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What if Thailand had not managed to weather the tides of colonialism like Ethiopia concurrently did, and was subsequently absorbed into the French colonial empire like the other Indochinese states? Perhaps sometime around the Franco-Siamese War of 1893, or even later. What would be the effects of a French Thailand on the history of the country and its surrounding areas?
With Thailand firmly in French hands, would Britain end up demanding more concessions? They could pressure France to cede the areas of the Patani Sultanate to the south of the Kra isthmus, enlarging the British colony of Malaya, as compensation for the loss of a buffer state, imo. How does the continuation of Anglo-French conflicts in Southeast Asia affect the formation of the Entente Cordiale, if it even consolidates at all?
Could France, seeking to one-up the British, decide to build the Kra Canal in order to ease communications between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and to decrease naval dependence on British Singapore for that?
What are the overall effects on Thailand itself? Would it be split into multiple associated states, like the rest of OTL French Indochina? What sort of impact would be brought by the adoption of French as another language of administration?
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