Eastern Irrawaddy Delta

These are the shallow waters off the eastern mouths of the Irrawaddy, where the Yangon and Bago rivers run out into the Gulf of Martaban. The delta was long Mon country, and Mon kings at Bago held it for much of the period from 1287 to 1539. When the port of Bago silted up in the fifteenth century, Thanlyin, then called Syriam, took over as the chief harbour, and Dagon, later Yangon, grew around the Shwedagon pagoda. In 1599 the Portuguese adventurer Filipe de Brito seized Syriam, and he held it until the Taungoo king Anaukpetlun took the town and impaled him. In the 1740s the French East India Company based itself at Syriam, which King Alaungpaya captured in 1756.