About suranari.com

suranari.com is a historical map of the Nine Armies' War, the first great war of the Bangkok era. It is made so that travellers, students and local people can easily see which army marched where, where the fighting took place, and what those places are like today. The site takes its name from Thao Suranari, the heroine of Nakhon Ratchasima, who has a page of her own; wherever she is mentioned we state clearly that her stand was not part of the Nine Armies' War.

What this site does

• Maps of 8 campaign routes that you can zoom and pan, with 41 points in all
• Tables of the nine Burmese armies and the four Siamese armies
• Pages for 13 places, with photos, nearby sights and food, and links for directions
• A summary of the war and the stories of three heroines
• Links to the province travel guides on songkran.com

How we write

Every page lists its sources. The main narrative follows the Royal Chronicle of Rattanakosin, First Reign, and Prince Damrong's Thai Rop Phama (Our Wars with the Burmese), as summarised in the articles and studies we cite, compared with Burmese evidence as far as it has been studied. Anything that comes from legend or oral tradition is marked as such. Where historians still disagree, we set out each view instead of choosing one conclusion, and we summarise in our own words.

The Thai edition gives years in the Buddhist Era counted the modern way, with the new year on 1 January; this English edition gives the same dates in the Common Era. That is why we say the Battle of Lat Ya ended in February 1786, although many Thai books give BE 2328 (1785) under the old calendar, whose year began around April.

Coordinates are decimal degrees in WGS84. A place whose exact position cannot be fixed carries the mark ≈ and a note. The routes drawn on the maps are approximate lines, not the actual path step by step. The base map uses data from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain. Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences, with the photographer credited under each one. If you find an error, tell us on the contact page.

Sister sites

naresuan.com covers Ayutthaya in the time of King Naresuan, taksin.com covers the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 and the Thonburi period, and songkran.com is a travel site covering Thailand province by province.