•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 centresas well.
•In the Tai-speaking world Ayutthaya may have dominated the Menambasin among LanNa with its important cities of Chiengmaiand Chiengrai, while eastwards lay LanSang which included much of modern day Laos and was focused on two muangat LuangPrabangand 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 Demakon Java's north coast, for example, was based not only on its trading prosperity but on its fame as a centrefor Islamic studies and protector of the venerated mosque associated with the first Muslim teachers on Java.