Siamese Attacks on Angkor before 1430
by Lawrence P. Briggs
A documented argument of the 'Fall of Angkor'.
Publication: The Far Eastern Quarterly Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 3-33
Published: November 1948
Author: Lawrence P. Briggs
Pages: 31
Language : English
pdf 2.2 MB
Studying several historical sources, in particular the Annals of Ayuthia, the author refutes the common idea that the Siamese overran the Khmer rulers and captured Angkor Thom on one or more occasions before the final sack of that capital in 1430 – 31.
Among the author’s main conclusions:
- Boromoraja II (Paramardjadhirdja) of Ayuthia besieged Angkor Thom in 1430 and took it after 7 months, in 1431. This date is established by the most ancient and reliable of all the chronicles — Luang Prasoet’s recension of the Annals of Ayuthia, as translated by Frankfurter — and by other data given herein.
- Coedès has established, by means of a recension of a Cambodian chronicle found at Phnom Penh,75 that the capital was founded there by Ponha-yat in 1434, after he had spent a year at Basan. The Chinese say that embassies from Chenla to the imperial court ceased to come regularly during the period 1426 – 35.
- The date of the accession of Boromoraja II of Siam may be fixed at 1424.
- The accession of Barommo-soccoroch or Thommo-soccarach (Dhar-masok) of Cambodia is dated in 1428 by the simple fact that practically all versions of the Cambodian chronicles or annals agree that the siege of Angkor began in the third year of his reign. If 1430 is accepted as the date of the siege of Angkor, 1428 must be accepted as the date of the acces- sion of that king.
- The belief that Rama Thibodi I of Ayuthia did not capture Angkor in 1350 – 53 or at any other time is based on the following facts: (a) Siamese annals do not mention such a conquest — they only mention a raid into Cambodia; (b) the Chinese, who had intimate relations with Cambodia after 1370 (see Table 2) give no hint of a Siamese conquest prior to 1430- 31; © nothing is said of the loot of the temples of Angkor, which would have been great; (d) the Laotian chronicles indicate that the king who was on the throne before 1330 was there after 1353.
Tags: Siam, Thailand, Angkor Thom, decline and fall
About the Author
Lawrence P. Briggs
Lawrence Palmer Briggs (17 Oct 1880, Manton, Wexford County, Michigan, USA — ?) was a US diplomat and independent researcher who dedicated his major work to the Ancient Khmer Empire.
After graduating from University of Michigan in 1908, and teaching in Seattle (Washington State) in 1909-10, Briggs, the first “Native Sons” fellow at University of California [from the Orders of the Native Sons & Native Daughters of the Golden West, founded in 1875], was sent to Spain in 1911 – 2 to work in the Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, in order to complete a thesis on the Spanish colonization of the Pacific coast.
Later, he served as Superintendent of schools and joined the State Department at the outbreak of WWI, serving as U.S. Consul in Saigon (1914−17), Rangoon (1918−20), Rivière du Loup (Quebec, Canada) (1920−22), Nuevitas (Cuba) (1924−29), and Bahia (Brazil) (1932). He seemed to have left the diplomatic service by 1945, as he signed “Retired American Consul” a residence card in Los Angeles on that year. His burial location remains unknown.
In the 1940s and 1950s, he published his research extensively, in particular in The Journal of American Oriental Society. Reviewing his major published work (The Ancient Khmer Empire, 1951) in 1953, George Coedès, who had met him in Cambodia, noted that L.P. Briggs had started working on the manuscript in 1943, collating more than 750 research items on the subject. “It is the first time that the already considerable body of research work relating to ancient Cambodia has been assembled, sifted and brought within reach to the English’speaking public”, noted Coedès.
He is credited with major breakthroughs in ancient Cambodia history, for instance the hypothesis that the mythical founding couple of Kambuja, Prince Kaundinya and Princess Soma, was inspired by a foundation myth from the Pallava kingdom of India.