of infrastructure and the lush forested terrain. Finally, in autumn of 1855, king Rama IV signed a ceasefire with representatives from the British crown and a peace was signed. In the peace treaty, Siam lost much territory to the United Kingdom. Rama IV ceded much of the Siamese land on the Malay Peninsula including the Kra Isthmus. The loss of this land would influence the development of Siam over the next few decades. With the frequent shelling of Bangkok over the course of the war, Rama IV moved the Siamese court back to the inland city of Ayutthaya in 1859, almost one hundred years after it had been moved to Bangkok. It also turned Siam's focus north rather than south when the country began to industrialize.

The Anglo-Siamese War also influenced the British colonial administration in the region. The newly gained land was incorporated into British Malaya, along with the Tenasserim region and the peninsula was unified under one colonial government after the British East India Company gave control of the region to the crown. British Malaya quickly began to develop along several port towns on both sides of the peninsula including Phuket, Singapore and Banton[1]. A railroad built in the 1910s connecting Phuket and Banton on either side of the Malay Peninsula would greatly reduce the time needed for goods to go from British India to east Asia and siphoned some of the development from Singapore and the Johor region to the Phuket region further north.

Belgium, and the Netherlands:
Besides the United Kingdom, the other two countries most involved in colonialism in the East Indies in the 19th century were Belgium and the Netherlands. The Dutch had already created a presence in the larger islands of Sumatra and Java, and in the 1840s they began to extend their control over the Moluccas islands of Sulawesi and New Guinea. Dutch trading ports were founded on the coasts of the islands and treaties were created with the local communities establishing protectorates in the region. In 1857, the Second Anglo-Dutch Naval Treaty between the governments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that granted the Dutch full rights over all territory on the island of New Guinea. However, the Dutch would not extend their holdings in New Guinea beyond a few colonial forts and towns until the 1880s. Similarly, the Aceh tribes and a few islands east of Java would remain independent well into the 19th century.

Belgium, on the other hand, was a latecomer in the colonial game. The country's first colonial possession in Borneo came from a treaty with the Netherlands in 1839. From this small series of outposts on the southern end of the island of Borneo, Belgium fostered relations with the local kingdoms over the next twenty years. These efforts culminated in the Sabah War in the late 1850s during which Belgium brought the Sultanate of Brunei under its jurisdiction as a protectorate and gained a base of operations on the island of Labuan. In the 1860s under King Ludwig I[2], Belgium expanded their colonial base in the East Indies from Borneo to Indochina. Ludwig's colonial policy led to the country's conquest of much of the lands south of China and east of the Mekong River. In the 1870s, Belgian Indochina was divided into six colonial administrative units led by a local chief and a representative from Brussels.

The Other Colonizers:
Along with these three major players, there were a number of minor colonial players in southeast Asia during the 19th century. The Portuguese kept their small holding on the eastern half of the island of Timor. In 1864, the Portuguese settled the border between Portuguese and Dutch Timor and exchanged a post that was a Portuguese exclave for a couple minor islands north of Timor. The Danish, with economic assistance from Great Britain after the cession of Tranquebar to the British East India Company, expanded their colonial control of the Frederiksoerne[3].

France, with their minor possessions in Pondicherry and Korea, attempted to obtain further small bases in the East Indies and the Pacific to secure their trade with Korea. After failing to establish a lasting presence in New Guinea and Formosa, France finally had success in taking the island of Palau. France's presence in the East Indies grew as the century ended when France took the island of Hainan from China as part of their assistance in the Sino-Korean War. Also during the latter half of the 19th century, Spain consolidated her holdings in the Pacific under the administration of Manila as part of the reforms of King Alfonso XII.

[1] OTL Surat Thani.
[2] Sort of Leopold II, probably a different personality though.
[3] Nicobar Islands.