For 417 years the kingdom of Ayutthaya was the dominant power in the fertile Chao Phraya River basin. Its capital was Ayutthaya, an island-city situated at the confluence of three rivers, the Chao Phraya, the Pa Sak, and the Lop Buri, which grew into one of AsiaΓÇÖs most renowned metropolises, inviting comparison with such great European cities as Paris. The city must indeed have looked majestic, filled as it was with hundreds of monasteries and criss-crossed by canals and waterways which served as streets.
An ancient community had existed in the Ayutthaya area well before 1350, the year of its official founding by King Ramathibodi I (U Thong). The huge Buddha image at Wat Phananchoeng, just outside the island city, was cast over twenty years before King Ramathibodi I moved his residence to the city. The site offered a variety of geographical and economic advantages. The rivers and waterways offered not only easy access to the countryside but also to the Gulf of Thailand, which stimulated maritime trade. The surrounding rice fields were flooded each year during the rainy season, making the city virtually impregnable for several months annually. These fields, of course, served the even more vital function of feeding a relatively large population in the Ayutthaya area, as well as yielding a surplus large enough for export to various countries in Asia.
Ramathibodi I, AyutthayaΓÇÖs first king, was both a warrior and a lawmaker. Some old laws codified in 1805 by the first Bangkok king date from this much earlier reign. King Ramathibodi I and his immediate successors expanded AyutthayaΓÇÖs territory, especially northward towards Sukhothai and eastward towards the Khmer capital of Angkor. By the 15th century, Ayutthaya had established a firm hegemony over most of the northern and central Thai states, though it failed in attempts to conquer Lanna. It also captured Angkor on at least one occasion but was unable to hold on to it for long. The Ayutthaya kingdom thus changed during the 15th century from being one of several similar small states in central Thailand into an increasingly centralized kingdom wielding tight control over a core area of territory, as well as having looser authority over a string of tributary states.
The greater size of AyutthayaΓÇÖs territory, compared with that of Sukhothai, meant that the method of government could not remain the same as during the days of King Ramkham-haeng. The paternalistic and benevolent Buddhist kingship of Sukhothai would not have worked in Ayutthaya. The rulers of the latter therefore created a complex administrative system, beginning in the reign of King Trailok, or Boromma-trailokanat (1448-1488), which was to evolve into the modern Thai bureaucracy. It contained a hierarchy of ranked and titled officials, all of whom had varying amounts of ΓÇ£honour marksΓÇ¥ (sakdina).
Thai society during the Ayutthaya period also became strictly hierarchical. There were roughly three classes of people, with the king at the very apex of the structure. At the bottom of the social scale, and most numerous, were the commoners (freemen or phrai) and the slaves. Above the commoners were the officials or nobles (khunnang), while at the top of the scale were the princes (chao). The one classless section of Thai society was the Buddhist monkhood, or sangha, into which all classes of Thai men could be ordained. The monkhood was the one institution which could weld together all the different social classes, the Buddhist monasteries being the centre of all Thai communities both urban and agricultural.
The Ayutthaya kings were not only Buddhist kings who ruled according to the dhamma; they were also devaraja, god-kings whose sacred power was associated with the Hindu gods Indra and Vishnu. To many Western observers, they seemed to be treated as if they were gods. The French Abbe de Choisy, who came to Ayutthaya in 1685, wrote that ΓÇ£ the king has absolute power. He is the only god of the Siamese: no one dares to utter his name.ΓÇ¥ Another 17th century writer, the Dutchman Van Vliet, remarked that the king of Siam was ΓÇ£ honoured and worshipped by his subjects more than a god.ΓÇ¥
The Ayutthaya period was early Thai historyΓÇÖs great era of international trade. The port of Ayutthaya became an entrepot, an international marketplace where goods from the Far East could be bought or bartered in exchange for merchandise from the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, India, or Persia, not to mention local wares or produce from AyutthayaΓÇÖs vast hinterland. The trading world of the Indian Ocean was accessible to Ayutthaya through its possession, for much of its long history, of the seaport of Mergui in the Bay of Bengal, which was linked to the capital by an ancient and frequently used overland trade route.
Throughout its history, Ayutthaya had a thriving commerce in ΓÇ£forest produce,ΓÇ¥ principally sapanwood (from which a reddish dye was extracted), eaglewood (an aromatic wood), benzoin (a type of incense), gumlac (used as wax), and deerhides (much in demand in Japan). Elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns were also highly valued exports, though the former was a strict royal monopoly and the latter relatively rare, especially when compared with deerhides. Ayutthaya also sold provisions such as rice and dried fish to other Southeast Asian states. The range of minerals found in the kingdom was limited but tin from Phuket (ΓÇ£JunkceylonΓÇ¥) and Nakhon Si Thammarat (ΓÇ£LigorΓÇ¥) was much sought after by both Asian and European traders.
The Chinese, with their large and versatile junks, were the traders who had the most regular and sustained contact with Ayutthaya. In order to conduct a steady and profitable trade with the Ming and Manchu China, from the 14th to the 18th centuries, the Ayutthaya kings entered willingly into a tributary relationship with the Chinese emperors. Muslim merchants came from India and further west to sell their highly-prized textile both to Thai and other foreign traders. So dominant were Chinese and Muslim merchants in Ayutthaya that an old Thai law dating back to the 15th century divides the Thai kingΓÇÖs foreign trade department into two sections, one for each. Chinese, Indians, and later on Japanese and Persians all settled in Ayutthaya, the Thai kings welcoming their presence and granting them complete freedom of worship. Several of these foreigners became important court officials.
Containing merchandise from all corners of Asia, the thriving markets of Ayutthaya attracted traders from Europe. The Portuguese were the first to arrive, in 1511, at the time when Albuquerque was attempting to conquer Melaka (Malacca). They concluded their first treaty with Ayutthaya in 1516, receiving permission to settle in the city and other Thai ports in return for supplying guns and ammunition to the Thai king. PortugalΓÇÖs powerful neighbour Spain was the next European nation to arrive, toward the end of the 16th century. The early 17th century saw the arrival of two northern European East India Companies, the Dutch (V.O.C.) and the British. The Dutch East India Company played a vital role in AyutthayaΓÇÖs foreign trade from 1605 until 1765, succeeding in obtaining from Thai kings a deerhide export monopoly as well as one on all the tin sold at Nakhon Si Thammarat. The Dutch sold Thai sapanwood and deerhides for good profit in Japan during JapanΓÇÖs exclusion period, after 1635.
The French first arrived in 1662, during the reign of AyutthayaΓÇÖs most outward-looking and cosmopolitan ruler, King Narai (1656-1689). French missionaries and merchants came to the capital, and during the 1680s splendid embassies were exchanged between King Narai and King Louis XIV. The French tried to convert King Narai to Christianity and also attempted to gain a military foothold in the Thai kingdom when, in 1685, they sent troops to garrison Bangkok and Mergui. When a succession conflict broke out in 1688, an anti-French official seized power, drove out the French troops, and executed King NaraiΓÇÖs Greek favourite Constantine Phaulkon, who had been championing the French cause. After 1688, Ayutthaya had less contact with Western nations, but there was no policy of national exclusion. Indeed, there was increased trading contact with China after 1683, and there was continued trade with the Dutch, the Indians, and various neighbouring countries.
AyutthayaΓÇÖs relations with its neighbours were not always cordial. Wars were fought against Cambodia, Lanna, Lanchang (Laos), Pattani, and, above all, Burma. Burmese power waxed and waned in cycles according to their administrative efficiency in the control of manpower. Whenever Burma was in an expansionist phase, Ayutthaya suffered. In 1569, King Bayinnaung captured Ayutthaya, thus initiating over a decadeΓÇÖs subjection to the Burmese. One of the greatest Thai military leaders, Prince (later King) Naresuan, then emerged to declare AyutthayaΓÇÖs independence and to defeat the Burmese in several battles and skirmishes, culminating in the victory of Nong Sarai, when he killed the Burmese Crown Prince in combat on elephant back.
During the 18th century Burma again adopted an expansionist policy. The kings of the Alaungphaya Dynasty were intent on subduing the Ayutthaya kingdom, then in its cultural and artistic prime. In the 1760s, Burmese armies inflicted severe defeats on the Thai, who had become somewhat complacent after almost a century of comparative peace. In April 1767, after a 15-month seige, Ayutthaya finally succumbed to the Burmese, who sacked and burnt the city, thus putting an end to one of the most politically glorious and culturally influential epochs in Thai history.
King Taksin: Warfare and National Revival
(1767-1782)
After the shattering defeat and destruction of Ayutthaya, the death and capture of thousands of Thais by the victorious Burmese, and the dispersal of several potential Thai leaders, the situation seemed hopeless. It was a time of darkness for the Thai nation. Members of the old royal family of Ayutthaya had died, escaped, or been captured, and many rival claimants for the throne emerged, based in different areas of the country. But out of this catastrophe emerged yet another saviour of the Thai state: the half-Chinese general Phraya Taksin, former governor of Tak. Within a few years this determined warrior had defeated not only all his rivals but also the Burmese invaders and had set himself up as king.
Since Ayutthaya had been so completely devastated, King Taksin chose to establish his capital at Thon Buri, across the river from Bangkok. Although a small town, Thon Buri was strategically situated near the mouth of the Chao Phraya River and therefore suitable as a seaport. The Thai needed weapons, and one way of acquiring them was through trade. Moreover, foreign trade was also needed to bolster the Thai economy, which had suffered extensively during the war with Burma. Chinese and Chinese-Thai traders helped revive the economy by engaging in maritime trade with neighbouring states, with China, and with some European nations.
King TaksinΓÇÖs prowess as a general and as an inspirational leader defeated all the Burmese attempts to reconquer Siam. The rallying of the Thai nation during a time of crisis was his greatest achievement. However, he was also interested in cultural revival, in literature and the arts. He was deeply religious and studied meditation to an advanced level. The stress and strain of so much fighting took their toll on the king, and following an internal political conflict in 1782 his fellow general, Chao Phraya Chakri, was chosen king. King TaksinΓÇÖs achievements have caused posterity to bestow on him the epithet ΓÇ£the Great.ΓÇ¥
