ARI Working Paper Series
WPS 17 The Northern Tai Polity of Lan Na (Babai-Dadian) Between the Late 13th to Mid-16th Centuries: Internal Dynamics and Relations with Her Neighbours
| Author | : | Volker GRABOWSKY |
| Publication Date | : | Jan / 2004 |
| Publisher | : | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore |
| Keywords | : | Northern Thai (Lan Na) history, tributary relations between Ming China and Tai polities, state structure and population in pre-colonial Southeast Asia |
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By the mid-15th century the northern Tai (Yuan) polity of Lan Na (Chinese: Babai-dadian) had emerged as one of the most powerful Tai states in mainland Southeast Asia. Lan Na had not only developed into a regional centre of Theravada Buddhism, which culturally had a strong influence on the neighbouring Tai polities, such as Sipsòng Panna and Lan Sang, but also succeeded in strengthening her governmental institutions. At that time Sipsòng Panna (Chinese: Cheli) and most of the Shan principalities on the east bank of the Salween forged tributary relations with Chiang Mai. However, the image of Lan Na as a unitary kingdom is misleading. Chinese sources testify to a regional rivalry between Chiang Mai in the south and Chiang Rai/Chiang Saen in the north, which dominated Lan Na throughout the 14th century and which was a factor leading to the kingdom’s eventual downfall in the first half of the 16th century.
Most historians of Lan Na — both Thai and Western — have so far neglected the Chinese influence on the internal dynamics of Tai polities. Despite northern Thai chronicles are virtually silent on Ming involvement in Lan Na politics after 1404/5, Chinese sources such as the Mingshi and its predecessor Mingshi gao document the almost uninterrupted tributary relations between Chiang Mai and the Ming court. The importance of Lan Na in the overland trade between Southeast Asia and China cannot be separated from the political relations with Ming China. Moreover, it can be argued that the organisation of manpower in Lan Na based on the huasip system and the kingdom’s administrative system based on the territorial unit of panna, was influenced by earlier Mongol-Chinese patterns.
This paper attempts to re-evaluate northern Tai statecraft in the context of her relations with Ming China by making intensive use of indigenous Tai sources (chronicles, inscriptions) and analysing them against the background of contemporary Chinese sources, which have been translated into English for me by Foon Ming Liew from Hamburg.