Feudal Era Commerce

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Đại Việt Conquering Champa and Capturing the entire Jiaozhi Ocean System

At this point (1470), Thánh Tông and his court decided to strike against Champa, to put an end to Vijaya’s constant raids against the old northern part of Champa that was now southern Đai Viêt. As the Vietnamese state had changed from the older Southeast Asian-style mandala system to a Sinic bureaucratic administration, it had also changed its pattern of foreign relations to a stronger sense of being “civilized” versus those outside such civilization. Henceforth, the Vietnamese would not merely conquer, loot, and return home, leaving the Cham capital and territory to its own aristocracy; they would seek to destroy Champa almost entirely. 

From the early 1470s until the 1690s, whenever the Vietnamese state seized Cham lands the conquered territory was made part of its provincial administration. Đai Viêt was beginning the vaunted Vietnamese southward march (nam tiến). But was there an economic element to this campaign as well? While Thánh Tông made his case to his people and his ancestors in political, cultural, and strategic terms, he was undoubtedly also aware of the Jiaozhi Yang trading system, of Thi Nai’s major place therein, and of the ceramic manufacture of Champa. Did he feel there was an economic competition between Đai Viêt and Champa over the benefits to be gained from this export commodity? Though not emphasized in the record of Đai Viêt, the economic well-being of society was a key element in the approach of the new government, and the manufacturing and commercial sectors in the eastern coastal region were strongly tied into the Jiaozhi Yang system. 

Thus, one factor in Đai Viêt’s strike to the south might have been to seize Thi Nai and to shift Champa’s role in this trade to Đai Viêt and Vân Đồn. Intentional or not, this seems to have been one result of the campaign—Thi Nai would apparently cease to be an international port and the Jiaozhi Yang system was ripped away from the Melayu Sea, sending shivers through Malacca. Backed by his powerful new bureaucratic apparatus, Thánh Tông led his huge army south by land and sea to destroy Vijaya (modern Bình Đinh Province). Its land was divided and its northern part became Đai Viêt’s thirteenth province, Quảng Nam. Many local Cham people were brought north and settled in the Red River Delta, where they were ordered to take Vietnamese-style names and conform to Sinic morality. 

In addition, the king acted to open more lands in the lower delta and to increase the population there with a variety of peoples. The key question here is how did this crushing victory affect the Jiaozhi Yang system of international trade? There is almost no reference in the Vietnamese court chronicle to the trading system, either in the south (Champa’s former system) or in the north (the port of Vân Đôn). Only in 1485 do two items of possible significance to this discussion appear, both indirect. From the far south, there was a report that a lack of ships was making it difficult for the new province of Quảng Nam to send its tax collection north. This dearth of shipping must indicate the complete disruption of the port of Thi Nai and the former trade of the region. At the same time, in the north, the royal court in Thăng Long set regulations for the formal reception of foreign envoys. Since these envoys came from Champa, Laos, Siam, Java, and Malacca, this would seem to indicate the continued functioning of Đai Viêt’s seagoing contacts and hence of Vân Đôn itself. 

The new para mount king of Champa did not forget what had been lost and kept trying to gain Ming aid in recovering it, as Chinese court records suggest. In 1478, Thánh Tông complained to Beijing that a seagoing link between Champa (now located farther south) and the Ryukyu Islands had led to an attack on the southern Đai Viêt coast, perhaps trying to recapture Thị Nại. In his diplomatic gamesmanship downplaying reports of Đai Viêt’s attack on Champa, Thánh Tông discounted any desire on his part to do such a thing, rhetorically asking why his kingdom needed (or would want) such a place, with only mountain goods and little in the way of agriculture and livestock. “Little benefit” would accrue to Đai Viêt, he claimed, if such were the case.

This reputed attack may have been a reaction by others in the Jiaozhi Yang network against the new dominance of Đai Viêt, which may also have disrupted Java-Ming relations as well. Three years later imperial China complained that Đai Viêt had interfered with an embassy from Malacca and that Malacca felt threatened by Đai Viêt. Furthermore, in 1487, 1489, and 1495, the paramount king of Champa’s last constituent polities, Kauthara and Panduranga, used his country’s connections by sea with Guangzhou in his effort to restrain Đai Viêt and to restore the prior situation. Beijing was not sympathetic, not least because the requests involved merchants and “the vast maritime regions.” 

After the death of Lê Thánh Tông in 1497, Champa again approached Beijing. This time, its ruler got straight to the point—“The area of Xinzhou [Thi Nai] in our country has long been occupied by Annan [Đai Viêt].” The king requested that his son be recognized by Beijing as ruler of Champa, “so that in future days he can protect the area of Xinzhou Port.” In 1505, following the death of the next king, Thánh Tông’s son Hiên Tông, Champa again requested the Cham prince be granted “Xinzhou port and other areas.” For the Chinese court, once again the matter of merchants and their guile surfaced: “countries across the seas,” in Ming eyes, were trying to manipulate Beijing to solve their own problems. The Ming court continued its policy of noninvolvement in these maritime affairs.

Thus, after 1471, for more than three decades the court records in Beijing showed Champa repeatedly attempting to reestablish the Jiaozhi Yang commercial network by regaining its former port of Thi Nai (Xinzhou), now part of Đai Viêt. We see no sign of it being used as the major port it had once been; but neither is there any explicit textual evidence that Vân Đôn was the major port it had been. The question remains: had the Jiaozhi Yang system been disrupted totally, readjusted, or affected in some other way?

From the Pandanan wreck northeast of Borneo, with its heavy preponderance of Champa ware, to the Hội An (Cù Lao Chàm) wreck off the central coast of Vietnam, with its great amount of Vietnamese ware, the change appears to reflect the loss of the Champa port and the continued functioning of Vân Đôn. These Đai Viêt wares came mainly from the eastern delta, especially Chu Đâu, but also perhaps from farther upriver around the capital of Thăng Long and Kinh Băc Province. 

Before she died, the late Roxanna Brown was in the process of arguing that Đai Viêt’s conquest of Champa both destroyed the Vijaya kilns of Go Sanh and brought Cham potters north into the eastern delta of Đai Viêt. She posited that their presence there led to the major increase in the later fifteenth-century export of Vietnamese ceramics and injected a specific Cham element (a particular form of bowl) into the Vietnamese style. If she was right, then Đai Viêt’s victory not only captured the northern territory of Champa but also Vijaya’s place in the Jiaozhi Yang system as well as the role of Vijaya’s ceramics in that system. The group of shipwrecks identified by Brown as Hongzhi (the Ming reign period from 1488 to 1505) carried much Vietnamese and varied Thai wares, plus the first sizable quantity of Ming blue and white along with some Burmese and Champa pieces. I would thus postulate a thriving port of Vân Đôn as the key node in the shifting Jiaozhi Yang system for these decades. 

I had initially believed that changes in court and government policy in the 1460s under Lê Thánh Tông led to the disengagement of Đai Viêt from maritime commerce and the Jiaozhi Yang system, that emphasis on traditional Chinese economic policy (agriculture over trade), efforts to gain better control over hard-to-manage mountain and sea territories, and a foreign policy increasingly against foreign interactions had all acted to restrict Đai Viêt’s involvement in this trade. In the process, Vân Đôn had presumably shriveled and died as an international port, cut off by these policies. Yet, if we assume that the shipwreck and ceramic evidence dated to the Hongzhi period imply a functioning manufacturing sector that exported through a major port, then Vân Đôn must have continued and thrived as the key port for Đai Viêt manufactures, since no other site seems to have been available. 

Economically, what the Hông Đức period (1470–97) of Lê Thánh Tông seems to indicate was a policy of well-being for the general populace, one that ensured the proper functioning of the economy, in both its commercial and agricultural sectors. On this basis, we might assume that the stable and prosperous bureaucratic state that developed in fifteenth-century Đai Viêt had the practical goal of advancing a well-run economic system and would have encouraged and facilitated this manufacturing and commercial network as part of the Jiaozhi Yang field. In fact, Vân Đôn had most likely become the key node in this network over the final quarter of the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth, replacing Thi Nai. As long as this bureaucratic structure continued to operate well, facilitating economic transactions, I would expect that internal and external commerce continued as well.

The End of the Jiaozhi Ocean System

Roxanna Brown noted that this flow of ceramics stopped after the Hongzhi period (1505). Vietnamese, Cham, and Burmese wares all ceased to be found in wrecks of the Zhengde period (1506–20). The Chinese blue and white disappeared as well, as the Ming court restricted private trade once again. Only Thai wares, particularly Sawankhalok, continued. If we equate the flow of Southeast Asian ceramics with the Jiaozhi Yang system and believe that Vân Đôn was the key node for this system in those decades, what happened? Brown suggested a “Mac gap” for Vietnamese (and other) wares during the sixteenth century. It would appear that this “gap” actually marked the end of the Jiaozhi Yang system, the disappearance of Vân Đôn, and the transition into what would eventually be the new system, that of Hội An. How can we explain this?

The reason would seem to lie in the disastrous reign of Lê Uy Muc Ðê (1505– 9) and the chaotic years that followed. ( @dat2492; @Leo; Wasn't Lê Uy Mục called "the demon king" by Vietnamese? He was ruthless, indulged himself in wine and women all day, destroyed the fortune that his ancestors took decades to build. He brought the Lê dynasty to its decline).

Lê Hiến Tông had succeeded his father on Thánh Tông’s death in 1497 and had maintained his father’s system until his own death in 1504. Then after a short-lived reign came the ascension of Uy Muc Ðê. The new ruler had been enraged when passed over for the throne in 1504 and turned fiercely against his father’s Thanh Hóa kin and their allies. Instead, he utilized female kinship ties, via his mother, his adopted mother, and his wife, to establish himself in Kinh Băc, Hải Dương, and northern Sơn Nam Province, just south of the capital.

Empowering the kin of these women created a Red River Delta political base for himself. The avaricious maternal kin came to dominate the state, and much royal and aristocratic turmoil ensued. As Nola Cooke noted for the politics of Đai Viêt, “The decay had begun under Uy-muc.” This appears to have held true for the socioeconomic situation as well.

Caught in the middle of these struggles was the local Cham community, already facing cultural conflict. Told that Chams were in revolt, the king ordered them exterminated. In the meantime, Cham servants of powerful families and of the aristocracy began fleeing south. Elements of this Cham community in the Red River Delta had probably continued to play roles in the Jiaozhi Yang system, both commercial and manufacturing (the potters), so this savage reaction against them would have disrupted Đai Viêt’s place therein. (There was one mention of a seagoing Cham caught in the middle of all this.)

In addition, the rapacity of the royal maternal kin had a major impact on the economy as they grew high, mighty, and rich:

As a result [of their actions] in the residential area and the marketplaces, all those households that worshipped the guild founders had to hide [their wealth]. When [a number of named powerful figures] appeared on the roads, [officials and commoners] would run and hide in their homes and shops until [those powerful figures] had passed by. Throughout the land, people lost hope!

Texts written immediately after Uy Muc Ðê’s reign spoke of the royal clan run amok, “wolfish factions” thriving, and the lowly lifted to power. Mountain areas were stripped of their trees, and coastal zones ran out of salt—such were those times.

The chronicle reported that continued and increasing construction projects exhausted the people of Kinh Băc and Hải Dương Provinces, two maternal kin bases that had close connections to the manufacturing and export trade. Such disruptions to manufacturing, commerce, and the environment would have led to the collapse of the export sector and with it the port of Vân Đôn and the Jiaozhi Yang system itself, at least as far as it affected Đai Viêt.

As a fitting epitaph for both, the court chronicle quoted an edict that declared, “Over the Four Seas, there was dire poverty/utter misery!”

In the following years, any chance for revival of the port and the system would have been crushed by the constant turmoil in Đai Viêt. Rival aristocratic families, especially the Trinh and the Nguyên, fought over the court and the throne. In 1516, a great revolt broke out in the lower delta against Thánh Tông’s bureaucratic system. It involved surviving Chams, Buddhists, a reincarnation of Indra (ĐếThích), and an appeal to revive the pre-Lê dynasty of the Trân. One can imagine maritime and commercial elements taking part in it as well. The rebels took the capital before being defeated.

Emerging of the new trading network. Rise of Hội An and Phố Hiến

By the time stability and prosperity returned to the Red River Delta in the mid-sixteenth century under the new coastal Mạc dynasty (1528–92), including renewed ceramic production, a total change had occurred in the international trade system. The Portuguese had taken Malacca, and a new commercial regime was developing. As Pires noted for both Đai Viêt and Champa, they played little direct role in the new system. By the middle of the sixteenth century, according to da Cruz, Đai Viêt, although doing well, was not part of the international economic system. Pires and da Cruz mentioned no ports of any consequence on the eastern seaboard of the Southeast Asian mainland. Hence we arrive at the “Mac gap” and the disappearance of the Jiaozhi Yang system. 

Through much of the sixteenth century, the commercial situation around the South China Sea remained quite fluid, with the ever dynamic wokou (mixed Japanese and Chinese pirates) and traders active there. Eventually, in the second half of the century, the Portuguese set themselves up in Macao and the Spanish in Manila, as the Ming were opening up trade on their southeast coast and Japan was emerging from its civil wars. 

In the midst of all this, a new commercial system began to form along the coasts of Đai Viêt and the remaining Champa polities (Kauthara and Panduranga), just as the Vietnamese southern push began to get underway in earnest. 

In the south, instead of a port reappearing at the “New District” (Xinzhou, or Thi Nai) in what is now Quy Nhơn, where one had existed since the twelfth century, the new port of Hôi An rose at the pre-twelfth century port of Jiuzhou (the “Old District”), where the Cham polity of Amaravati had done its trading. Here Chinese and Japanese would gather to trade with each other, as well as with Vietnamese, other Southeast Asians, and Europeans. 

Encouraged by the rising Nguyên polity on Đai Viêt’s southern border, this new trading regime expanded greatly. To the north, the inland port of Phố Hiên and the capital of Đai Viêt itself would eventually join the new seventeenth-century international trade system, although without long-term success. 

Thus, for a hundred years, from the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth, events in Đai Viêt seem to have controlled the Jiaozhi Yang system, both positively and negatively, eventually leading to its destruction. Where Thi Nai and Champa had been the most important part of the system through the first two thirds of the fifteenth century, Lê Thánh Tông’s strong and pragmatic bureaucratic state seems to have taken control of the system over the final third of the century and into the early sixteenth, eliminating Champa as a major competitor and opening the way for Đai Viêt’s own productivity to feed directly into the system. Though we have no knowledge of customs duties or government fees, the profits from this system must have helped underwrite the expenses of the burgeoning state. This all collapsed, internally and externally, apparently following the spiraling demands placed on key local areas under Uy Muc Ðế and his grasping relatives, and any hope of revival was crushed by the political chaos that followed. By the time the Mac were established on the throne, the international commercial system itself was changing dramatically to the detriment of Đai Viêt’s participation. It was only toward the end of the sixteenth century that the maritime system reformulated itself, now focused on Hôi An in the south.