Ratchaburi

History

The earliest evidence of settled habitation is that of the Dvaravati culture. At one time it was thought that the early town was founded on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, and that over time the coast had moved 30 km (18 miles) away to the south, due to sedimentation coming down the Mae Klong River. However, geological and palynological investigation has shown that these early Dvaravati and proto-Dvaravati towns were all inland, at the edges of swamps when founded. A third reconstruction stands between the two. A survey by Phōngsi Wanasin and Thiwa Supcanya found the ancient towns of the plain arranged in two rows above the 3.5-metre contour, the western running from Phetchaburi through Ratchaburi to Suphan Buri; David K. Wyatt, who reports it, reads the rows as the fringes of a plain then largely under water, without placing the towns on an open coast. Chinese ceramics of the Han, Five Dynasties, Tang and Song periods have been dredged from the Mae Klong in front of Wat Ko Nammathapathawalanchayaram, on the river at Ratchaburi, and O. W. Wolters allowed the mouth of the Mae Klong here as a possible seaport for the polity the Chinese called Chen Li Fu. Ratchaburi remains an important commercial centre, however. Archeological discoveries show that the area was already settled in the Bronze Age, and the town itself is known to have existed for at least two thousand years. Walailak Songsiri treats Ratchaburi as a later town grown out of the moated Dvaravati settlement at Khu Bua, in the same way that she derives Phetchaburi from the coastal site at Khao Chao Lai. Later it was an important trade centre in the Ayutthaya Kingdom. In 1768 the Burmese (who had recently destroyed Ayutthaya) were thrown out of Ratchaburi by King Taksin, and the town became part of Siam. In…