First Toungoo Empire

The First Toungoo Empire was Burma's great sixteenth century empire from 1510 to 1599, the largest mainland Southeast Asia had seen. Tabinshwehti, a petty chief's son ruling the backwater of Toungoo, spent the 1530s devouring the Mon south: he took Pegu in 1539, moved his capital there, and with Portuguese gunners in his ranks pushed to Martaban and Tavoy. His brother-in-law Bayinnaung, the loyal general who never rebelled, inherited in 1550 and spent thirty years conquering everything in reach: the Shan hills, Lan Na, Manipur, and in 1569 Ayutthaya itself, carried off with its king to Pegu. At its height the empire ran from Manipur to Cambodia and taxed the trade of three coasts, administered by Bayinnaung's famous bell of justice hung at the palace gate. But it was an empire of one man's energy: under his son Nanda the vassals rose everywhere, the Siamese broke free under Naresuan, and in 1599 rebels with Arakanese allies starved Pegu and burned it, carrying off its guns, its elephants and its white elephant's legend. A second Toungoo line would rise at Ava, but the first empire's half century remains Burma's imperial memory.