Nakhon Ratchasima Province - History

History

The area around Khorat was already an important center in the times of the Khmer empire in the 11th century, as can be seen by the temple ruins in the Phimai historical park. Still, Nakhon Ratchasima Province is one of the provinces where there is a sizable Northern Khmer population.

A new walled-city with a surrounding moat, designated as Nakhon Ratchasima, was built in the seventeenth century by order of the King Narai, as the easternmost 'command post', guarding the Kingdom's border and supervising its Lao and Cambodian 'vassals'. It continued this duty during the Bangkok Period, although it was seized by deceit during Chao Anuwong of Vientiane's 1826 revolt against the King Rama III of Siam.

Nakhon Ratchasima has long been the most important political and economic center in the northeastern region. In the late nineteenth century, the railroad reached Khorat became the junction of two main rail lines in the Northeastern, Isan, region.

In 1933 it was the stronghold of the royalist troops in the Boworadej Revolt, against the new ostensibly democratic government in Bangkok.

In the 1970s, the province was the site of United States military bases supporting the Vietnam War.

Read more about this topic:  Nakhon Ratchasima Province

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
    Mao Zedong (1893–1976)

    Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.
    Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)