After Jayavarman, the Khmer Empire declined quickly. Indeed, in the densely packed lands of Indochina, it was always difficult for one kingdom to hold power for very long, and at the first sign of weakness others were more than willing to step in. Under the Tran dynasty (1225-1400), northern Vietnam annexed the Cham-
Workers in the rice fields of present-day Vietnam. Photograph by Cory Langley. Reproduced by permission of Cory Langley.
Pa lands as Khmer influence faded. But an even greater force was pushing in from the north: the Mongol Yuan dynasty of China.
The Mongols forced a group called the Nan-chao (nahn-ZHOW), ancestors of the Thais, into the region in 1253. The Nan-chao swept into the power vacuum created by the decline of the Khmer, and conquered the Angkor Empire in 1431. Thereafter the Nan-chao and the Vietnamese alternately controlled Khmer lands. Vietnam itself came under Chinese rule in the early 1400s, but reemerged more powerful than ever under the Le dynasty (1428-1788), which fully conquered the southern part of the land.
Farther west, the Mongols brought an end to the Burmese kingdom in 1287, and for the next five centuries anarchy reigned in that country. Between Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, the tiny, landlocked kingdom of Laos unified under the Buddhist monarch Fa Ngum (fahng-OOM; 1316-73). Educated at Angkor, Fa Ngum returned to his homeland with a Khmer army in 1353, and brought Laotian power to the greatest extent it would ever
An entrance to the temple of Angkor Thom, a medieval city carved out of the jungle during the Khmer Empire in what is now Cambodia. Reproduced by permission of the Corbis Corporation.
Reach. Within a few years, however, the Thais had absorbed much of Laos.
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