Ayutthaya ruled Siam for four centuries before Burma burned it
The Ayutthaya Kingdom centered on its namesake city in today’s Thailand from 1351 to 1767. Early sixteenth-century Europeans ranked it among Asia’s three great powers. Succession chaos and Burmese invasions in 1759–60 and 1765–67 ended the capital.
The name tracks Sanskrit Ayodhya via the Ramakien epic. The realm grew from a mandala of Chao Phraya valley city-states including Ayodhya, Lavo, Phrip Phri, and Suphannaphum. Locals called themselves Tai and their land Krung Tai; foreigners said Siam. Fra Mauro’s mid-1400s map labels the city Scierno; Dutch artists later wrote Iudea or Iudia.
Official styles could run to Krung Thep Dvaravati Si Ayutthaya, though many texts drop Dvaravati. The fullest version, preserved in preambles to the Three Seals Law, runs to a string of honorifics, and the pairing still turns up in an 1842 inscription.
The early state was a maritime confederation that raided and taxed the post-Srivijaya seas before turning inland and centralising. Burma's Toungoo dynasty held it as a vassal from 1569 to 1584, after which it regained independence and grew into a hub of international trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Under King Narai, who reigned from 1657 to 1688, Persian and then European influence peaked, and an embassy reached Louis XIV in 1686. A late golden age followed as the French and English withdrew and Chinese commerce rose.
Unsettled succession and the spread of capitalism eroded the elite networks and labour controls that sustained army and administration. In April 1767, after a fourteen-month siege by Konbaung Burma, the city fell and was razed, ending a 417-year kingdom. Siam rebounded fast: within fifteen years power had shifted to Thonburi and then Bangkok.
Source: Ayutthaya Kingdom
