The future king was born Aung Zeya (အောင်ဇေယျ "Successful Victory") at Moksobo, a village of a few hundred households in the Mu River Valley about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Ava (Inwa) on 24 August 1714 to Min Nyo San (မင်းညိုစံ) and his wife Saw Nyein Oo (စောငြိမ်းဦး).

His father was a hereditary chief of Moksobo and his uncle, Kyawswa Htin (ကျော်စွာထင်), better known as Sitha Mingyi (စည်သာမင်းကြီး), was the lord of the Mu Valley District.

[5] Alaungpaya claimed descent from kings Mohnyin Thado, Narapati I and Thihathura of Ava, and ultimately the Pagan royal line.

The "palace kings" at Ava had been unable to defend against the Manipuri raids that had been ransacking increasingly deeper parts of Upper Burma since 1724.

Ava had failed to recover southern Lanna (Chiang Mai), which had revolted in 1727, and did nothing to prevent the annexation of northern Shan States by the Manchu Qing dynasty in the 1730s.

A tall man for the times, (5-foot-11-inch in height (1.80 m) as described by an English envoy),[9] the solidly built, sunburnt Aung Zeya displayed his natural ability to lead men and was viewed as a leader by his gentry peers throughout the valley.

Satisfied that the 22-year-old had no designs on the throne, Taungoo Yaza on behalf of the king bestowed the title Bala Nanda Kyaw (ဗလနန္ဒကျော်) to Aung Zeya.

[2] Aung Zeya became deputy to his uncle the lord of Mu Valley, and the administrative officer kyegaing (ကြေးကိုင်, [tɕéɡàɪɰ̃]), responsible for tax collection and for the preservation of order.

By early 1752, Hanthawaddy forces, aided by the French East India Company-supplied firearms and Dutch and Portuguese mercenaries, had reached the gates of Ava.

[8][11]: 291–292  On 29 February 1752 (Full moon of Tabaung 1113 ME), as the Hanthawaddy forces were about to breach the outer walls of Ava, Aung Zeya proclaimed himself king with the royal style of Alaungpaya ("One Who Is the Future Buddha", Maitreya) and founded the Konbaung Dynasty.

[1][need quotation to verify] His full royal style was Thiri Pawara Wizaya Nanda Zahta Maha Dhamma Yazadiyaza Alaung Mintayagyi (သီရိပဝရ ဝိဇယနန္ဒဇာထ မဟာဓမ္မ ရာဇာဓိရာဇာ အလောင်းမင်းတရားကြီး).

He pointed out that although Alaungpaya had scores of enthusiastic men, they only had a few muskets, and that their little stockade did not stand a chance against a well-equipped Hanthawaddy army that had just sacked a heavily fortified Ava.

Soon, Alaungpaya was mustering a proper army from across the Mu Valley and beyond, using his family connections and appointing his fellow gentry leaders as his key lieutenants.

Alaungpaya then turned his attention to the East India Company (EIC) outpost at Cape Negrais at the southwestern tip of the Irrawaddy Delta.

[20] In 1758, Alaungpaya got the news that the East India Company's agents had sold ammunition and arms (500 muskets) to Mon rebels.

[23][24] After Lower Burma was defeated, Alaungpaya himself led another expedition in November 1758, this time to place the Burmese nominee to the Manipuri throne.

The Konbaung armies, according to the Manipuris, committed "unspeakably cruel" crimes against the populace, inflicting "one of the worst disasters in its history".

Siamese resistance stiffened as the Burmese approached the capital of Ayutthaya, but nonetheless, they were driven back with heavy losses in men, guns, and ammunition.

[34] Only Minkhaung Nawrahta's 6000 men and 500 Cassay cavalrymen remained as the rearguard, successfully fending off Siamese attacks along the route of retreat.

[35] Alaungpaya died on Sunday, 11 May 1760 (12th waning of Kason 1122 ME) at the dawn, at Kinywa, near Martaban, after being rushed back from the Siamese front by the advance guard.

For the administration of his newly acquired territories, he largely continued the policies of the Restored Taungoo kings—the most important aspect of which was to reduce the number of hereditary viceroyships.

Aware that hereditary viceroyships were a constant cause of instability, the king appointed governors in most of his newly conquered territories throughout the Irrawaddy valley.

)[37] One key policy change that Alaungpaya initiated, and followed by latter Konbaung kings, was the establishment of military colonies and civilian settlement in Lower Burma.

Although the law book was poorly arranged and offered little explanations on contradictory passages, it attained enormous popularity, owing to its encyclopedic nature and to its being written in simple Burmese with little Pali.

Indeed, overconfident Konbaung kings that followed him would go to war with all the neighbors in the next seven decades on their way to founding the second-largest Burmese empire, until they were defeated by the British in present-day northeastern India.

[citation needed] Alaungpaya has also been named as the first king of Burma to consciously manipulate ethnic identity as a means to military and political domination.

He ended the cultural autonomy adopted by the Burmese rulers of the Pagan era, and by kings Tabinshwehti and Bayinnaung, and colonized the Mon state".

[40] The charges need to be balanced with the fact that Alaungpaya was merely reacting to what historian Victor Lieberman calls "dismally self-defeating" policy of ethnic polarization of the Restored Hanthawaddy.

After executing scores of Avan captives in 1754, the Hanthawaddy leadership obliged all Bamars to wear an earring with the stamp of the Bago heir-apparent and to cut their hair in Mon fashion as a sign of loyalty to the southern kingdom.

[41] Moreover, while Alaungpaya was merciless in his sacks of Thanlyin and Bago where the moats "ran red with gore",[40] elsewhere he reappointed Mon governors who submitted.