Thailand - Early Period (250–1250)
The Thai traditionally date the founding of their nation to the 13th century, though kingdoms of Thai peoples existed in the north and in the south before then. Before the establishment of the first capital of the Sukhothai Kingdom, the land was divided into many territories. These territories were influenced by India through the trade route that began in the 6th Buddhist century. At that time, India expanded its trade routes to this region by way of the China passage in the South. Many aspects of Indian civilization spread to this area, such as religion, politics, government, art, and culture. In particular, Buddhism and Brahminism became deeply rooted and had the most influential effects on civilization in these territories.
During these times many off-shoots of the Thai tribes migrated by slow degrees into the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. One of the western off-shoots became the Shans of Burma. On the other side of the Peninsula many of the Thai tribes come into Tongking, including the Laos of the Lao State who settled down in the Mekhong basin. Further west of the Lao State in a northernly direction were the northern Thai of Chiang Sen which was on the north border of Thailand. There is no doubt that the words Shan-san, the name of Nan-Chao Kingdom and Chiang Sen may be identified as one and the same work. All these Thai tribes established themselves in the Peninsula in many small independent states of principalities which engaged in strife and warfare not only among themselves but also with the neighbouring tribes (1117-1547 AD). The Northern Thai of Chiang Sen had gone further south and founded a city of Chieng-mai, which means "new city", and succeeded in taking away the northern remnants of the decaying Mon empire.
The frontier of the Northern Thai now touched the border of the Khmer Empire in the Northern parts or Central Thailand which was called Siam or Palized into Samadesa. There is no doubt that the Thai had been before that time already in the land of the Mon and The Khmer Empire but they were only a minority and formed themselves into semi-independent states under the suzerainty of these empires. Traditionally these Thai who settled in Central Thailand or Siam were called Thai Noi or Lesser Thai in contrast to Thai Yai or Major Thai who were the Shans of Burma. Traditionally the Thai Noi or Lesser Thai came from the north of Thailand. It was therefore presumed that they were the Northern Thai of Chiang-mai with the Laos or the Thai of Mekhong basin partly mixed; but to me the so-called Thai Noi or Lesser Thai had in their melting pot in no less degree the Thai Yai or Major Thai i.e. the Shan too.
On the narrow isthmus to the southwest of Funan, Malay city-states controlled the portage routes that were traversed by traders and travelers journeying between India and Indochina. By the tenth century AD the strongest of them, Tambralinga (present-day Nakhon Si Thammarat), had gained control of all routes across the isthmus. Along with other city-states on the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, it had become part of the Srivijaya Empire, a maritime confederation that between the seventh and thirteenth centuries dominated trade on the South China Sea and exacted tolls from all traffic through the Strait of Malacca. Tambralinga adopted Buddhism, but farther south many of the Malay city-states converted to Islam, and by the fifteenth century an enduring religious boundary had been established on the isthmus between Buddhist mainland Southeast Asia and Muslim Malaya.
Although the Thai conquered the states of the isthmus in the thirteenth century and continued to control them in the modern period, the Malay of the peninsula were never culturally absorbed into the mainstream of Thai society. The differences in religion, language, and ethnic origin caused strains in social and political relations between the central government and the southern provinces into the late twentieth century.
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