We often think of India and China as Asia’s greatest historical centres—but European visitors in the 17th century ranked Siam, present-day Thailand, on par with them. Its armies were comparable to those of Vijayanagara or the Deccan Sultanates; its kings were fabulously wealthy, rivalling even the Mughals. It was extraordinarily urbanised for the time, and women were major players in the economy of its greatest city: Ayutthaya.
Named after the capital of the mythical god-king Ram, Asia’s history pivoted around Ayutthaya. Its meteoric rise and fall challenge the way we imagine diversity, religion, and commerce in a state—and the question of “Indian influence” in Southeast Asia.
Cosmopolitanism and power
As early as the 1st and 2nd centuries CE—around the Sangam period in South India—Thailand’s Chao Phraya river basin was well-connected to the world. In their chapter ‘Contacts between the Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula and the Mediterranean World’, archaeologists Brigitte Borell, Bérénice Bellina, and Boonyarit Chaisuwan discussed a number of Roman artifacts, including cameos and pendants, discovered in their excavations. These were most likely brought by merchants from India’s east coast. A golden seal dating to the 2nd–4th centuries was inscribed with the name of one of these sailors: Brihaspati-Sharma, possibly a Brahmin. In A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World, historians Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit discuss Chinese chronicles that mention both Brahmins and Buddhists migrating to Thailand in search of good prospects. The Buddha, they point out, was considered an ancestor-spirit in Thailand, just as Shiva was in neighbouring Cambodia. And, as in early Andhra, Buddhist stupas were sometimes built over older grave sites.
From the 7th century onwards, city-states in the Chao Phraya basin, especially Dvaravati, had become prosperous from trade, sending out embassies to China, and adopting the political vocabulary of the Sanskrit cosmopolis. Not all of these ideas came from India. Neighbouring Cambodia had a booming population, and its political culture was growing more complex, especially around the great city of Angkor. Angkorian ideas of city planning, with a heavy reliance on symmetry, geometry, and irrigation, were adopted in northern Thailand. Around this time, the southward expansion of Chinese empires started the centuries-long migration of Tai-speaking peoples in an enormous arc stretching from Assam to Laos. In the 13th century, Tai speakers founded both the Ahom kingdom (in the Brahmaputra river valley) and the Sukhodaya or Sukhothai kingdom in the upper Yom river valley of present-day Thailand. Sukhothai, note Baker and Phonpaichit, was a rich cultural crossroads: it was home to Tai and Mon-Khmer speakers, and absorbed influences from kingdoms in present-day Burma and Cambodia.
Around the same time, a warlike little kingdom emerged in the Chao Phraya basin, near the coast of the Gulf of Siam. Called “Xian” by Chinese sources, this kingdom—known as Ayutthaya from 1351—constantly conducted overseas raids against other Southeast Asian ports, which were in the midst of a power struggle after Chola raids in the region. (We’ve seen the ambitions of one of these ports—Tambralinga—in an earlier edition of Thinking Medieval). By the 15th century, Ayutthaya was a cosmopolitan place indeed: it had Tai, Mon, Khmer, Malay, Chinese and even Indian denizens. Baker and Phonpaichit point out that it had many legendary founders: a Tai peasant, a Chinese merchant, a Khmer noble, even a Chola prince. What set Ayutthaya apart was that unlike other port-cities, it could draw on the resources of the enormous Chao Phraya basin. This allowed it to gradually absorb dynamic northern urban centres, like Sukhothai. The stage was set for centuries of Ayutthayan dominance.
Ayutthaya’s heyday and decline
The kingdom of Ayutthaya raised enormous armies in its pursuit of dominance in mainland Southeast Asia. In The Palace Law of Ayutthaya and the Thammasat: Law and Kingship in Siam, Baker and Phonpaichit write that Ayutthaya used law as a major tool of integration in a diverse society. To make their authority visible to all their subject communities, its kings issued judgements on everything from magic to marriage, reinforcing their status as semi-divine adjudicators of divine order. They claimed to maintain peace through war so that their subjects could achieve nirvana or liberation, and claimed that they were divinely appointed by Hindu gods because they were meritorious Buddhists. This syncretic model of Hindu-Buddhist kingship is fairly unique—India had nothing like it.
For all their lofty claims, Ayutthaya’s kings were brutal in their pursuit of power. According to Ayutthaya’s own chronicles, kings like the 16th century Naresuan massacred thousands of civilians; the Portuguese claimed that he fried twenty of their men in coconut oil; Buddhist monks condemned him. Extreme militarism depopulated the countryside and denuded all major cities except for Ayutthaya itself. As more peaceful conditions took root in the 17th century, Ayutthaya turned this to its advantage. Trade between Europe and Asia skyrocketed, and Ayutthaya (uniquely among Asia’s great powers) fended off all attempts at European takeover, thus offering a safe port for intra-Asian exchanges. Its kings imposed commercial monopolies and became shipowners, undertaking joint ventures with Europeans and sending multiple embassies to France. Baker and Phonpaichit (A History) call this kingship “merchant absolutism”. The resulting wealth allowed Ayutthaya to hire mercenaries from India, Japan and Europe, establishing hegemony over most of present-day central Thailand, and conscripting peasants for royal projects.
Partly due to war and partly due to royal conscriptions, men were outnumbered by women in urban Ayutthaya. As a result, women ran most households, and much of Ayutthaya’s commerce. This was recorded with surprise by many European visitors. Inequality, however, continued to increase. Aristocrats built Buddhist monasteries for merit, but monks encouraged peasants to rise up against the ruling class. Simultaneously, rice trade with China, which was outside royal monopoly, led to the expansion of peasant societies. Ayutthaya’s rulers, focused on commerce and profit, were unable or unwilling to respond to this social change. They also failed to maintain a professional army, thus becoming easy pickings for the rising power of the Toungoo Empire of Burma. In 1767, the city was mercilessly sacked—but it had already been in decline for years before.
Ethnonationalist myths
Early Thai ethnonationalists, in the 20th century, held views about their history that had much in common with those of their Indian counterparts. To them, Sukhothai was a homogenous ethnic Golden Age, followed by Ayutthaya’s “degeneration” due to outside influence and invasion. They believed Thailand’s history culminated in the “restoration” of an ethnically pure modern nation-state in Bangkok.
History, however, defies these categories. From the earliest times, Indian Ocean polities have been characterised by diversity and cosmopolitanism. The most successful polities, like Ayutthaya at its peak, harnessed this to their advantage. But war could and did impact societies, as did endless profiteering. A wealthy, absolutist ruling class wasn’t enough for Ayutthaya to prosper: it failed because it could not manage the benefits that came with profit.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of Lords of the Deccan, a new history of medieval South India, and hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti. Views are personal.
This article is a part of the ‘Thinking Medieval‘ series that takes a deep dive into India’s medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)