Hanthawaddy kingdom

The Hanthawaddy kingdom, often called simply Pegu after its later capital, was the leading power of Lower Burma, in today's Myanmar, from 1287 until 1539, with a brief revival in 1550 to 1552. Founded by Wareru as a Mon-speaking state amid the collapse of the Pagan Kingdom, it grew rich on Indian Ocean trade and became a renowned centre of Theravada Buddhism before falling to the Burmese Toungoo dynasty.

Wareru, born Magadu in 1253 near Thaton, was a commoner of Mon or Shan background. According to Mon and Thai chronicles he served at the court of Sukhothai and eloped with a daughter of its king, a story some historians treat as legend. Back home he built up a fortified town at Donwun, seized the governorship of Martaban (Mottama) in 1285 and, with Sukhothai's support, declared independence from Pagan in 1287. The new state, called Ramaññadesa, was at first a nominal vassal of Sukhothai and of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which recognised Wareru in 1298. By around 1296 he controlled the three Mon-speaking provinces of Bassein, Pegu and Martaban. He was assassinated around 1307, but his line kept the throne until the mid-sixteenth century. The kingdom became formally independent in 1330.

In its early phase Hanthawaddy was less a single state than a federation of three regional centres: the Irrawaddy delta, Pegu (Bago) and Martaban. Its capitals included Martaban, Donwun and, later, Pegu. The legal code Wareru commissioned, the Wareru Dhammathat, is among the oldest surviving law treatises in Myanmar and influenced the laws of Burma and Siam for centuries.

King Razadarit, who reigned from 1384 to 1421, unified the three Mon regions under firm rule and held off the northern, Burmese-speaking kingdom of Ava in the Forty Years' War of 1385 to 1424. He also made the western kingdom of Rakhine a tributary between 1413 and 1421. The war ended in stalemate, but Ava gave up its hopes of restoring Pagan's old empire, and Hanthawaddy emerged secure.

Between the 1420s and the 1530s Hanthawaddy was the strongest and wealthiest of the kingdoms that followed Pagan. Its merchants traded across the Indian Ocean, bringing in gold, silver, silk and spices. Among its notable rulers was Shin Sawbu, Razadarit's daughter, one of the few queens regnant in mainland Southeast Asian history, who came to the throne in 1454. She chose as her heir Dhammazedi, a former monk, who reigned until 1492 and is remembered as one of the wisest kings in Burmese history. Between 1476 and 1479 he reformed the Buddhist monastic order along Sri Lankan lines, commemorated in the Kalyani Inscriptions at Bago. The kingdom's ties with Sri Lanka helped spread these reforms across the country.

From 1534 the much smaller Toungoo state, under King Tabinshwehti and his general Bayinnaung, began attacking. Hanthawaddy's last king, Takayutpi, failed to marshal his greater resources. Toungoo took Pegu and the delta in 1538 to 1539 and Martaban in 1541, and Tabinshwehti made Pegu his own imperial capital. After his assassination a Mon revival briefly restored Hanthawaddy in 1550, but it held little beyond Bago and was crushed by Bayinnaung in March 1552.

Under Bayinnaung, Pegu became the royal seat of the First Toungoo Empire, with Mon as well as Burmese elites in its service. Wareru's success had helped the Mon emerge as a coherent people in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the memory of Hanthawaddy's golden age endured. In 1740 the Mon of Lower Burma rose against a weakened Toungoo court and founded the Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom, which lasted until it fell to the Konbaung dynasty in 1757.

Our 1492, 1500 and 1530 maps draw the kingdom under the label "Pegu" in Lower Burma.