The economic climate of the early sixteenth century
nurtured the movement towards political consolidation, a
movement apparent not only among coastal ports, but
among prominent interior centres as well.
• In the Tai-speaking world Ayutthaya may have dominated
the Menam basin among Lan Na with its important cities of
Chiengmai and Chiengrai, while eastwards lay Lan Sang
which included much of modern day Laos and was focused
on two muang at Luang Prabang and Vientiane. But
throughout Southeast Asia an equally important factor in
the centralizing process was the reputation for religious
patronage which normally accompanied the rise of a
commercial centre.
• The leadership of Demak on Java's north coast, for
example, was based not only on its trading prosperity but
on its fame as a centre for Islamic studies and protector of
the venerated mosque associated with the first Muslim
teachers on Java.