Restored Toungoo Dynasty

The Restored Toungoo Dynasty was the second life of Burma's Toungoo house, ruling from Ava from 1599 to 1752, what Burmese historiography calls the Second Burmese Empire. After rebels with Arakanese allies starved Pegu into surrender in 1599, Nyaungyan Min, a son of Bayinnaung posted to the northern outpost of Nyaungyan, refused to accept the collapse: from Ava he spent six years reducing rival claimants across Upper Burma. His son Anaukpetlun finished the work, retaking Prome, Toungoo and the delta ports, so that by 1622 a smaller, more governable kingdom again joined Lower Burma, Upper Burma, the Shan hills and Lan Na under one crown. The restored kings gave up the old overreach. They replaced hereditary chieftains throughout the Irrawaddy valley with appointed governors, curbed the Shan sawbwas, and renewed law and taxation in the Bayinnaung tradition; trade and secular administration then paid for more than eighty years of prosperity from the new capital at Ava. But the settlement depended on strong kings, and after 1700 the court sank into palace rule. Meitei horsemen raided down the Chindwin from the 1720s, Chiang Mai broke away, and in 1740 the Mon of Lower Burma rose and founded the Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom. Hanthawaddy armies marched upriver and stormed Ava in 1752, closing the two-hundred-sixty-sixth year of the Toungoo dynasty.