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Chapter 4 The august founder of the Ming dynasty, the Hongwu 洪武
emperor (r. 1368–98), while recognising the need for
Causes and security, was also wary of the costs of warfare, noting:

Consequences of the The ancients had a saying: ‘Expanding territory is not the way
to lasting peace. Troubling the people is the road to disorder.’
… I feel that as the various small man 蠻 and yi 夷 countries [to
Ming Intervention in the south] are obstructed by mountains, are across the seas or
are secluded in some corner, they do not pose a danger to
Vietnam in the Early China. I will certainly not attack them. 1

He later enjoined his successors from doing so as well,
Fifteenth Century though in fact the founder himself was not immune to the
lures of territorial expansion. Nevertheless, his own son, the
Yongle 永樂 emperor (r. 1403–24), violated this injunction
Kenneth M. Swope even more explicitly and embarked upon a costly two
decade-long effort to formally annex the Kingdom of Annan
(Annam or Đại Việt, modern-day northern Vietnam) to the
Ming as the province of Jiaozhi 交趾. While this action has
2
traditionally been understood as a manifestation of Yongle’s
vainglory and desire to legitimise his reign after having
usurped the throne from his nephew, the Jianwen 建文
emperor (r. 1399–1402), it can also be viewed within the
broader context of Ming grand strategy, which was to
‘manifest awe’ (wei 威) both domestically and abroad so as to
3
maintain hegemony and preserve regional security. Ideally,
as noted in the ancient Chinese military classics, awe could
be maintained with a fairly circumscribed expenditure of
resources, but there were also times when only blunt military
4
force would suffice. Indeed, as seen repeatedly in Ming
military interventions in Southeast Asia during the 15th
century, there were times when military force was the
preferred method of establishing awe. In this sense it served
5
as an important adjunct to regular diplomatic relations as
embodied in the so-called ‘tributary system’ and could even
be seen as an object lesson for neighbouring powers. The
6
present chapter will consider the Ming intervention in
Vietnam within this light and also discuss some of the
broader unintended ramifications of the Ming decision to
intervene in Vietnam. 7
The term tributary (or tribute) system is a catch-all
shorthand for the way Chinese empires generally conducted
foreign relations and trade. On the one hand, it was
designed to ensure some level of security and international
primacy for the Chinese empire. But it was also an
important component of domestic legitimation. As one
scholar has remarked:
No sharp line divided the conditions for maintaining
international harmony from those for ensuring social and
political order within the Middle Kingdom. The tribute system
mediated between international and domestic harmony; hence,
it was perceived as extending the emperor’s power as well as
Chinese civilisation to distant realms, while external threats to
the empire, such as barbarian attack or mistreatment of an
imperial embassy, were taken as evidence of domestic
8
weakness.
Thus it was imperative upon the Chinese monarch to
restore order among the tributary states so as to reify his
status as the rightful Son of Heaven. Of course the degree to
which Chinese monarchs actually did this was predicated
upon both the perceived strategic interests of the empire at
any given time and the predilections of the reigning

Causes and Consequences of the Ming Intervention in Vietnam in the Early Fifteenth Century | 37