Central Thailand historical timeline

Central Thailand has been the seat of power in this part of Southeast Asia for most of the last seven centuries, and the region’s history is largely the history of three capitals.

Before the Thai

The Dvaravati culture, Mon-speaking and Buddhist, flourished on the plain from around the sixth century, leaving the great chedi at Nakhon Pathom and the sculpture that still defines early Thai Buddhist art. From the eleventh century the Khmer empire extended its control west, and its temples survive at Lopburi and Phimai.

Ayutthaya

Founded in 1351 on an island at the confluence of three rivers, Ayutthaya became one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world. European visitors in the seventeenth century compared it with Paris and London, and its court traded with Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Japan and Persia, keeping foreign quarters outside the walls. It survived more than thirty kings and repeated Burmese invasions.

1767

A Burmese army took and burned the city after a fourteen-month siege, destroying the archives, melting the gold from the temples and carrying off much of the population. The kingdom simply ended. What remains is deliberate ruin rather than decay, and that is what gives the site its character.

Thonburi and Bangkok

Taksin regrouped and established a capital at Thonburi within months; in 1782 Rama I moved it across the river and founded Bangkok, laying out a new royal island deliberately modelled on Ayutthaya.

The modern centuries

Siam avoided colonisation, modernised under Chulalongkorn, became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, and was occupied by Japan from 1941 — which is when the Death Railway was built through Kanchanaburi at enormous human cost.