In the Rattanakosin era, during the 1893 Paknam crisis, French troops landed and occupied the western part of Chantaburi Province. In 1904, Siam was forced to surrender Trat to French Indochina in order to regain Chantaburi. Three years later, however, finding that Trat with its almost entirely Thai population was hard to rule, the French returned Trat to Thailand on 23 March 1907, in exchange for larger areas along the Mekong river, which included Battambang, Siam Nakhon, and Sisophon, which all have a Khmer majority population.