Fall of Angkor

The fall of Angkor, also known as the sack of Angkor or siege of Angkor, was a seven-month siege of the Khmer capital Angkor by the Ayutthaya Kingdom. After the Khmer refused to recognize Ayutthaya authority, the Ayutthaya besieged Angkor and sacked the capital city. The Khmer King Ponhea Yat fled the city to Basan and later to Chaktomuk (in present-day Phnom Penh). Though the Khmer Empire was already in decline, the conquest of Angkor delivered the final blow and the empire fell. Angkor was subsequently abandoned. After the Fall of Angkor, the king moved the capital first to Basan and later to Chaktomuk, initiating the period known as the Post-Angkor period.

Fall of Angkor
Date 1431 Location Angkor, Khmer Empire Result Initial Ayutthayan victory Later Khmer victory Ayutthayan troops loot Angkor King Ponhea Yat retakes Angkor in a counter-offensive Fall of the Khmer Empire Ponhea Yat abandons Angkor and sets up court in Phnom Penh Post-Angkor period begins
Belligerents
Ayutthaya Kingdom	Khmer Empire
Commanders and leaders
Borommarachathirat II	Ponhea Yat

History

First Siamese occupation (1352–1357)

In 1351, during the reign of the Khmer King Lompong Reachea, the Siamese King Uthong established the Ayutthaya Kingdom and sent his army to attack the Khmer. The Siamese army surrounded the city for almost one year and five months. Many Khmer reinforcements were raised from various places, but they were uneven and were defeated. The King Lompong Reachea also died of illness. At that time, Khmer prince Soryavong and the royal teacher Purohit brought the royal equipment, broke through the Siamese army's defence and fled. However, the capital of Angkor fell into the hands of the Siamese in 1352.^[1][2]

After anointing the Siamese prince Basat to reign in Angkor and appointing a Siamese governor to control the Khmer provinces in the west that he had captured during his invasion of Angkor, King Uthong returned to Ayutthaya, taking many of his subjects as prisoners and transporting much of his wealth. King Uthong's three sons, Basat, Baat, and Kamban Pisey, reigned in succession in Angkor from 1352 to 1357. In 1357, Khmer prince Soryavong, who had fled to Laos five years ago, led an army to recapture Angkor. The Khmer then drove the Siamese out from the western part of the Khmer kingdom, and Soryavong ascended the throne.^[3][4]

Second Siamese occupation (1394)

The king who reigned Khmer in 1393 was Thomma Saok. At that time, Ramesuan was the King of Siam and continued the policy of annexing the territory of Cambodia. Angkor was besieged and occupied again in 1393, when King Thomma Saok also died. The Siamese king anointed his son, Ponhea Prek, as the vassal king in 1394, and transported the wealth and 70,000 Cambodian captives back to Ayutthaya.^[1]

By then, Khmer prince Ponhea Yat had fled and gone to lead an army based in Srey Santhor. The national liberation movement led by this prince was growing rapidly. Five months later, the Khmer army was able to recapture Angkor. Ponhea Prek was also killed by Ponhea Yat. After liberating the capital, Ponhea Yat ascended the throne with the title Raja Aungkar Preah Paramrajathiraj.^[3][5]

Fall of Angkor in 1431

In 1431, Angkor was sacked and looted by Siamese King Borommarachathirat II. Khmer King Ponhea Yat was forced to flee Yasodharapura as it was indefensible against attack by the Siamese. Ponhea Yat first resettled in Basan (Srey Santhor), but after it became flooded, he fled to Chaktomuk (now part of Phnom Penh).^[4]

Factors

There continues to be some debate over the fall of Angkor.^[6] The fall of Angkor has been attributed to a variety of factors, of both human and natural origin.

Human factors

Military defeat

The main reason for the fall of Angkor, especially according to Thai historians, is the Suphannaphum dynasty attack in 1431, which caused the Khmer to abandon Angkor and to retreat south-eastwards.^[7]

Some believe that Champa warriors from Southeast Asia may have sacked the city for its wealth.^{[citation needed]}

Collapse of the hydraulic city

Command of water played an important role in the rise and fall of Angkor, and scholars using satellite technology are only now beginning to fathom the true size and achievement of medieval Khmer society. Once abandoned after the reign of Suryavarman II, stagnating reservoirs attracting mosquitoes may have been the cause spreading malaria as this was also the period in which this disease was introduced in Southeast Asia.^[8]

Groslier argues the fall of Angkor was partly brought on by an imbalance in the ecosystem that was caused by the extension of irrigated rice fields and hydraulic cities into formerly forested land in Cambodia, and was therefore an ecological crisis induced by mankind.^[9]

A more Malthusian argument that with excessive population growth, Angkor was unable to feed its own population which led to social unrest and eventually societal collapse.

Crisis of faith

Some scholars have connected the decline of Angkor with the conversion of the Khmer Empire to Theravada Buddhism following the reign of Jayavarman VII, arguing that this religious transition eroded the Hindu concept of kingship that underpinned the Angkorian civilization.^[10] According to Angkor scholar George Coedès, Theravada Buddhism's denial of the ultimate reality of the individual served to sap the vitality of the royal personality cult which had provided the inspiration for the grand monuments of Angkor.^[11] The vast expanse of temples required an equally large body of workers to maintain them; at Ta Prohm, a stone carving states that 12,640 people serviced that single temple complex. Not only could the spread of Buddhism have eroded this workforce, but it could have also affected the estimated 300,000 agricultural workers required to feed all of them.^[12]

On the other hand, a new religious fervor was growing among the Siamese who came to believe that they had the moral authority as well as the self-confidence and the public support to challenge Khmer rule as the moral order of Angkor declined.^[13]

Natural factors

Southeast Asian drought of the early 1400s

Southeast Asia suffered a severe drought in the early 1400s. The East Asian summer monsoon became very fickle in the decades leading up to the fall of Angkor in the fifteenth century.^[14] Brendan Buckley suggests this drought dried out Angkor's reservoirs and canals,^[15] which in turn, led to its precipitous decline and foreign invasion.^[8]

Climate change

Climate change may have been another factor in the fall of Angkor which happened during the transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. The fall of Angkor was an "impressive illustration for failure to interact successfully with hydrological extremes".^[16]

Aftermath

Angkor fallen, but not abandoned

Contrary to the popular idea that ancient temple complexes had been abandoned after the fall of Angkor, many important sites remained in use, although now they were rededicated to Theravada Buddhism.^[17] After the fall of Angkor in the fifteenth century and the permanent removal of the capital to the south, Khmer royalty repeatedly returned to Angkor's temples, paying their respects to gods and ancestors, restoring old statues and erecting new ones, as can be seen from the Grande Inscription d'Angkor and even to this day, with "unflagging assiduity".^[18]

Moving out of Angkor into the Middle period

After the fall of Angkor, Cambodian history can be characterized as a declining state because of the limited information.^[19]

A literary downfall

Because of Cambodia's troubles following the fall of Angkor, no Cambodian literature survives that can be precisely dated to the 15th or 16th centuries. The earliest written extant literature consists of the Reamker (Cambodian Rāmayāna), and Chbab (Codes of Conduct). Many Khmer writers and books were relocated to Siam. While it had been the main language in Khmer inscriptions, Sanskrit was abandoned and replaced by Middle Khmer, showing borrowings from Thai, Lao and to a lesser extent, Vietnamese.^[20]

See also

• Fall of Longvek
• Fall of Phnom Penh