The Origins of Pegu and Its Founding Fathers

Abstract

The origins of the First Pegu Dynasty began at Muttama (Martaban) in the second half of the thirteenth-century. It was shaped by several “push” and “pull” factors then current in the region, particularly several long-term patterns between the eleventh and sixteenth-centuries, some of which came together only during the second half of the thirteenth, creating a “conjuncture” in Fernand Braudel’s sense, with a direct and indirect impact on the making of the First Kingdom of Pegu. On the north was Pagan, whose decline allowed Lower Myanmar to assert its independence. To the west lay the maritime region of Arakan with its gaze towards both the Bay of Bengal and the interior of Upper Myanmar. Although it had not yet fully integrated the various components that came together subsequently in the sixteenth-century as the Kingdom of Mrauk-U, its underpinning maritime and commercial foundations were already there and operating, which were to affect the history of Pegu. On the other side of the Gulf of Muttama lay Ayuthaya, dominated by Thai speakers who had moved from their earlier centers in northern and central Thailand (the agrarian interior) to the increasingly blossoming commerce of the coasts, a process that was to have an impact on the rise and development of Pegu subsequently. Towards the south lay many port cities such as Htaway (Tavoy) and Myeik (Mergui), which acted as windows to Pegu’s external world and maritime Southeast Asia.