Khmer Capital Moves to Phnom Penh

1436

Following Ayutthaya's devastating sack of Angkor five years earlier, the Khmer court permanently abandoned its monumental temple capital and relocated south to Phnom Penh at the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. The move reflected a fundamental shift from inland agrarian power to maritime trade, but the loss of Angkor's vast hydraulic infrastructure of canals and reservoirs accelerated Khmer decline into a smaller, commercially oriented kingdom.