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The kingdom of Ayutthaya was a Thai kingdom that existed from the 1350 to 1767. King Ramathibodi I (Uthong) founded Ayutthaya
(อยุธยา) as the capital of his kingdom in
1350 and absorbed Sukhothai, 640 km to the north, in 1376. Over the next four
centuries the kingdom expanded to become the nation of Siam, whose borders were roughly
those of modern Thailand, except for the north, the Kingdom of Lannathai. Ayutthaya was friendly towards foreign traders, including the Chinese, Indians, Japanese and Persians, and later the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch,
British and French,
permitting them to set up villages outside the city walls. The court of King Narai
(1656-1688) had strong links with that of King
Louis XIV of France, whose ambassadors compared the city in
size and wealth to Paris.
Historical overview
The Siamese state based at Ayutthaya in the valley of the
Chao Phraya River grew from the earlier kingdom of Lopburi, which it absorbed, and its rise continued the steady shift southwards of the centre
of gravity of the Tai-speaking peoples. U Thong was an adventurer
allegedly descended from a rich Chinese merchant family who married royalty. In 1350, to escape the threat of an epidemic, he
moved his court south into the rich floodplain of the Chao Phraya. On an
island in the river he founded a new capital, which he called Ayutthaya, after Ayodhya in northern India, the city of the hero
Rama in the Hindu epic Ramayana. U Thong
assumed the royal name of Ramathibodi (1350-60).
Ramathibodi tried to unify his kingdom. In 1360 he declared Theravada Buddhism the official religion of Ayutthaya and brought members of a sangha, a Buddhist monastic community, from Ceylon to establish new
religious orders and spread the faith among his subjects. He also compiled a legal
code, based on the Indian Dharmashastra (a Hindu legal text) and Thai
custom, which became the basis of royal legislation. Composed in Pali -- an Indo-Aryan
language closely related to Sanskrit and the language of the Theravada Buddhist
scriptures -- it had the force of divine injunction. Supplemented by royal decrees, Ramathibodi's legal code remained generally
in force until the late nineteenth century.
By the end of the fourteenth century, Ayutthaya was regarded as the strongest power in southeast Asia, but it lacked the manpower to dominate the region. In the last year of his reign,
Ramathibodi had seized Angkor during what was to be the first of many successful Thai
assaults on the Khmer capital. The policy was aimed at securing Ayutthaya's
eastern frontier by preempting Vietnamese designs on Khmer territory. The weakened
Khmer periodically submitted to Ayutthaya's suzerainty, but efforts to maintain control over Angkor were repeatedly frustrated.
Thai troops were frequently diverted to suppress rebellions in Sukhothai or to campaign against Chiang Mai, where Ayutthaya's expansion was tenaciously resisted. Eventually Ayutthaya subdued the territory that
had belonged to Sukhothai, and the year after Ramathibodi died, his kingdom was recognized by the emperor of China's newly
established Ming Dynasty as Sukhothai's rightful successor.
The Thai kingdom was not a single, unified state but rather a patchwork of self-governing principalities and tributary
provinces owing allegiance to the king of Ayutthaya under the mandala
system. These states were ruled by members of the royal family of Ayutthaya who had their own armies and warred among
themselves. The king had to be vigilant to prevent royal princes from combining against him or allying with Ayutthaya's enemies.
Whenever the succession was in dispute, princely governors gathered their forces and moved on the capital to press their
claims.
During much of the fifteenth century Ayutthaya's energies were directed toward the Malay Peninsula, where the great trading port of Malacca contested its claims to sovereignty. Malacca and other Malay states south of Tambralinga had become Muslim early in the
century, and thereafter Islam served as a symbol of Malay solidarity against the Thais.
Although it failed to make a vassal state of Malacca, Ayutthaya continued to control the lucrative trade on the isthmus, which
attracted Chinese traders of specialty goods for the luxury markets of China.
In 1767, the Burmeses from Burma invaded Siam and totally destroyed Ayutthaya and that
ended an era of a proud nation of Siam. It was the one out of numerous invasions through out the history to Siam from the
neighboring country Burma, which was the mightiest of all in South East Asia at the
time.
Thai Kingship
Thai rulers were absolute monarchs whose office was partly religious in nature. They derived their authority from the ideal
qualities they were believed to possess. The king was the moral model, who personified the virtue of his people, and his country
lived at peace and prospered because of his meritorious actions. At Sukhothai, where Ramkhamhaeng was said to hear the petition
of any subject who rang the bell at the palace gate to summon him, the king was revered as a father by his people. But the
paternal aspects of kingship disappeared at Ayutthaya, where, under Khmer influence, the monarchy withdrew behind a wall of
taboos and rituals. The king was considered chakkraphat, the Sanskrit-Pali term for the "wheel-rolling" universal prince who
through his adherence to the law made all the world revolve around him. As the Hindu god Shiva was "lord of the universe," the
Thai king also became by analogy "lord of the land," distinguished in his appearance and bearing from his subjects. According to
the elaborate court etiquette, even a special language, Phasa Ratchasap, was used to communicate with or about royalty.
As devaraja (Sanskrit for "divine king"), the king ultimately came to be recognized as the earthly incarnation of Shiva
and became the object of a politico-religious cult officiated over by a corps of royal Brahmans who were part of the Buddhist
court retinue. In the Buddhist context, the devaraja was a bodhisattva
(an enlightened being who, out of compassion, foregoes nirvana in order to aid
others). The belief in divine kingship prevailed into the eighteenth century, although by that time its religious implications
had limited impact. The French Abbe de Choisy, who came to Ayutthaya in 1685, wrote that,
"the king has absolute power. He is truly the god of the Siamese: no-one dares to utter his name." Another 17th century writer,
the Dutchman Van Vliet, remarked that the King of Siam was "honoured and worshipped by his subjects more than a god."
One of the numerous institutional innovations of King Trailok (1448-88) was to create the position of uparaja, or heir apparent, usually held by the king's senior
son or full brother, in an attempt to regularize the succession to the throne -- a particularly difficult feat for a polygamous
dynasty. In practice, there was inherent conflict between king and uparaja and frequent disputed successions.
Social and Political Development
The king stood at the apex of a highly stratified social and political hierarchy that extended throughout the society. In
Ayutthayan society the basic unit of social organization was the village community composed of extended family households.
Generally the elected headmen provided leadership for communal projects. Title to land resided with the headman, who held it in
the name of the community, although peasant proprietors enjoyed the use of land as long as they cultivated it.
With ample reserves of land available for cultivation, the viability of the state depended on the acquisition and control of
adequate manpower for farm labor and defense. The dramatic rise of Ayutthaya had entailed constant warfare and, as none of the
parties in the region possessed a technological advantage, the outcome of battles was usually determined by the size of the
armies. After each victorious campaign, Ayutthaya carried away a number of conquered people to its own territory, where they were
assimilated and added to the labor force.
Every freeman had to be registered as a servant, or phrai, with the local lord, or
nai, for military service and corvee labor on public works and on the land of the official to
whom he was assigned. The phrai could also meet his labor obligation by paying a tax. If he found the forced labor under his nai
repugnant, he could sell himself into slavery to a more attractive nai, who then paid a fee to the government in compensation for
the loss of corvee labor. As much as one-third of the manpower supply into the nineteenth century was composed of phrai.
Wealth, status, and political influence were interrelated. The king allotted rice fields to governors, military commanders,
and court officials in payment for their services to the crown, according to the sakdi na system. The size of each official's
allotment was determined by the number of persons he could command to work it. The amount of manpower a particular nai could
command determined his status relative to others in the hierarchy and his wealth. At the apex of the hierarchy, the king, who was
the realm's largest landholder, also commanded the services of the largest number of phrai, called phrai luang (royal servants),
who paid taxes, served in the royal army, and worked on the crown lands. King Trailok established definite allotments of land and
phrai for the royal officials at each rung in the hierarchy, thus determining the country's social structure until the
introduction of salaries for government officials in the nineteenth century.
Outside this system to some extent were the Buddhist monkhood, or sangha, which
all classes of Siamese men could join, and the Chinese. Buddhist monasteries (wats)
became the centres of Siamese education and culture, while during this period the Chinese first began to settle in Siam, and soon
began to establish control over the country's economic life: another long-standing social problem. The Chinese were not obliged
to register for corvee duty, so they were free to move about the kingdom at will and engage in commerce. By the sixteenth
century, the Chinese controlled Ayutthaya's internal trade and had found important places in the civil and military service. Most
of these men took Thai wives because few women left China to accompany the men.
Ramathibodi I was responsible for the compilation of the Dharmashastra, a legal code based on Hindu sources and traditional Thai custom. The Dharmashastra remained a
tool of Thai law until late in the 19th century. A bureaucracy based on a hierarchy of ranked and titled officials was
introduced, and society was organised in a manner reminiscient of, though not as strict as, the Indian caste system.
The sixteenth century witnessed the rise of Burma, which, under an aggressive dynasty,
had overrun Chiang Mai and Laos and made war on the Thai. In 1569 Burmese forces, joined by Thai rebels mostly royal family members of Siam, captured the city
of Ayutthaya and carried off the whole royal family to Burma. Dhammaraja (1569-90), a Thai governor who had aided the Burmese,
was installed as vassal king at Ayutthaya. Thai independence was restored by his son, King Naresuan (1590- 1605), who turned on the Burmese and by 1600 had driven them from the country.
Determined to prevent another treason like his father's, Naresuan set about unifying the country's administration directly
under the royal court at Ayutthaya. He ended the practice of nominating royal princes to govern Ayutthaya's provinces, assigning
instead court officials who were expected to execute policies handed down by the king. Thereafter royal princes were confined to
the capital. Their power struggles continued, but at court under the king's watchful eye.
In order to ensure his control over the new class of governors, Naresuan decreed that all freemen subject to phrai service had
become phrai luang, bound directly to the king, who distributed the use of their services to his officials. This measure gave the
king a theoretical monopoly on all manpower, and the idea developed that since the king owned the services of all the people, he
also possessed all the land. Ministerial offices and governorships--and the sakdi na that went with them--were usually inherited
positions dominated by a few families often connected to the king by marriage. Indeed, marriage was frequently used by Thai kings
to cement alliances between themselves and powerful families, a custom prevailing through the nineteenth century. As a result of
this policy, the king's wives usually numbered in the dozens.
Even with Naresuan's reforms, the effectiveness of the royal government over the next 150 years should not be overestimated.
Royal power outside the crown lands--although in theory absolute- -was in practice limited by the looseness of the civil
administration. The influence of central government ministers was not extensive beyond the capital until the late nineteenth
century.
Economic Development
The Thai never lacked a rich food supply. Peasants planted rice for their own
consumption and to pay taxes. Whatever remained was used to support religious institutions. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth
century, however, a remarkable transformation took place in Thai rice cultivation. In the highlands, where rainfall had to be
supplemented by a system of irrigation that controlled the water level in flooded paddies, the Thai sowed the glutinous rice that
is still the staple in the geographical regions of the North and Northeast. But in the floodplain of the Chao Phraya, farmers
turned to a different variety of rice--the so-called floating rice, a slender, nonglutinous grain introduced from Bengal--that
would grow fast enough to keep pace with the rise of the water level in the lowland fields.
The new strain grew easily and abundantly, producing a surplus that could be sold cheaply abroad. Ayutthaya, situated at the
southern extremity of the floodplain, thus became the hub of economic activity. Under royal patronage, corvee labor dug canals on
which rice was brought from the fields to the king's ships for export to China. In the process, the Chao Phraya Delta--mud flats
between the sea and firm land hitherto considered unsuitable for habitation--was reclaimed and placed under cultivation.
Contacts with the West
In 1511 Ayutthaya received a diplomatic mission from the Portuguese, who earlier that
year had conquered Malacca. These were probably the first Europeans to visit the country. Five years after that initial contact,
Ayutthaya and Portugal concluded a treaty granting the Portuguese permission to trade in the kingdom. A similar treaty in
1592 gave the Dutch a privileged position in the rice trade.
Foreigners were cordially welcomed at the court of Narai (1657-88), a ruler with a
cosmopolitan outlook who was nonetheless wary of outside influence. Important commercial ties were forged with Japan. Dutch and
English trading companies were allowed to establish factories, and Thai diplomatic missions were sent to Paris and The Hague. By
maintaining all these ties, the Thai court skillfully played off the Dutch against the English and the French against the Dutch
in order to avoid the excessive influence of a single power.
In 1664, however, the Dutch used force to exact a treaty granting them extraterritorial rights as well as freer access to
trade. At the urging of his foreign minister, the Greek adventurer Constantine Phaulkon, Narai turned to France for assistance. French engineers constructed
fortifications for the Thai and built a new palace at Lopburi for Narai. In addition,
French missionaries engaged in education and medicine and brought the first printing press into the country. Louis XIV's personal
interest was aroused by reports from missionaries suggesting that Narai might be converted to Christianity.
The French presence encouraged by Phaulkon, however, stirred the resentment and suspicions of the Thai nobles and Buddhist
clergy. When word spread that Narai was dying, a general, Phra Phetracha, killed the designated heir, a Christian, and had Phaulkon put to death along with a
number of missionaries. The arrival of English warships provoked a massacre of more Europeans. Phetracha (reigned 1688-93) seized
the throne, expelled the remaining foreigners, and ushered in a 150-year period during which the Thai consciously isolated
themselves from contacts with the West.
During the early 20th Century, Thailand, after learning lessons from Burma - a
militarily stronger neighbor failed to protect itself from western powerhouse Britain
in 1885, mostly used flexible and significantly compromising approach towards its counterparts including numerous western nations
and Japan.
The Final Phase
After a bloody period of dynastic struggle, Ayutthaya entered into what has been called its golden age, a relatively peaceful
episode in the second quarter of the eighteenth century when art, literature, and learning flourished. Ayutthaya continued to
compete with Vietnam for control of Cambodia, but a greater threat came from Burma, where the new Alaunghphaya dynasty had subdued the Shan
states.
In 1765 Thai territory was invaded by three Burmese armies that converged on Ayutthaya.
After a lengthy siege, the city capitulated and was burned in 1767. Ayutthaya's art
treasures, the libraries containing its literature, and the archives housing its historic records were almost totally destroyed,
and the city was left in ruins.
The country was reduced to chaos. Provinces were proclaimed independent states under military leaders, rogue monks, and cadet
members of the royal family. The Thai were saved from Burmese subjugation, however, by an opportune Chinese invasion of Burma and
by the leadership of a Thai military commander, Phraya Taksin.
All that remains of the old city are some impressive ruins of the royal palace. King Taksin established a capital at Thonburi, across the Chao Phraya from the present capital, Bangkok. The ruins of the historic city of Ayutthaya and "associated historic towns" in the Ayutthaya historical park have been listed by the
UNESCO as World
Heritage Sites. The city of Ayutthaya was refounded near the old city, and is now capital of the Ayutthaya province.
List of rulers of the Ayutthaya Dynasty
- Ramathibodi I (formerly Prince Uthong) 1350-1369
- Ramesuan 1369-1370 (abdicated)
- King Pangua (Boromma Ratchathirat I) 1370-1388
- Prince Thong Lun 1388
- King Ramesuan 1388-1395 (second rule)
- Rama Ratchathirat 1395-1409
- King Nakarinthara Thirat (Inthararatcha I) 1409-1424
- King Samphraya (Boromma Ratchathirat II) 1424-1448
- Boromtrailokanat 1448-1488
- Boromma Ratchathirat III (Inthararatcha I) 1488-1491
- Ramathibodi II (1491-1529)
- Boromma Ratchathirat IV 1529-1533
- Prince Ratsadatiratkumar 1533; child king
- King Chaiya Ratchathirat 1534-1546
- Prince Kaeofa (Or Yotfa) (joint regent 1546-1548); child king & Queen Si Sudachan
- King Worawong 1548
- King Chakrapat (ruled 1548-1568) & Queen
Suriyothai (d.1548)
- Mahintharathirat 1568-1569
- Prince Maha Tammaratchathirat (Sanpet I) 1569-1590
- Naresuan the Great (Sanpet II) 1590-1605
- Ekkatotsarot (Sanpet III)1605-1610
- Prince Si Saowapak (Sanpet IV) 1610-1611
- King Songtham (Boromma Ratcha I)
1611-1628
- Prince Chetthathirat (Boromma Ratcha II) 1628-1629
- King Atitthayawong 1629; child but titled Somdet Phra
- King Prasat Thong (Sanpet V) 1630-1655
- King Chai(Chao Fa Yai) (Sanpet VI) 1655
- King Si Suthammarat (Sanpet IV) 1655
- Narai The Great 1656-1688
- King Petratcha 1688-1703
- King Suriyentharathibodi, Luang Sorasak or Phrachao Sua ('The Tiger King') (Sanpet VIII) 1703-1709
- King Phuminthararatcha or Tai-sra (Sanpet IX) 1709-1733
- King Boromma Kot (Boromarachathirat III) 1733-1758
- Utompon (Boromaratchathirat IV) 1758
- King Suriamarin or Ekkathat (Boromaratcha III) 1758-1767
References
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