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:

    To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.
    Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)