Page 363 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

History CONTEXTS 361
including Arakan and the southern Mon territories, rebelled and declared
independence. Almost overnight, the great empire of Bagan had ceased to exist.
A period of confusion ensued. The Mongols moved still further south into Tagaung,
north of Mandalay (although it appears they possibly never reached Bagan itself), but
showed no signs of wishing to permanently occupy the lands of the empire whose
demise they had just precipitated. A new king, Kyawswa (ruled 1289–97), appeared
in Bagan, although real power was held by three local brothers and former military
commanders – Athinhkaya, Yazathingyan and Thihathu. Kyawswa submitted to
Mongol authority and was recognized as governor of Bagan in 1297, only to be
promptly overthrown by the three brothers, who proceeded to found the short-lived
Myinsaing Kingdom. The Mongols despatched yet another force to reinstate Kyawswa,
but this was beaten back, and Mongol forces finally left Myanmar for the final time in
1303, never to return.
Bagan, meanwhile, had been reduced from a once flourishing city of 200,000 people
to an unimportant town. Further descendants of Anawrahta continued to rule as local
governors owing allegiance to subsequent kingdoms until 1369, but the town itself
would never regain its former political pre-eminence.

After Bagan: the successor kingdoms
The collapse of Bagan left a power vacuum in Myanmar, during which a series of
smaller successor kingdoms – Ava, the Shan States, the Mon territories and Arakan
– jostled for pre-eminence over a period of almost three centuries before the rise of the
next great Burmese dynasty, the kingdom of Taungoo.

Ava
The remains of Bagan itself mutated, via the Myinsaing Kingdom and other local
fiefdoms (including the Pinya and Sagaing statelets, which had emerged following the
collapse of Bagan), into the Kingdom of Ava, the dominant power in Upper Burma for
almost two centuries. Based in the city of Ava (at Inwa, near Mandalay; see p.303), the
dynasty was founded by King Thadominbya, an ethnic Shan, in 1364. Despite their
non-Bamar origins, Thadominbya and his successors regarded themselves as
descendants and rightful heirs to the kings of Bagan and fought a series of wars in
an attempt to reconquer former Bagan territories, although with only partial success.
Long battles against the Mon, in particular, exhausted and impoverished the kingdom.
The Forty Years’ War (1385–1424) against the southern kingdom of Hanthawaddy
(see p.362) took a particular toll, as did attacks on Ava by the Shan States, which
succeeded in conquering Ava itself in 1527. The enfeebled kingdom never recovered,
and in 1555 was toppled once again by the armies of the emerging Taungoo dynasty.
The Shan States
Yet another people from Yunnan in southern China, the Shan had been moving down
into northern Myanmar from at least the tenth century, establishing a series of minor
kingdoms, at first under the authority of Bagan, and then, following the Mongol invasion
of 1287, independently. Shan rulers gained increasing power during the two centuries
after the fall of Bagan, establishing the Kingdom of Ava (see above) as well as a series of

1364 1369 1385–1424
Foundation of the The Hanthawaddy Kingdom Repeated clashes between the Ava and
Kingdom of Ava establishes its new capital at Bago Hanthawaddy kingdoms during the Forty Years’
War

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