The Sukhothai era is considered to be the beginning of modern Thai identity, because for the two centuries it lasted this period saw an extraordinary flowering of power, wealth and culture. Within twenty years the kingdom covered the entire Upper Chao Phraya Valley. Under its third king, Ramkhamhaeng, the city-state adopted Theravada, the oldest form of Buddhism, as its official religion. Ramkhamhaeng also established the modern Thai script, basing it on the written language of the Khmer, which was itself derived from the very old Tamil script known as vattezhuttu, meaning “rounded writing”, which in turn was derived from the ancient Brahmi. The Buddhist and Hindu cultural influences that had originated in India and Sri Lanka and been propagated by the Khmer empire began to coalesce into a distinctively Thai form in religious art and temple architecture.
Sukhothai developed into an important trading centre, trading with China, India and the Khmer empire. As the city-state grew in wealth and influence, its reach expanded out of the Upper Chao Phraya Valley until it encompassed Lampang in the north, Martaban in Burma, Vientiane and Luang Prabang in Laos, and parts of the Malay peninsula in the south. This same period saw the rise of the Lanna kingdom in the far north of Thailand, as the Tai settlements in that region evolved. Based initially at Chiang Rai and then at Chiang Mai, Lanna was another great flowering of Thai culture. Relationships between Sukhothai and Lanna were largely peaceful. Lanna had more cause to fear Burma, a continual menacing presence, and the rise of the Mongol empire in China.
Against this background the founding of Ayutthaya, much further to the south, appears at first to have been of little consequence. There had been earlier kingdoms at this part of the lower Chao Phraya floodplain, and in the middle of the fourteenth century a man who was either a Tai nobleman or a rich Chinese merchant, and who is known to history as King Uthong, established himself on an island formed by the gathering of three rivers: the Chao Phraya, the Pasak and the Lopburi. Ayutthaya had two natural advantages: as an island it was well protected from aggressors, and it had easy access to the sea, just a hundred kilometres further down the Chao Phraya. Overseas trading had started to become significant, and the rise of Ayutthaya was therefore a natural development. It also happened fast. Ayutthaya was founded in 1351, and less than thirty years later had subsumed Sukhothai, which had begun to decline after the death of Ramkhamhaeng.
Ayutthaya became one of the richest and most beautiful cities in Asia and the most powerful kingdom on the Southeast Asian mainland. It also became one of the most cosmopolitan. The greatest volume of trade was with China, and such was the importance of the relationship that Ayutthaya entered willingly into a tributary relationship with the Chinese emperors. Chinese merchants and workers settled in Ayutthaya and many of them rose to positions of power and wealth. Muslim merchants came from India, and Japanese and Persians followed. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive, in 1511, at the time of their ventures in Malacca, and a year after they had conquered Goa. They received permission to settle in Ayutthaya in return for supplying guns and ammunition to the king. The Spanish arrived towards the end of the same century, followed by the Dutch and the British in the early seventeenth century. The French arrived in 1662, during the reign of King Narai, and their influence grew immensely when Narai and Louis xiv exchanged lavishly-funded delegations.
Despite the short distance to the sea, the meandering course of the Chao Phraya doubled the distance and meant that sailing to and from Ayutthaya took several days. During the first half of the sixteenth century canal works were undertaken at various points to improve navigation, and 1542 saw the most ambitious, a two-kilometre (1.24-mile) cut across a 14-kilometre (8.7-mile) loop that saved a complete day of sailing time. Rather than remaining a canal, however, the action of the river water widened the cutting so that it became the main course.
There had already been for many years a customs post and storage depot on the land within the loop: records from a century before the canal was cut referring to the official in charge as Nai Phra Khanon Thonburi, the earliest documented appearance of the name “Thonburi”, which can be translated loosely as “Money Town”. Now an island, the town gained in importance as a customs port, entrepot and garrison. Ships wishing to sail upriver were required to pay a tax there, and to deposit their cannon, which they would collect on the way down. A grand name was required for the now fortified port, and in 1557 it became Thonburi Sri Maha Samut, “City of Treasures Gracing the Ocean”.
The area through which the canal had been dug had, however, always been known colloquially as Bang Kok, or Bang Makok. No one seems to know which, or why. There are no Thai records, and the early European accounts give several versions of the spelling. Bang is the Thai word for a settlement near to water. Kok or makok is a variety of plum, so it is possible that orchards covered the area. There is some significance in the fact that Wat Arun, meaning “Temple of the Dawn”, was originally a small temple named Wat Makok. Another possibility is that the name was actually Bang Koh, which means “Village on an Island” and certainly, when the word koh is spoken, it is short and sharp, bearing little relation to the way it is written in English. There is even a possibility that the Malay word bengkok, which means “bend”, could have been borrowed to describe the meandering river. Quite possibly the name derives from all these sources. Whatever the origin, when the canal was cut across the land, the name Bangkok continued to be used for both banks and was entrenched by the Portuguese and all the European nations who followed them.
The origins of the word Siam evolved in a similar haphazard way. It is not of native origin. There is a Sanskrit word, syama, which describes a shade of dark brown, and a Hindi word, shyam, used for dark-skinned people. A twelfth-century a.d. inscription at Angkor Wat is the first written evidence of this word being used to refer to the Tai, and it has carried over to the Shan in Burma, who are of Tai origin. Early sources say that the people of Ayutthaya continued to call themselves Tai, and their kingdom Krung Tai, or “the City of the Tais”. The name Syam, Siem or Siam was propagated by the Portuguese, who possibly encountered it at Goa. Incidentally, the word “Tai” is not the linguistic root for the name of modern Thailand. The latter is a confection that dates from the 1930s, when the absolute monarchy had been overthrown and the new government was striving for an international identity that would also please the local population. “Thai”, it was decided, is generally held to mean “free”, while “land”, of course, is not even a Thai word. With more than forty ethnic groupings in the country, the new name was not universally popular, and there is even today a small but vociferous group of scholars who are lobbying for the name to revert to Siam.
The rise of Thonburi
With the main force of the river water coursing through the route of the canal, the original loop silted up and the waterway eventually became four canals: Bangkok Noi, Bang Ramat, Taling Chan and Bangkok Yai. From these, other small canals and streams connected and became the basis of transporting produce from the farms and orchards of the outlying districts. With the growth of residential areas came the building of temples. The garrison was strengthened in 1665 when King Narai the Great ordered the construction of Wichaiprasit Fort at the mouth of the Bangkok Yai canal to protect Ayutthaya from invasion by sea. Narai had greatly expanded relations with the European powers, which had unleashed an unprecedented foreign influence at the Ayutthaya court. Advised that a stronger French presence would provide a counterweight to the Portuguese and the Dutch, who were causing the most concern, in 1688 Narai allowed the French to increase their military presence at Bangkok, occupying the Thonburi fort and building another on the opposite bank of the river. A chain was laid between the two, which could be raised in the event of uninvited shipping attempting to travel upriver.
For the Ayutthaya courtiers, increasingly hostile to the foreign communities and to Narai’s chief minister, a Greek adventurer named Constantine Phaulkon, this was the final insult. The French were intent not only on trade and influence; they were flooding the city-state with missionaries in an attempt to convert the royal family and the people to Roman Catholicism. In what became known as the Siamese Revolution of 1688, the commander of the royal elephant corps, Phra Phetracha, staged a coup d’état and the king was arrested. Narai, who was already gravely ill, died a few weeks later. Phetracha became king. Phaulkon was beheaded. The Siamese then set to dislodge the French, who left the Thonburi fort and grouped at their new fortification on the open, swampy ground of the eastern bank. Cannon balls were hurled across the river at the French, and their fortress