Hanthawaddy Kingdom

The Hanthawaddy Kingdom, in Mon Ramaññadesa, also called Hongsawatoi or simply Pegu, was the great Mon polity that ruled lower Burma from 1287 to 1539, with a brief restoration in 1550 to 1552, before becoming the imperial capital of the Burmese Toungoo. It was founded by Wareru in the wreck of the Pagan Kingdom as a nominal vassal of Sukhothai and the Mongol Yuan, and it became formally independent in 1330. In its early Wareru phase it worked as a loose federation of three centres, the Irrawaddy Delta, Bago and Mottama, and its founder's story, of the trader Makadu who rose at the Sukhothai court, eloped with the king's daughter and took Mottama, tells of the closeness of Mon trade and rule. Bago became the capital when Binnya U moved the court there in 1369. The middle fifteenth century was its golden age, and in the early sixteenth it fell to Tabinshwehti of Toungoo, who made Pegu his own imperial capital; Bayinnaung later made Hanthawaddy the royal seat of the First Toungoo Empire, bringing Burmese and Mon elites together in one administration.