1919th Prehistory

Prehistory of the Draft and Its Thai Translation

In 1919, the final version of the Draft “Civil and Commercial Code for the Kingdom of Siam” was submitted to the Siamese government. The procedure of its codification has then begun to proceed properly. The time of over 100 years has lapsed since the time. In such circumstances, it would be just an appropriate opportunity to reconsider how much the French advisers to the Siamese government at the time really contributed to the modernization of the Siamese law, especially in the field of civil law. This task of the reassessment of the French contribution requires also another task; namely the effort to exactly identify whole the historical steps toward establishing the Civil and Commercial Code.

For such a research project, the “Archives of the History of Thai Codification” (with 282 entries) would be absolutely essential materials. Among these publicly accessible digital archives, however, those archives regarding Civil and Commercial Code show such a wide range of variety so that it is not easy to get an overview of them. For this reason, it would be reasonable to take a strategical approach to them. In a following way, I would like to propose one of such possible strategies.

There are obviously several “Milestones” in the whole codification process of the Civil and Commercial Code. In this moment, I would like to limit our research targets to the first three books of the Code; namely General Principles, General Part of Obligations, and Specific Contracts, and regarding the first three books, I would propose to set up following six “Milestones”:

•     I. The Initial Draft in 1910 and 1912
•     II. The fourth Draft in 1914 and its Thai Translation
•     III. The final Draft of 1919 and its Thai Translation and Revision (1919 – Nov. 1923)
•     IV. The first Revision of Book III (1923 – Jan. 1925)
•     V. The Revision of Book I and II (Jan. – Nov. 1925)
•     VI. The second Revision of Band III (1926 – Jan. 1929)

Thai Translation of the Draft 1919

Diverse versions of Thai translation