A city and a region steeped in
tradition and history, Chiang Mai has weathered seven hundred years of
fascinating history.
There has been continuous habitation in
what is now Thailand for over 10,000 years. Thailand lies between the two
great civilizations of India and China and it has been much influenced by
the both. Coastal trade came up the river to Siam, as the old capital now
known as Ayutthaya, was called. Elephants or ox carts also carried goods
across the narrow isthmus to avoid the long and pirate infested route
through the Malacca Straight.
Over the centuries great Empires rose
and fell in South East Asia and most of them were maritime states feeding
off the merchants who traded along the coast. Such was Srivijaya based, some
say, in Sumatra, the Khmer Empire of Angkor and the powerful kingdoms of
Burma. Far to the north lay China, which sometimes stretched its tentacles
down to the south.
Lanna, as the kingdom whose capital was
Chiang Mai was called, sits right in the middle of all these powers - a
land-locked country surrounded and divided by forests and great mountain
ranges straggling down from the Himalayas, but with many fertile valleys of
which the most important was Chiang Mai.
By 1300A.D. the Thai people, moving out
from the peripheral areas of China, had established themselves in the
northern parts of Thailand. The two most important Thai kingdoms were Lanna
and Sukothai, which was, a hundred years later, absorbed into Siam based at
Ayutthaya. By the middle of the fifteenth century Lanna was firmly
established, it fought successful wars against Siam over disputed territory
and it became a major centre of Buddhist studies, hosting the Seventh World
Buddhist Conference in 1477. Chiang Mai was also the key market on the trade
routes from Yunnan to the Burmese ports where goods arrived from, and were
sent to, India and beyond.
In 1557 the Burmese attacked the Thai
world, utterly destroying Siam and turning Chiang Mai into a vassal state.
For the next two hundred years Chiang Mai was an impoverished backwater cut
off from the rest of the world and neglected by its rulers - it disappeared
from the pages of history.
In 1767 Burma struck at Siam again and
reduced the great city of Ayutthaya to a pile of rubble and it never
recovered, the capital was recreated at Bangkok. Slowly the kingdom of Siam
recovered under the new Chakri Dynasty.
Chiang Mai, after being deserted for
twenty years following the Burmese onslaught, was gradually repopulated and
willingly gave its allegiance to the king of Siam. But the journey up the
river to Chiang Mai was slow and difficult so that the Prince of Chiang Mai
was virtually an independent ruler. The first American Presbyterian
missionary to reach the north from Bangkok in 1867 records that the journey
took him exactly three months. McGilvary's mission brought in the modern age
- as well as, largely unsuccessfully, spreading the gospel, he also
introduced modern medicine and education. T
Towards the end of the century British
teak companies in Burma began to seek concessions in the north of Thailand
and there were frequent conflicts with the Prince who saw nothing wrong with
leasing the same concession to two different people. Problems with the
missionaries and the teak companies together with fears of British and
French intentions along the borders finally forced the Bangkok Government to
take firm control of Chiang Mai and the rest of the north in the 1890's. All
real power was removed from the Prince and the last hereditary ruler died in
1939. In 1921 the railway blasted its way through the encircling mountains
and Chiang Mai became an integral and loyal part of Siam, or Thailand as it
came to be called in 1949.
The inhabitants of Chiang Mai are, as
one would expect in a city sited at the crossroads of mainland South East
Asia, a very mixed lot. The people living in the valleys think of themselves
as Thais with a difference - they have their own distinct language and are
in fact a mixture of Mon, Lawa, Lao and Thai Lue amongst others. To the west
live many Shan and Karen while in the mountains, over the past hundred
years, tens of thousands of hill tribe people have settled after fleeing from
troubles in Burma, Laos and China - Hmong, Akha, Musser, Yao and the long
necked Padaung. There are also many overseas Chinese, Chin Haw Muslim
traders from Yunnan and increasing numbers of Europeans and Americans who
have come to live in the beautiful and gentle valley of Chiang Mai.
The inhabitants of Chiang Mai are, as one would expect in a
city sited at the crossroads of mainland South East Asia, a very mixed lot.
The people living in the valleys think of themselves as Thais with a
difference - they have their own distinct language and are in fact a mixture
of Mon, Lawa, Lao and Thai Lue amongst others. To the west live many Shan
and Karen while in the mountains, over the past hundred years, tens of
thousands of hill tribe people have settled after fleeing from troubles in
Burma, Laos and China - Hmong, Akha, Musser, Yao and the long necked
Padaung. There are also many overseas Chinese, Chin Haw Muslim traders from
Yunnan and increasing numbers of Europeans and Americans who have come to
live in the beautiful and gentle valley of Chiang Mai.
