A History of Ayutthaya

Siam in the Early Modern World

Bibliographic Data

ID19928955
AuthorsChris Baker (0000-0001-7572-1871), Pasuk Phongpaichit (Chulalongkorn University)
Year2017
Publication date2017-05-11
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueHistory of Ayutthaya (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/9781108120197
OpenAlexW3170743549
Open LibraryOL34557941M
ISBN9781108120197
LanguageEN
Citations received28

Early European visitors placed Ayutthaya alongside China and India as the great powers of Asia. Yet in 1767 the city was destroyed and its history has been neglected. This book is the first study of Ayutthaya from its emergence in the thirteenth century until its fall. It offers a wide-ranging view of social, political, and cultural history with focus on commerce, kingship, Buddhism, and war. By drawing on a wide range of sources including chronicles, accounts by Europeans, Chinese, Persians, and Japanese, law, literature, art, landscape, and language, the book presents early Siam as a 'commercial' society, not the peasant society usually assumed. Baker and Phongpaichit attribute the fall of the city not to internal conflict or dynastic decline but failure to manage the social and political consequences of prosperity. This book is essential reading for all those interested in the history of Southeast Asia and the early modern world

Ancient history · Archaeology · Buddhism · China · Economic history · Economy · Geography · Monarchy · Peasant · Political history · Political science · Politics · Prosperity · Reading (process) · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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