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merely reinforced these aims while actually extending Ming As the Ming occupation wore on, firearms proved useful
influence considerably, at least in the short term. A song time and again in aiding the Ming to quickly quell
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was composed in commemoration of the pacification of Vietnamese uprisings. Particularly striking from a military
Annam, Zhang was promoted to a dukedom and his stipend perspective on the Ming invasion of Vietnam is the variety
was raised considerably. The other states around Vietnam of weapons they used and the variety of settings in which
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were also suitably impressed and were loath to challenge the they were utilised, attesting to their adaptability and
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military might of the Ming. So in this sense the Yongle readiness to employ firearms, in contradistinction to
emperor achieved additional strategic aims without having Western characterisations of the Ming as pacifistic and
to resort to military action in these other places. But uninterested in military technologies. The Ming deployed
rebellion soon broke out in Vietnam due to taxation woes, firearms in breaking elephant charges, attacking heavy
administrative difficulties and agitation by Trần claimants. fortifications, and on ships. In at least one case they used
There is also considerable evidence suggesting that Ming their firepower to overwhelm defenders using heavy
eunuch pacification commissioners were exorbitant in their crossbows against them. All told, the Ming left an
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demands for luxury items, particularly gemstones. occupation force of some 87,000 scattered in 39 citadels
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Mu Sheng was initially dispatched from Yunnan to around the country, though most were concentrated in the
handle matters but he was unsuccessful, and Zhang Fu was Red River delta area. These would be bolstered by frequent
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again dispatched to Vietnam in 1409. He enjoyed quick infusions of new troops as circumstances dictated, the Ming
success, defeating the Trần rebels, rejecting their claims to quickly coming to the realisation that their forces were
legitimacy and refusing their request to seek investiture from insufficient and that military force alone could not suffice to
the Ming. Zhang executed the last Trần claimant and bring the Vietnamese to heel. 76
Vietnam again seemed to be under control, prompting his Over time, however, the Ming would also lose their
recall to China. This was a pattern that would be repeated technological advantage. The Vietnamese were already
over the next several years. Even the Yongle’s emperor’s aware of the benefits of firearms in warfare and had used
promise to remit taxes for three years if the people returned them effectively against the Chams (in what is now southern
to their old occupations and abandoned their resistance was Vietnam) in the 1390s. So when the resistance began in
unsuccessful in quelling dissent. In a situation eerily earnest, one of the first things the rebels did was establish
reminiscent of the American experience centuries later, the arsenals to manufacture weapons. In fact, this was most
Ming in Vietnam would consistently win major battles with likely an extension of preparations begun by Hồ Quý Ly in
their superior firepower only to see rebel groups spring up as anticipation of a Ming invasion. And as the rebels acquired
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soon as Ming troops left an area. The rebel leader Lê Lợi more and more Ming firearms, the tide of the occupation
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(1385–1433) would eventually emerge as the most intractable started to turn. As one Vietnamese source noted, ‘their
of these freedom fighters and it was he who would eventually firearms piled up and their gunpowder stores were filled’.
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drive the Ming out of Vietnam. Over time the Vietnamese This was nowhere more evident than in the successful
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captured and started manufacturing their own firearms, Vietnamese siege of Xương Giang that signalled the end of
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evening the technological balance. Ming power in Vietnam. Vietnamese sources confirm that
This process in turn had serious implications for the despite their own establishment of arsenals, most of their
Vietnamese state later and should be seen as perhaps the weapons were captured from the Chinese or brought to
most significant of the unintended consequences of the Ming them by defectors. Since many Vietnamese served as
invasion. In light of the mounting evidence to the contrary, it assistant commanders and vice commanders and as officers
is surprising that many military historians continue to in guards and companies (the colonial administration
ignore the fact that Asians not only invented gunpowder mirroring that of the Ming), it can be reasonably presumed
technologies, but improved upon them and used them to that these men gained training in the use of firearms and
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great effect long before the coming of Western gun traders. passed this on to the rebels when they joined the resistance
Moreover, innovations in the manufacture and deployment movement.
of gunpowder weapons often proved critical in state- This would not be the only case of unintentional
building efforts and in the maintenance of regional stability, technology transfer on the part of the Ming. Deserters
a process historians have often confined to the Western apparently transmitted Ming firearms technology to Burma
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experience. Yet, as Peter Lorge has recently provocatively in the early 1500s after a Ming rout of the Maw Shans (as the
argued, Europeans only began to exploit profitably Burmese called the Shan polities) in a border clash, and
gunpowder technologies when their states became more like Ming guns most likely entered the rest of Burma and
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the imperial bureaucratic Chinese state. By extension, the northeast India around the same time via traders. The
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same argument can be made for Southeast Asian states, Vietnamese refused Ming demands to return captured
most notably Vietnam. While much has been made of weapons after peace was restored between the states in the
Vietnamese cultural and institutional borrowing from Ming 15th century. This Ming request in itself is ironic given that
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China and its importance in the maturation of the they claimed to have acquired 135,900 horses, cows and
Vietnamese state, until recently far less attention has been elephants and over 2,000,000 weapons in their initial 1407
paid to military borrowings. Just as they did with the conquest of Vietnam as part of their tributary exactions.
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tributary system itself, the Vietnamese adopted and adapted Significantly, the Ming used the elephants not only for
military technologies to suit their own ends and advance parades and in the imperial menagerie (see discussion by
their position vis-à-vis their neighbours. Jonathan Hay in Chapter 5 of this volume), but also for

42 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450