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Phuket is the largest island in modern Thailand, locating in Southern Thailand on the western coast in the Andaman Sea. Historically at the fringe of Thai sphere of influence, Phuket has a unique place in Thai history, as its natural maritime wilderness hid lucrative tin resources that attracted both locals and foreigners who competed for control over the island, also a battleground for intensive Burmese–Siamese Wars, later becoming a Hokkien Chinese labor immigration entrepôt in tin mining industry and eventually a world tourism hub.

Historiography

Locating on the southern frontier of Thai sphere of influence, far from Thai historical centers such as Ayutthaya and Bangkok, closer to the Malay archipelago, events in Phuket were rarely recorded by the mainstream official royal Siamese chronicles. Native records about Phuket are scarce and none of them described events prior to the eighteenth century. Most of early history of Phuket can only be constructed from Western records by various foreigners such as the Dutch, the British and the French, who occasionally visited or had businesses in the Phuket island in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Dearth of Phuket indigenous records may be attributed to the Burmese destruction of all settlements on Phuket in 1810, which presumably destroyed any historical documents and clues of the island.

The oldest extant native Thai historiography about the history of Phuket is dated to 1841, a small excerpt recounting a list of governors of Thalang or Phuket from around mid-eighteenth century to that time. Phraya Thalang Roek the governor of Thalang, relying on oral accounts of some elderly people of Phuket, provided a slightly more detailed account of History of Phuket, published by Prince Damrong in 1914 as Phongsawadan Mueang Thalang ("Chronicles of Thalang").

Gerolamo Emilio Gerini, an Italian man known by Siamese title Phra Sarasat Phonlakhan (พระสารสาสน์พลขันธ์), served as a military instructor at Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy from 1897 to 1905. Gerini studied Siamese history and culture, composing Historical Retrospect of Junkceylon Island in 1905, the first modern historical narration of Phuket, republished in 1986 under Siam Society.

Names of Phuket

For most of its history, Phuket was known as "Junkceylon" in Western sources. The term Junkceylon came from Portuguese attested terms Jonsalam, Jonsalan or Junsalão of the sixteenth century. These terms were derived from the Malay term "Ujong Salang", meaning the "Cape of Salang", referring to the southern tip of the island. The name "Salang" was apparently related to native calling of the island "Chalang" or Thalang", which was adopted by the Thais to call the island. The name Salang, Chalang or Thalang did not have translatable meanings in both Thai and Malay languages, in which Gerini theorized to be derived from indigenous Austroasiatic language spoken by Semang Negrito people of the Malay peninsula. Merong Mahawangsa the Chronicles of Kedah, dated to late eighteenth century to early nineteenth century, called Phuket "Pulau Salang".

The name "Phuket" came from the Malay term Bukit ("Mountain"), substantiated into Thai term "Phukej" (ภูเก็จ) from Phu ("Mountain") and Kej ("Diamond"), meaning "Diamond Mountain", which was related to Siamese title of the governors of Thalang "Phraya Phetkhiri" (พระยาเพชรคีรีฯ, "Lord of the Diamond Mountain"). Thalang and Phukej are two distinct settlements on the island. Thalang was the preferred term by pre-modern Siamese government as it was the main administrative center, locating in various shifting places in the center-northern part of the island, while Phukej began as a small settlement on the southern half of the island around late eighteenth century under jurisdiction of Thalang. With the foundation of modern Phukej town in 1827, the Phukej city grew rapidly and exponentially as a tin mining hub, attracting Hokkien Chinese tin mine laborers. After mid-nineteenth century, Phukej became the preferred term to call the island. Official spelling changed from Phukej to Phuket in early twentieth century.

References

1. ^ Abu Talib Ahmad; Liok Ee Tan (2003). New Terrains in Southeast Asian History. Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780896802285.
2. ^ Gerini, G.E. (1986). "Historical Retrospective of Junkceylon Island" (PDF). Journal of Siam Society.

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