During his reign, trade between Siam and China became lucrative. The king kept his profits in red purses beside his bed, subsequently this money was known as "red purse money". Nangklao stipulated that the red purse money that he had earned through his business acumen should be set aside as the state's emergency fund for the future "so that Siam would be able to buy the land back" if it fell into a squabble with a foreign power. In the reign of his nephew Chulalongkorn, Siam indeed had to pay reparations to France for the 1893 Paknam incident during the Franco–Siamese War), and funding in part came from Nangklao's red purse money.