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<mask> (born 1966) is an American contemporary artist and educator. Her work is situated between sculpture and image and engages with post-conceptual photography and Minimalism. Her work examines the fluidity of the medium of photography and expands on what constitutes the viewing of a photograph. <mask> has stated that she seeks to "enable the viewer to see the inconstancy of the conditions of display, which are always at play but sometimes hard to see." Her practice is not bound to a single technology, method, process, or subject, but to the fundamental elements of photography, such as light, paper, chemistry, and time. She has taught at Bennington College and was a visiting artist at Columbia University's School of Visual Arts and Yale University. In 2019, she was the Wolf Chair in Photography at Cooper Union.She currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts, New York. She lives and works in New York City. Early life and education
<mask> was born in 1966 in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up on the South Shore, a largely homogeneous and conservative town. As a child, she frequently encountered and was fascinated by the Boston Gas Tank (Rainbow Tank) by artist and activist Corita Kent, situated prominently on the waterfront of Dorchester. In the mid-1980s, <mask> enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), intending to study painting or architecture but eventually changing her focus to photography. The pedagogical style of RISD at the time was very conservative and there were few female faculty members in the photography department. As a result, Deschenes sought other contexts for involvement with feminism, queer politics, AIDS activism, examining the power of representation within the medium of photography.Deschenes graduated from RISD in 1988 with a BFA degree in photography. Deschenes worked in photography labs as a technician throughout her career as a young artist, becoming adept at chemical and analogue printing processes. In this capacity, she also worked extensively documenting the artwork of others, which influenced her notion of mediation and the conditions of production and display. In 1997, Deschenes presented Elevation #1-#7 (1997), a set of seven monochrome dye transfer prints whose colors correspond to those developed by cartographers to represent the range of earth's elevation. In the work, by utilizing the process of dye color transfer color printing, which was discontinued by Kodak in 1994, Deschenes investigates the technological changes in the medium. In 2001, influenced by her visit to the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas, Deschenes created her series Blue and Green Screens (2001-2002), which foregrounded the invisible backdrops used for special effects in film production. Work
Deschenes explores the materials and properties of photography, light, and perception, often in relation to the architectural environments within which they are displayed.Curator and critic Matthew Witkovsky has written that Deschenes' work "pushes against the basic terms by which photography is conventionally defined: instantaneity, veracity, fixity, or reproducibility." At the same time, Deschenes engages with the legacy of Minimalism, drawing attention to the techniques of the observer by deploying old photographic methods and techniques such as the photogram and the daguerreotype. Deschenes "calibrates her works to the site" in order to reveal the spectator's relationship to the space, whether by encouraging new visual encounters or responding to and disrupting the architectural space. Major works
In 2007, Deschenes presented her series of photographs titled Moiré (2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery's "Registration" exhibition. For the work, Deschenes photographed a sheet of perforated paper filtering the light coming through the window, and layered the negative with a duplicate in an enlarger to create an abstract image with illusions of movement. Moirés were paired with Red Transfer (1997), a diptych of monochromatic dye transfer prints with subtle differences in hue. The dye transfers' matrices alignment served as a counterpoint to the misregistration in the Moirés series.In an interview with Mousse Magazine in 2014, <mask> noted that the Moires series sought to "confound" the limitations of making something "with a property largely outside of the confines of photography and expectations that are brought to looking at a photographic work." Two years later, in 2009, Deschenes created Tilt / Swing (2009), an installation of six "silver mirror" panels arranged in a 360-degree floor-to-ceiling configuration. It was based on an unrealized exhibition design conceived by Herbert Bayer, a Bauhaus artist and architect, in The Fundamentals of Exhibition Design. While Bayer's schema sought to be "an inclusive picture of all [viewpoint] possibilities," Deschenes' installation resulted in a fragmentation of the surrounding environment. Commenting on the title of the work, Matthew Witkovsky has written that the words tilt and swing evoke "abstract issues of viewpoint and manipulation, for example the ways in which the spectatorial subject is turned or focused in the controlled setting of a museum building." At the same time, curator Eva Respini has remarked that in addition to the reference to Bayer, it is crucial to consider the influence of Conceptual and Performance Art in Tilt / Swing, as the work requires a physical "activation by the viewer." In her 2012-2013 exhibition at the Secession in Vienna, Deschenes staged a new series of photograms, Stereographs 1-16 (2012).In the installation, Deschenes mimicked the illusion of spatiality in the stereoscopes by converting the gallery into a camera. Deschenes moved the gallery's entrance to a previously unused exterior side door, leading the viewers through a long hallway (the viewfinder) to two adjacent rooms (the stereograph). Each room contained four Stereographs of the same size. Johanna Burton stated that the Stereographs "must be seen not only as dilating context and insisting on spatial occupation but also as moving speculatively: developing." In 2014, at the invitation of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Deschenes created Gallery 7 (2014), a site-specific installation composed of three elements: eleven photographs in freestanding frames; three horizontal lines etched into the gallery walls; and the natural light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The freestanding frames were located in the center of the space, relocating the viewing experience from the walls towards the windows. The exhibition was on view for a year, throughout which the light conditions changed and encouraged the oxidation of the light-sensitive photograms.The proportions of the photographs, furthermore, were based on those of an index card, in reference to Lucy Lippard's c. 7,500 exhibition of Conceptual art by women artists at the Walker Art Center in 1973. In 2018, Deschenes staged her Rates (Frames per Second) exhibition at Miguel Abreu Gallery. In the installation, Deschenes took the proto-cinematic experiments of Étienne-Jules Marey as the point of departure and presented two series, FPS (Frames per Second) and FPF (Frames per Feet). FPS was cut and mounted directly on vertical strips of dibond, and FPF was pressed in thin, horizontal frames. Both series progressed with the rhythm of the viewer's footsteps, akin to the body's movement being captured by the camera in time. The Brooklyn Rail described the show as centering on not "the specific atmospheric or environmental conditions that produced each print," but "how time is felt...and the specific weight that time can hold in space." Exhibitions
Deschenes has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, including solo shows at ICA/Boston (2016), MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA (2015), Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2015), Campoli Presti in Paris  and London (2013), Secession, Vienna (2012), Sutton Lane, Brussels (2010), and Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York (2009).Her first solo presentation at an American museum, "Liz Deschenes: Gallery 7" was on view at the Walker Art Center from November 2014 to October 2015 and curated by Eric Crosby. Deschenes' work has been included in numerous group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Musee d'Art Moderne, the Centre Pompidou, and Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp. Her work was also featured in "Sites of Reason: A Selection of Recent Acquisitions" at the Museum of Modern Art (2014), "What is a Photograph?" at the International Center of Photography in New York (2014), and "Cross Over. Photography of Science + Science of Photography" at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2013). Deschenes was also featured in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and "Parcours" (2012), a two-person exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago that she co-curated with Florian Pumhösl and Matthew Witkovsky. Recent monographs dedicated to Deschenes' work includes <mask> (Boston: The Institute of Contemporary Art, 2016) and <mask>, Secession (Vienna: Secession, Berlin: Revolver, 2012).Collections
Deschenes' work is in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in France, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as The Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the ICA/Boston, the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Corcoran Museum of Art and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston showed the first comprehensive survey of her work in 2016. References

External links

CAMPOLI PRESTI - LIZ DESCHENES

Interview

American women photographers
Rhode Island School of Design alumni
Bennington College faculty
School of Visual Arts faculty
1966 births
20th-century American photographers
Living people
21st-century American photographers
20th-century American women artists
21st-century American women artists
Artists from Boston
Photographers from Massachusetts
20th-century women photographers
21st-century women photographers
American women academics

masks:
Liz Deschenes
Deschenes
Deschenes
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Liz Deschenes
Liz Deschenes


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<mask>. (born May 27, 1952) is an American serial killer from Spokane, Washington. From 1975 to 1998, <mask> is known to have murdered at least 11 women in Spokane. <mask> also confessed to two murders committed in Walla Walla in 1975 and a 1988 murder committed in Skagit County. In 2002, <mask> was convicted of killing two women in Pierce County and sentenced to death, but it was commuted to life without parole after Washington outlawed the death penalty in 2018. He is currently serving life in prison at the Washington State Penitentiary. Early life
<mask> was born on May 27, 1952, and grew up in Oak Harbor, Washington in a middle-class family that attended a local Seventh-day Adventist church. Before his birth, his grandmother murdered his grandfather with an axe in 1945.<mask> graduated from Oak Harbor High School in 1970. In 1975, he was hired by the Washington State Department of Corrections to work as a correction officer at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. In October 1977, <mask> enlisted in the United States Army, in which he became certified to fly civilian transport airplanes and helicopters. <mask> was stationed in various countries outside the continental United States, including Germany and later Somalia and Haiti during the United Nations peacekeeping missions of the 1990s. <mask> also served three years in the Army National Guard as a Helicopter Pilot from April 1997 through April 2000. He earned several commendation and service medals during his military career, including the US Army Master Aviator Badge. <mask> left the active duty Army in April 1996, apparently a year and a half short of being eligible for his full retirement benefits and pension.At this time, the military was reducing its numbers, so he got his full retirement despite being short of the customary 20 years served. He then joined the Army National Guard in April 1997 and served three years until his arrest in April 2000. He served a total of 21.5 years in the military. He has five children (four daughters and one son) with second wife Linda, whom he married in 1976. The children's birth years range from 1974 to 1989. Murders
The murders <mask> committed between 1975 and 1998 in Spokane all involved sex workers who worked along Spokane's East Sprague Avenue. The victims were initially solicited for sex work by <mask>, who would have sex with them (often in his 1979 Ford van), sometimes do drugs with them, then kill them and dump their bodies in rural locations.All of his victims died of gunshot wounds to the head. Eight of the murders were committed with a Raven .25-caliber handgun, and one attempted murder was linked to the same model of handgun. Autopsies of two of the victims indicated that the killer was a marksman aiming for the heart. One particularly bizarre detail of <mask>' murders involved the case of Melody Murfin, whose body was buried just outside the bedroom window of <mask>' family home, while his wife was sleeping in the room

On August 1, 1998, <mask> picked up sex worker Christine Smith, who managed to escape after being shot, assaulted and robbed. She is <mask>' only known attempted murder survivor. On September 19, 1998, <mask> was asked to give a DNA sample to Spokane police after being stopped. He refused, stating that it was too extreme of a request for a "family man."Convictions and appeals
<mask> was arrested on April 18, 2000, for the murder of Jennifer Joseph. After his arrest, a search warrant was executed on a 1977 white Corvette that he had previously owned. A white Corvette had been identified as the vehicle in which one of the victims had last been seen. Coincidentally, <mask> had been pulled over in this vehicle while the Task Force was searching for it, but the field interview report was misread as saying "Camaro" not "Corvette," thus the incident was not realized until after <mask> had been arrested. After searching the Corvette, police discovered blood that they linked to Jennifer Joseph and DNA from <mask> that they then tied to 12 other victims. In 2000, he was charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder in Spokane County Superior Court. As part of a plea bargain in which <mask> confessed to the murders to avoid the death penalty, he was sentenced to 408 years in prison.Charges were dropped in the murder of Shawn McClenahan, however in a statement made by <mask>, he apologized to her family and the other victims. In 2001 <mask> was charged in Pierce County with the murders of two additional women. The prosecution sought the death penalty for the deaths of Melinda L. Mercer in 1997 and Connie Ellis in 1998, which were thought to be linked to the killings in Spokane County. On September 19, 2002, <mask> was convicted of those murders and subsequently sentenced to death by lethal injection on October 3, 2002. The 2002 death sentence was appealed on grounds that <mask> believed his 2000 plea bargain to be "all-encompassing" and that a life sentence for 13 murders and a death sentence for two constituted "disproportionate, freakish, wanton and random" application of the death penalty. The arguments were rejected in 2007 by the Washington Supreme Court. A September 19, 2008 execution date was stayed by Chief Justice Gerry L. Alexander pending additional appeals.In 2013, <mask>'s attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court, stating that <mask> is mentally ill and, "through no fault of his own ... suffers from a severe paraphilic disorder" that predisposed him to commit murder. The still-pending motion is regarded as a "long shot" by most observers. "I don't think Mr. <mask> helps his cause by relying on the fact that he's a necrophiliac," said Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist. <mask> remains incarcerated at the Washington State Penitentiary. His case was further complicated by Washington Governor Jay Inslee's 2013 declaration that he would not sign death warrants for anyone on death row while he is in office. Inslee cited the high cost of the appeals process, the randomness with which death sentences are sought, and a lack of evidence that the penalty serves as a deterrent to other criminals. In July 2015, the Washington Supreme Court once again rejected an effort by <mask> to overturn his conviction and death sentence.After the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the death penalty violated the state constitution, <mask>'s death sentence, as well as that of Washington's other death row inmates, was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Victims

See also
 List of serial killers in the United States
 List of serial killers by number of victims

References

External links
<mask> <mask>, Jr. at Crime Library
Kari & Associates – <mask> <mask>, Jr.

1952 births
American aviators
United States Army personnel of the Gulf War
American murderers of children
American people convicted of murder
American prisoners sentenced to death
American serial killers
Crimes against sex workers in the United States
Male serial killers
Living people
Necrophiles
People convicted of murder by Washington (state)
People from Spokane, Washington
People from Walla Walla, Washington
Prisoners sentenced to death by Washington (state)
United States Army soldiers
American male criminals
Violence against women in the United States

masks:
Robert Lee Yates Jr
Yates
Yates
Yates
Yates
Yates
Yates
Yates
Yates
Yates
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Yates
Yates
Yates
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Robert Lee
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Robert Lee
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<mask>, IKI (born <mask>, 29 November 1933) is a  Hungarian painter, professor emerita, Kossuth Prize winner. Life and career

<mask> was born in Pécs, Hungary. She studied at the Free School of Art (Pécs) between 1946 and 1950, then at the High School of Fine and Applied Art (Budapest) between 1950 and 1952. She was accepted to the Academy of Fine Art in 1952, where, after completing the painting and mural courses, she graduated in 1958. During the first three years at the College her professor had been László Bencze, followed by István Szőnyi. However, she considers Ferenc Martyn as her real master, who had been overseeing her professional development from as early as 1945. From 1960 she worked for the Belles-lettres and the Ferenc Móra Publishing Houses as an illustrator.In 1962 she received a scholarship from the Italian government and followed the courses of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome for a year. There she had her first show at the Galleria Bars in 1963. She then returned to Hungary and besides painting, she dedicated herself to designing sets and costumes for performances at the National Theatre, the Katona József Theatre, the Opera House, and the Ódry Stage in Budapest, the Gergely Csíky Theatre in Kaposvár, the Katona József Theatre in Kecskemét and the Hungarian Theatre in Targu Mures (Romania). <mask> Keserü <mask> showed her first abstract paintings at the Jókai Klub in Budapest in 1964, then regularly thereafter in Budapest and various Hungarian cities. In 1972 she exhibited in Czechoslovakia, then, in the summer of 1974 she painted a mural in Vence (France). She also worked on a mural for the new Sports Palace in Budapest in 1979. From 1963 onwards she has taken part in numerous group-shows throughout the world.For example, at the Olympiade des Arts in Seoul, South Korea in 1988, at the Das Offene Bild in Münster, Germany in 1992. <mask> <mask> <mask> taught drawing and painting at the University of Pécs from 1983 to 2003 (from 1991 as professor). From 2003 to 2008, as professor emerita, she organized short painting courses and exhibitions for Doctorate students entitled Színerő (Colour Force), a platform for creating and presenting works of large scale at the unused great halls of the Zsolnay Factory in Pécs. She is one of the founders of the Master School of Fine Arts in Pécs. She also gave lectures at universities abroad as a guest professor: at the École des Beaux Arts (Cergy-Pontoise, France) in 1985, and at the University of Hertfordshire (UK) in 1998. Throughout her life, <mask> took part in study trips to various countries from Poland to the US. <mask> <mask> <mask> received the Mihály Munkácsy Prize in 1984, became an Artist of Merit in 1989, and was awarded the Cross Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic in 1996.She became a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts in 1993. In 2000 she was awarded the Kossuth Prize and in 2014 the Artist of the Nation Award. <mask> <mask> <mask> lives and works in Budapest and Pécs, Hungary. Secolo, Palazzo Reale, Milano, Italy
 1976 International Biennial of Graphic Design, Florence, Italy
 1980 XXXIX. Biennale di Venezia, Hungarian Pavilon, Venice, Italy
 1982 Musée Cantini, Marseille, France
 1982 L’art hongrois contemporain, L’Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris, France
 1985 Drei Generationen ungarischer Künstler, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria
 1988 Olympiade of Arts, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
 1992 Das offene Bild. Ilona Keserü Ilona Works 1982-2008 - published by MODEM Modern Debreceni Művészeti Közhasznú Társaság, 2009. Ilona Keserü Ilona Works 1959-1982 - edited and published by <mask> Keserü <mask>,
 Ilona Keserü Ilona Approach Tangle Stream - An investigation of Causes and Effects in Ilona Keserü Ilona's Oeuvre - published by Katalin Néray, director of Ludwig Museum - Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, 2004.Women in the Arts - published by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Fall 2008 (volume 26, no. 3)
 Groupe Iparterv - Le progrés de l'illusion 1968-69 - The third generation of the Hungarian avant-garde - published by András Ecsedi-Derdák, Institut hongrois de Paris, 2010. Studio - International Journal of Modern Art - published by Studio International Publications Ltd., London, edited by Peter Townsend, March 1974 (volume 184, n.o.964) p. 105
 Aktuelle Kunst aus Ungarn, László Fehér - István Haász - <mask> Keserü <mask> - Károly Klimó - published by 2006. External links
 Ilona Keserü Ilona's website
 University of Pécs
 Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum
 Ludwig Museum
 AL Gallery, Budapest
 Uffizi Gallery, Florence
 National Museum of Women in the Arts
 Mondriaanhuis, Amersfoort, Netherlands
 Work no.1. at the Hungarian National Gallery
 Work no.2. at the Hungarian National Gallery
 Artportal (in Hungarian)
 Museum of Fine Art - The Use of Cangiante Colour Technique in Ilona Keserü Ilona's New Paintings (in Hungarian)
 Kieselbach Gallery and Auction House, Budapest
 Approach - Tangle - Stream, An Investigation of Causes and Effects in Ilona Keserü Ilona's Ouvre (excerpts in English)

1933 births
Living people
20th-century Hungarian women artists
21st-century Hungarian women artists
People from Pécs

masks:
Ilona Keserü Ilona
Ilona Keserü
Ilona Keserü Ilona
Ilona
Ilona
Ilona
Keserü
Ilona
Keserü
Ilona
Keserü
Ilona
Ilona
Keserü
Ilona
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Ilona


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Bayinnaung Kyawhtin Nawrahta ( ; ,  ; 16 January 1516 – 10 October 1581) was king of the Toungoo Dynasty of Myanmar from 1550 to 1581. During his 31-year reign, which has been called the "greatest explosion of human energy ever seen in Burma", Bayinnaung assembled what was probably the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, which included much of modern-day Myanmar, the Chinese Shan states, Lan Na, Lan Xang, Manipur and Siam. Although he is best remembered for his empire building, Bayinnaung's greatest legacy was his integration of the Shan states into the Irrawaddy Valley-based kingdoms. After the conquest of the Shan states in 1557–1563, the king put in an administrative system that reduced the power of hereditary Shan saophas, and brought Shan customs in line with lowland norms. It eliminated the threat of Shan raids into Upper Burma, an overhanging concern since the late 13th century. His Shan policy was followed by Burmese kings right up to the final fall of the kingdom to the British in 1885. Bayinnaung could not replicate this administrative policy everywhere in his far-flung empire, however.His empire was a loose collection of formerly sovereign kingdoms, whose kings were loyal to him as the Cakkavatti ("Universal Ruler"), rather than to the Kingdom of Toungoo itself. Indeed, Ava and Siam revolted just over two years after his death. By 1599, all the vassal states had revolted, and the Toungoo Empire completely collapsed. Bayinnaung is considered one of the three greatest kings of Burma, along with Anawrahta and Alaungpaya. Some of the most prominent places in modern Myanmar are named after him. He is also well known in Thailand as the Phra Chao Chana Sip Thit (พระเจ้าชนะสิบทิศ, "Conqueror of the Ten Directions"). Early life

Ancestry

The future king Bayinnaung was born Ye Htut (ရဲထွတ်, ) on 16 January 1516 to Mingyi Swe and Shin Myo Myat.His exact ancestry is unclear. No extant contemporary records, including Hanthawaddy Hsinbyushin Ayedawbon, the extensive chronicle of the king's reign written two years before his death, mention his ancestry. It was only in 1724, some 143 years after the king's death, that Maha Yazawin, the official chronicle of the Toungoo Dynasty, first proclaimed his genealogy. According to Maha Yazawin, he was born to a gentry family in Toungoo (Taungoo), then a former vassal state of the Ava Kingdom. He was descended from viceroys of Toungoo Tarabya (r. 1440–1446) and Minkhaung I (r. 1446–1451) on his father's side; and from King Thihathu of Pinya (r. 1310–1325) and his chief queen Mi Saw U of the Pagan Dynasty on his mother's side. Furthermore, Ye Htut was distantly related to then presiding ruler of Toungoo Mingyi Nyo and his son Tabinshwehti through their common ancestor, Tarabya I of Pakhan. Later chronicles simply repeat Maha Yazawin account.In all, the chronicles (perhaps too) neatly tie his ancestry to all the previous main dynasties that existed in Upper Burma: the Ava, Sagaing, Myinsaing–Pinya and Pagan dynasties. Despite the official version of royal descent, oral traditions speak of a decidedly less grandiose genealogy: that his parents were commoners from Ngathayauk in Pagan district or Htihlaing village in Toungoo district, and that his father was a toddy palm tree climber, then one of the lowest professions in Burmese society. The commoner origin narrative first gained prominence in the early 20th century during the British colonial period as nationalist writers like Po Kya promoted it as proof that even a son of a toddy tree climber could rise to become the great emperor in Burmese society. To be sure, the chronicle and oral traditions need not be mutually exclusive, since being a toddy tree climber does not preclude his having royal ancestors. Childhood and education
Whatever their origin and station in life may have been, both of his parents were chosen to be part of the seven-person staff to take care of the royal baby Tabinshwehti in April 1516. Ye Htut's mother was chosen to be the wet nurse of the prince and heir apparent. The family moved into the Toungoo Palace precincts, where the couple had three more sons, the last of whom died young.Ye Htut had an elder sister Khin Hpone Soe, and three younger brothers: Minye Sithu, Thado Dhamma Yaza II, and the youngest who died young. He also had two half-brothers, Minkhaung II and Thado Minsaw, who were born to his aunt (his mother's younger sister) and his father. Ye Htut grew up playing with the prince and the king's other children, including Princess Thakin Gyi, who would later become his chief queen. He was educated in the palace along with the prince and the other children. King Mingyi Nyo required his son to receive an education in military arts. Tabinshwehti along with Ye Htut and other young men at the palace received training in martial arts, horseback riding, elephant riding, and military strategy. Ye Htut became the prince's right-hand man.Deputy of Tabinshwehti

Rise to power
On 24 November 1530, Mingyi Nyo died and Tabinshwehti ascended the throne. The 14-year-old new king took Ye Htut's elder sister Khin Hpone Soe as one of his two principal queens, and rewarded his childhood staff and friends with royal titles and positions. Ye Htut, already a close confidant of the new king, instantly became a powerful figure in the kingdom which was surrounded by increasingly hostile states. In the north, the Confederation of Shan States had conquered the Ava Kingdom just three and a half years earlier. To the west was the Confederation's ally the Prome Kingdom. To the south lay the Hanthawaddy Kingdom, the wealthiest and most powerful of all post-Pagan kingdoms. The impending threat became more urgent after the Confederation defeated its former ally Prome in 1532–1533.Tabinshwehti and the Toungoo leadership concluded that their kingdom "had to act quickly if it wished to avoid being swallowed up" by the Confederation. It was during the kingdom's mobilizations that Ye Htut made his mark, and was noticed for "his deeds of valor and strength of character." Ye Htut was by the king's side in 1532 when the king and his 500 most skillful horsemen made an uninvited foray into the Shwemawdaw Pagoda at the outskirts of Pegu, the capital of Hanthawaddy, ostensibly for the king's ear-piercing ceremony. The audacious intrusion went unpunished by Hanthawaddy's weak ruler, King Takayutpi. Ye Htut became the constant companion and adviser to the young king. However, the close relationship between the two was severely tested in 1534, as they prepared for war against Hanthawaddy. Ye Htut had become romantically involved with Thakin Gyi, the king's younger half-sister, and the affair was discovered around April 1534.The commoner's affair with the king's sister under Burmese law constituted an act of treason. Ye Htut spurned suggestions of mutiny and submitted to arrest. Tabinshwehti deliberated at length with his ministers, and finally came to the conclusion that Ye Htut should be given his sister in marriage, and a princely title of Kyawhtin Nawrahta. With this decision, Tabinshwehti won the loyalty of his brother-in-law "without parallel in Burmese history". Military leadership

Tabinshwehti's decision would pay enormous dividends in the following years. Between 1534 and 1549, Toungoo would bring war to all its neighbors and in the process found the largest polity in Burma since the fall of Pagan in 1287. Ye Htut would win many key battles for his king, and help administer the growing kingdom.In late 1534, Toungoo attacked Hanthawaddy, the larger, wealthier but disunited kingdom to their south. It was Toungoo's gambit to break out of its narrow landlocked realm before the Confederation's attention turned to the last remaining holdout in Upper Burma. While Toungoo did not yet have any foreign firearms, due to receiving a constant flow of refugees from elsewhere in Upper Burma for the last three decades, Toungoo did have more manpower than it normally could have enlisted. Tabinshwehti and Ye Htut (now styled as Kyawhtin Nawrahta) were to cut their teeth in failure however. Their maiden annual dry-season campaigns (1534–1537) all failed against Pegu's well armed, heavily fortified defenses. But their performance got better with each successive campaign, penetrating deeper and deeper into Hanthawaddy territory. They finally broke through in their 1538–1539 campaign, and captured Pegu.Kyawhtin Nawrahta made his name in the Battle of Naungyo in which his light forces decisively defeated numerically superior Hanthawaddy forces in the Irrawaddy delta. The battle, one of the most famous in Burmese military history, has been called "the first characteristic touch" of the great Bayinnaung. After the battle, a grateful Tabinshwehti bestowed upon his brother-in-law the title of Bayinnaung ("King's Elder Brother"), the name by which he would be remembered. Toungoo went on to conquer all of Hanthawaddy by mid-1541, gaining complete control of Lower Burma's manpower, access to foreign firearms and maritime wealth to pay for them. And Tabinshwehti would use these new assets for further expansions. By incorporating Portuguese mercenaries, firearms and military tactics into the Toungoo armed forces, Tabinshwehti and Bayinnaung continued to grow as military leaders. The duo also benefited from having experienced former Hanthawaddy military commanders like Saw Lagun Ein and Smim Payu serve as their top military advisers and generals.With their help, Bayinnaung delivered key decisive victories at the Battle of Padaung Pass (1542) against Prome's ally Arakan and the Battle of Salin (1544) against the Confederation, enabling Toungoo to take over central Burma as far north as Pagan (Bagan). After Bayinnaung crushed the Arakanese forces in April 1542, Tabinshwehti was so pleased with the victory that he made Bayinnaung the heir-apparent of the kingdom. The duo's later campaigns against Arakan (1545–1547) and Siam (1547–1549), however, fell short. In both campaigns, Toungoo forces won all major open battles, and went on to lay siege to the capitals, Mrauk-U and Ayutthaya respectively. But they still had no answer to heavily fortified defenses equipped with Portuguese firearms, and had to retreat both times. Toungoo's own Portuguese supplied cannon had little impact on the walls of both capitals. Nor did they have enough manpower (19,000 and 12,000 troops respectively in the Arakanese and Siamese campaigns) for long-term sieges.Nonetheless, despite the setbacks, Tabinshwehti and Bayinnaung had by 1549 built up the largest polity in Burma since the fall of the Pagan Empire in 1287, stretching from Pagan in the north to Tavoy in the south. Administrative duties
Bayinnaung was also entrusted to administer the kingdom. Tabinshwehti appointed him chief minister in 1539. In the then prevailing administrative model, the role of the prime minister was limited to managing and coordinating semi-independent tributaries, autonomous viceroys, and governors who actually had control over day-to-day administration and manpower. Trusted local rulers like Smim Payu and Saw Lagun Ein were appointed by the king to assist Bayinnaung with central administration. In 1549, Tabinshwehti, who had developed a liking to wine, gave up all administrative duties to Bayinnaung, and spent much of his time on long hunting trips away from the capital. Concerned by the king's erratic behavior, ministers at the court urged Bayinnaung to take over the throne but he declined, saying he would try to "win back the king to his old sense of duty to his own kingdom".He was unsuccessful. Even when faced with a serious rebellion by Smim Htaw, the king asked Bayinnaung in January 1550 to suppress the rebellion, and went on another months-long hunting trip. Restoration of the Toungoo Empire

Interregnum
On 30 April 1550, Tabinshwehti was assassinated by his own bodyguards on the order of Smim Sawhtut, one of the king's close advisers. Smim Sawhtut naturally proclaimed himself king. But so did all other major governors and viceroys—including Bayinnaung's own brother Minkhaung II. Although Bayinnaung had been Tabinshwehti's chosen heir apparent since 1542, none of them acknowledged Bayinnaung as the rightful successor. When Bayinnaung received the news of the assassination, he was in Dala (modern Yangon) chasing after Smim Htaw's rebel forces.The Toungoo Empire, which he had helped found and expand for the last 16 years, lay in ruins. He, as a colonial era historian noted, was "a king without a kingdom". Bayinnaung would have to rebuild the kingdom all anew. At Dala, with "few but faithful" troops, he plotted his next moves. His two eldest younger brothers Minye Sithu and Thado Dhamma Yaza II were with him and remained loyal. Also in his service was an ethnic Mon commander named Binnya Dala who would become his most trusted adviser and "best commander". Because he did not yet have any foreign mercenaries who could handle firearms, he sent for his favorite Portuguese mercenary Diogo Soares de Mello who had greatly impressed him in the Siamese campaign.Soares, who was abroad, returned with his men (all 39 of them), and he was warmly received by Bayinnaung. Two months after the assassination, Bayinnaung was ready to start the restoration project. He faced the following adversaries:

Central Burma (1550–1551)

Toungoo (1550–1551)
After much deliberation, Bayinnaung and his advisers decided that their war of restoration would begin at Toungoo, the original home of the dynasty. It was a calculated gamble since they would have to pass through the heart of Pegu-controlled territory. But they decided to take the gamble because they felt Bayinnaung would find the best support in his native Toungoo rather than deep in the Mon country they found themselves in. In late June, Bayinnaung and his small but cohesive unit of fighting men left Dala for Toungoo. They marched north to Hinthada, and then crossed over to the eastern side of Bago Yoma, north of Pegu.Smim Sawhtut, now "king" of Pegu, came out with his army to stop them. Bayinnaung, as recounted by the chronicles, paid "no more heed than a lion does to jackals", and marched on. Discovering that Bayinnaung's target was not Pegu, Sawhtut did not engage them. Bayinnaung set up camp at Zeyawaddy (), 50 km (31 miles) outside of Toungoo. Once there, Bayinnaung received many of the ministers and soldiers of Tabinshwehti's old court, who fled Pegu and Martaban. The new arrivals were of all ethnic backgrounds, Burmans, Shans and Mons, demonstrating that in 16th-century Burma, "vertical patron-client structures often preempted horizontal ones, even those as strong as ethnic identity and cultures". By late August, he had collected a serious fighting force (9600 men, 200 horses, 20 elephants, 200 war boats).His land and naval forces began the attack on 2 September 1550, and laid siege to the city. Minkhaung resisted for four months but finally surrendered on 11 January 1551. Remarkably, Bayinnaung forgave his brother. On the same day, he was crowned king at the temporary palace. He rewarded


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 his men with upgraded titles and positions. His eldest son Nanda was made the heir apparent. Prome (1551)
The Toungoo command selected Prome as their next target.In March 1551, Bayinnaung's army (9000 troops, 300 horses, 25 elephants) attacked the city. But the city's musket and artillery fire kept them at bay for over three months. He retreated on 19 June 1551, and regrouped with men from central Burma (up to Myede and Sagu) whose rulers now submitted to the new rising power. Another 9000-strong army resumed the siege on 21 August 1551, and took the city on 30 August 1551. Bayinnaung ordered the execution of Prome's ruler Thado Dhamma Yaza I but regretted the decision immediately afterwards. He appointed his second eldest younger brother as viceroy of Prome with the style of Thado Dhamma Yaza II. Pagan (1551)
Bayinnaung then proceeded to complete the conquest of northernmost central Burma up to Pagan (Bagan) by mid-September 1551.He appointed his uncle Min Sithu governor. He then marched to Ava, hoping to take advantage of the civil war between King Mobye Narapati and Sithu Kyawhtin, governor of Sagaing. But he was forced to withdraw speedily as Pegu forces marched toward Toungoo. Lower Burma (1552)
Pegu's forces withdrew from his territory but Bayinnaung now decided that Pegu must be eliminated first. Meanwhile, Mobye Narapati, who had been driven out of Ava, came to join Bayinnaung. After five months of preparation, Bayinnaung's army (11,000 men, 500 horses, 40 elephants) left Toungoo for Pegu on 28 February 1552 and arrived before the city on 12 March 1552. Smim Htaw, who had taken over Pegu in August 1550, came out and challenged Bayinnaung to single combat, which Bayinnaung accepted.The two men on their respective war elephants fought. Bayinnaung was victorious, driving Htaw and his elephant off the field. Htaw's men fled following their leader. Htaw and his small army fell back to the Irrawaddy delta. The Toungoo armies followed up, taking eastern delta towns by the end of March. Htaw's army briefly retook Dala in a daring attack but they were finally defeated near Bassein (Pathein) in mid-May. His entire army, including his chief queen and father-in-law, were captured.Htaw barely escaped. He would be on the run as a fugitive until he was captured and executed in March 1553. By mid-1552, Bayinnaung had gained control of all three Mon-speaking regions (Bassein, Pegu, and Martaban). He appointed his eldest younger brother Minye Sithu as viceroy of Martaban on 6 June 1552. Upper Burma (1553)
Two years after Tabinshwehti's death, Bayinnaung had restored the late king's empire. But he considered his job unfinished because Siam, which according to him had been remiss in sending him, the rightful successor of Tabinshwehti, tribute. He seriously considered invading Siam but his advisers led by Binnya Law, governor of Bassein, recommended that he should attack Ava instead.Taking their advice, the king sent 14,000-strong combined land and naval forces led by his heir apparent Nanda on 14 June 1553. But Ava's new king Sithu Kyawhtin (of the House of Mohnyin) was ready. He had enlisted troops from five allied Shan states (Mohnyin, Mogaung, Momeit, Onbaung, and Bhamo) and from his own vassal states throughout the Mu valley and Kyaukse districts. Arrayed against overwhelming defenses, Nanda called off the invasion. Coronation
Bayinnaung decided to consolidate his gains instead. He commissioned a new palace, called Kanbawzathadi, in his capital Pegu on 17 November 1553. On 12 January 1554, he was formally crowned king with the reign name of Thiri Thudhamma Yaza ().His chief queen, Thakin Gyi, was crowned with the reign name of Agga Mahethi (). Expansion of the Toungoo Empire

The reconquest of Lower Burma gave him complete control of much needed access to foreign firearms and maritime wealth to pay for them. In the next two decades, he would use these assets for further expansions, and by pyramiding manpower and resources from newly conquered lands, he would found the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. Upper Burma (1554–1555)
By late 1554, Bayinnaung had assembled a large invasion force (18,000 men, 900 horses, 80 elephants, 140 war boats), the largest mobilization to date. Precautions were taken on the frontiers to guard against attacks from Lan Na, Siam and Arakan. In November 1554, Toungoo forces launched a two-pronged invasion, one up the Sittaung valley and the other up the Irrawaddy valley. Avan defenses, supported by nine Confederation armies (from Bhamo, Kale, Mogaung, Mohnyin, Momeik, Mone, Nyaungshwe, Theinni and Thibaw-Onbaung), could not stop the advance, and the capital Ava fell to the southern forces on 22 January 1555.King Sithu Kyawhtin was sent to Pegu. Bayinnaung appointed his younger brother Thado Minsaw viceroy of Ava. Toungoo forces then drove out the remaining Confederation armies from the Chindwin valley up to Monywa, the Mu valley up to Myedu and the Kyaukse valley up to Singu by late March. Bayinnaung now controlled both the Irrawaddy and Sittaung river valleys, the corridors to and from the "heartland" where most of the food of the country was produced and its population lived. Still, his hold on Upper Burma was small—his northernmost outpost Myedu was only about 160 km (100 miles) from Ava—and tenuous since he had not secured the allegiance of the surrounding Shan states, which had been the source of constant raids into the upcountry since the 14th century, and indeed dominated much of it since the early 16th century. He needed to bring the surrounding unruly states under control if his hold on Upper Burma was to last. Cis-Salween Shan states (1557)
By 1556, the king and his court had decided that all the Shan states immediately surrounding the Irrawaddy valley needed to be reduced in one shot.They also recognized that they may need to take on Lan Na (Chiang Mai), which was an ally of the powerful state of Mone. The Toungoo command spent the year assembling the largest army yet (36,000 men, 1200 horses, 60 elephants, 180 war boats, and 100 cargo boats) for the invasion. The invasion of the Shan country began in January 1557. (The armies left their Ava base between 24 December 1556 and 8 January 1557.) The massive show of force worked. States submitted one after another with minimal resistance. By March 1557, Bayinnaung in one stroke controlled most of the cis-Salween Shan states from the Patkai range at the Assamese border in the northwest to Mohnyin (Mong Yang), Mogaung (Mong Kawng) in present-day Kachin State to Momeik (Mong Mit), and Thibaw (Hsipaw) in the northeast.But order broke down right after the army left. The powerful state of Mone (Mong Nai), which sent in tribute in 1556 and thus did not face the invasion, revolted with the support of Lan Na, which was ruled by Mekuti, a brother of Mone's ruler. Mone forces went on to occupy Thibaw, and executed the new saopha appointed by Bayinnaung. In November 1557, five Toungoo armies (33,000 men, 1800 horses, 170 elephants) led by the king himself invaded, and easily occupied Mone and Thibaw. By the end of 1557, of the cis-Salween states, only the Chinese vassals—Theinni (Hsenwi; present-day northern Shan State), Mowun, Kaingma, Sanda, and Latha (present-day Dehong and Baoshan prefectures in Yunnan, China)—remained outside Bayinnaung's grasp. The Toungoo command seriously considered attacking Theinni as Thado Minsaw's army was already in neighboring Thibaw. But they decided not to open another front while Lan Na remained a threat to the southern Shan states.Lan Na (1558)

Bayinnaung now eyed the once powerful Kingdom of Lan Na, which had been involved in dynastic struggles between two branches of the Mengrai dynasty. The rule of King Mekuti of the House of Mone had been resisted by King Setthathirath of Lan Xang, grandson of King Ketklao of Lan Na. When Bayinnaung and his armies showed up at the gates of Chiang Mai on 31 March 1558, Mekuti surrendered without a fight on 2 April 1558. The Burmese king allowed Mekuti to remain ruler of Lan Na, and brought several artisans, many of whom were notable lacquerware workers, back to Pegu. He left a small garrison of 1000 men commanded by Binnya Dala and Binnya Set at Chiang Mai. Order broke down soon after the main armies left. Setthathirath occupied eastern provinces of Lan Na (Phrae, Nan, Chiang Rai and Chiang Saen).In November 1558, a 14,000-strong army led by Thado Minsaw reinforced Chiang Mai's defenses, and from there the combined armies then successfully drove out the Lan Xang forces from the territories. Cis-Salween Chinese Shan states (1558–1559)
Lan Xang's defeat cemented Toungoo Burma's emergence as the premier power in the Shan country. The remaining cis-Salween Shan states fell in line even if they probably continued paying tribute to China. Theinni sent preemptive tribute, received on 26 July 1558. It was followed by tributary missions by the smaller Chinese vassal states of Mowun, Kaingma, Latha and Sanda in early 1559. Manipur (1560)
Bayinnaung immediately put manpower from the newly acquired territories to acquire yet more territory. On 2 December 1559, he ordered an invasion of Manipur, ostensibly to address the small kingdom's alleged transgressions into Kale's territory.He had recalled Binnya Dala from Chiang Mai to lead the invasion. The three armies (10,000 men, 300 horses, 30 elephants), mostly made up of conscripts from Kale, Mohnyin, Mogaung, Momeik and Sanda, faced minimal resistance. The Manipuri raja surrendered around February 1560. Trans-Salween Chinese Shan states (1562–1563)
The king spent the next two years preparing for war against Siam, which he considered his unfinished business. He set up a garrison at Tavoy (Dawei) on 17 June 1562. But he first wanted to bring the trans-Salween Shan states into his fold, probably to get more manpower as well as to secure the rear. The Burmese chronicles states that he was merely responding to a July 1562 rebellion by his cis-Salween Chinese Shan states with support from trans-Salween Shan states.However, as with Manipur, it may just have been a pretext. He sent four 12,000-strong armies, led respectively by Nanda, Thado Dhamma Yaza II, Minkhaung II and Thado Minsaw. The southernmost trans-Salween state of Kengtung submitted prior to the invasion on 16 December 1562. The armies launched a two-pronged invasion of the Taping valley in March/April 1563. The armies faced minimal resistance, and secured the allegiance of the local saophas. Bayinnaung now had at least nominal suzerainty over the Chinese Shan states from the cis-Salween states in the Taping valley to Kenghung (present-day Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan) in the east. Siam (1563–1564)

With much of western mainland Southeast Asia under his control, Bayinnaung now felt ready to take on Siam.He needed an overwhelming advantage in manpower over Siam because unlike interior Shan states, Siam could not be overwhelmed by the strength of his Portuguese firearms alone. Siam was a prosperous coastal power in its own right, and its forces included Portuguese firearms, ships and mercenaries. On 16 July 1563, he sent an embassy to Siam, demanding one of the four white elephants in possession of the Siamese king as tribute. As expected, King Maha Chakkraphat duly refused. On 1 November 1563, five armies (60,000 men, 2400 horses and 360 elephants) left Pegu to start the campaign. Another army from Lan Na was supposed to come down but King Mekuti of Lan Na had revolted. The invasion route was via central Siam.The armies took the key central town of Kamphaeng Phet on 4 December 1563. Three of the armies then fanned out to acquire the key central Siam cities of Sukhothai, Phitsanulok, and Sawankhalok. Aside from a five-day battle at Phitsanulok, the armies faced minimal opposition. The rulers of the three cities as well as the ruler of Phichit submitted, and were reappointed to their positions. The armies then marched down to Ayutthaya. There, they were kept at bay for weeks by the Siamese fort, aided by three Portuguese warships and artillery batteries at the harbor. The invaders finally captured the Portuguese ships and batteries on 7 February 1564, after which the fort promptly fell.The Siamese king surrendered on 18 February 1564. Bayinnaung took all four white elephants, among other loot, and sent the fallen king to Pegu. He appointed Mahinthrathirat, a son of the fallen king, vassal king of Siam, and left a garrison of 3000. Thai sources state that Bayinnaung also took Prince Ramesuan (ราเมศวร), the eldest son of Maha Chakkraphat, back with him as well as Phraya Chakkri (พระยาจักรี), the chancellor of Ayutthaya, and Phra Sunthon Songkhram (พระสุนทรสงคราม), the military chief of Ayutthaya. Lan Na and Lan Xang (1564–1565)
Although he had finally conquered Siam, he still needed to deal with the middle Tai country. King Mekuti of Lan Na had allied himself with his old rival Setthathirath of Lan Xang. On 23 October 1564, Bayinnaung himself led five massive armies (64,000 men, 3600 horses, 330 elephants) and began a two-pronged invasion of Lan Na.The levies hailed from all over the empire, including Siam whose troops were led by Ramesuan, the former crown prince of Siam. The massive show of force worked. When four southern armies showed up at Lamphun, 20 km south of Chiang Mai, on 25 November 1564, the commanders leading Chiang Mai's defenses simply fled the city. Mekuti now submitted, asking for forgiveness. Bayinnaung spared the broken king's life, and sent him to Pegu. The Burmese king then stayed in Lan Na for the next four months, administering the country. He appointed Queen Visuddhadevi, as the vassal ruler of Lan Na before leaving Chiang Mai on 10 April 1565 to deal with a serious rebellion in Pegu.Lan Xang proved a much more difficult project however. Three armies led by the crown prince himself invaded Lan Xang, and easily captured Vientiane on 2 January 1565. But King Setthathirath escaped. For the next several months, the Burmese troops fruitlessly chased him and his small band of men around the Laotian countryside. Many troops died of starvation and disease. The Burmese command finally gave up, and the armies left Vientiane on 1 August 1565. They had installed a son-in-law of Setthathirath as vassal king.They also brought back many members of the Lan Xang royalty, including Setthathirath's 18-year-old brother, Maha Ouparat. Lan Na was to be at peace for the rest of Bayinnaung's reign. At Vientiane, however, the vassal king's authority did not extend much beyond the capital, backed by the Burmese garrison. Setthathirath remained active in the countryside, and would return to Vientiane in late 1567. Maintaining the empire
After the Lan Xang campaign, Bayinnaung had at least nominal control over the lands stretching from Manipur in the northwest to Lan Xang in the east; and from the Chinese Shan states in the north to the Malay peninsula in the south. After a brief lull, he was to spend nearly a decade (1568–1576) keeping the empire intact. Interlude (1565–1567)

After


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 the 1565 rebellion by resettled Shans in Pegu, he faced no new rebellions for the next two years (1565–1567).Because the rebellion burned down major swaths of the capital, including the entire palace complex, he had the capital and the palace rebuilt. The new capital had 20 gates, each named after the vassal who built it. Each gate had a gilded two-tier pyatthat and gilded wooden doors. The newly rebuilt Kanbawzathadi Palace was officially opened on 16 March 1568, with every vassal ruler present. He even gave upgraded titles to four former kings living in Pegu: Mobye Narapati of Ava, Sithu Kyawhtin of Ava, Mekuti of Lan Na, and Maha Chakkraphat of Siam. Lan Xang and Siam (1568–1569)

Even as he triumphantly entered the new palace as the universal ruler, or cakkavatti, trouble was already brewing in Lan Xang. About a month earlier, he had been informed that Setthathirath's forces not only had retaken Vientiane but were also raiding eastern districts of central Siam and Lan Na.In response, he had rushed down troops from the Shan states and Upper Burma to the border. But it was a rush job. The army could only muster 6000 troops on short notice, and was thoroughly routed at the border. More bad news piled up. He learned on 12 May 1568 that southern Siam (Ayutthaya) too had revolted, and entered into an alliance with Lan Xang. The rebellion was led by Maha Chakkraphat, the deposed king of Siam whom Bayinnaung had just showered with honors and permitted to return to Ayutthaya on pilgrimage as a monk. No sooner had the monk arrived at Ayutthaya than he flung off the robe, and declared independence.But all was not lost. The ruler of central Siam (Phitsanulok), Maha Thammarachathirat, remained loyal to him. On 29 May 1568, a dismayed Bayinnaung sent an army of 6000 to reinforce Phitsanulok. The war began in June. Desperate to consolidate the Chao Phraya valley before the expected dry-season invasion, combined Ayutthaya and Lan Xang forces braved unforgiving rainy season conditions and laid siege to Phitsanulok. But Phitsanulok's reinforced defenses held. In late October/early November, the besiegers retreated to their respective cities before the upcoming invasion.<mask>'s five armies (54,600 men, 5300 horses, 530 elephants) arrived at Phitsanulok on 27 November 1568. Reinforced at Phitsanulok, combined armies of 70,000 marched down along the Chao Phraya to Ayutthaya, and laid siege to the city in December 1568. But the Burmese armies, despite taking immense losses, could not break through for months. When Setthathirath and his army approached to relieve the city, <mask> left Binnya Dala in command of the siege, and left with half his force to meet the enemy. On 8 May 1569, he decisively defeated Setthathirath northeast of the city, after which Lan Xang ceased to be of concern to the siege operations. Meanwhile, Maha Chakkraphat had died, and his son Mahinthrathirat made an offer of conditional surrender. It was refused.Bayinnaung demanded an unconditional surrender. Instead he sent one of his Siamese nobles to the city, pretending to be a deserter. King Mahinthrathirat promptly appointed him to a high command. Through the spy's treacherous machinations, one of the city's gates was opened. The city fell on that very night on 2 August 1569. Bayinnaung appointed Maha Thammarachathirat king of Siam on 29 September 1569. Remote regions
While Bayinnaung had decisively defeated Siam, his most powerful rival in the region, his greatest challenge would turn out to be keeping remote, mountainous states in the farthest corners of his empire in check.Guerrilla warfare by small rebel armies combined with difficult terrain and starvation caused more problems for the king's armies than the armies of Siam ever did. Lan Xang (1569–1570)
The remote hilly Lan Xang proved most troublesome. He personally led the two-pronged invasion of Lan Xang in October 1569. Setthathirath made a stand at Vientiane for a few months before retreating into the jungle in February 1570 to conduct his tried-and-true guerrilla warfare. <mask> and his men spent the next two months combing the Lao countryside. Setthathirath was nowhere to be found but many Burmese troops died of starvation and from long marches. Bayinnaung finally called off the search in April 1570, and returned home.When the king arrived back at Pegu, very few men of the original army had survived to reach their own country. Northern Shan states (1571–1572)
Lan Xang was not the only remote, mountainous region the Burmese king had trouble controlling. The northernmost Shan states of Mohnyin and Mogaung (and their vassals in present-day Kachin State and Sagaing Region) collectively revolted in July 1571. He sent two 12,000-strong armies led by Nanda and Thado Dhamma Yaza II. The armies easily recaptured the states. But, like in Lan Xang, the troops spent five punishing months fruitlessly chasing after the renegade saophas in the snow-clad foothills of the Himalayas. Lan Xang (1572–1573)

Meanwhile, Setthathirath's forces sacked the Burmese garrison at Vientiane.Fortunately for the Burmese, so it seemed, the Lan Xang king was killed shortly after—sometime before mid-1572, and a senior minister and general named Sen Soulintha seized the throne. (In Laotian history, the events took place a year earlier. Setthathirath retook Vientiane in the dry season of 1570–1571, and died in 1571.) Much to his surprise, Soulintha refused Bayinnaung's ultimatum to submit. Incredulous, Bayinnaung sent Binnya Dala to lead an invasion with a small army of 6000, with the majority of troops coming from Lan Na and Siam. But he and the Toungoo court had underestimated the opposition. Lan Xang's strength was more than Setthathirath, and Soulintha proved no pushover.The small Burmese army suffered from guerrilla attacks, and had to retreat in early 1573. At Pegu, the king was furious at Binnya Dala, hitherto his most trusted adviser and favorite general, despite the fact that he had given the general little to work with. He sent Binnya Dala into exile "to a sickly place" in central Siam, where the general who had won him many a battle died from illness six months later. Lan Xang and northern Shan states (1574–1577)
He immediately ordered the levy to be raised to invade Lan Xang in the following dry season of 1573–1574. But the kingdom had been in constant campaign mode, and his annual demands of more levies were pushing his vassals to the breaking point. Even his senior advisers murmured loudly, and the king reluctantly agreed to postpone the expedition for a year. The respite did little to restore the ranks of depleted vassals.When the conscription drive came in 1574, the northernmost states of Mohnyin and Mogaung refused, and revolted. The king was unfazed. He ordered Thado Minsaw, the ruler of Ava, to take care of the northern states while he personally led the Lan Xang campaign. On 1 October 1574, Thado Minsaw's army (6000 men, 800 horses, 80 elephants), made up of regiments from Upper Burma and the Shan states, marched north. Six days later, Bayinnaung's four armies (34,000 men, 1800 horses, 180 elephants), with regiments from Lower Burma, Lan Na and Siam, began the Lan Xang campaign. The armies arrived before Vientiane after 60 days marching. On 6 December 1574, the king and his massive armies faced no opposition entering Vientiane, as Soulintha had already evacuated to the countryside.Fortunately for the Burmese king, Soulintha was viewed as a usurper by his own officers, who arrested him and presented him to the conqueror. Burmese armies again fanned out to and received tribute from the Lao countryside, including easternmost Lan Xang, which is now part of present-day Vietnam. The Burmese king appointed a younger brother of Setthathirath, Maha Oupahat (Chao Tha Heua), king of Lan Xang with the regnal name Voravongsa I, and returned to Pegu on 16 April 1575. Since he was a true high Lan Xang royal he was accepted by the populace as the rightful successor to Setthathirath. Lan Xang was finally under control. The low-grade rebellion in Mohnyin and Mogaung remained a pesky thorn in Bayinnaung's side. The rebel chiefs simply retreated to the jungle when the army showed up, returning right after the army left.The king was particularly annoyed that the leader of the rebellion, the young saopha of Mogaung, had been raised at the Pegu palace, and that he himself had appointed him to the office in 1572. He personally marched north in late 1575, and sent several battalions to comb the jungles. One battalion ran into the rebels deep in the hills, and killed the saopha of Mohnyin. But the saopha of Mogaung escaped and remained at large for another year and a half. When the renegade saopha was finally captured, and brought before the king on 30 September 1577, the king ordered that the young chief be exhibited in fetters for a week at each of the twenty gates of Pegu, and that he and his followers be sold as slaves in India. Later years

Ceylon

By 1576, almost no one wanted to challenge Bayinnaung's rule, and the rest of his reign was to be relatively quiet. Other states in the region—in particular, rival Ceylonese kingdoms—were keen to receive his support.For his part, Bayinnaung viewed himself as the protector of Theravada Buddhism, and had long tried to promote and protect the religion in Ceylon. Two decades earlier, in November 1555, he sent rich presents to the Tooth of Kandy, and bought land there to keep lights continually burning at the shrine. His craftsmen beautified the temple and swept it with the broom made of his and his chief queen's hair. In 1560, upon hearing that the Portuguese had seized and taken the tooth relic to Goa, he sent envoys to secure the relic for 800,000 silver kyats (41,000 pounds sterling) and shiploads of rice, whenever needed, to provision the Portuguese garrison at Malacca. Viceroy Constantino de Bragança was interested but the Archbishop of Goa, Gaspar de Leão Pereira, overruled him by threatening the viceroy with an Inquisition style trial. In 1561, "while the Burmese envoys gazed in frozen horror, the archbishop placed the Tooth in a mortar, grounded it to powder, burned it in a brazier, and cast the ashes into the river." The Ceylonese however claimed that the destroyed relic had been a replica, and that the true Tooth had remained in Ceylon.Two teeth, claimed to be the real Tooth, appeared in Ceylon, one at Colombo and the other at Kandy. By the 1570s, both Kotte and Kandy were jockeying for Bayinnaung's support. King Dharmapala of Kotte was the most active. He presented who he said was his daughter to Bayinnaung. The princess was received with great fanfare at Bassein (Pathein) on 24 September 1573. According to G.E. Harvey, however, the Kotte king's action was not voluntary: the Burmese king had demanded a princess to fulfill a prophecy given by his astrologers, and Dharmapala, who had no daughters, complied by sending the daughter of a chamberlain, whom he had treated as his own.At any rate, Dharmapala, who had converted to Catholicism, continued to curry favor by sending what he claimed was the real Tooth relic, ostensibly to be safeguarded under the protection of the great Buddhist king. The main purpose of his mission was to seek military help against a rebellion. The Tooth was received on 14 July 1576. While it is unclear whether Bayinnaung actually believed in the authenticity of the relic, the possession of a holy Tooth, which many millions of subjects believed in, was of the highest importance. In return, Bayinnaung sent 2500 of his best "invulnerables" from all parts of the empire in five ships to Colombo. The king's best troops easily defeated the rebellion, which was noticed by the other three rulers on the island. Chronicles say that the Burmese generals then received the rulers of the four kingdoms of Ceylon in Colombo, and instructed them to safeguard the religion.King Karaliyadde Bandara of Kandy, offered a daughter and what he claimed was the real Tooth. But His Majesty, seeing no reason to reopen the case, would not enter into controversy with skeptics and dismissed them with thanks. Lan Na and Lan Xang (1579)
No troubles arose when Queen Visuddhadevi of Lan Na, who had successfully kept the middle Tai country quiet for over 13 years, died on 2 January 1579. Bayinnaung's choice Nawrahta Minsaw, one of his sons, faced no problems taking over the Lan Na throne. When instabilities arose in Lan Xang, he took no chances. On 17 October 1579, he sent a sizable army (22,000 men, 1200 horses, 120 elephants), which faced no opposition. According to Laotian history, the vassal king of Lan Xang Maha Ouparat died in 1580, and Bayinnaung installed Sen Soulintha, the usurper whom he had kept in Pegu since 1574, as the successor.The Burmese chronicles make no mention of any change for the rest of the king's reign. The Chronicles' lone post-1579 entry on Lan Xang during his reign simply states that on 2 September 1581, the king commissioned a Buddhist pagoda in Lan Xang. The Chronicles say that the vassal king died in September/October 1588. Arakan (1580–1581)
By 1580, not only had the "universal ruler" subdued all the countries which had occupied his attention for the last three decades but he also had the respect of neighboring states. He faced no internal or external threats (although Portuguese Goa considered itself technically at war with Burma for her interference in Ceylon). Instead of resting, he turned his gaze on Arakan, the kingdom he and Tabinshwehti unsuccessfully tried to conquer in 1545–1547. He determined that it was now time to reduce the western coastal kingdom to the vassal status it held under the Pagan kings once more.A year earlier, he had sent an embassy to Emperor Akbar of the Mughal Empire, which had just acquired Bengal in 1576, perhaps to ascertain whether his occupation of Arakan would be viewed as an act of hostility to the Mughals. At any rate, the king sent an 8000-strong naval invasion force on 15 October 1580. The fleet, which consisted of 200 ships, went on to occupy Sandoway in November 1580. The king had probably planned to lead the assault on the Arakanese capital Mrauk-U by himself but could not because of his failing health. The invasion force remained inactive at Sandoway for a year. The king sent additional land and naval forces (29,000 troops, 1600 horses, 120 elephants) on 28 August 1581 in preparation for the coming dry season campaign. But the king died six weeks later, and the invasion forces withdrew soon after.Administration

Emperor without an empire

Bayinnaung successfully assembled the largest empire in Burmese history. The empire spanned "from Manipur to Cambodian marches and the borders of Arakan to Yunnan," and likely received "propitiatory homage" from states as far east as Vietnam and Cambodia. Notwithstanding its fragility, his realm was certainly the largest empire in the history of mainland Southeast Asia and "probably the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia." The Portuguese called Pegu "the most powerful monarchy in Asia except that

masks: Bayinnaung Bayinnaung Bayinnaung


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 of China." But Bayinnaung, who began his reign as a "king without a kingdom", ended his reign as an "emperor without an empire." According to Than Tun, Bayinnaung conquered territories not to colonize them but to gain the loyalty of their rulers. He kept conquered kings and lords in their own positions so long as they remained loyal to him.Tun Aung Chain adds that "the extensive polity was held together not so much by formal institutions as personal relationships" based on the concepts of thissa (, 'allegiance') and kyezu (, 'obligation')." Lieberman writes: "...he presented himself as cakkavatti, or World Ruler, par excellence..."

This was nothing new. The king was simply following the then prevailing Southeast Asian administrative model of solar polities in which the high king ruled the core while semi-independent tributaries, autonomous viceroys, and governors actually controlled day-to-day administration and manpower. As such, the "King of Kings" governed only Pegu and the Mon country himself, leaving the rest of the realm to vassal kings in Ava, Prome, Lan Na, Lan Xang, Martaban, Siam, and Toungoo. He regarded Lan Na as the most important of all the vassal states, and spent much time there. He administered Lower Burma with the help of ministers, the vast majority of whom were of ethnic Mon background. (The word used by European visitors to describe a court official was semini, Italian translation of smim, Mon for lord.)His chief minister was Binnya Dala, known for his military and administrative abilities, and literary talents. Administrative reforms
He introduced administrative reforms only at the margins. By and large, he simply grafted the prevailing decentralized administration system, which barely worked for petty states like his native Toungoo, to the largest polity ever in the region. Indeed, it did not work for mid-size kingdoms like Ava, Hanthawaddy, Lan Na, and Siam. (Ava had always had to contend with Prome and Toungoo; Pegu with Martaban and Bassein; Chiang Mai with Chiang Saen and Nan; Ayutthaya with Phitsanulok; etc.) Now, because of the sheer size of the empire, the system was even more decentralized and stretched thinner still. At any rate, it was the only system the Toungoo kings knew, and they "had no choice but to retain it."He, perhaps inadvertently, did introduce a key reform, which turned out to be the most important and most enduring of his legacies. It was his policy to administer the Shan states, which had constantly raided Upper Burma since the late 13th century. The king permitted the saophas of the states to retain their royal regalia and ceremonies, and feudal rights over their subjects. The office of the saopha remained hereditary. But the incumbent saopha could now be removed by the king for gross misconduct although the king's choice of successor was limited to members of the saopha's own family. The key innovation was that he required sons of his vassal rulers to reside in his palace as pages, who served a dual purpose: they were hostages for good conduct of their fathers and they received valuable training in Burmese court life. His Shan policy was followed by all Burmese kings right up to the final fall of the kingdom to the British in 1885.Still, his reforms were ad hoc and experimental. Patron-client relationships still mattered much more than weak or non-existent institutions: his vassals were loyal to him, not Toungoo Burma. The reforms he started would ultimately be expanded by his 17th-century successors. But they had not sufficiently taken root by his death to prevent his "overheated" empire from rapidly collapsing in the next two decades. Legal and commercial standardizations
His Majesty introduced a measure of legal uniformity by summoning learned monks and officials from all over his dominions to prescribe an official collection of law books. The scholars compiled Dhammathat Kyaw and Kosaungchok, based on King Wareru's dhammathat. The decisions given in his court were collected in Hanthawaddy Hsinbyumyashin Hpyat-hton.He promoted the new law throughout the empire so far as it was compatible with customs and practices of local society. The adoption of Burmese customary law and the Burmese calendar in Siam began in his reign. He also standardized the weights and measurements such as the cubit, tical, basket throughout the realm. Religious affairs

Another enduring legacy of Bayinnaung was his introduction of a more orthodox Theravada Buddhism to Upper Burma and the Shan states. He propagated the religious reforms begun by King Dhammazedi in the late 1470s. Viewing himself as the "model Buddhist king," the king distributed copies of the scriptures, fed monks, and built pagodas at every new conquered state from Upper Burma and the Shan states to Lan Na and Siam. Some of the pagodas are still to be seen, and in later ages the Burmese would point to them as proof of their claim to rule those countries still.Following in the footsteps of Dhammazedi, he supervised mass ordinations at the Kalyani Ordination Hall at Pegu in his orthodox Theravada Buddhism in the name of purifying the religion. He prohibited all human and animal sacrifices throughout the kingdom. In particular, he forbade the Shan practice of killing the slaves and animals belonging to a saopha at his funeral. His attempts to rid of animist nat worship from Buddhism, however, failed. He donated jewels to adorn the crowns of many a pagoda, including the Shwedagon, the Shwemawdaw, the Kyaiktiyo, and many less famous ones. He added a new spire to the Shwedagon in 1564 after the death of his beloved queen Yaza Dewi. His main temple was the Mahazedi Pagoda at Pegu, which he built in 1561.He tried but failed to secure the release of the Tooth of Kandy from the Portuguese invaders in 1560. He later interfered with the internal affairs of Ceylon in the 1570s, ostensibly to protect the Buddha Sasana there. Economy
His kingdom was mainly an agrarian state with a few wealthy maritime trading ports. The main ports were Syriam (Thanlyin), Dala, and Martaban. The kingdom exported commodities such as rice and jewels. At Pegu, overseas trade was in the hands of eight brokers appointed by the king. Their fee was two percent.Their honesty and business-like methods won the esteem of European merchants. The wealth was seen at the capital. Contemporary European travelers would "never tire of describing Pegu—the long moat full of crocodiles, the walls, the watch-towers, the gorgeous palace, the great processions with elephants and palanquins and grandees in shining robes, the shrines filled with images of massy gold and gems, the unending hosts of armed men, and the apparition of the great king himself." The king appointed officials to supervise merchant shipping and sent out ships to undertake commercial voyages. The prosperous life at the capital, however, was probably not replicated at the countryside. Annual mobilizations of men greatly reduced the manpower necessary to cultivate the rice fields. Harvests at times fell perilously low, causing severe rice shortages, such as in 1567.Military

Bayinnaung built the largest empire in Southeast Asia on the back of "breathtaking" military conquests. His success has been attributed to a "more martial Toungoo tradition", Portuguese firearms, foreign mercenaries, and larger forces. First, he was a product of Toungoo, a rebellion-prone former vassal of Ava, where he as a young man at the palace received a military-style education since childhood. With their training, he and Tabinshwehti launched their first campaign against a larger, wealthier Hanthawaddy when they were both just 18. Secondly, the beginning of their military careers coincided with the arrival of Portuguese cannon and matchlocks in large quantities. Portuguese weaponry proved superior in accuracy, safety, ballistic weight, and rapidity of fire to Asian-made firearms. The duo arrived at the coast on the cusp of this transformation, and quickly turned it to their advantage, incorporating Portuguese firearms as well as Portuguese and Indian Ocean (mostly Muslim) mercenaries into their forces.Indigenous infantry and elephant units also began using guns, with 20–33% of the troops so equipped on some late 16th century campaigns. According to Lieberman, "had Toungoo attacked Pegu a generation later, it is conceivable that Portuguese guns could have given Pegu the victory, thus altering the course of history." But it was Toungoo that seized Hanthawaddy's advantages and leveraged them into an empire. Finally, Bayinnaung was able to marshal more manpower than any ruler in the region. He required every new conquered state to provide conscripts for his next campaign. Using both larger forces and superior firearms, he had no trouble reducing Manipur and the entire Shan world to tributary status. His larger forces and their greater fighting experience proved to make the difference against Siam, which too was a wealthy coastal power with a powerful well-equipped military.It turned out however that Siam was not his greatest adversary. It was the remote mountainous states like Lan Xang, Mohnyin and Mogaung whose guerrilla warfare gave him constant trouble. Many of his men died from starvation and disease while fruitlessly searching for elusive bands of rebels, year after year. (The death toll must have been significant since it made it to the chronicles.) He was fortunate that the charismatic guerrilla leader Setthathirath died. In the end, his military might alone could not bring lasting peace. He needed competent local rulers, who commanded the respect of the local populace, to rule the lands on his behalf.History shows that he used the political solution instead to maintain peace. To be sure, the individual ingredients alone cannot explain his success. The same ingredients were available to his successors. Yet no one (in Burma or elsewhere in the successor states of his empire) could put them together. For example, he raised upwards of 60,000 to 70,000 men for his major campaigns. His Toungoo successors raised a third at most. It was not until the early Konbaung kings that the army again raised nearly as many men.Harvey notes: "From his teens until his death, he was constantly in the field, leading every major campaign in person. The failure of other kings who attempted the same conquests is the measure of his ability." Death and succession
The king died on 10 October 1581 after a long illness. His full reign name at death was "Thiri Tri Bawa Naditra Pawara Pandita Thudhamma Yaza Maha Dipadi." His eldest son and heir-apparent Nanda took over the throne without incident. But the empire, which Bayinnaung had built on military conquests and maintained by both military power and personal relationships with the vassal rulers, was to crumble soon after. The first crack appeared in the far north in September 1582 when the Chinese Shan states of Sanda and Thaungthut revolted.The rebellion was put down in March 1583. Much more serious cracks followed. Ava (Upper Burma) revolted in October 1583, and the rebellion was put down on 24 April 1584. Siam revolted on 3 May 1584. Nanda would spend the rest of his reign fighting Siam and other former vassals and would lose the entire empire in the process by 1599. Family

The king had three principal queens consort and over 50 other junior queens. In all, he left 97 children.The following is a list of notable queens and their issue. A notable queen of Bayinnaung in Thai history is Suphankanlaya, daughter of King Maha Thammarachathirat of Siam. Legacy

Bayinnaung is considered one of the three greatest Burmese kings, alongside Anawrahta and Alaungpaya, the founders of the First and Third Burmese Empires, respectively. The king is mostly remembered for his military conquests, not just in Myanmar but also in Thailand and Laos. His reign has been called "the greatest explosion of human energy ever seen in Burma." In Myanmar, the soldier-king is considered the favorite king of the present-day Burmese generals. According to Thant Myint-U, the generals often see themselves "as fighting the same enemies and in the same places... their soldiers slugging their way through the same thick jungle, preparing to torch a town or press-gang villagers.The past closer, more comparable, a way to justify present action. His statues are there because the ordeal of welding a nation together by force is not just history." In Thailand, he is well known as the "Conqueror of the Ten Directions" (พระเจ้าชนะสิบทิศ), from the 1931 novel Phu Chana Sip Thit (ผู้ชนะสิบทิศ, "Conqueror of the Ten Directions") by Chote Praepan (โชติ แพร่พันธุ์). He has thus far escaped the increasingly negative portrayals of Burmese kings in Thai history books. As the founder of an empire geographically centered in Siam, he is well known by the Thai people, and often still treated with respect. In Laos, King Setthathirath is lionized for his pesky resistance to the empire. Though he is best known for empire building, his greatest legacy was his integration of the Shan states, which eliminated the threat of Shan raids into Upper Burma, an overhanging concern to Upper Burma since the late 13th century.His Shan policy, greatly enhanced by later Toungoo kings, reduced the power of hereditary saophas, and brought hill customs in line with low-land norms. This policy was followed by Burmese kings right up to the final fall of the kingdom to the British in 1885. The adoption of Burmese customary law and the Burmese calendar in Siam began in his reign. Siam used the Burmese calendar until 1889. Commemorations

Bayinnaung is commemorated in Myanmar in several ways. Bayinnaung Bridge, a suspension bridge in Yangon
 Bayinnaung Market, a major commodities market in Yangon
 Bayinnaung Road, a road in Yangon
 Bayinnaung Statue, one of the three statues of kings that tower over the main parade square in Naypyidaw. The other two are the statues of Anawrahta and Alaungpaya.Cape Bayinnaung, the southernmost point of mainland Myanmar
 Team Bayinnaung, one of the five student teams in Burmese primary and secondary schools
 UMS Bayinnaung, Myanmar Navy Anawrahta-class corvette

In popular culture
Bayinnaung is a main character in Age of Empires II: The Rise of the Rajas published by Xbox Game Studios. In part 1 of King Naresuan film series, Bayinnaung is a Burmese conqueror and a father-figure for young prince Naresuan. Notes

References

Citations

Sources

External links

Voyage to Pegu, and Observations There, Circa 1583, Gaspero Balbi
Account of Pegu (1586–1587), by Cesar Fedrici. The Flight of Lao War Captives from Burma back to Laos in 1596:A Comparison of Historical Sources Jon Fernquest, Mae Fa Luang University, SOAS bulletin, Spring 2005
 The Changing Nature of Conflict between Burma and Siam as seen from the Growth and Development of Burmese States from the 16th to the 19th Centuries, by Pamaree Surakiat,Mar 2006, Asia Research Institute, Singapore. Burmese monarchs
Burmese Buddhist monarchs
Rulers of Toungoo
1516 births
1581 deaths
First Toungoo Empire
16th-century Burmese


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<mask> (née Huber, born March 24, 1951) is a Comanche activist and women's health advocate. <mask> is one of the founders of the Native American Community Board (NACB) and the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center (NAWHERC). President Clinton appointed her to the National Advisory Council for Health and Human Services (HHS). She has been awarded the Woman of Vision award by the Ms. Foundation and the United Nations Distinguished Services Award. Biography
<mask> was born on March 24, 1951 in San Jose, California to a Comanche mother and father of European descent. She has been no stranger to activism and hardship, even in her young high school days. Asetoyer's first formulation of strategic protesting occurred in her high school cafeteria, where she staged a school-wide sit in as a way to protest the existing food conditions and demand a hot-lunch program.Her attempts worked and by the end of the week her school had implemented new lunch arrangements that met the desired standards. Fashion and women's beauty also had a profound impact on Asetoyer's young life; as a young entrepreneur, she started her own dress company from her home, and she later dropped out of high school in order to expand her business. Asetoyer referred to herself as "creative, independent, and an entrepreneur" and noted that she learned more in the coffee shops and streets of California than she would have in the halls of her high school. She moved to San Francisco and successfully ran her own dress shop until 1971 when she closed the boutique in order to enroll in San Francisco City College. San Francisco brought important elements into Asetoyer's life, including more activist opportunities and her marriage to Dennis Duncan. Her marriage to Dennis Duncan, officially initiated in 1972, led her into her first job that merged her activist work and women's health care; she worked as a WIC program leader and counselor at the Urban Indian Health Clinic in SF's financial district. Her job was one of the only beneficial things to come from her marriage to Duncan, his abusive nature led her to end their relationship in 1977 and resultantly compelled her to move out of California.Asetoyer relocated to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1977, and she enrolled in the University of South Dakota, where she matriculated from in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. 1981 was a monumental year for <mask>, alongside college graduation, she married Yankton Sioux tribe member Clarence Rockboy, and migrated again, this time to Brattleboro, Vermont. While in the American Northeast, Asetoyer significantly expanded her education and her family. First, she gave birth to her first child, a boy named Chaska (American version is Charles). After Chaska's birth, the couple also adopted Clarence's abandoned nephew, Reynold James Brugier. Alongside maintaining a growing nuclear family, Asetoyer obtained a dual master's degree in 1983 for Management and Intercultural Administration from Vermont's School for International Training. Their time in Vermont was short lived.Abiding by Yankton Sioux tradition, the family returned to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1983 following the death of Clarence's father. Clarence was to serve a four-year sentence at the reservation in order to fulfill a cultural and religious memorial commitment after his father's passing. The return to Sioux Falls indicates the essential beginning of <mask> <mask>'s activist and political career. In-depth activist work
Her work in California and her own abusive marriage pushed <mask> Asetoyer to help more dislocated women, specifically Natives. In the early 1970s, the American Indian Movement (AIM) coordinated a walk from Canada and across the United States as a way to protest the forced sterilization of Native women by the government, and this caught the eye of <mask>, the young activist. The Indian Health Services, operating under the US government, had been estimated to have sterilized 25% of Native women age 15 to 44 in the late 1970s, without consent from the women or proper education given to them. AIM was a general effort to protest general treatment of Native Americans.In 1978, Asetoyer and many other women involved in AIM joined forces and sought to reconstruct and modernize women's role in the Native community, giving them back some independence within the family unit and in regard to their own healthcare. This group of more than 300 women separated themselves from the American Indian Movement in order to create a more specific group solely for women. These empowered women formed the group known as Women of All Red Nations. <mask> <mask>'s first activist organization was Women of All Red Nations, commonly abbreviated as WARN, and Asetoyer was the brain behind the business of this operation. Asetoyer created a subdivision of WARN that focused on women's healthcare. Generally, WARN aligned itself with the American Indian Movement that was growing throughout the American 1980s. WARN's objectives initially sought out to help Native American women that were underrepresented in society.Under Asetoyer's leadership of her branch, the organization's intentions generally targeted women's health and pregnancy issues that were prevalent on the Sioux Falls reservation, two of the most prominent being fetal alcohol syndrome and forced sterilization. Asetoyer's strong willed personality clashed with the politics of WARN, and in 1985, she abandoned the organization, and her own branch, in order to form a more meaningful program that operated precisely how she wanted it to. With the help of her husband Clarence Rockboy, Everdale Songhawk, Jackie Rouse, and Lorenzo Dion, the Native American Community Board (NACB) was born in Rockboy and Asetoyer's basement of their family home in Lake Andes, SD. The NACB started out with a broad mission and intended to help out Natives on the reservation and in the area with any problem they encountered. The NACB planned out certain campaigns in order to bring awareness to issues in the community, and their first project was centered around what Asetoyer worked on at WARN- fetal alcohol syndrome. "I wanted to get serious about this work. I felt that it was an issue that was plaguing our communities and that we really needed to get a handle on it."By examining the causes of fetal alcohol syndrome, the NACB focused on educational initiatives for young mothers that would lead to better lives for mom and child alike. As Asetoyer and the NACB embarked on this journey to try and transform life on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, they uncovered even more issues among the community. While simultaneously working on the fetal alcohol syndrome objectives, Asetoyer was revamping the general knowledge of women in the area. Creation of the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center
Through conferences and seminars, Asetoyer worked to spread the word about acknowledging the issues at hand, preventative ideology, elements for treatment, and simply about the fundamental components that would increase the standard of living within the Native American community. By spreading awareness, she met other like-minded individuals that were also seeking change. <mask> Asetoyer envisioned a designated center that would provide information and assistance in regard to the feminine and reproductive health of Native American Women, and in 1988, her dream became a reality with the creation of the Native American Women's Health Educational Resource Center (NAWHERC) where she was named executive director. "NACB established NAWHERC to provide ongoing comprehensive community health education among Native Americans and to impact policy issues that affect indigenous women nationally and internationally."While creating NAWHERC, Asetoyer drew much inspiration from the National Black Women's Health Imperative after visiting their headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. NAWHERC embarked on attacking a wide range of issues within the Native American female community, focusing primarily on elements relating to domestic violence and reproductive health.2 By the end of 1988, NAWHERC's success was adamant. It had already established a domestic violence outpost for victims and survivors, an extensive list of reproductive health programs, information on environmental safety elements, Native American cultural preservation, and was intently circulating literature in relation to AIDs symptoms, treatment, and prevention following the crisis that took place earlier in the decade. NAWHERC was the first organization in South Dakota to actively discuss the treatment and prevention of AIDs. The Native American Women's Health Educational Research Center revolutionized life in Sioux Falls with the help of <mask> Asetoyer's leadership. As the center grew, it became known for its profound influence in leading Native women's health initiatives and community learning. Today, the NAWHERC branch functions as the primary headquarters for NACB activism.As time went on, NAWHERC vastly expanded their list of services to include things like general help forums (alcoholics anonymous, narcotics anonymous, etc. ), more treatment centers for a variety of issues, more extensive health screening to involve prevalent concerns like breast cancer, nutritional services for children and adults, childcare services, and even more critical interests. Domestic situations are still one of the center's top priorities and NAWHERC seeks to bring attention to the rampant domestic abuse in Native families. NAWHERC sponsors a group where women can come together and share their experiences with one another on the topic, provide advice and information, and alert women of the safe spaces and shelters they offer; the center attentively pushes a 'woman's right to leave' campaign and extends help in a multitude of areas to assist women in escaping these detrimental and harmful situations. The center also makes sure that the voices of these women are heard, not just in the community, but at the state and national level as well. "NAWHERC's work has resulted in policy changes such as improvements in informed consent, the provision of patients with results for abnormal pap tests and mammograms, treatment for HIV+ patients, patient confidentiality, and the discontinuation of Norplant." Recent work
Alongside her establishment and running of NAWHERC, Asetoyer actively participates in women's rights conventions and she travels extensively to speak around the world.Asetoyer tried to continue her hand in politics throughout the early 2000s by running for Mayor of Lake Andes and state senate in two separate elections, but all attempts were unsuccessful. In the mid 2000s, she campaigned against gerrymandering in South Dakota and how polling centers actively prevented Natives from voting. In 2004, a polling place in Lake Andes, SD on the Yankton Sioux Tribe had an illegitimate sign that said in order to vote, a valid photo ID was required. <mask> <mask> stood up against this injustice with the proof that it was not legal to require an ID and that there were government-accepted alternate documents, especially because Natives living in Yankton Sioux did not have IDs. Asetoyer claimed that poll workers were being force-fed incorrect information in order to cancel the Native vote, and at least twenty one Native Americans were turned away from the polls in just that location. Asetoyer and the community outcry gained the attention of South Dakota's Secretary of State, Chris Nelson. Nelson adamantly agreed with Asetoyer and set out on an initiative to educate poll workers and higher-ups authorities at the polls.More on the outside realm of politics, she has spoken at the World Conference for Human Rights, in front of the United Nations, and directly to US presidents. "<mask> has also influenced political change at the federal level. President Clinton appointed her to serve on the National Advisory Council for Health and Human Services (HHS), and she has served on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)." She works now to reverse the anti-abortion stance of South Dakota and identifies as a pro-woman, pro-choice democrat and still searches for political activist work. Alongside her political strides in the democratic community, the Native American women still remain at the top of <mask> <mask>'s priority list. <mask> published the book Indigenous Women's Health Book within the Sacred Circle: Reproductive Rights, Environmental Health, Traditional Herbs and Remedies in 2003, naming the author as NAWHERC so proceeds benefit her organization. The Indigenous Women's Health Book revolutionized knowledge and accessibility for the named women because it was the very first book to address the reproductive issues and feminine health of indigenous women.<mask> <mask> has received numerous awards throughout her forty plus years of feminist activism for the Native American community, but her notable distinctions and accolades aren't stopping her anytime soon; Asetoyer says there is still an extensive amount of work that needs to be done in so many areas of focus. <mask> Asetoyer learned the power of collective uniting at a young age with her in-school protest, and her own experiences as a woman pushed her to help the Native women in need. Over the span of her continuous career, Asetoyer has touched the hearts and lives of countless Native American women by standing up for their rights, protecting them, and giving them a feminist icon to look up to. Through her multitude of organizations, she has revolutionized living and health conditions for female Natives that may never have happened without her perseverance, even in the face of opposition. Writings

NAWHERC

Journal articles and book chapters

References

Citations

Sources

External links
 Profile on SheSource
 Interview (NBC news)
 Oral history interview (Smith College, 2005)
 <mask> <mask> papers, at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. 1951 births
University of South Dakota alumni
SIT Graduate Institute alumni
Comanche people
American women's rights activists
Native American activists
People from San Jose, California
Living people
Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area
People from Charles Mix County, South Dakota
Activists from South Dakota

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