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A History of Phuket and the Surrounding Region Hardcover – January 1, 2013

by Colin Mackay (Author)

3.3 8 ratings

This is the first book to comprehensively examine the little-known history of the Phuket region. It incorporates over 1000 direct contemporary writings and quotes from commentators and visitors over the last 2,000 years. The book is divided into 38 chapters and is illustrated with over 100 maps, pictures and some previously unpublished photographs, many of which have never been published before.

This epic story begins with the arrival of the first humans and goes on to cover: the influence of early Negro, Malay, Indian, Chinese, Arab, Greek settlers and visitors; Phuket's important position on the ancient east-west maritime trade route; the rise and fall of mysterious early kingdoms and empires; the coming of Islam and Thai regional dominance; the social history and the scourge of piracy; swashbuckling attempts by Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch, French and British adventurers to control Phuket in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries; the destruction of the 18th and 19th century Burmese wars; the tin mining boom; mass Chinese immigration and their rise to regional power; European colonial pressure and why Phuket was never colonized; the birth of Thailand; Japan's WWII invasion, local resistance battles and the eventual Allied conquest of Phuket; and the island's post-war transformation into a jet-set destination.

Print length

418 pages
Language

English
Publisher

White Lotus
Publication date

January 1, 2013
ISBN-10

9744801956
ISBN-13

978-9744801951
See all details

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ White Lotus; First Edition (January 1, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 418 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9744801956
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9744801951
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.95 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #5,347,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #47,207 in Asian History (Books)

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3.3 8 ratings

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Colin Robert Mackay

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CMD

Great book! Interesting! Peculiar stories about Phuket! Well-researched.

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2020

This is an excellent book and a very thorough history of the island. I have recommended this book to quite a few friends living in Phuket and found it not only entertaining, informative, and well-written.

Originally I had given this review a very low rating because it was not available in Kindle format, which makes it difficult to access for some expats since lugging around a hard copy can be cumbersome for travellers. I apologize for this, but think it would be much nicer if it was more easily accessible on the Kindle store.

5 people found this helpful

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Ian

“A History of Phuket” is unavailable, in Phuket…. Mai Khao Jai…..

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2023

25 years ago in 1998 I chose to make Phuket my home, and have been living here since.
I recently tried to purchase “A History of Phuket”….. but it is unavailable. Amazon will not ship it to my home address here on Phuket. Further…. It is unavailable at any bookstore here on the island. Go figure…..

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Nick Reef

Deepens your appreciation of a wonderful locality - a terrific read

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2015

This is the definitive book on the history of Phuket and its surrounding region. Thousands of people visit this area on holiday every year and they witness its exquisite beauty of landscape and coastlines, but few can realise what a fascinating history lies behind the scatter of ports, resorts and fishing villages with its ever present backdrop of lush tropical forests and plantations. Mr Mackay has made a wonderful and extensive, sweeping review of the region's history from ancient right through to modern times. In many ways this corner of South East Asia has been relatively neglected by systematic academic study, but this book remedies this and will be the seminal work for many years to come.

As with the rest of fabulously diverse and culturally rich South East Asia it is a story of a region that goes beyond being a bridging point between the great civilisations of India and China, to one that has found its own agency and complex identities. I use the word story deliberately because a major part of the appeal of Mr Mackay's writing is that he uses a narrative style. He has drawn upon a vast range of sources and at each point in the book (which is structured chronologically in terms of historical periods) he draws out endlessly interesting insights. Just one criticism given that this is a serious and scholarly book spanning some 430 pages I can't help feeling it would have been beneficial to have provided an index. Although I should note that there is a full bibliography and detailed notes pertaining to the sources.

Phuket has a history of migration and trade, adventurers and pirates, and a whole series of rising and falling constellations of principalities and their military conflicts, which are all succinctly presented here. I have visited Phuket many times and although I have a general knowledge of the history of South East Asia there is so much that I have learnt from this book that further deepens the appeal of this locality.

This book must be the culmination of many years of absorption in the locality as well as systematic scholarship. Like the many migrants have passed through this region in the past the author has also made it his home and married into the local community. It is probably this combination of sound scholarship, extensive knowledge of the locality, and a real feeling for Phuket that underlies the success of this book. If you love Phuket you will never tire of reading it.

4 people found this helpful

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Alasdair Forbes

History at its most entertaining

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2015

First, a declaration of interest: I edited an early version of Colin Mackay’s A History of Phuket and the Surrounding Region. I thought then that it was an excellent piece of work. The final product is just plain superb.

Mackay spent five or six years researching the book, unearthing memoirs, official documents, love letters and even an epic poem, in Thai, English, Dutch, Russian, German, Portuguese, French, Danish, Malay and more languages. He has had to travel across half the globe to find them.

He is particularly proud of the bibliography – more than 400 sources are listed – which he believes is the “really valuable thing about this book”.

He still sees it primarily as a scholarly academic work – and it is that. But it is much more. It’s a rollicking, swashbuckling read, full of pirates, the roar of guns, smuggling and skullduggery and a huge cast of characters, most of whom are quite dreadful people.

If at times it reads like a novel, the structure is absolutely conventional, starting with prehistory and moving through 38 chapters to modern times. This is a history book, so there are no plot twists.

It doesn’t need them anyway. In his preface Mackay quotes Immanual Kant: “From the crooked timbers of humanity no straight thing shall come.” The figures in the history of the island, some of them carved from very crooked timber indeed, provide all the twists one could wish for.

Mackay has unearthed parts of history that were hitherto unknown, and thrown light on others that were ignored in much of official history and unknown to most people.

For example, there was the aftermath of the Battle of Thalang; the island left devastated and depopulated for years, or the Burmese invasion 25 years later, when the fort in Thalang that was so valiantly defended by the Heroines, Chan and Mook, was utterly destroyed and the island again made uninhabitable.

He quotes a Malay saga which tells how, after that victory, the Burmese slaughtered or carried off the population and the livestock, and even “... uprooted all the chili plants … heaped them together and burnt them...” And the Burmese came back again in 1818.

He explains how various colonial powers coveted the island and attempted to take it, how Phuket once had a French governor (the French built the famed fort), and how the British East Indian Company plotted for years to take it before finally settling on Penang.

The last colonial claim on Phuket was just 68 years ago, when Britain demanded the entire west coast of peninsular Thailand – including the island – as part of reparations for Bangkok siding with Japan in World War II. (The Americans told London not to be silly).

Phuket’s strategic desirability – as a base on the east coast of the Bay of Bengal; as a source of tin (found lying around on the ground), ambergris (found lying around on the beaches), tigers, elephants and many other animals that could be turned into valuable products; and as a convenient base for crossing the Isthmus of Kra and from there trading with China – resulted in it being fought over again and again. Usually those who suffered most were the islanders.

The history itself is colourful and violent enough to make good reading, but what raises this book a very significant notch is the way it’s told.

Mackay, as anyone who knows him will attest, is a delightful and robust raconteur. A History of Phuket is his finest yarn so far. It’s not just the stories he tells – it’s the way he tells ’em.

For example, there’s a chapter on the introduction of rubber. Rubber trees were native to the Amazon rainforest and anyone found smuggling rubber seeds out of Brazil faced the death penalty.

A British character called Henry Wickham, however, managed to smuggle some seeds out. Mackay writes, “The romantic story goes that he hid them in the heels of his shoes, but given that a rubber seed is roughly the size of a large grape, and that he brought our some 70,000 seeds, he must have worn a suspiciously colossal pair of shoes as he walked past the Brazilian port guards.”

There are many tales that are just plain funny in their own right, such as the attempted annexation of Phuket by a French admiral in the late 17th Century.

His small fleet reached Phuket by trial and error (they had to ask the way of local people on other islands) to find no one home – the Phuketians had done their usual trick of running away or hiding whenever they spotted a threatening sail.

The French sat at anchor for months. Finally a resupply ship was sent, but after sailing around in circles, failed to find the fleet, and went back home again to Pondicherry in India.

The invasion fleet, after six months of sitting “... on their hot dank ships through the rainy season with no one to attack” gave up and went back to India.

More modern history is no less fascinating. Phuket was the scene of naval action in World War II. The last successful kamikaze attack took place off that most popular sunset spot, Cape Phrom Thep, resulting in the sinking of HMS Vestal, now a popular dive site.

The book is broad in its sweep, taking in events in Keddah, Penang, Ayutthaya, Bangkok and across the world, all of which informed or influenced events on Phuket. This broad approach makes the history of this island so much more easy to grasp.

This is a fine book, and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand more about this "tourist paradise".

2 people found this helpful

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Will Barclay

For anyone interested in the Andaman area.

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2017

This scholarly book has answered questions that have bothered me for over forty years. I thoroughly reccomend it to anyone with an interest in the history of the region.

4 people found this helpful

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Eric Rosenkranz

Excellent and Intriguing

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2014

Histories of local regions published by small publishing houses tend to be deadly dull. NOT THIS ONE! A History of Phuket is well written, lively and entertaining. I couldn't wait to get home every night to read some more, and breezed through the book in no time. It is much much more than a history of Phuket, but really more a history of Thailand and actually a good part of South-east Asia.

Starting from early geology and going all the way up to modern times, A History of Phuket is well researched, but never boring. There are plenty of lively anecdotes and the photos are amazing.

Highly recommended to all students of Thailand, and to all history buffs who want to enjoy a good read.

4 people found this helpful

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