History Of Thailand - Part 2
Thailand An Amazing History of an Amazing Nation

Then a third centre in the region took over the power. In the 14th century, the Prince of U-Thong in the central southern region was the leader of another group of Thais that had moved south to the rich rice growing plains of nowadays Thailand.

He founded his capital of Ayutthaya, in the year 1350 and thus began another chapter in the history of Thailand and Siam.

The Ayutthaya period had begun. Upon establishing the city of Ayutthaya, Prince U-Thong was crowned as King Ramathibodi and started to expand the boundaries of the Ayutthaya Kingdom.

The expansion by alliances and treaties system was rejected by the Ayutthaya empire and the successive kings of Ayutthaya made huge expansions by invading and conquests over the next 400 years.

The Ayutthaya period was one of constant battle and fighting to take over regions and then protect them from retaliatory attacks.

To maintain this fervour, the kings of Ayutthaya and Siam had to be powerful and the paternalistic system that had been in vogue in the Sukhothai era was replaced with a Khmer style of monarchy.

The Ayutthaya Kings of ancient Siam were autocratic and divine. They were "deveraja" - The God Kings of Siam.

During the Auytthaya period, a Khmer style of governance was refined and the Ayutthaya Empire flourished. Ayutthaya, with a population of over 1,000,000 people, became a large international port of trade and by the 16th century, Europe started to become very interested in Siam, as Thailand was known in those days.

The Portuguese brought the technology of firearms and physical weaponry to Siam, which the Ayutthaya army seized gladly, as the Burmese invaders were continuing to be a constant problem for the Ayutthaya Kingdom.

However, in 1569 the Burmese broke through the Siamese defences and sacked the capital of Ayutthaya, but the new Burmese rulerws lasted less than 20 years and were ousted out of Siam once more.

By the 17th century Ayutthaya was again a favoured South-East Asian trading port in the region.

But the idyllic lifestyle of Ayutthaya was not destined to continue. Renewed aggression from the Burmese saw Ayutthaya besieged for than a year and then finally over-run in the year 1767. This time, the Burmese did not just sack the city - they razed and burned Ayutthaya completely to the ground. 

Anything of value was taken away and all records and art were burned. 90,000 inhabitants were taken by force to Burma as slaves, while the rest perished.