Eastern Thailand historical timeline

The east has spent most of its history as a frontier — between Thai and Khmer power, and later between Siam and French Indochina.

Khmer influence

The region lay within the orbit of the Khmer empire for centuries, and the border districts retain Khmer place names, temple ruins and a Khmer-speaking population. The line between Thai and Cambodian authority here has moved repeatedly and has never been entirely settled.

Taksin’s regrouping

When Ayutthaya fell to the Burmese in 1767, the general who became King Taksin broke out eastward with a small force and used Chanthaburi and Rayong as his base, gathering ships, men and supplies before retaking the central plain within months. The east’s role in that recovery is a significant part of local identity, and Taksin shrines are common.

Gems

Chanthaburi’s sapphire and ruby deposits made it a trading centre from the nineteenth century. The local mines are largely worked out, but the expertise remained, and the town is still one of the world’s major cutting and trading hubs for coloured stones, now mostly imported from Africa and Myanmar.

The French occupation

France occupied Chanthaburi from 1893 to 1905 during the confrontation over Laos and Cambodia, and the Catholic cathedral, enlarged by the Vietnamese community in that period, dates from it.

The Eastern Seaboard

From the 1980s a deliberate state programme built deep-water ports, petrochemical complexes and industrial estates along the coast, transforming a farming and fishing region into the country’s manufacturing centre. Tourism on the islands developed alongside it, with Ko Chang designated a national park in 1982.