Kingdom of Ayutthaya

The Kingdom of Ayutthaya was the dominant Thai (Siamese) state for over four centuries and one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan kingdoms of early modern Southeast Asia.

It was founded in 1351 when King Uthong, who took the regnal name Ramathibodi I, established a new capital on an island at the confluence of rivers in the lower Chao Phraya basin, a site whose strategic position and access to maritime trade would underpin the kingdom's prosperity. Ayutthaya gradually absorbed or overshadowed the earlier Thai kingdom of Sukhothai and grew into a major regional power, repeatedly clashing with the Khmer Empire to the east, the Lan Na kingdom to the north, and especially the Burmese kingdoms to the west. The kingdom developed a highly centralised and elaborate administrative and social system, codifying the sakdina system of ranked social hierarchy and an organised bureaucracy under the absolute, semidivine authority of the king, a model strongly influenced by Khmer and Hindu-Buddhist concepts of kingship. King Borommatrailokkanat in the fifteenth century carried out major administrative and legal reforms that shaped Thai government for centuries. Ayutthaya became a great commercial entrepot, trading with China, India, Japan, Persia, and later European powers, and its capital grew into one of the largest and most magnificent cities in the world, with a reported population approaching a million at its height and a remarkably diverse community of foreign merchants and residents. Under rulers such as Naresuan the Great, who restored Siamese independence after a period of Burmese domination, and Narai the Great, who cultivated extensive diplomatic and commercial ties with Europe, the kingdom reached its political and cultural peak. After centuries of intermittent warfare with Burma, the kingdom met a catastrophic end in 1767, when a Burmese army besieged and utterly destroyed Ayutthaya, burning the city, carrying off its population, and ending the dynasty. Siamese power was soon revived under new leadership at Thonburi and then Bangkok.

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