Khmer Empire

This article is about the specific polity Khmer Empire and therefore only includes events related to its territory and not to its possessions or colonies. If you are interested in the possession, this is the link to the article about the nation which includes all possessions as well as all the different incarnations of the nation.

If you are looking for the page with the statistics about this polity you can find it here:All Statistics

Was a Hindu-Buddhist empire that ruled over most of mainland southeast Asia.

Establishment

January 701: Chenla King Içanavarman I extended Khmer influence to the Chao Phraya Valley in the 7th century.

Chronology

Interactive Chronologies with maps are available in the section Changes Navigation

1. Events

January 801: The city of Indrapura on the Mekong River was temporarily controlled by the Srivijaya Empire in the early 8th century.

January 801: Hariphunchai was a state founded at an uncertain date between the 7th and 8th centuries by the Mon in the territory of today's Northern Thailand. It took its name from its capital, Hariphunchai, the ancient name of today's Lamphun.

January 801: Pan Pan was a city in the Srivijaya Empire, a powerful maritime and commercial kingdom in Southeast Asia. Tambralinga was a kingdom located in the Malay Peninsula. Srivijaya Empire was ruled by King Balaputra.

January 803: However author Michael Vickery asserts that these categories of Water and Land Chenla created by the Chinese are misleading and meaningless because the best evidence shows that until 802 AD, there was no single, great state in the land of ancient Cambodia, but a number of smaller ones. Individually, historians reject a classical decline scenario, arguing there was no Chenla to begin with, rather a geographic region had been subject to prolonged periods of contested rule, with turbulent successions and an obvious incapability to establish a lasting centre of gravity. Historiography discontinues this era of nameless upheaval only in the year 802, when Jayavarman II establishes the appropriately named Khmer Empire.

January 851: In 850, in southern Vietnam/Cambodia, the Khmer King Jayavarman II, founder of the Khmer Empire dynasty, broke away from the Srivijayan Empire's influence. This marked the beginning of the Khmer Empire's independence and rise to power in the region.

January 851: The city of Indrapura on the Mekong River was temporarily controlled by the Srivijaya Empire in the early 8th century.

January 902: The Malay prince was married to a Khmer princess who had fled an Angkorian dynastic bloodbath. The son of the couple contested for the Khmer throne and became Suryavarman I, thus bringing Lavo under Khmer domination through personal union. Suryavarman I also expanded into Isan, constructing many temples.

January 904: According to a legend in the Northern Chronicles, in 903, a king of Tambralinga invaded and took Lavo and installed a Malay prince to the Lavo throne.

January 1001: Towards the 11th century, the emerging Khmer Empire extended its influence north to conquer Vientiane, as confirmed by Khmer inscriptions found in the central Wat Simuang temple.

January 1151: Under Suryavarman II, in power from 1113 to 1150: in the east the Khmer Empire annexed several provinces of Champā, in the south the Khmer invested the Malay Peninsula.

January 1178: In 1177, the Khmer Empire, under the rule of King Jayavarman VII, annexed the Kingdom of Champa.

January 1181: The Kingdom of Chiang Hung was a state founded in 1180 by King Pagna Jueang in today's Chinese prefecture of Xishuangbanna, in southern Yunnan. It was named after the capital, today's Jinghong.

January 1182: The Kingdom of Champa reverst to an independent kingdom.

January 1191: According to inscriptions, in 1190, Jayavarman VII conquered Champa and made it a dependency of the Khmer Empire for 30 years.

January 1212: Sithu II formally founded the Palace Guards in 1174, the first extant record of a standing army, and pursued an expansionist policy. Over his 27-year reign, Pagan's influence reached further south to the Strait of Malacca.

January 1221: According to inscriptions, in 1190, Jayavarman VII conquered Champa and made it a dependency of the Khmer Empire for 30 years.

January 1239: Pho Khun Bang Klang Hao was a local mueang chief who led a group of Central Thai peoples in rebelling against the governor at Sukhodaya in 1238. This led to the establishment of Sukhothai as an independent Thai state.

January 1244: The state of Kengtung was founded in 1243 by a prince named Mang Kun.

January 1258: King Ramkhamhaeng expanded his kingdom to include bordering cities, leading to the Sukhothai Kingdom covering the entire upper valley of the Chao Phraya River by the end of his reign in 1257.

January 1299: Ban Mueang and Ram Khamhaeng the Great expanded Sukhothai beyond the borders established by their father. They conquered the Mandala kingdoms of Suvarnabhumi and Tambralinga.

January 1301: By the beginning of the fourteenth century, Sukhothai controlled most of present-day Thailand.

January 1351: King Uthong and King Ramathibodi I founded Ayutthaya in 1350. King Uthong was the first king of Ayutthaya, while King Ramathibodi I was the founder of the Ayutthaya Kingdom. They named the city after Ayodhya, a sacred city in India.

January 1354: It was in the fourteenth century that Prince Fa Ngum, a native of Xieng Dong-Xieng Thong, undertook to unify Laos. Driven out at a very young age by his father, educated by the Khmers in Angkor, he returned as a conqueror to his hometown, having annexed two other provinces in the process, constituting for the first time in the history of the region a united Laotian territory.

January 1401: The Ayutthaya Kingdom conquered large portions of the Khmer Empire.