Prome Kingdom

The Prome kingdom — also known as the Pyay kingdom, the Burmese name meaning the 'Second Sri Ksetra kingdom' — was a kingdom that existed for six decades between 1482 and 1542 in present-day central Burma, the small Irrawaddy state shown on the map. Based out of the city of Prome, the minor kingdom was one of the several statelets that broke away from the dominant Ava kingdom in the late fifteenth century; for much of the earlier centuries Prome had been a vassal of the Upper Burma kingdoms of Pagan, Pinya and Ava, the southernmost region abutting the rival Hanthawaddy kingdom and a frequent battlefield of the Forty Years' War, where Ava appointed only its most senior princes as viceroys — Crown Prince Minye Kyawswa and two kings of Ava among them. Throughout the 1520s Prome was an ally of the Confederation of Shan States, and together they raided Avan territory; after Ava fell to the Confederation armies in 1527, Prome itself became a tributary of the Confederation in 1532. In the late 1530s the kingdom became ensnarled in the Toungoo–Hanthawaddy War (1534–1541): despite military assistance from the Confederation and the Mrauk U kingdom, the small kingdom fell to the Toungoo forces in 1542.