The Mongol attacks on Southeast Asia

The Mongols successfully attacked the Song in 1127, forcing the court to move southward, and to increase its tributary alliances with the frontier region to obtain horses, metals and other com-modities for defence and war purposes. The Song tried to maintain a balance of power between the larger kingdoms, to not face an additional threat in the South. It did so by controlling the horse trade from Dali, which was a major factor in military strength (YANG 2004 298-299).

1236 the southward expansion started, and in 1253 the kingdom of Dali fell to be incorporated into the Yuan-empire as part of a grand strategy to outflank the Southern Song, eliminating their horse supply and with it a mediator at the frontier so the border shifted further south. The sparse-ly populated borderland and the rough terrain provided marching routes against the Song, turning Dali and Yunnan into an important conquest base. While Guizhou, Sichuan and Guangxi were still Song territories, the Mongols could stabilize their rule over Yunnan through a mix of using and coopting original ruling families, neutralizing their adversaries as well as promoting the in-flux of Muslims from Central Asia as soldiers and administrators on behalf of the court, who were also supposed to civilize the area by integrating the local population into the administrative, economic and educational infrastructure so that they become imperial subjects. Dali aristocracy was more than willing to help offering maps on tribes and chieftains that have not yet surrendered as well as Dali techniques to draw them into their political and economic orbit. The Yuan re-warded this help with imperial titles as well as authority over fiefs of less than ten thousand households, but charged them with keeping Yunnan and environs under control, supporting the Mongols as guides and vanguards for their expansion in Southeast Asia and crashing uprisings against the Mongols in 1264. The Song dynasty finally fell in 1276, and the overtaking of the administration and destruction of the Song military capacities gave the Mongols the means to tightly grip control over the Chinese empire. In the same year, the Yunnan Branch Secretariat to administer this province was opened. Dali, administered as a Chinese province, provided the

Mongols with a springboard to launch attacks against Đại Việt and Pagan. With greater consoli-dation of power over the frontier area, the local power stronghold in Dali became a risk for the Yuan and the local nobility was stripped more and more of its powers, titles and privileges, even-tually leading to clashes with the Dali aristocracy and Yuan administrators that remained unre-solved until the end of the dynasty. (STUART-FOX 2003, 52-53, 59; ATWILL 2003 1082;

YANG 2009, 743; DU/CHEN 1989 34-35). The Mongols could so, however, integrated the smaller tusis into their political-military hierarchies, changing the relationship from a negotiated transaction of border protection against Chinese recognition to an institutionalized, bureaucratic relationship with ranks, classifications, and delineated boundaries (HERMAN 2006, 136).

Economically, the conquest meant that Dali and the Yunnan area partly lost its position as inter-linkage between China, Tibet, Southeast Asia and India. Long-distance traders maintained Dali standards of transaction such as the use of cowry shells for money, however the relationship tween Yunnan and the Yuan center trumped over the relations between Yunnan and entities be-yond the frontier. Cowries got gradually replaced by copper and silver coins, the vector of mar-kets changed their direction towards Beijing and the massive Han immigration created large in-tra-Chinese markets, rendering certain connections abroad obsolete (YANG 2004 308-309). Also, the Yuan dynasty set up military garrisons all over Yunnan to establish domination and using its projection of force to divide and rule the chieftains. Their practices significantly changed the rela-tion to the border area as the territorial penetrarela-tion of the Mongols put them into direct contact with kingdoms that were linked to China through tributary relations but did not have much direct interaction with the Chinese empire. Burma, Sukothai, Lanna and Muang Sua (Luang Phrabang) saw themselves forced under military threat after Khubilai Khan‘s notification in 1260 to submit to Chinese suzerainty in person and redefine their tributary relations as a matter of their own se-curity. Lax tributary relations transformed into stable diplomatic ties, unofficial border trade be-came codified in new trade routes from Yunnan to Burma and the Tai kingdoms, expanding the sources of income for Theravada lowland kingdoms (STUART-FOX 2003, 55-57).

The Mongols made clear already in the name Yuan, ―the first beginning‖, that they do not feel bound by the previous order on its Southern border or any historical precedence. Their behavior was a new form of rule, in which everyone shall submit who was perceived weaker than them.

Vietnam wanted to maintain a stable situation and refused the Mongols to pass through its territo-ry to attack the Song from the south in 1257, only provoking an invasion, siege and sacking of their capital Thăng Long. The Vietnamese troops and the rough climate had the Mongolian troops

recede. In 1267, the Mongols demanded the personal submission of the Vietnamese rulers, to keep his sons in Beijing as hostages, and to appoint a Mongol governor – de facto reversing Viet-namese independence, nullifying their autonomy and plunging the state into an identity crisis.

The court therefore commissioned Lê Văn Hưu to compile a history of Vietnam to determine the Vietnamese identity as long-standing and congruent with the Vietnamese state in its current bor-ders. The purpose was to establish a record of autonomy that was not up for renegotiation with the Yuan with the effect that the Vietnamese cultural identity became stronger in its bordering effect as being separate from that of China (WOMACK 2006, 119, 123-124, 248-249; STUART-FOX 2003, 59). Lê Văn Hưu‘s work reconciled the two poles of reliance on the Chinese model of governance with a distinctively separate identity by demonstrating that Vietnam‘s intellectual horizon is within and matches the one of China while the essence of identity remains different. It was also the starting point for the national myth of a longstanding Vietnamese identity coinciding with a Vietnamese territorial state striving for independence, unification and consolidation within its borders. In a sense, Lê Văn Hưu inscribed a geographic circumference to an identity onto which he projected a state and the boundaries of the political community it holds (GAT/YAKOBSON 2013, 109). In the end, it didn‘t help. On the one hand, the Tran dynasty was falling apart with powerful landed oligarchs challenging court and administration. In addition in 1285 and again from 1287 to 1289 the Yuan launched invasions of Vietnam again – not force it into submission but to punish Champa. The border was violated and the capital was seized be-cause of a third-party conflict, so mobilization efforts were undertaken easily and a counter-attack in combination with a hostile, disease-ridden climate had the Yuan troops pushed back be-hind the frontier. While these expeditions helped to fortify the autonomy of Đại Việt within its borders, it also sent expensive tribute missions to Beijing, to re-establish tributary relations and accepting suzerainty within the Yuan world order (STUART-FOX 2003 60-61; WOMACK 2006 125). In 1279, the Yuan dynasty wanted to install a more subservient king in Thăng Long, yet the mission and the Mongol-sanctioned pretender to the throne were captured. Other missions to submit Đại Việt failed as well, for example in 1287. In total there were three invasions and nu-merous tribute offerings from the Tran dynasty, so that finally Đại Việt‘s resistance as well as diplomatic deference to Beijing helped stabilizing the border (WOMACK 2006 123). Đại Việt‘s challenges with the direct threat from the Yuan abated for a while as it had to manage its relations with the Cham kingdom to the South. Several attacks from there in the 14^th century provided Ho Quy Ly the opportunity to topple the Tran dynasty and establish the Ho dynasty, but the state

it-self remained stable. Confucianist statecraft allowed a continued administration regardless of mil-itary circumstances, and the rivalry between the milmil-itary and the Confucian literati kept both of these groups in check, so that especially at the border strong local units existed headed by civilian and military chiefs. Ho also curtailed the privileges of the landed gentry, reigned into Buddhism and distributed land. While being popular and setting up stable structures for the Vietnamese state, he also provided a pretext for the Ming to invade Vietnam in 1407 (LIEBERMAN 1993, 511-513;

WOMACK 2006, 125).

Regarding Theravada Southeast Asia, the Yuan first dispatched an envoy to king Narathihapate of Pagan, which was quite unprecedented as there were only two previous tributary missions in 1004 and 1106 at the time of which Pagan‘s gifts were seen as tribute and the kingdom ranked as an outer barbarian state in the Chinese universe. Consequently, the Yuan required a renewal of the tributary relation after it took over, which the Burmese interpreted in the Theravada-sense of the concept, meaning it would be drawn closely into the Chinese rule as a provider of necessary goods and manpower. These missions were not aimed at territorial extension, but to increase sta-bility at the Sino-Burmese border by bringing Pagan into the Yuan tributary network and to force Pagan to increase its efforts against refugees from Yuan rule in the frontier region. The refusal of tribute, the ignored request to contain anti-Yuan forces in the mountains, the assassination of the Chinese delegation and the invasion of vassals who already symbolically submitted to Chinese suzerainty – all means to protect the autonomy and sovereignty of the court by upholding the symbolic frontier – led to an invasion in 1277. The mixed result – no official tribute mission, no punishment of Narathihapate, no destruction of the capital – led to another invasion in 1287, dur-ing which Narathihapate‘s sons poisoned him, took over the throne and offered to pay tribute.

This gave Pagan some breathing space in a more or less maintained status quo at the border and in relation to its own tributaries for 80 more years (STUART-FOX 2003 60-61; HALL 1984, 66;

YIAN 2010, 144). However, it was the start of the decline of Pagan. The particular structure of finances with government donations to the sangha who was essentially in control of productive lands, left a Pagan at the time with incredible riches but an empty royal treasury. The contradic-tion between this-worldly needs of state proteccontradic-tion and otherworldly merit-making left the state in a precarious situation regarding border protection and administrative depth. This in turn caused a competition among the elites for labor, which strengthened lesser centers in the mandala at the cost of central power and control that could easily be attributed to waning karmic powers and jus-tifying internal rebellions, which weakened the state further (BENTLEY 1986, 284).

The policy of invasions did not lead to any real benefits for the Mongols, and ended with the death of Kubilai Khan also as lack of pastures for horse-breeding didn‘t allow for massive cam-paigns – the competitive advantage the Mongols had (FINDLAY/O‘ROURKE 2007 104-105).

The tribute based Pax Mongolica in East and Southeast Asia changed the nature of relations. The governor of Yunnan was responsible for interactions with frontier chieftains, Tai principalities, borderstates and Pagan. The conquests and the new structure of interactions facilitated cross-border communications and interactions (YANG 2004 313).

This was particularly the case for regions and states that remained beyond the reach of central powers for a long time, such as the Tarup, who during the approach of the first Mongol invasion first started enlisting military support from the Shan just to defer to the Yuan‘s suzerainty, volun-tarily opting to forge closer ties to Yunnan than Myanmar. The resulting muang enclosed Bur-mese, Mongol, Yunnanese, Chinese, Turks, re-defining the ethnicity of Tarup to the relationship with the geographic area as it being located beyond the boundary and suzerainty of Burma.

Therefore, the Mongol invasion catalyzed a new, rather imagined, boundary in northern Burma that was not marked by military posts or border contracts (YIAN 2010, 142, 151-152).

At the same time as the Khmer power declined and left a power vacuum after Jayavarman VII, more and more of smaller Tai principalities, new or already existing muangs, began to form larg-er kingdoms, gradually filling what the retreating Khmlarg-er-powlarg-er left open. They seemed to accept Mongol suzerainty, and charismatic rulers formed larger kingdoms within the reach of their man-dalas. The Yuan invasion simply catalyzed this process. The predecessor of Lan Na, Ngoenyang so fell under the dominion of Chiang Hung in the 1250s and King Mangrai, conquering Haripunchai, the second predecessor, so formed the kingdom of Lan Na. The kingdom with a capital in Chiang Mai, adopted Theravada Buddhist ideals of kingship, understood its territorial reach as normative rather than prescriptive within fixed boundaries, and so added another manda-la-layer over the borderland. The second Yuan invasion of Pagan in 1287 accelerated this for-mation even more as three powerful Tai princes of the frontier region formed a united front against the Mongols. When the muang Chiang Hung fell to the Mongols, king Mangrai retook the city. Another Mongol invasion in 1301 failed, border squirmishes continued between that polity and the Mongols so that only acknowledgement of the Yuan court and tributary missions could placate the situation. In the longer term, also the decline of Pagan increased the frontier-area as more Shan migrated southwards setting up their own power centers under the rule of king Magadu/Wareru, yet the internal quarrels divided this territory time and again – increasing its

structural essence of a frontier region (STUART-FOX 2003 63-65; MAW 2015, 2; BENTLEY 1986, 283; TARLING 2004, 44).

In the Chinese side of the frontier region the strong degree auf autonomy the borderland-states enjoyed became so reversed from the 13^th century onward and the black box of the border region became a much more structured affair with greater oversight from the Yuan through a civil ad-ministration with native chieftains who as intermediaries had to modulate resistance towards Yu-an rule through tax farming Yu-and military labor. The established system should later help the Ming dynasty to expand settlement policies and military garrisons to develop an extraction apparatus for the political ambitions of the empire (CAFFREY 2009 192-193).

Given the new administration, chieftains followed different strategies. Cheli engaged at first in tributary relations, but later on fought Mongol troops only to be crushed in battle. Sipsongpanna on the other hand – used to navigate the treacherous power patterns in the frontier – split rule, paid tribute, and ceded multiple sovereignty to get protection (GUNN 2011, 42-43; DAVIS 2003, 184). However, except political control, direct war and occupation proved difficult for the Mon-gols in Southeast Asia as the bedrock of their army was the cavalry and pastures for horses be-came rare in Southwestern China. Control worked best with the fortification of the Chinese ministrative practices through simuren, outside experts from Central Asia, Tibet or Persia, to ad-ministrate military, civil and financial affairs. These new Muslim settlers strengthened the al-ready existing Muslim community that descended from Muslim soldiers who helped crushing a Tibetan rebellion in 801 and never returned. As the sedentary population was their tax base, Mongol rulers tried to enhance productivity, increasing the territorial reach of control through transport and irrigation infrastructure as well as strict currency control through paper money (FINDLEY/O‘ROURKE 2007, 105-106; YEGAR 1966, 73-74).

These events had a great impact on the border area. China expanded its direct control south fur-ther into Yunnan, opening the area for a new influx of Chinese migrants and provoking an exodus of locals for whom the pressure became too big – either into the mountains, the frontier area or even further into Southeast Asia. Continued Chinese power projection, albeit by an ethnically Mongol emperor on the throne, into Đại Việt and Pagan was made possible, as the Yuan dynasty did not need to fear a threat from its northern border. The standstill Đại Việt and Pagan achieved was deceptive as a new attack could happen anytime – the only factor guaranteeing some degree of stability was the recognition of suzerainty and sending tribute missions to become invested as a vassal king (STUART-FOX 2003 66-67).

The Mongol idea of power was centered not on territory but over people, so that sovereignty was jurisdictional rather than territorial. It was necessary to win the loyalty of the people for tax pay-ments, corvée labor and military service, so that the new dynasty fostered patron-client relations with native chieftains of the conquered areas. Indigenous rule continued, yet the relationships in-tensified with the center laying the groundwork for the Ming to switch to a more territory-based concept of statehood with geopolitical boundaries and territorially organized government offices.

By tying the people closer to the center, the Yuan provided the Ming a pretext to also pursue a territorial consolidation of the area through conquest and colonization (CAFFREY 2009, 191).

The effects of the Mongol conquest on the border was primarily a hardening and consolidation of the Chinese grip over the frontier, which in turn pushed the fluidity and flexibility further south, where it concentrated and spilled over to Southeast Asia. There, the power-vacuum left by declin-ing Pagan and Khmer, soaked up chiefs and Tai settlers like sponges, increasdeclin-ing the fluidity on that side of the frontier area.