Nanda Bayin
Nanda Bayin, also known as Ngah Hsuu Daayakaa, was king of the Toungoo dynasty of Burma from 1581 to 1599. He presided over the collapse of the First Toungoo Empire.
The eldest son of King Bayinnaung was one of the principal commanders in his father's military campaigns that expanded and defended the empire. As king, Nanda faced the impossible task of keeping his father's "improbable domain" together. He never gained the full support of his father's chosen vassal rulers, who governed what used to be sovereign kingdoms just a few decades earlier. Within the first three years of his reign, both Upper Burma and Siam revolted. Though he could never raise more than a third of his father's troop levels, Nanda could not come to terms with a smaller empire. Between 1584 and 1593, he launched five disastrous invasions of Siam, which increasingly weakened his hold everywhere else. From 1593 onward, it was he who was on the defensive, unable to stop a Siamese invasion that seized the entire Tenasserim coast in 1594–95, or prevent the rest of the vassals from breaking away in 1597. In 1599, Nanda surrendered to the joint forces of Toungoo and Arakan, and was taken prisoner to Toungoo. A year later, he was assassinated by Natshinnaung.
Nanda was an energetic king, who probably would have made an "above average" Burmese monarch. But he made the mistake of trying to hold on to an "absurdly overextended" empire built mainly on patron-client relationships. The king's monumental failures taught his 17th-century successors not to overextend their realm and to implement a more centralized administrative system. The Restored Toungoo administrative reforms, which with Konbaung modifications, would last to the end of Burmese monarchy in 1885, had their origins in the failures of Nanda Bayin.
Early life
Ancestry
Nanda was born to Princess Thakin Gyi and General Kyawhtin Nawrahta at the Toungoo Palace on 9 November 1535. The prince hailed from Pagan and Pinya royal lines, and was a grandson of King Mingyi Nyo and nephew of King Tabinshwehti of Toungoo. He had one full elder sister, Inwa Mibaya. He was probably at least one quarter Shan.Childhood and education
Except for the first three years of his life, he grew up at the Pegu Palace in Pegu, which became the new capital of the burgeoning Toungoo dynasty in 1539. Throughout his youth, his father was away on annual military campaigns with his uncle the king. Nanda nominally became the second in line to the Toungoo throne in 1542 when his father was made heir-apparent by Tabinshwehti. Like his father and uncle, who received a military style education in their youth, he as a Toungoo prince probably received the same kind of military oriented education. Indeed, Nanda was only 13 when he, styled as Zeya Thiha, accompanied his father and his uncle in their campaign in Siam. For his bravery at the battle of Ayutthaya, the young prince was awarded the title of Minye Kyawswa by Tabinshwehti.Heir-apparent
Accession
On 11 January 1551, Nanda became heir-apparent of the kingdom after eight months of chaos following Tabinshwehti's assassination on 30 April 1550. When the news of the assassination reached Pegu, one of Bayinnaung's half-brothers Minkhaung II refused to recognize Bayinnaung as the rightful successor, and seized the throne. Nanda, his mother and his sister had to flee the city to join Bayinnaung who was away on a campaign in Dala. There, Nanda became an active member of his father's inner circle who plotted to restore the Toungoo Empire. Bayinnaung's forces first attacked his native Toungoo in September 1550 and took the city on 11 January 1551. Bayinnaung held a coronation ceremony there, and made his 15-year-old son his heir-apparent.Military service
For the next 15 years, Bayinnaung directed his energies to restoring and expanding the Toungoo Empire. Everyone in his inner circle was devoted to the main enterprise of the kingdom: warfare. In the early years, however, Nanda, still a teenager, was given limited roles, and did not see any combat action. It was only 1557 onward that Nanda took on increasingly active and prominent roles in his father's military campaigns that founded the largest empire in Southeast Asia. Nanda, along with his uncles Thado Dhamma Yaza II, Minkhaung II and Thado Minsaw, became one of the four principal commanders of the king. Over the next decades, he grew to be an able military leader in his own right, and by the end of his father's reign, was leading entire campaigns by himself.Administration
Nanda was an active member of the Pegu court dominated by ethnic Mon ministers. His father listened to Nanda's input even if he did not always heed his son's suggestions. He took on an increasingly greater role in the last two years of his father's reign when the king's health deteriorated.Early reign
Accession
Bayinnaung died on 10 October 1581 after a long illness, and Nanda succeeded without incident. He cremated his father's body in the Buddhist tradition of Cakkavatti in front of the Kanbawzathadi Palace. Nanda was crowned king on 15 October 1581. He appointed his eldest son Mingyi Swa his heir-apparent.State of the empire
Nanda had inherited what was "probably the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia" and what the Portuguese regarded as "the most powerful monarchy in Asia except that of China". Yet, it was an "absurdly overextended" empire, largely held together by Bayinnaung's personal relationships with his vassal rulers, who were loyal to Bayinnaung and not the kingdom of Toungoo. To administer the kingdom, Bayinnaung largely followed then prevailing Southeast Asian administrative model of solar polities in which the high king ruled the core while semi-independent tributaries, autonomous viceroys, and governors actually controlled day-to-day administration and manpower. In the tradition of the system, every new high king had to establish his authority with the vassals all over again. This was already very difficult when vassals were situated in the same geographic region but nearly impossible with faraway lands, given inherent difficulties in bringing serious warfare to those lands.The historian G.E. Harvey noted that Nanda was "saddled with an impossible legacy" of the holding the empire together, and his "one hope of keeping the country together was to evacuate Siam and retrench in every direction." Without the benefit of hindsight, Nanda would try to hold on to the "impossible legacy". He spent the first months of his reign reaffirming the loyalty of the vassal rulers to him. For their part, the vassal rulers, who governed what used to be sovereign states as recently as only a few decades ago, would break away at any first hint of weakness. But no one was yet ready to make the first move against Nanda, an experienced military commander in his own right, and adopted a "wait-and-see attitude". By May 1582, all the key vassal rulers, including the ruler of Siam, the most powerful vassal state, had sent tribute. Even King Min Phalaung of Arakan, half of whose kingdom was under Toungoo occupation in 1580–81, sent an embassy in early 1583 to Pegu to offer a truce between the two kingdoms, to which Nanda agreed.
Futile wars
Within the year of his accession, Nanda had to deal with a seemingly small rebellion in northernmost Shan states in present-day Yunnan. The rebellion was put down but it led to rebellions by Ava and Siam in 1584. The rebellion in Ava was put down but that in Siam could not be. Between 1584 and 1593, Nanda manically launched five invasions of Siam, all of which failed. The king never had the full support of his other vassals, and could never field more than a third of the number his father led. By the end of the invasions, his core base of Lower Burma was severely depopulated, and would be unable to stop further breakaways.Initial rebellions
Chinese Shan states (1582–83)
The first rebellion started in the Chinese Shan states of Sanda and Thaungthut, which never sent tribute to the new king. In September/October 1582, Nanda sent two armies led by Thado Dhamma Yaza II of Prome and Nawrahta Minsaw of Lan Na for a punitive expedition. The armies spent five months at Sanda before finally taking the town, and arrived back at Pegu on 9 April 1583.Ava (1584)
But all was not well. Although the two armies had been drawn mainly from Upper Burma and Shan states, Nanda did not ask Thado Minsaw, the viceroy of Ava, to join the campaign, much less lead it. Thado Minsaw was a half-uncle of Nanda, and was married to Nanda's only full sister. Despite the deep familial ties, the slight did not go unnoticed in Ava. In June/July 1583, Thado Minsaw sent secret embassies to Prome, Toungoo and Chiang Mai to raise simultaneous rebellions. His intention was not to seek Nanda's imperial throne but to rule Upper Burma independently. The three viceroys sided with Nanda and secretly forwarded the news to Nanda.At Pegu, Nanda was particularly concerned that Ava had the support of the Shan states. To counter the manpower of Upper Burma, Nanda secretly ordered troops from Prome, Toungoo, Lan Na, Lan Xang and Siam during the dry season of 1583–84. To be sure, he did not trust his remaining vassals either, especially Minkhaung II of Toungoo, his other half uncle who once revolted against none other than Bayinnaung. As a result, Nanda built a series of canals between Toungoo and Pegu. In March 1584, armies from Prome, Toungoo, Lan Na, Lan Xang and Siam marched to Ava. Mingyi Swa was left with a sizable force to guard Pegu.
At Ava, Thado Minsaw asked his loyalists from the Shan states to send help while his army tried to hold off the invading armies. On 24 April 1584, the two armies met t the outskirts of Ava—between Tada-U and Pinya. Faced with an overwhelming force, Thado Minsaw issued a challenge of single combat on war elephants to his nephew, who accepted. The nephew prevailed after a long drawn out battle, driving off his uncle off the field. Thado Minsaw with 2,000 of his men fled to northern hills but died en route.