Khmer Empire

The Khmer Empire, centred on the great capital of Angkor, was the dominant power of mainland Southeast Asia for over six centuries and produced one of the most extraordinary architectural legacies in the world.

It is conventionally dated from 802 CE, when Jayavarman II unified the preceding Chenla polities, declared independence from foreign overlordship, and instituted the cult of the devaraja, or god-king, in a grand consecration ceremony on the sacred mountain of Phnom Kulen. The empire was a centralised Hindu, and later Buddhist, monarchy whose wealth and population rested on a sophisticated system of hydraulic engineering: vast reservoirs (barays) and intricate canals captured the monsoon waters and supported intensive rice agriculture capable of sustaining one of the largest urban complexes of the pre-industrial world. Successive god-kings expressed their power and piety through monumental temple-building. Yasovarman I founded the first city at Angkor; Suryavarman II in the early twelfth century constructed Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument ever built and an enduring symbol of Cambodia. The empire reached its greatest territorial extent in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries under Jayavarman VII, a Mahayana Buddhist ruler who built the walled city of Angkor Thom with its enigmatic Bayon temple, along with hospitals and roads across his realm. From the fourteenth century the empire declined, weakened by the immense costs of temple construction, strain on the aging hydraulic system, environmental and climatic stress, the shift to Theravada Buddhism, and mounting pressure from the rising Tai kingdoms to the west. Following repeated Siamese (Ayutthaya) incursions, Angkor was captured and largely abandoned around 1431, and the Khmer court relocated southward toward the region of Phnom Penh, ending the Angkorian era.

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