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 was besieged for four months. Eventually the French were ejected from the country, and aside from the ever-present Portuguese, who had largely intermingled with the local population, and a small number of Dutch traders, who had supplied material help, other European nations were no longer as welcome as they once had been.
The fall of Ayutthaya
King Narai’s era is regarded as the time when Ayutthaya was at its peak. After the dynastic convulsions that followed him had subsided there was a brief period of stability in the first half of the eighteenth century, but Ayutthaya’s influence was waning. The city-state had always controlled its provinces and vassal states with a relatively loose hand, and as a consequence many had become powerful in their own right and less inclined to be subservient to the king. Although the Khmer empire had been eclipsed by Ayutthaya, and the Europeans no longer presented a threat, the Burmese had risen in power in the middle of the sixteenth century and had overrun Chiang Mai and the Lanna kingdom in the north, where they stayed for two centuries. During the second half of the sixteenth century the Burmese had laid siege to Ayutthaya and captured the city for a brief period before they were driven out.
In the middle of the eighteenth century there were more struggles over the royal succession in Ayutthaya, amounting almost to civil war and culminating in the crowning of King Ekkathat. He was to be the last monarch. Ayutthaya had formed an alliance with the Mons who were fighting the Burmese, and in 1760 the Burmese attempted to invade Ayutthaya. Ekkathat, his kingdom weakened by internal turmoil, managed to repel them, but in 1765 they returned with enormous armies converging on Ayutthaya from both the west and the north, capturing peripheral cities to remove any chance of support for the capital. The Burmese laid siege for two years and when they broke through in 1767 they utterly destroyed the city, looting and burning its palaces, temples, libraries and houses. Ekkathat fled, and was discovered by monks in woodland several days later, dead from starvation.
During the siege, about a year before Ayutthaya fell, a Siamese general named Taksin managed to break out of the city with five hundred troops and he headed for the east coast, to Rayong, far away from Burmese influence. He was too late to save Ayutthaya, but at Chantaburi and along the eastern coast he built up an army of 5,000. With a land assault impractical, Taksin assembled a fleet of ships and sailed up the Chao Phraya to Thonburi, where the Burmese had installed a puppet governor. The Thonburi forces were overpowered and the governor executed. Taksin and his men sailed on up the river and drove the invaders out of Ayutthaya and back across the border into their own country. Ayutthaya was no longer habitable, and so Taksin as the new ruler had to make a very fast choice of location for a new capital. He selected Thonburi. There was already a thriving community, a port and fortifications, and the river and canals formed a moat.
Taksin’s kingdom
Taksin is one of the most remarkable figures in Thai history. He was part Chinese, his tax-collector father having been Teochew Chinese and his mother Siamese. The boy was given the name of Sin, and showing great promise he had joined the service of King Ekkathat. Eventually he rose to become the governor of Tak, a province in the north of Thailand that borders Burma. This brought him the title of Phraya Tak, or Lord Tak, and from there he became popularly known as Phraya Tak Sin. He was crowned king at Wang Derm Palace in Thonburi on 28th December 1768, at the age of 34.
Much of the new king’s reign was devoted to warfare. Several of the provinces in the east, north and south had broken away and were declaring themselves independent. Taksin waged campaigns against the rebels, he drove the Burmese out of Lanna, and he extended his power into Laos, Cambodia, and part of the Malay peninsula. Despite an almost continual state of warfare—and Taksin was a king and a general who led from the front—he still paid a great deal of attention to the transformation of Thonburi from garrison town to capital, renovating temples and building new ones, ordering canals to be dug, promoting trade with other countries including China, Britain and the Netherlands, and encouraging education and the arts. He brought in prisoners of war from his battles and used them as labour.
Craftsmen who had survived the destruction of Ayutthaya settled in Thonburi and formed their own communities. With China supplying money and manpower, Chinese traders thrived. The Portuguese, who supplied Taksin with arms and ammunition, were given a plot of land on the riverside. Indian and Malay Muslim traders established themselves along the canal banks.
Although much was accomplished in a short time, Siam was still in chaos. The breakdown of institutions and society proved a harder battle than retaking the provinces. Internally, the country was almost ungovernable. There were other contenders for the throne, and even the priesthood was in rebellion. Perhaps the strain was too much, for Taksin began to exhibit symptoms of mental derangement. He attempted to tame the priesthood by declaring himself an incarnation of the Buddha, punishing monks who would not worship him. He imprisoned, tortured and executed court officials who he believed were plotting against him, and certainly, with no royal bloodline to connect him to the old nobility of Ayutthaya, there were many who regarded him as a usurper. Morale in Thonburi sank to the point where, with the country largely held together by a mix of force and patronage, it was felt that the kingdom was yet again in danger of disintegration.
A court rebellion in early 1782 signalled the end for Taksin. Siam’s highest ranking noble, Thong Duang, more usually known by his title, Chao Phraya Maha
