Ahom kingdom

The Ahom kingdom (English: /ˈɑːhɔːm/, Assamese: [aɦʊm]), or Kingdom of Assam, was a late medieval kingdom in the Brahmaputra Valley. It is conventionally dated from 1228 to 1826, although the chronology of its foundation is disputed. The kingdom came to incorporate large parts of modern Assam. Traditionally associated with the arrival of Sukaphaa, a Tai prince from Möng Mao (present-day Dehong, China), it began as a small Tai polity in the upper Brahmaputra valley based on wet-rice agriculture. Guha (1983) characterises the Ahom polity of the late fourteenth century as a “state-like organisation”, rather than a full-fledged state, and identifies the reign of Suhungmung (1497–1539) as the watershed in which it “leaped into statehood”. Major territorial and institutional expansion followed in the early 16th century, particularly through the annexation of the Chutia kingdom, the acquisition of parts of present-day Nagaon then ruled by the Baro-Bhuyans and the Golaghat-Jorhat regions (Dikhou-Dhansiri) under the Dimasa king. The expanded kingdom became multi-ethnic in character, accelerating a process of social change, ethnogenesis, and inter-ethnic interactions under the ruling Ahom dynasty. During the 17th century, the kingdom defeated multiple attempts by the Mughal Empire to expand into Northeast India. The central authority collapsed following the Moamoria rebellion in the late 18th century. Internal conflicts between dynastic claimants led to Burmese intervention, and the kingdom faced multiple Burmese invasions after 1817. British intervention led to the First Anglo-Burmese War, and control of the kingdom passed to the East India Company through the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826. The kingdom was largely multi-ethnic, with the ethnic Tai Ahom people constituting less than 10% of the population according to the 1872 and 1881 censuses of British India. People from different ethnic groups became a part of the Ahom population due to a process known as Ahomisation. The identity...