Bangkok History of Bangkok Museum
A guide to the History of Bangkok! Visit Get-Packing.com for Bangkok History and read up-to-date information, reviews and articles on Bangkok art and museums...
Originally a trading centre along the banks of the river, where farmers came to sell produce grown on the fertile plains of the Chao Praya River, Bangkok rose to prominence slowly, until after the collapse of Siam, when it became the most important city in the country. Bangkok became the capital of Thailand under the Chakri Dynasty in 1782, and quickly began to develop as a city, with roads being built and temples developing along the side of the river.
Once the initial building work was completed in 1785, the city was named Krung Thep (a shortened version of a name that was originally 164 letters long) although much of the world knows the city as Bangkok.
The modernisation has continued ever since, most notably after the Japanese occupation during the Second World War.
It was during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s that Bangkok developed a real tourism industry, although this was driven initially by offering "recreation" to visiting troops, and although this trade has mostly been curbed, there are still many clubs and massage parlours in the city.
Thailand, and Bangkok in particular developed a lot in the boom of the 1980s and has ridden out the collapse that affected much of South East Asia in the mid 1990s and is on its way to becoming one of the most important banking and finance centres in the region.
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