Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [221]
Mengrai is also remembered by history as a skilled diplomat who formed alliances with potential rivals in nearby Sukhothai and Phayao. The cooperation between these three northern kingdoms, as well as geographic impediments, contributed to the region’s successful resistance of the Mongol expansion in the 13th century. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Lanna kingdom expanded as far south as Kamphaeng Phet and as far north as Luang Prabang in Laos. During this time, Chiang Mai became an important religious and cultural centre and the eighth world synod of Theravada Buddhism was held here in 1477.
The Lanna kingdom was soon confronted by challenges from Ayuthaya, the powerful city-state that had flourished in Thailand’s central plains and that would later consolidate the region under Siamese control and help shape the broader ‘Thai’ identity. But it was the Burmese who would overtake the city and the kingdom in 1556, an occupation that lasted 200 years.
The fall of Ayuthaya in 1767 to the Burmese marked another turning point in Chiang Mai’s history. The defeated Thai army reunited under Phraya Taksin south of Ayuthaya in present-day Bangkok and began a campaign to push out the occupying Burmese forces. Chao Kavila, a chieftain (known as jôw meu·ang) from nearby Lampang principality, helped ‘liberate’ northern Thailand from Burmese control, which led to the eventual integration of the Lanna kingdom into the now-expanding Thai kingdom based in Bangkok.
Under Kavila, Chiang Mai became an important regional trade centre. In 1800 Kavila built the monumental brick walls around Chiang Mai’s inner city and expanded the city in southerly and easterly directions, establishing a river port at the end of what is today Th Tha Phae (tha phae means ‘raft pier’). Many of the later Shan- and Burmese-style temples were built by wealthy teak merchants who emigrated from Burma during this period. Labour was needed to reconstruct the war-ravaged city and many workers from the Shan state and other outside regions were brought to Chiang Mai under the practice of corvée (involuntary service to the state).
There were many political and technological factors that ultimately lead to the demise of an independent Lanna state. The Bangkok-based government designated Chiang Mai as an administrative unit in 1892 during the expansion of colonial rule in neighbouring Burma and Laos. The completion of the northern railway to Chiang Mai in 1921 finally linked the north with central Thailand. In 1927, King Rama VII and Queen Rambaibani rode into the city at the head of an 84-elephant caravan, becoming the first central Thai monarchs to visit the north. In 1933, Chiang Mai officially became a province of Siam.
During the 20th century, Chiang Mai was an important centre for handcrafted pottery, weaving, silverwork and woodcarving. But by the mid-1960s tourism had replaced commercial trade as Chiang Mai’s number-one revenue source. Throughout the decades, the national government has helped to modernise Chiang Mai by sponsoring educational and infrastructure projects as well as working to eradicate opium production in the province’s highlands. In 2001, then prime minister and Chiang Mai native Thaksin Shinawatra sought to make Chiang Mai one of the nation’s primary centres of information technology by expanding the airport and building superhighways. Thaksin envisioned doubling the size and wealth of the city and encouraging the building of five-star hotels so as to attract international meetings and high-end tourists.
The political demise of the Thaksin administration by the military coup of 2006 and the ongoing political stand-off in Bangkok has dampened the initial enthusiasm for Chiang Mai’s grand makeover. The global economic downturn in 2008 has also added more uncertainty. But the city still plans to build an international convention and exhibition centre, slotted for completion at the end of 2009, and hoteliers feel confident that the city can position itself as an important conference destination.
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ORIENTATION