A tale of two kingdoms: Ava and Pegu in the fifteenth century

Abstract

Over a half century after the great ‘classical’ kingdom of Pagan that produced the ‘golden age’ of Myanmar had declined in the first decade of the fourteenth century, the kingdoms of Ava and Pegu appeared. Thereafter, for the next century and a half, both dominated the land. While Ava was an ‘upstream’ agrarian kingdom ruling mostly Upper Myanmar, Pegu was a ‘downstream’ commercial polity with hegemony over Lower Myanmar. However, and contrary to convention that the history of fifteenth-century Myanmar was an ethnic struggle between two irreconcilable Burmese and Mon populations, their relationship should be characterised more as a dualism of different geo-political and economic factors instead. Indeed, the history of that ‘upstream–downstream’ relationship between Ava and Pegu established lasting patterns that became, thereafter, part of the fabric of Myanmar's history until today.