Pagan Establishes Forty-Three Frontier Forts

February 1061

By royal order issued in February, King Anawrahta's engineers completed a chain of forty-three fortified posts ringing the Pagan kingdom's expanded borders. The forts guarded against Shan hill raiders and secured the overland routes to China's Yunnan frontier. This defensive infrastructure transformed Pagan from a river-valley kingdom into a territorial state with defined, defended boundaries - a leap in political organization unprecedented in Burmese history.