Empire in Asia: A New Global History: Volume One From Chinggisid to Qing 9781472591210, 9781474295758, 9781472591234

Citation preview

Empire in Asia

Empire in Asia: A New Global History Volume One From Chinggisid to Qing

Edited by Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Jack Fairey, Brian P. Farrell, and Contributors, 2018 Jack Fairey, Brian P. Farrell, and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. x constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Sharon Mah Cover image © Genghiz Khan in conquered Bokhara demands the surrender of buried monies. India. Moghul. circa 1590. Court of Akbar the Great, Lahore. Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB set: 978-1-4725-9666-6 HB: 978-1-4725-9121-0 ePDF: 978-1-4725-9123-4 eBook: 978-1-4725-9122-7 Series: Empire in Asia Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Linguistic Conventions Notes on Contributors Series Introduction: Reordering an Imperial Modern Asia Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

ix x xi xii 1

Concepts and Historiography Definitions Revisiting Empire in Asia

2 4 6

Introduction: Making Imperial Asia  Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

9

1 Inner Asia, 1100s–​1405: The Making of Chinggisid Eurasia Florence Hodous The Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia Formation of the Mongol Empire Building the Empire Imperial Identity A Mandate to Rule the World Legacies of the Mongol Empire Mongol Decline and Successor States 2 The Great Ming and East Asia: The World Order of a Han-​Centric Chinese Empire, 1368–​1644 Jinping Wang Political Legitimacy Imperial Governance Monarchy and Bureaucracy Community Frontier Management Foreign Relations with Other East Asian States Conclusion

15 15 16 19 23 26 29 33 43 44 48 48 52 55 63 69

Contents

3 East Asia under the Expanding Qing Frederik Vermote Introduction Jurchen Origins Formation of the Manchus Imperial Consolidation and Expansion Institutions of Empire The Banner System Manchu Language Government Ministries Control of Frontiers and Subjects The Qing in Decline Qing Legacies 4 Southwest Asia, 1300–​1800: Ottomans, Safavids, and the Turco-​Persianate Imperial Tradition Jack Fairey Introduction History of the Imperial Idea: Persia History of the Imperial Idea: Greco-​Roman World History of the Imperial Idea: Caliphate The Türkmen Dynasties Ottomans: From Beylik to Sultanate Ottomans: Imperialism as Crisis Management Safavids: From Sufi Ṭarīqah to Millenarian Empire Imperial Self-​Understanding Imperial Visions of World Order Borderlands Institutions Ottoman and Safavid Legacies 5 South Asia, 1400–​1800: The Mughal Empire and the Turco-​Persianate Imperial Tradition in the Indian Subcontinent Murari Kumar Jha Introduction Mughal Conquests and Imperial Expansion Structure and Institutions of the Mughal Empire Process of Decline The South Asian Context of Mughal Notions of Kingship and Sovereignty Mughal Imperial Ideas and the Articulation of Legitimacy Mughal Interactions with Other Empires Legacy of the Mughal Empire

vi

77 77 79 80 84 85 85 87 90 92 97 98 107 107 107 108 110 111 113 115 116 120 125 127 129 131 141 141 142 145 148 150 152 157 161

Contents

6 Northern Eurasia, 1300–​1800: Russian Imperial Practice from Tsardom to Empire Paul W. Werth

171

Introduction Russia, Asia, Europe The Rise and Growth of Muscovy: A Brief Sketch Legitimation and Imaginings Motivations Institutions and Practices Conclusion

171 172 174 176 180 183 190

7 In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia Bruce M. Lockhart

195

Introduction Historiographical Overview Toward a Synthesis Kingship and Ideology Comparative Observations 8 In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World Sher Banu Khan Srivijaya, 700–​1400: Seventh-​Century “Harbor City” or “Imperial Construct”? Melaka, 1400–​1600: Islamic City-​State or a Global Malay/​Islamic Center? State-Formation and the Creation of “Absolutist States” in Insular Southeast Asia, ca. 1500–​1700: Toward “Genuine Empire Formation”? The Beginnings of “Empire-​Building” in Insular Southeast Asia? The Case of Aceh The Beginnings of “Empire-​Building” in Insular Southeast Asia? The Case of Johor Mainland/​Island Southeast Asia Dichotomy: A Case Study of Success and Failure in the Empire Project? 9 Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–​1700s: The Portuguese and Spanish Empires in Asia Anthony Rendell Disney Introduction The Hybrid Character of the Iberian Empires: Seaborne, Maritime, and Territorial Transportation Networks

195 195 199 206 208 215

217 220 222 223 228 231 239 239 240 240

vii

Contents

Networks of Trade Catholic Mission Networks Formal Imperium and Territorial Empire The Iberian Empires and the Great Powers of Asia The Spanish Territorial Empire in the Philippines Informal Conquests and Freelance Conquistadores Imperial Lines of Defense Social Interaction and Cultural Exchange The Iberians and the Other European Empires in Asia Twilight of Empire Conclusion 10 Chartered Companies and Empire Peter Borschberg Introduction Research What Is a Chartered Company? Era of the East India Companies Why Companies? Were the East India Companies Successful? Importance of the Charter Territory Were All Chartered Companies Instruments of Empire? From Companies to Company States Legacies of the Chartered Companies Index

viii

241 244 246 249 251 252 253 253 257 259 260 269 269 272 273 275 277 278 280 281 283 287 295

Illustrations

1.1 1.2 2.1 3.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 9.1 10.1

Mongol Ulus, c. 1294 18 Central Asia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 36 Northern Border Garrisons and the Great Wall 57 The Qing Empire in 1759 78 Portrait of Mehmed II, the Conqueror (Edirne, 1432–​Gebze, 1481), Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, painting by Gentile Bellini (ca. 1429–​1507), 1480 121 Ottoman-Safavid territories, ca. 1660 128 Jahāngīr’s Dream: ‘Abbās I, Shah of Persia (left) and Jahāngīr, Emperor of India, ca. 1620 159 Map of India in 1757 (ca. 1912) 162 Tribes of Siberia, by Semen U. Remezov, early eighteenth century 173 The Russian Empire in 1700 185 Mainland Southeast Asia, 1220 201 Mainland Southeast Asia, 1340 202 Mainland Southeast Asia, 1540 203 Island Southeast Asia: Sumatra, West Java, and Malay Peninsula, ca. 1700 216 Ports and Islands in East Africa and the Coast of India, 1630 263 Historic towns in Asia, 1600 270

Acknowledgments

These volumes emerged from a research project based in the Department of History, National University of Singapore, with which they also share a title. The investigators, editors, authors, and project members note with gratitude the support provided by the Singapore Ministry of Education through a research grant from the MOE Academic Research Fund, Tier 2, without which this work would not have been possible. Grateful thanks also to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, as well as the Department, for understanding and support. Claire Lipscomb and Emma Goode from Bloomsbury were more patient than we deserved and very supportive, for which our thanks. Among the authors, special mention must go to Thomas Dubois for doing so much to launch the entire project in the first place. Miriam Kaminishi and Ishizu Tomoyuki made timely and welcome contributions to the project as a whole. Most welcome and effective research assistance was provided by Michelle Djong, Daniel Lee, Aloysius Ng, Sandeep Singh, Amelia Tan, Wilfred Teo, and Jennifer Yip. Last but not least, the many students who over the years have taken our course HY2245 History of Empires, Colonies and Imperialism have our gratitude for inspiring the whole idea in the first place.

Linguistic Conventions

Personal and Place Names Personal names are generally given in the forms that will be most familiar to readers (e.g., Peter the Great instead of Pëtr Velikii). A few notable exceptions have been made, however, to bring anglicized names closer to their original form: for example, Chinggis for Genghis, Qubilai for Kubilai, and Tīmūr for Tamerlane. Similarly, place-​names are generally given in their modern, official form, with a few exceptions made for places that are better known under their historic names:  therefore, Cochin and Banquibazar rather than Kochi and Ichapore (but Melaka rather than Malacca). Batavia, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras have also been used occasionally to refer to the cities of Jakarta, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai, as the historic names also refer to the larger Dutch and British colonies and presidencies of which they were the capitals. For clarity, the modern official name will be given once in parenthesis upon the first use of such historic names.

Transliteration and Romanization Non-​English words are italicized upon first use only. Words such as “jihad,” “khan,” and “Sharia” that have entered regular English usage have not been italicized, nor has any attempt been made to transliterate them in any systematic fashion (so jihad rather than jihād). Words and names from languages written in non-​Latin scripts are rendered according to the following systems. Arabic: as per the system of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Chinese: as per the Pinyin system of romanization, without the diacritics showing tones Greek: as per the American Library Association—​Library of Congress (ALA-​LC) Japanese: as per the Revised Hepburn system of romanization Korean: as per the McCune-​Reischauer system of romanization Manchu: as per the Möllendorff transliteration system Mongolian: as per the system of Nicholas Poppe’s Grammar of Written Mongolian, modified by replacing č, š, and γ with ch, sh, and gh Ottoman Turkish:  as per modern Turkish orthography, except that final unvoiced consonants are left voiced (e.g., Ahmed not Ahmet and Mehmed not Mehmet) Persian: as per the system of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Russian:  as per the American Library Association—​Library of Congress (ALA-​LC), slightly modified by removing all diacritic marks (e, ii, ts, iu, and ia for ë, iĭ, ͡ts, ͡iu, and i͡ a) Sanskrit: as per the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST)

Contributors

Peter Borschberg teaches history at the National University of Singapore. He specializes in Europe-​Asian interactions in the early-​modern period, mainly with a geographic focus on Southeast Asia. He is the author of several studies including The Singapore and Melaka Straits: Violence, Security and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth Century (2011), as well as Hugo Grotius, the Portuguese and Free Trade in the East Indies (2012). Anthony Rendell Disney, MA (Oxon.), PhD (Harvard), is primarily a historian of the Portuguese empire in maritime Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, about which he has written extensively. His works include Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century (1978; 2nd edn 2010); A History of Portugal and of the Portuguese Empire: From Beginnings to 1807 (two volumes, 2009); The Portuguese in India and Other Studies, 1500–​ 1700 (2009); and numerous articles, papers, and other shorter works. He has taught at Melbourne and La Trobe Universities in Australia and has been a scholar emeritus at La Trobe since 2010. Anthony has also been a member of the International Seminar on Indo-​Portuguese History since its foundation in 1978. Currently he is writing a biography of Dom Miguel de Noronha, fourth Count of Linhares, who was viceroy at Goa between 1629 and 1635. Jack Fairey’s research work deals primarily with the history of the Mediterranean and Eastern Orthodox Christendom, with a particular interest in empires, religion, and diplomacy. He was Ted & Elaine Athanassiades Post-​Doctoral Research Fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton in 2005–​2006, and has previously taught European, Ottoman, and Mediterranean history at the National University of Singapore, and before that at Queens University and York University in Canada. He is the coeditor of Volume One of Empire in Asia. His most recent publication, The Great Powers and Orthodox Christendom: The Crisis over the Eastern Church in the Era of the Crimean War (2015), examines the role of the Orthodox Church as a locus for competing imperial agendas in the mid-​nineteenth-​century Ottoman Empire. The monograph shows how competition among the British, Russian, French, Austrian, and Ottoman governments over religious protectorates and clerical privileges contributed first to the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853–​56) and then to secularizing reforms in the Ottoman Empire. His other publications have dealt with the impact of religion and imperial ideologies on group identity in the Balkans, as well as with the intersections of British, French, Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman imperialism in the eastern Mediterranean.

Contributors

Brian P. Farrell is professor of history at the National University of Singapore, where he has been teaching since 1993. His research and teaching interests focus on the military history of the British Empire, the Western military experience in Asia, and the modern history of Empire in Asia. He is the author of The Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940–​ 1942 (2005) and The Basis and Making of British Grand Strategy 1940–​1943: Was There a Plan? (1998), and coauthor of Between Two Oceans: A Military History of Singapore from 1275–​1971 (1999; 2010), plus related edited books, chapters in books, and journal articles. Series editor for Empire in Asia, and coeditor for Volumes One and Two, he is currently working on a coauthored study of Great Powers and the geopolitical reordering of the Asia Pacific in the twentieth century. Florence Hodous is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Renmin University, Beijing, interested in the history of the Mongol Empire and in particular its laws and religions, as well as cross-​cultural contacts between Yuan China and the Ilkhanate in Persia. From 2013 to 2016, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, researching judges of the Mongol Empire. Her publications include: “A Judge at the Crossroads of Cultures: Shi Tianlin” (Asiatische Studien, forthcoming); “Faith and the Law: Religious Beliefs and the Death Penalty in the Ilkhanate” (in Bruno De Nicola ed., The Mongols’ Middle East, BRILL, 2016); “Clash or Compromise? Mongol and Muslim Law in the Ilkhanate (1258–​1335)” (Studies on the Iranian World II, Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2015); and “The quriltai as a Legal Institution in the Mongol Empire” (Central Asiatic Journal 56, 2012/​2013). She completed her PhD, “Toluid Dynamics of Asia: Flexibility, Legality and Identity within Toluid Institutions,” in 2013 from SOAS, University of London, under the direction of George Lane. Murari Kumar Jha is currently an assistant professor in the School of Historical Studies, Nalanda University, India. Earlier, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of History, National University of Singapore. He received training in history at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His forthcoming monograph deals with the Ganga River, the Mughal Empire’s successes and failures along the river, and the interactions between the regional economy along the eastern tracks of the Ganga and the maritime global economy of the Bay of Bengal during 1500–​1800  ce. Sher Banu Khan is an assistant professor in the Malay Studies Department at the National University of Singapore. She received her advanced master’s degree from Leiden University and her PhD from Queen Mary, University of London. Her research interest is the Malay world and Southeast Asia in general in the early-​modern period focusing on state-​formation, cross-​cultural encounters, gender studies, and Islam. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, among which are “Ties That Unbind:  The Botched Aceh-​VOC Alliance for the Conquest of Melaka 1640–​1641” (Indonesia and the Malay World); “What Happened to Syaiful Rijal?” (Bijdragen tot de taal-​, land-​en volkenkunde); “Men of Prowess and Women of Piety: The Rule of xiii

Contributors

Sultanah Safiatuddin Syah of Aceh 1641–​1675” (Journal of Southeast Asian Studies); and “The Jewel Affair: The Sultanah, Her Orangkaya and the Dutch Foreign Envoys” (M. Feener, P.  Daly, and A.  Reid, eds, Mapping the Acehnese Past). Her latest book is titled Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom: The Sultanahs of Aceh, 1641–​1699 (2017). Bruce M. Lockhart is associate professor in the History Department at the National University of Singapore. He trained at Cornell University in Southeast Asian history, and his specialization includes both Thailand and Indochina. His primary interest has always been the monarchy, and he has written a monograph on The End of the Vietnamese Monarchy (Yale Council on Southeast Asian Studies, 1993). Currently, he is working on a history of constitutional monarchy in Thailand. He has coauthored the third edition of the Historical Dictionary of Vietnam in the Scarecrow Press series and coedited The Cham of Vietnam: History, Society and Art (2011). He has also written several journal articles and book chapters on Vietnamese and Lao historiography. As a follow-​up to his contribution to this volume, he hopes to look more deeply at French relations with Siam and Cambodia during the reign of King Mongkut (1851–​68). Frederik Vermote is an assistant professor in Asian and World History at Fresno State University and a research fellow at the USF Ricci Institute for Chinese-​Western Cultural History. His research interests include Jesuit finances and travel between Europe and China during the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. His forthcoming and most recent publications include: “Travellers Lost and Redirected: Jesuit Networks and the Limits of European Exploration in Asia” (Itinerario: The Journal of the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction); two book chapters on financing Jesuit missions in Brill and Oxford edited volumes; “Cash or Credit: Jesuit Money Flows during the Dawn of a Global World” (Mercantilism and Account Keeping: Comparative Analysis of the Periphery-​Core Structure and Its Impacts on Indigenous Market Players); and an article titled “Dangers and Limitations of Jesuit Travel throughout Eurasia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” (The World History Connected). Vermote’s book manuscript Moving Money and Missionaries in a Global World: The Jesuit Financial Networks between Europe and Asia is under contract with Brill. Jinping Wang is assistant professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore. She works on the sociocultural history of middle and late imperial China. She is the author of the forthcoming monograph In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200–​1600, which will be published by Harvard University Asia Center. Paul W. Werth is professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, specializing in the history of the Russian Empire. He has held fellowships in Washington, North Carolina, Sapporo, and Munich, and for five years he was editor of the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. His previous work has focused

xiv

Contributors

primarily on problems of religious diversity and toleration in Tsarist Russia, and his major publications include At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-​Kama Region, 1827–​1905 (2002); The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (2014); and, in Russian, Orthodoxy, Unorthodoxy, Heterodoxy: Sketches on the Religious Diversity of the Russian Empire (2012). Having recently completed a term as head of his department, he is now researching a book on the significance of the seemingly obscure year 1837 for Russian history, while also contemplating future projects linking the histories of Russia and China.

xv

Series Introduction: Reordering an Imperial Modern Asia Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell In the Asia of the twenty-​first century, Japan is the only state still headed by a figure referred to in English as an “emperor” (tennō). The title is understood by all, however, to be an anachronism, given that Japan no longer professes itself an empire.1 Everywhere else in the world, explicitly imperial titles and forms of governance have more or less disappeared. “Empire” itself has become a dirty word, applied to existing states primarily in order to condemn and revile them. And yet, this is a very recent state of affairs. Historically, more Asians have lived under imperial rule than under any other form of political organization and for longer periods of time. There is not a single Asian region, state, or people whose history has not been shaped in decisive ways by these experiences. It is precisely the diversity of imperial forms of governance present in Asia—​and the corresponding wealth of political terms in different Asian languages—​ that has tended to obscure the full extent of the impact of empire, as a political form, on the region. Beyond the impact of empires on individual states and peoples, it has played a critical role in framing the larger history—​spatial, cultural, economic, and especially political—​of the region. Empires thus have not only helped to define modern Asia but also to mediate and connect its inhabitants to the wider world, long before the era of instantaneous mass electronic communications. Does the foregoing mean there is something inherently “Asian” about empires in Asia? The question is, of course, flawed from the outset inasmuch as it presupposes a monolithic “Asia” that has never existed. The inherent fallacy of the question, however, has not prevented a long line of European political theorists from answering it in the affirmative. Beginning in Classical Greece, writers such as Herodotus, Aeschylus, and Aristotle considered empire to be a characteristically “Asiatic” form of rule—​a generalization made slightly more pardonable by the stark contrast that existed then between the turbulent and fragmented world of the Greek city-​states and the absolutist and universal monarchs of Achaemenid Persia and Pharaonic Egypt.2 The notion that a fundamental distinction existed between the freedom-​loving peoples of Europe and the slavish masses of Asia became a recurring motif across centuries of European thought, showing up in the “seigneurial monarchy” of Bodin, the “oriental despotism” of Enlightenment thinkers such as Boulanger, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Condorcet, the “theocratic despotism” of Hegel, the “Asiatic mode of production” of Marx, and the “patrimonialism” and “sultanism” of Weber.3

1

Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

Such assumptions about “Asiatic despotism” used to be seen as self-​evident given not only that Asia was home to many of the largest and most populous empires from the Mongols to Qing China, but also that, in purely numerical terms, the majority of imperial states have been based in the central and eastern regions of the Eurasian supercontinent. The relatively brief epoch of Western global supremacy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had the effect of turning this paradigm on its head so completely that empire and imperialism are now conceived of and studied as largely European—​or, at least, trans-​Atlantic—​phenomena. Modern theorizing about the nature and practice of empire has thus, until quite recently, been done primarily on the basis of evidence derived from the modern British, Spanish, and French empires, with supporting evidence drawn from their Russian, Dutch, German, and Habsburg contemporaries. Asia was thus demoted, somewhat ironically, from the Urheimat of empire to one of its principal victims. This series will revisit the relationships between empire and Asia by asking questions about the historical experiences of empire in Asia. Those questions emanate from, and revolve around, three principal queries. First, how did empire, as a form of political organization, shape the spatial, cultural, economic, and especially political ordering of Asia and Asians? Second, what concepts, practices, and understandings of empire defined these Asian experiences? Finally, how did both these things connect Asia and Asians to wider worlds—​and to what ends? In order to answer these questions about the experience, impact, and importance of empire in Asia, however, we need to vault beyond old false binaries of “East and West” or “Europe and Asia.” The first volume of this series will examine how empire first shaped a larger Eurasia—​a supercontinent intimately connected, across time, by geography and the movements of peoples, goods, and ideas—​while the second volume will show how empire helped forge what we will call a “Global Asia” (a concept we will unpack in the introduction to that second volume).

Concepts and Historiography We propose to conduct this examination by providing a general and comparative history of empire as a form of governance in Asia, across the span of time during which modern Eurasia, then Global Asia, evolved as geopolitical realities. The value of such a project stands on the premise that empire played a decisive role in shaping the histories of modern Asia: if so, then a clearer understanding of the histories of empire in Asia must surely strengthen our general understanding of modern Asia. This is not to suggest that the histories of individual empires in Asia have been neglected; far from it. But a proper understanding of large-​scale structures and processes—​such as empires were—​requires that similarly large-​scale comparisons be made across political boundaries and, on this score, much remains to be done. Historians working on specifically Asian-​based empires, for example, in China or India, have tended for much of the 2

Series Introduction

past century to focus on these polities for their own sake, rather than in order to address larger discussions about empire or imperial governance. This tendency to compartmentalize has been even more in evidence outside Asian studies since, in English at least, the scholarship devoted to empire has focused disproportionately on the experiences of empire in Europe, or of empires built by Europeans.4 The winds of change are, however, clearly at work in recent scholarship. The developing trend among historians working on Asian empires is to produce studies that take a more comparative approach. This can include comparing themes of empire, regions, aspects, and experiences, as well as seeing the histories of empire as encounters, connections, flows, and movements, and engaging all these things across time and space. Karen Barkey, Ariel Salzmann, Rifa’at Abou-​El-​Haj, and Suraiya Faroqhi, for example, have all reinterpreted the Ottoman experiences of empire in wider and more comparative contexts. Barkey’s comparative analyses focused on the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Roman experiences of themes such as centralization, state control, and social movements. Salzmann and Abou-​El-​Haj have compared processes of state formation in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Suraiya Faroqhi’s comprehensive studies of Ottoman politics, everyday life, and numerous other themes are best reflected in her book The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It, a wider analysis that encompasses Ottoman grand strategies, foreign policies, and empire-​building as integrated within the wider European, Middle Eastern, and Southwest Asian worlds the Ottomans linked together.5 Such vantage points make eminent sense for the study of a region that even today stands as the point of contact, on multiple levels, between “Europe” and “Asia.” In South Asia, Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, among others, have produced work that reexamines the Mughal Empire within multiple contexts and through an array of comparisons: as part of larger Islamic and imperial worlds, through interplay with Turco-​Persian political and cultural dynamics, through connections with Inner or Central Asia, as a regional hegemon in a subcontinental system of states and powers, and not least in interaction with European agents and powers.6 Victor Liebermann ambitiously sought to connect Southeast Asia with much wider connected experiences of empire in Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–​1830.7 Nicola di Cosmo, Thomas Barfield, and Christopher Beckwith all studied imperial experiences in Central Asia, or Central Eurasia, or Inner Asia, within such larger contexts as discourse with the Sinic world, engagement with the Turco-​Persian regions, contact with an expanding Russia, and intercourse with the Indian subcontinent.8 Peter Perdue changed our understanding of Qing China, both its nature and its place in wider Asian and global orders, through such work as China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, and Shared Histories of Modernity: China, India and the Ottoman Empire.9 The last-​mentioned study points us toward something important. All this work stands on the shoulders of much that went before. Some canonical works still resonate. In The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, published in 1974, Marshall G. S. Hodgson’s thesis of the “gunpowder empires” shaped two generations of work on the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman experiences, and made direct contributions 3

Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

to the emerging field of “World History” that Hodgson, together with William McNeill, did much to develop.10 That same year Immanuel Wallerstein published The Modern World System, which fostered the growth of the controversial “world systems theory,” later expanded by scholars such as Andre Gunder Frank.11 The more recent waves of scholarship, identified above, have built on these foundations by more focused and penetrating comparative studies of just what constituted the experiences of empire across Asia and through time, and to what ends. One of the principal objectives of this two-​ volume series is to bring such comparative work together, digest it as part of a wider reconsideration of the histories of “Empire in Asia,” and make it accessible to historians working on empire, in general, as well as in Asia, in particular, and to a wider interested readership.

Definitions The first step in any comparative history of empires is of course to define what we mean; historically, what was an empire? This is no easy task, as the term has generally been applied in haphazard and imprecise fashion. Indeed, there is a surprising lack of consensus among political scientists and historians as to the defining characteristics that would distinguish an empire from a kingdom, city-​state, federation or any other form of governance. We also cannot rely on empires to make our task easier by “self-​identifying” themselves as such. The wide array of terms that Asian states have used, across time and space, to refer to themselves raises difficult questions of commensurability: are tianxia in Chinese, pādshāhī in Persian, and samrājya in Sanskrit, for example, all interchangeable words for “empire,” or did they describe fundamentally different kinds of entities? Then there is the question of whether it is appropriate or meaningful to apply a political term grounded in Roman and medieval European history to non-​European polities. At least one leading scholar of Imperial China, Mark Elliott, has gone so far as to say that China itself only really became an empire once Europeans started to refer to it as such.12 These objections and difficulties will be treated at greater length in the chapters that follow, but we will lay them aside for the moment to offer the working definition of “empire” we will use in these volumes. We will define an “empire” as any state that formally adopted some combination of an associated set of ideas and practices that manifested themselves in three ways: ideological, structural, and institutional. In ideological terms, empires considered territorial expansion and/​or incorporation of territories and peoples to be a good in and of itself, whether on civilizational, religious, legal, practical, or political grounds. Imperial states did not see their domain, in other words, as limited to a particular people, region, or religion. They did not always make an explicit claim to universal rule, but their political principles anticipated and implied it. Such universalism was less common in the historical experience of empires in Europe and became less prominent in Asia during the modern period. But in earlier periods of 4

Series Introduction

Asian history, as well as the global historical experience of empires, it was strongly characteristic.13 An ideological corollary of imperial expansionism was a strongly hierarchical vision of the political order of the world, with one particular empire (or sometimes a group of mutually cognizant empires) at its pinnacle. As these hierarchical structures were seen as universally valid across time as well as space, empires commonly presented themselves as the literal or figurative heirs of other great, world-​conquering empires. Structural features of empire included two key facets: composite polities and unequal incorporation. Empires were typically made up of multiple distinct peoples and territories that retained their separate identities and, often, distinct institutions. Such peoples and territories were incorporated into the imperial state on different and often distinctly unequal terms, and administered as such, with very different privileges and responsibilities vis-​à-​vis the imperial center. And the key institutional feature was related: the frequency of indirect rather than direct rule, mediated through layers or delegations or accommodations, over most subject populations and territories. Empires were typically expansive and expansionist, composite, differentiated, and plural. Why should these kinds of polities have become so common across Asia, especially during its early modern and modern history? In part, this was the result of both active and passive diffusion of imperial ideas and concepts across the wider supercontinent of Eurasia. It was in the very nature of empires to cast long shadows, both over the lands they ruled and the neighbors they impinged upon. Successful empires, in particular, produced many imitators and heirs, who sought to draw not only on the prestige of the former but also on their practical experience. As Burbank and Cooper, Nexon, and others have pointed out, the diverse and composite nature of imperial polities required an unusually high degree of adaptability and resourcefulness, as the symbols, constitutional arrangements, and institutions that ensured the cooperation of one group might have the opposite effect on another. Empires therefore had to develop ample tool kits or repertoires of rule and to become masters of the art of multivocal or polyvalent signaling, that is, appealing simultaneously to the loyalty of many disparate subject groups.14 In practice, empires tended to develop in clusters or lineages that, while by no means identical, drew upon a common stock of time-​tested imperial institutions or practices. Examples of such “imperial lineages” would be the Sinic empires of East Asia or the Turko-​Persianate empires of Southwestern and South Asia, marked respectively by such common features as the adoption of Confucianism, literary Chinese, and the imperial civil examination system, and of Islam, literary Persian, and the employment of slaves (kul/​ghulām) as elite soldiers and bureaucrats. The widespread diffusion of imperial ideas and practices was thus as much a product of necessity as imitation. Simply put, empire, as a form of governance in Asia, worked—​ on multiple levels. Charles Tilly captured the point in a seminal work that applies very well to the Asian experience, when he argued that empire “has proven to be a recurrent, flexible form of large-​scale rule for two closely related reasons: because it holds together disparate small-​scale units without requiring much centrally-​controlled internal 5

Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

transformation, and because it pumps resources to rulers without costly monitoring and repression.”15 Empire, in other words, allowed one to govern far-​flung and stubbornly different places and peoples effectively yet—​relatively speaking—​inexpensively. Having defined “empire,” we must now turn to the issue of how to define “Asia.” Historically, what was Asia? Geographically, this is not painfully difficult, even if exact “borders” with Europe and Africa are more or less moot. The working premise can be that Asia encompassed the continental landmass between the Pontic Steppe, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Sinai Desert in the West; Japan, the Philippines, and the Pacific Ocean in the East; the Arctic Sea in the North; and the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago in the South. But the more important question is historical: why, for this series, is Asia a meaningful unit and focus of study? The answer returns us to our first page: strictly speaking, it is not. There was nothing specifically or uniquely “Asian” about the features we have identified as constituting the historical experiences of “Empire in Asia.” Notions of stagnant Oriental despotism and Asiatic modes of production simply do not stand up to close scrutiny of the evidence. Instead, it makes most sense to study Asia within the context and frame of a larger Eurasia. Regarding the experience of empire in history, there was an East, there was a West—​but only in reference to each other, subject to multiple variations across time and space, and neither was ever completely different from, or utterly alien to, the other. And they certainly did meet, and together they became something else again. Even Rudyard Kipling, despite his infamous assertion that “Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat,” had to admit, “But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!”16 Asia is thus important for our study not so much because we endorse it as a category in its own right, but in order to promote a greater understanding of the unities of Eurasian history by looking at its more ignored, eastern components. In this sense, we propose to study the “Asian history of empire,” in order to transcend it.

Revisiting Empire in Asia The structure of this series, its division into two volumes, is dictated by this larger argument we wish to make about the historical experiences of “Empire in Asia.” Contacts on multiple levels, of varying degrees of intimacy, between Asia and the rest of the world stretch back long enough to be lost in the proverbial mists of time. The wider interconnectedness we now call “globalization” is also a very old process, substantially accomplished long before the onset of the personal computer and mobile phone. It will be argued herein that the history of empire, both in Asia and everywhere else, was deeply intertwined with the history of globalization, in at least three ways. First, empires were fundamental drivers of the process of globalization because they consolidated large areas, and because they opportunistically pressed outward to incorporate 6

Series Introduction

new regions and resources. Second, practices of imperial governance provided much of the new structures and norms that regulated the resulting encounters from this consolidation and expansion; as empires moved toward each other, they increasingly sought to reconcile, one way or another, their mutually overlapping claims and interests. The modern concept of an “international order” should more accurately be seen as an order built primarily by empires, not by nation-​states. Finally, imperial governance was itself reshaped by globalization; empires became more and more alike through processes of influence, imitation, and assimilation. The history of empire is a central component of global history.

Notes 1

2 3

4

5

6

Although they are not usually referred to in English as “emperors,” the kings of Thailand and Cambodia also currently sport titles (respectively, sayamminthrathirat—​“emperor of Siam,” and preah sri loka dhammika raja—​“virtuous king universally propagating the Dharma”) that could legitimately be understood as imperial. Ann Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire (Waco, TX:  Baylor University Press, 2008); Ryan Balot, Greek Political Thought (Maldon, MA, Oxford, and Victoria, Australia: Blackwell, 2006), chap. 5. Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République (Paris:  1576); Nicolas-​Antoine Boulanger, Recherches sur l’origine du despotisme oriental (London: 1762); Jean-​Antoine-​Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet, Tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain: Projets, Esquisse, Fragments et Notes (1772–​1794), ed. Jean-​Pierre Schandeler et  al. (Paris: Éditions de l’Institut national d’études démographiques, 2004); Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History: Introduction, Reason in History, trans. John Sibree (London: H.G. Bohn, 1861); Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Garnier, 1963); Lawrence Krader, The Asiatic Mode of Production: Sources, Development and Critique in the Writings of Karl Marx (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975); Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1978). Historians of Imperial Russia deserve to be seen as an exception to this observation but that exception only underlines the case being made here, as it has been driven by the sense that intermingling between European and Asian themes in the Russian experience was too intimate to be separated. The chapters in Volumes One and Two of this series by Paul Werth address this theme directly. Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge:  University Press, 2008); Ariel Salzmann, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State (Leiden:  Brill, 2004); Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004); Rifa’at Abou-​El-​Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991). Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-​Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries 1400–​1800 (Cambridge:  University Press, 2007); The Mughal State: 1526–​ 1750 (Oxford:  University Press, 2011); and Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2012). For some other examples of comparative treatment of empire in South Asia, see:  A. Azfar Moin, The Millenial 7

newgenprepdf

Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2012); Ali Anooshahr, The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods (London and New York: Routledge, 2009); Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2012); and Christopher Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World 1780–​1830 (London and New York: Longman, 1989), chaps 1–​2. 7 Victor Liebermann, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–​1830, 2 vols (Cambridge: University Press, 2003, 2009). 8 Nicola di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge: University Press, 2004); and The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, coedited with Allen J. Frank and Peter B. Golden (Cambridge: University Press, 2009); Thomas J. Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989); Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton: University Press, 2009). 9 Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005); and Shared Histories of Modernity: China, India and the Ottoman Empire, coedited with Huri İslamoğlu (London: Routledge, 2009). 10 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); William McNeill, A World History, 4th edition (Oxford: University Press, 1999). 11 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, 4 vols (New  York, San Diego, Berkeley: Academic Press and University of California Press, 1974–​2011); Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1998). 12 Mark Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford: University Press, 2001); New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde, coedited with James Millward, Ruth Dunnell, and Philippe Foret (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004); and “Was Traditional China an Empire?” Public Lecture, Nanyang Technological University, September 5, 2013; see also the chapter in Volume 1 of this series by Wang Jinping. 13 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: University Press, 2010). 14 On “imperial repertoires,” see ibid., pp. 3–​4, 16–​17. On imperial “polyvalent signaling,” see Daniel Nexon, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton:  University Press, 2009), pp. 99–​100. 15 Charles Tilly, “How Empires End,” in After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-​ Building, ed. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, CO:  Westview Press, 1997), p. 4. 16 Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West,” 1889. The romantic but complex themes of empire Kipling addressed, and the context in which he crafted this work, are analyzed in the chapter by Brian P. Farrell in Volume 2 of this series.

8

Introduction: Making Imperial Asia Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell Our venture divides this reexamination of the history of empire in Asia into two important phases, treated in two separate volumes. Volume One, “Making Imperial Asia,” examines the long period of imperial consolidation, fragmentation, and regional re-​formation that began with the rise of the Mongol Empire and spanned the next seven centuries to the arrival of “European Industrial Imperialism” in the nineteenth century—​ a development we deal with in Volume Two. As the focus of this volume is the rise across Eurasia of large, coherent imperial polities, the time period covered by each chapter varies slightly from region to region depending on the pace of developments locally. There are, in other words, simply no convenient beginning and end dates that would apply universally across Asia. It should also be made clear that although the period covered in Volume One is roughly coextensive with the period of world history known generally as the “Early Modern,” this concurrence is only significant to the extent that the “Early Modern” is understood first and foremost as a period of proto-​ globalization, characterized by increasing economic, political, and cultural exchanges between the different regions of the world.1 Our purpose, in other words, is not that Volume One serve as a potted history of premodern Asia, but rather that it provide a synoptic view of the forms of empire that were present in Asia during an era of marked imperial expansion, and of increasing interimperial contact and exchange. Given this focus, it is natural that Volume One should begin with the rise of the Mongols. The celebrated Chinggis Khan, who ruled from 1206 to 1227, produced an empire that barely lasted a century—​but its reverberations would continue much longer. The reach of Mongol imperial ambitions stretched from the Pacific Ocean to Central Europe, accepting no boundaries and recognizing no equals, creating, physically and politically, the closest thing Eurasia ever experienced to a single “world order.” Every region of the supercontinent found itself under Mongol sway to some degree with the exceptions of Japan, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe. Even in these “protected zones,” as Victor Liebermann calls them, the Mongol threat shook established orders.2 This new world order had a single source, however: the Mongols. Therefore, by definition, the “Pax Mongolica” fell short of being a true “international” order inasmuch as the Mongols denied the legitimacy of other empires or states. Mongol ideas, practices, and concepts of empire did establish new baselines, however, from which much subsequently flowed, just as Mongol military success forged connections in trade, commerce, and the movement of peoples, goods, and ideas that knit Eurasian regions together more tightly than ever before. Our first chapter, on “The Making of Chinggisid Eurasia,”

9

Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

therefore examines the Mongol experience and legacies. It also explains why the breakup of the vast Mongol imperial order was just as consequential as its creation and expansion. From unification under a single dynasty, Asia was fragmented into an array of contending successor realms and states; but at the same time each of these successor states remained intensely aware of their Chinggisid predecessor and sought to recreate many aspects of it in miniature in their more reduced domains. The chapter’s conclusion, that the Chinggisid Era laid the foundations for what became a modern “Imperial Asia,” is fundamental to the rest of this volume. The fragmentation of the Mongol khanates triggered several volatile centuries in Asia characterized by three broad trends. The first of these is that local “lineages of empire” took advantage of Mongol weakness to reassert themselves in the form of a host of smaller states with competing imperial ambitions. The second trend saw the winnowing of these contending states over the next two centuries as a handful of states consolidated their control over large regions of Asia and, in the process, came to embody new interpretations of their particular lineages of empire. The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries thus became, in many ways, a new imperial “Golden Age” in Asia, when the five empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, Romanovs, and Ming (then Qing) came to project their power and influence over most of the continent. In order to make this process clearer, the chapters of Volume One divide into four broad geographical regions. The Sinic Sphere in East Asia was so extensive and significant that two chapters are required to address the two dynasties that ruled China after the Yuan: one on the “Great Ming” and the second on the “Expanding Qing.” The Turco-​Persianate empires, similarly, require two chapters:  one on the Ottomans and Safavids in Southwest Asia, and a second focusing primarily on the Mughal Empire in South Asia. The Orthodox Slavic imperial traditions of Northwest Asia are examined in a chapter focusing on the Russian Empire under the Rurikid and Romanov dynasties. Southeast Asia is treated in two chapters, since the greater degree of political fragmentation there constituted something of an exception to the larger patterns of consolidation: one chapter examines Peninsular or Mainland Southeast Asia, and the second reviews the imperial history of Insular or Island Southeast Asia. The third and final trend in post-​Mongol imperial Asia was the arrival of European explorers, traders, soldiers, and missionaries especially in South and Southeast Asia, many of whom pursued their own imperial projects in Asian space. As European imperialisms also differed from each other in important ways, we have treated them in two chapters: the first dedicated to the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and the second to the chartered company states such as those of the British and Dutch East India companies. These new imperial blocks represented not one, but several competing, regionalized world orders. This is not, of course, to say that the different empires in Asia existed in splendid isolation from each other; they clearly did not. There were, however, major differences in ideology, structure, and function that made relations between states belonging to different “imperial lineages” particularly difficult and discomfiting. Diplomacy between the rulers of Vietnam and China or of the Ottoman and Safavid 10

Introduction

empires, for example, was often tense, but at least communications were facilitated by shared literary languages, religions, political rituals, and understandings of how politics worked. A host of obstacles, however, and not merely geographical distance, impeded relations across imperial lineages between, say, the Ottomans and Ming China. An important part of the story told in Volume One is how these different imperial lineages came into increasing contact with one another and how they dealt with the differences between them. Five especially prominent features characterized the web of interconnections between the empires of Eurasia and thus reappear in each of the chapters to a greater or lesser extent. The first was the prevalence across Eurasian societies of monarchy and hierarchy—​indeed, the very concept of “empire” would have been meaningless without a widespread conviction across multiple regions that human societies were ordered hierarchically both internally and relative to one another. The image of the emperor as a “king of kings,” for example, recurred in virtually all the imperial polities considered here. More egalitarian societies such as the tribal peoples of the Southeast Asian highlands, Borneo, or southwestern China, however, were generally inhospitable terrain for imperial projects. A second common feature of interimperial relations, which has already been mentioned previously, was the shared experience across much of Eurasia of Chinggisid rule and therefore a lingering model of how imperial unification of the entire known world could take place—​whether that model was held up for imitation or avoidance. The third, rather obvious, factor encouraging relations across states was the search for prosperity and power through commerce. Again and again, the desire for trade drew empires into sustained contact across enormous distances and gave them an incentive to overcome differences in language, culture, ideology, and political claims. This was not always the case, however, and empires such as those of the Ming and Qing were quite capable of ignoring the siren song of foreign commerce when it suited them. The fourth factor was the important role of religions as ideological and cultural unifiers. Islam, for example, was particularly important for encouraging exchanges across a wide range of states from North Africa to Southeast Asia and for giving their rulers a common store of political words, ideals, and practices. Missionaries, proselytes, and religious minorities played a particularly critical role as bridges between different imperial lineages and cultural worlds. The foreign relations of the Ming and Qing, for example, would have been much more difficult without the presence at court of Portuguese Jesuits and Muslim generals. The fifth and final feature was the role of the sea in linking multiple regions of Eurasia and allowing the circulation of new imperial ideas and practices. Indeed, it is not coincidental that the period covered in Volume One is also that of the “Age of Explorations” and the rise of long-​distance sea travel. The sheer size of the great Eurasian continental landmass and the difficulties imposed by climate and terrain impeded in time, manner, and extent the pace and depth of connections between its different regions. For millennia armies, settlers, and trade caravans had moved across the continent at 11

Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell

the same pace, and with similar degrees of vulnerability to climate, season, and terrain. Such conditions had militarily favored the great mounted cavalry armies of the Steppe Empires, preeminently the Mongols. Only Romanov Russia and Qing China eventually developed any significant capability to reorder the vast interior spaces of Central Asia on any large and lasting scale, and both could only march inexorably but slowly. Movement by sea, however, was potentially another story. It is true that for a long time movement by sea resisted transformation by human invention. Wooden ships propelled by the winds filling their sails were larger and more efficient in 1400 than they were in 400, but they could not move much faster, nor could they surmount restrictions imposed by the seasons and their patterns of winds. What their owners could do, however, was discover how to navigate the “great waters” of the world over very long distances, for very long times, out of sight of the land. Several different Eurasian empires showed an interest in precisely such maritime exploration during the 1400s–​ 1500s. Ming China under the Yongle Emperor, for example, commissioned Admiral Zheng He to undertake a series of “treasure voyages” with a massive fleet from the South China Sea to the east coast of Africa between 1405 and 1433. After a spectacular beginning, however, the Ming state abruptly lost interest in such voyages and returned to a deliberate policy of avoiding maritime entanglements. The Ottomans, similarly, engaged in ambitious voyages of exploration during the 1500s that took their fleets from the Atlantic to the Straits of Malacca. The dynasty even seems to have contemplated the creation of a sea-​borne “soft world empire” that would have stretched from Gibraltar to Sumatra, before official interest in these schemes waned over the course of the 1600s.3 By default, the great globe-​girdling voyages of reconnaissance that did so much to drive globalization and world history would come instead from Western Europe. It bears emphasizing, however, that if such voyages of exploration were launched mostly from European ports, they were aimed primarily at reaching Asian shores as European states sought to overcome the distances that divided them from the storied wealth of the Indies and China. Two very different types of European projection of power into Asian space thus evolved during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the slow but methodical expansion of Russia by land and by river across Siberia and the more dramatic, seaborne empire-​building of the maritime powers of Western Europe at scattered points throughout the Indian Ocean and Southeastern Asia. Europeans thus must form an inevitable part of the larger story of “Empire in Asia,” even before the formation of large European-​ruled empires in the region. The role of Europeans in the imperial history of Asia during this period was, however, much more modest and circumscribed than the usual stereotypes of Western imperialism would lead us to expect. Expansion into Asia connected Europeans to a larger and more dynamic world, not the other way around. European traders and explorers thus relied on already existing local networks and on Chinggisid, Ottoman, and Timurid empire-​building for the physical connections that enabled sustained intercourse. Upon arrival, Europeans had for a long time to tread softly in Asian spaces that were governed by polities often stronger and wealthier than those they came from. Until the late 1700s, Westerners 12

Introduction

were in no position to reorder the politics of the regions they operated in, but rather had to learn to adapt to local expectations. When Westerners transgressed the bounds set by their hosts or lost favor with a local ruler, they suffered wholesale expulsion as happened repeatedly to all European representatives operating in the East, such as the Portuguese in Japan (1639), the British in Java (1682), the French in Siam (1688), and in many other cases. As the chapter on the Iberian empires demonstrates, one of the great accomplishments of the Portuguese and Spanish was that they managed to overcome these limitations to build modest, but far-​flung empires in Asia that would have a lasting impact on the region and the world. In particular, the Iberians forged what was perhaps the first truly sustained global economy, which connected the export of silver mined in the New World of the Americas with Asian trade and commerce as they expanded in East, Southeast, and South Asia. In the process, the Iberians created a network of sea routes, ports, forts, and commercial links that other European powers like Britain, Holland, and France would later appropriate by force and use to build up a far more substantial presence in the region. The successes of the Iberian powers also introduced a novel concept to Asian states: that the sea itself could be both a means and an object of empire-​building. The final chapter of Volume One points us toward a more general shift of approach in the second volume of this series, by following the rise of a peculiar new method for informal empire-​building: the chartered company. This chapter underlines the important point that although the various East India companies were conceived and headquartered in Europe, they were fundamentally joint ventures that fused European ambitions and innovations with Asian networks, business practices, resources, and political interests. The resulting chartered companies did not always evolve into overtly imperial structures, but the largest and most important—​those belonging to the British, Dutch, and French companies—​certainly did so and would ultimately pave the way for European imperial projects of truly grand dimensions in Asia during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Notes 1

On the Early Modern period as “proto-​globalization,” see: Anthony G. Hopkins, “Introduction: Globalization—​An Agenda for Historians,” and Chris A. Bayly, “ ‘Archaic’ and ‘Modern’ Globalization in the Eurasian and African Arena, c. 1750–​1850,” both in Globalization in World History, ed. A. G. Hopkins (London: Pimlico, 2002), pp. 5–​6, 47–​73. 2 Victor Liebermann, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–​1830 (Cambridge: University Press, 2003, 2009), vol. 2, pp. 85–​6, 92–​122. 3 See Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford and New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 149–​51.

13

Chapter 1

Inner Asia, 1100s–​1405: The Making of Chinggisid Eurasia Florence Hodous The Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia The origins of many Asian empires are to be found in Inner Asia, an expanse of territory consisting mostly of prairies and steppe that stretches from the Black Sea in the west to the forests of Manchuria in the east. A long series of mountain ranges, including the Caucasus, Elburz, Hindu Kush, Pamirs, and Himalayas, and the Gobi Desert form its southern limits, while the arctic tundra marks its northern bounds. This region has been home to a host of peoples, practicing all the major world religions and speaking a wide range of languages belonging to the Turkic, Indo-​European, Finno-​Ugric, and Mongolian linguistic families. Its many deserts and marginal agricultural lands did not support large population concentrations, and therefore urban settlements have been restricted to scattered oases and the valleys of the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, and Tarim rivers. The vast grasslands of the steppe did, however, provide excellent pasture for horses and other livestock, making it the land par excellence of nomads and seminomadic peoples. The real wealth of these nomadic peoples proved to be their access to equine stock of exceptional quality, their freedom of movement across the steppe, and their skills as mounted archers. These military advantages periodically allowed the nomadic peoples of the Inner Asian steppe to impose themselves on their more settled and wealthier neighbors, both within the region and beyond it. As a result, one of the distinctive features of imperial polities in Inner Asia has been their dependence on nomadic political traditions and military support. The Mongol Empire was the most important and successful of these nomadic empires, but it was preceded by a millennium of other imperial polities founded by the nomadic peoples of Inner Asia. The empires of the Xiongnu (third century bc to first century ad), Rouran (fourth to sixth centuries ad), Göktürk (552–​81, 682–​742), Uyghur (744–​840), Khazar (seventh to tenth centuries), Jurchen (1115–​1234), Khitan (907–​1125), Tangut (1038–​ 1227), and Qara-​Khitai (1124–​1218) all either began as nomadic confederations or were founded by nomadic dynasts. Most of these polities also drew on a pool of common practices, symbols, titles, and institutions that recurred from century to century in Inner Asia.1 This chapter will explore how nomadism and Inner Asian political traditions influenced the governance, outlook, and style of rule of the Mongol Empire, and its legacies in Inner Asia as well as outside this region.

15

Florence Hodous

What set the empire of the Mongols apart from their predecessors is that they came to rule not only over the “people of felt-​walled tents” (nomads) and the sedentary peoples of Inner Asia, but also over multiple sedentary civilizations beyond Inner Asia including parts of today’s Russia as well as Iraq, Persia, and China. They were also the last of the great Inner Asian empires to be established before gunpowder weaponry put an end to the military supremacy of nomadic cavalry archers. The sheer size of the Mongols’ new state alone, however, did not make it an empire. Nor was it an empire because of the extent of Mongol control over their conquered territories, as the control exercised by Mongol rulers over any given locale was often shallow and indirect. Rather, what made the Mongols’ vision truly imperial was their belief in their right to rule the whole world and the effort and resources they invested in trying to work out how the different ethnicities under Mongol rule should relate to each other.

Formation of the Mongol Empire In the late twelfth century, a number of Mongolian-​speaking groups inhabited the Mongolian plateau.2 While they generally shared the same culture and intermarried extensively, the different groups also competed bitterly for power over the region and feuds could last for generations. Attempts to establish an overlordship that united all these groups—​at that time about a dozen loose confederations that had grown up around powerful chieftains or khans (qan)—​were rarely successful.3 The early history of the Mongol Empire is closely bound up with the life of a single individual—​Temüjin, the future “Chinggis Khan.” Though his great-​grandfather, Qabul Khan, had headed a confederation of Mongol groups, by the time of his father, Yisügei Ba’atur, the family’s power had largely vanished.4 When members of a rival Mongol confederation known as the Tatar poisoned Yisügei, Temüjin’s family was reduced to near starvation. After years of poverty and struggles, Temüjin managed to attract a small band of companions and allies who helped him rebuild the family’s fortunes. His dogged pursuit of his enemies and generosity toward his friends consolidated the young chieftain’s reputation and he began to seek the leadership of the entire Mongol people. The internal struggles among the Mongols that followed were arguably more difficult and took longer—​nearly forty years—​than the later conquests of non-​Mongol states that made Temüjin famous. This campaign was crowned with success in 1206 when a great assembly named Temüjin their supreme ruler or khan with the new name of Chinggis (“Fierce”) Khan.5 Temüjin’s success attracted the attention of neighboring peoples, who started to think about the benefits of joining his cause. Even at the lowest point of Temüjin’s struggle, when he was hiding on the shores of Baljuna Lake, his small group of followers is said to have included some foreign, Muslim merchants. As he started raids against peoples

16

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

beyond the Mongols themselves, the Uyghurs of the Tarim Basin took the prudent course of submitting voluntarily in 1209.6 The wars of Mongol expansion began in 1206 when a trade dispute prompted Chinggis to attack the neighboring Tangut Empire, also known as Western Xia, located in what are now the northwestern provinces of China. The Tanguts sued for peace in 1210, agreeing to recognize the overlordship of Chinggis and to pay him tribute, although they would later refuse to provide soldiers for the Mongol war machine when summoned to do so—​a failing that Chinggis took very seriously. Having defeated one hostile neighbor, Chinggis next turned to campaign against the Jin (or Jurchen) Empire to the east of the Tangut in northern China. This campaign began in 1211 and by 1215 his armies had sacked the imperial city of Zhongdu (modern Beijing). While Chinggis’s army continued the war against the Jin, the khan turned his attention westward to the Qara-​Khitan Empire, where Küchlüg, a fugitive Mongol leader of the Naiman confederation, had usurped power and was harassing Chinggisid vassals. Chinggis’s army made short work of the unpopular Küchlüg in 1216–​17 and ended up absorbing the lands of Qara-​Khitai. The Mongols’ sudden expansion westward and southward into Central Asia brought them into contact with the rulers of Transoxiana and Persia, the Khwarazmian Empire. Chinggis made peaceful overtures to his new neighbors, but conflict quickly replaced early promises of cooperation between the Mongols and Khwarazm. The Khwarazmians were nervous of Mongol prowess and rashly murdered first a large Mongol trade mission and then the envoys Chinggis sent to demand reparations. The infuriated khan punished these transgressions of the customary law of the steppe by carrying out a sanguinary conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire over 1219–​21 that was marked by wholesale massacres of the civilian population. Chinggis Khan’s acute sense of personal honor next led him to carry out a campaign of retribution against the Tangut Empire in 1226 for their refusal to provide troops to assist the Mongols in their expansion westward during 1216–​21. The great khan passed away of natural causes during the prosecution of this final campaign against the Tangut in 1227.7 Before his death, Chinggis allocated different territories that he had conquered to his four sons by his principal wife, in keeping with the Mongol inheritance custom of assigning territory furthest from the home to the eldest son, while the youngest would inherit the parents’ home. Chinggis also appointed his third son Ögödei, however, to be overall ruler over the empire, considering him the most able to rule well and keep his brothers in check. Ögödei immediately directed the energies of the royal family outward by restarting the Mongol war machine. He oversaw multiple invasions of Korea starting in 1231–​32, the completion of the conquest of the Jīn Empire in 1234, and devastating expeditions into Kievan Rus’, Poland-​Lithuania, and Hungary over the course of 1238–​41.8 An internal struggle among Chinggis’s sons and descendants was not long in coming, however. Already in 1246, many members of the imperial family disputed the election of Ögödei’s son Güyük as the next great khan. After Güyük died in

17

Florence Hodous

1248, these tensions boiled over into a serious civil war in which the descendants of Chinggis Khan’s third son, Ögödei, were pushed aside in favor of the descendants of his fourth son, Tolui. On the pretext of frustrating a large-​scale plot against himself, the new Great Khan Möngke (son of Tolui) had many of the rival princes executed.9 Möngke further sought to consolidate his position by pursuing wide-​ranging wars of conquest that saw Mongol armies campaigning on battlefields as far removed from each other as Vietnam and Syria. One of Möngke’s brothers, Hülegü, was sent west and took control of Persia and much of the Middle East in 1255–​60, sacking Baghdad, Aleppo, and Damascus and effectively putting an end to both the Abbasid Caliphate and the Ayyubid Sultanate.10 The conquests of another brother, Qubilai, were similarly prodigious. Between his dispatch by Möngke to northern China in 1251 and his death in 1294, Qubilai subjugated the remnants of the Song Empire, the independent kingdoms of Yunnan and Korea, and attempted invasions of Japan and Java and of the empires of Pagan, Champa, and Đại Việt in peninsular Southeast Asia. The expansive territories acquired by Qubilai and Hülegü strengthened the position of Tolui’s descendants and meant that the four khanates into which the Mongol empire finally crystallized bore little resemblance to the appanages which Chinggis Khan had originally allocated to his sons (see Figure 1.1).11 After the death of Möngke in 1259 tensions among the various princes of the imperial clan became irreconcilable. Qubilai drew on the vast resources of China to defeat his brother Ariq Böke, who received support from many other Chinggisid princes based in the traditional steppe heartlands. Though Qubilai secured the formal title of great khan, only his brother Hülegü in Persia recognized him; the descendants of Chinggis’s

Figure 1.1  Mongol Ulus, c. 1294. From Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B.  Golden (eds), The Cambridge History of Inner Asia (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2009). 18

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

first son, Jochi, who ruled the Qipchaq Steppe (spread across modern Kazakhstan and parts of Russia), and most of the descendants of his second and third sons, Cha’adai and Ögödei, in Central Asia all opposed him. The resulting “Toluid Civil War” of 1260–​64 marked the end of a unified Mongol Empire and the emergence in its place of four autonomous khanates that sometimes cooperated and sometimes opposed one another. Qubilai headed the first of these khanates, also known as the Yuan Empire, in China, which he and his descendants would rule from their new imperial city of Dadu (Beijing) until 1368. The second khanate consisted of the lands conquered by Hülegü in Persia and the Middle East. The resulting empire, known as the Ilkhanate, would last until 1335 and was ruled for much of this period from Tabriz. The descendants of Jochi formed a third khanate, often known as the Golden Horde, and ruled over Russia and the Qipchaq Steppe from their imperial capital at Sarai on the lower Volga. The constituent parts of the Golden Horde would, in turn, eventually secede to form six new smaller khanates between the 1430s and the first half of the sixteenth century. The descendants of Chinggis’s second son, Cha’adai (often rendered as Chaghatai), formed the fourth and final khanate in Central Asia, from the Aral Sea to the Altai Mountains. The Chaghatai Khanate would subdivide into two in the 1340s, with its western half becoming the center of the new Timurid Empire and the eastern half (known as Moghulistan) slowly slipping into obscurity and internal division over the 1400s–​1500s.

Building the Empire A frequent cause for amazement is how the Mongols, whose population at the eve of the empire is estimated at around a million, could have conquered and ruled an empire as vast as theirs, stretching from the Black Sea to southern China and from the Russian steppes to Manchuria, for building an empire requires different skills than simply conquering it. In fact, rather than impersonal and formal structures and institutions, Temüjin relied first and foremost on what he already had, namely, his own household, and the personal relations of loyalty which lay at its core. Crucially, because it was based on personal relations, often forged in the heat of battle or the cold of exile, the household of Chinggis Khan was able to, and did, absorb companions of manifold backgrounds and ethnicities, who joined themselves to his personal enterprise in building his empire. Some of these people became “honorary Mongols” through being granted a Mongol name. Some of the most powerful officials in the empire were those who acted as the khan’s cupbearer or rein-​holder, while any personal connection to Chinggis Khan allowed families to claim honors and material advantages for many generations after the event. It was this personal loyalty that often held the empire together in the absence of direct control over localities or other, impersonal bureaucratic structures. Individuals and even entire communities who were close to Chinggis Khan managed to obtain a share of power and a degree of partnership with him. One example is the Uyghurs. In 19

Florence Hodous

1209 when their leader, known as the idiqut, submitted voluntarily to Chinggis, the khan rewarded him with an excellent reception and declared the idiqut his “fifth son.”12 Opportunities for service and promotion were afforded to such people, most notably through an institution that Chinggis established early on: the imperial household guard (keshig). Membership in this elite corps made one part of the khan’s household and afforded opportunities for coming into close contact with him. By such means, many Uyghurs in fact rose to high positions.13 A number of women also played no less a role in keeping the empire together and functioning. Already having a high status among the nomadic Mongols, women of the imperial family who were married with representatives of various clans such as the Qonggirad or Oirad or the Korean kings contributed to consolidating relations of loyalty and trust. Their husbands, known as imperial sons-​in-​law or güregen, were often given leadership positions in the army.14 Moreover, women in practice could and did take on the role of their husbands when incapacitated (e.g., through addiction to drink)15 or after their death, until a new khan was appointed. The women regents of the Mongol empire such as Sorqaqtani Beki and Töregene Khatun were, though for short periods, among the most powerful women that Asia had ever known.16 The chief concern of the khans was not to impose uniformity, but rather to build a web of personal relationships through which they could avoid rebellions and resolve potential conflicts, while benefitting from the material goods and prayers offered by their subjects. Though the Mongols required that each new conquered territory submit to a census and pay taxes, they generally left their subordinate rulers and government officials to deal with the administrative details in their own way. The appanages of members of the imperial family were semi-​independent, with their own systems of tax collection and law enforcement. Vassal states such as the Uyghur kingdom of Qocho (until 1335), Zakarid Armenia, Cilicia, Georgia, and Korea similarly owed the empire taxes, troops, and loyalty, but were otherwise left to govern themselves. Even where territory was supposedly under the direct control of the khan, he sometimes found it easier to appoint tax-​farmers, who would pay a lump sum in advance and then recoup the money through the exclusive right to collect taxes in a certain area. The Mongols involved themselves more deeply in governance primarily in regions affected by rebellion or unrest, that is, where existing local leaders were unwilling to cooperate with them.17 The Mongols treated clerics and communities of almost all the religions they encountered with respect, not because of “tolerance,” but because these were subsumed into the Mongol worldview based on shamanism, with its multiple spirits and multiple centers of spiritual power. Mongol authorities exempted the clergy from taxation, so long as they agreed to pray for the khan.18 Religious communities, and in particular minorities such as Muslims in China or Christians in the Ilkhanate, were generally treated as self-​governing communities and allowed to maintain their own legal systems or, at least, to participate in trials regarding one of their members. The early Ilkhanids thus appointed many Christians and Jews to positions of importance (such as that of vizier) 20

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

and employed Buddhists and Confucians who had come to Persia from other territories under Mongol rule or who had arrived in the train of the conquering army.19 In terms of law, the Mongols, starting with Chinggis Khan, did not generally seek to impose a single legal system on everyone else. Rather, subordinate peoples were given a degree of latitude to continue upholding earlier laws and legal systems. Despite claims that Chinggis Khan issued a law code, known as the Great Yasa,20 and though he was later perceived as a lawgiver, the reality on the ground was that Mongol rulers wavered at many points on how far to impose their ways upon their new subjects, and leniency usually prevailed. Cha’adai, for example, ordered the arrest of a Muslim subject who had washed himself in a stream (an act Mongol customary law forbade as an offense to the water spirits), but the future great khan Möngke did not share the same strict viewpoint and later exonerated the offender.21 Hülegü, after his arrival in Persia and conquest of Baghdad, appointed Islamic judges (qāḍīs) where necessary to administer the Sharia in the lands he had conquered,22 and Qubilai likewise allowed Chinese local officials to continue using their existing law code until 1260, albeit with the proviso that they had to implement any edicts he issued whether or not they conflicted with Chinese laws. Later, and largely at the urging of Confucian officials of the dynasty, edicts issued by the great khans were systematized into legal compilations for the use of local officials.23 While the legal systems for the common people therefore did not change too much, there was one class of people who were sure to be judged in a trial conducted according to Mongol procedure regardless of their own customs. These were, besides the imperial princes, vassal rulers and government officials of the Mongols, in other words all those who had pledged their loyalty to the khan personally. If suspected of wrongdoing, they would be required to appear before someone superior in status usually at the imperial camp or in the context of a meeting of Mongol princes. For example, when a former governor of Khorasan accused his successor of malpractice not long after the first Mongol invasions, both men were summoned all the way from Persia to the imperial capital at Qaraqorum in Mongolia, where after some attempts at reconciliation the case was judged by Ögödei Khan himself.24 Another instance of the application of Mongol customs to vassal princes was the taboo against spilling blood upon the earth. Non-​ Mongol princes were accorded the “privilege” of not being executed by any cutting or piercing weapon, but rather through strangulation or bludgeoning.25 For example, when the Rus prince Mikhail Vsevolodovich of Chernigov refused to participate in a formal ceremony that involved passing between two purifying bonfires and bowing down before a representation of the deceased Chinggis Khan during his visit to the court at Sarai in 1246, Batu Khan ordered that the prince be trampled to death.26 If lesser princes and officials were thus expected to observe certain norms, khans too were expected to act in accordance with a fixed code of behavior. In order to become a ruler among the Mongols, it was not enough to be a strong warrior, decisive leader, or charismatic personality. A good leader was also expected to be extremely generous to his followers, rewarding them with people, honors, or later, lands. This quality was always 21

Florence Hodous

praised in the early Mongol sources, and Chinggis Khan himself refined a system that came to be known as “loyalty and care” for his servitors.27 That the khans had internalized this value can be seen from many incidents. The records thus praise Chinggis’s son Ögodei for his extravagant generosity and put into his mouth the opinion that “those who deposited valuable treasures beneath the earth were devoid of their share of intellect and strong understanding.”28 Hülegü Khan, the conqueror of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258, was supposed to have been scandalized to discover that his defeated opponent, Caliph al-​Musta’ṣim, had hoarded away two cisterns full of golden treasure. When the captive caliph asked for something to eat, Hülegü is said to have chided him for failing to share such wealth among his army by presenting al-​Musta’ṣim with an empty golden tray and telling him to eat that.29 The distribution of rewards generally occurred at the conclusion of a campaign, but they were also particularly associated with the meetings of the imperial princes known as quriltai, which were convened in order to enthrone a new khan or to take other joint decisions. Quriltais always entailed lavish banquets before the actual decision-​making, and following an enthronement, the distribution of cash, positions, or appanages. The ability of a newly enthroned khan to finance this largesse was an essential demonstration of their fitness to rule.30 The quriltai were also a reminder that, in addition to generosity, Mongol rulers were expected to show willingness to consult with the rest of the imperial elite. Most key decisions, especially regarding successions, would actually be finalized before the quriltai took place, but the meeting was still of paramount importance as a forum for the members of the extended imperial household to confirm publicly their agreement with the decision. Refusal to attend a quriltai was considered an act of serious disloyalty, so dissidents could either try to delay it or use the discussions to bring contentious matters out into the open. The decision-​making process among the Mongol elite was thus characterized by a considerable degree of discussion and participation. Steppe traditions supported this collegial tendency, as nomads had long possessed the ability to dissent from unpopular political decisions by “voting with their feet.” Mongol leaders had therefore learned to include as many influential people as possible in the process of decision-​making so that objections could be made and difficulties sounded out before any actions were taken.31 The consultative aspect of Mongol governance also manifested itself in a taste for court debates, which were routinely held not only to help the khans think through momentous decisions but also as a form of intellectual jousting. Debates thus served the khans simultaneously as entertainment, a forum for new knowledge, a rhetorical sparring ground, and a political theater showcasing to both the officials of the empire and its foreign guests the tolerance and geographical extent of the empire.32 Such debates were not merely for show, however, and could have serious consequences. When representatives of the Daoist religion performed poorly, for example, in a series of truly grand debates with Buddhist spokesmen held at the imperial court in 1258 and 1281, Qubilai punished the losers by ordering the wholesale destruction 22

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

of Daoist texts and the transfer of many Daoist temples and monasteries to Buddhist control. The importance of collegiality to Mongol rule was also reflected in the practice of appointing two or more officials to oversee the same task. What the khans sacrificed in efficiency, they gained in control, as the officials thus appointed kept a watchful eye on each other and were quick to report the abuses or irregularities of their rivals. The Ilkhanids thus appointed two joint viziers (chief ministers) whereas the tradition throughout previous Persian history had been to appoint a single vizier.33 When one of these joint chief ministers, the Persian historian Rāshid al-​Dīn, requested a clear division of responsibilities between himself and his fellow vizier, Öljeitü Khan denied the request on the grounds that “the peace of the empire lies in the fact that both [viziers] order matters in agreement with each other.”34 The administration in Yuan China was similarly characterized by frequent overlapping of official responsibilities. At virtually every level of the Yuan administration, for example, every prefect, sub-​prefect, and magistrate was paired with a Mongol overseer (darughachi) and neither functionary could act without the support of their counterpart. Moreover, officials at every level of local government were required to meet together in conference every morning. This tendency made Yuan governance more cumbersome but also more reliable and responsive to the will of the ruling khans, as it was more difficult for officials to act on their own authority.35

Imperial Identity Based on the evidence of early Mongol texts such as the Secret History (Mongqol-​un Niucha Tobcha’an), the Mongols initially did not see foreign polities as fundamentally different from their own, but rather interpreted them according to a Mongol frame of reference. There was a clear tendency, for example, to conceive of polities not so much as abstract entities, but in more personalized terms as the composite of a ruler, his lineage, and the people subject to them—​in a sense, the human “flock” or possession of a ruler. One term with this sense was “people” (irgen). The Secret History thus referred to the inhabitants of northern China as the “Khitan people” (Kitat irgen) in reference not to their ethnicity but to the Khitan Liao dynasty that had once ruled over the region. The primary word in Mongolian for such a polity, however, was ulus, a term that reappears throughout the Secret History and that can refer equally to groupings that were very large or very small. When Temüjin was proclaimed khan in 1206, for example, his small group of retainers and followers were described as his ulus: “And so, when the people [ulus] of the felt-​walled tents had been brought to allegiance, in the Year of the Tiger (1206) they all gathered at the source of the Onan River. They hoisted the white standard with nine tails and there they gave Činggis Qa’an the title of qan.”36 The term “ulus” (or more precisely Mongqol Ulus) remained the designation for the Empire even at its height. Rather than a fixed space, the term “ulus” initially referred 23

Florence Hodous

to a group of subordinate people, in keeping with the Mongols’ nomadic lifestyle and the relative difficulty of securing followers on the sparsely populated steppe. As the Mongols extended their control over neighboring polities, the term would acquire a more territorial connotation as well as the sense of an appanage granted to a member of the imperial elite by the khan. The continued use of this term highlights the extent to which the empire was, in the minds of its architects, a glorified Mongol chieftainship. In fact there is no proof that in 1206, Chinggis Khan thought of his realm as an empire. His adoption of the title of “khan” does not establish an imperial identity, as the title was used fairly frequently even for minor dynasts in the Turkic and Mongolic world at that time. Moreover, at the time of his elevation, Chinggis seems actually to have been a vassal of the Jin dynasty of northern China, who had been supporting sometimes one and sometimes another of their nomadic neighbors in order to ensure that none of them became too powerful. During Chinggis Khan’s confrontation in 1211 with the Jin dynasty, his nominal overlords, he first began to use unequivocally imperial terminology. Chinggis Khan welcomed a significant number of Jin defectors who thought they could get better rewards and higher positions from him. Among these were bureaucrats educated in the Chinese classics, who began to produce edicts and proclamations for the Mongol court. Song writers claimed that the Mongols borrowed their idea of “empire” from China, through the mediation of just such classically trained Jin officials. In China, it had long been accepted wisdom that it was in the very nature of things for a single ruler to exercise authority over the entire world, or “all-​under-​heaven” (tianxia). The Jin had assimilated this ideal and made it part of their state ideology.37 Whether out of imitation or rivalry with the Jin, Chinggis started giving the Mongqol Ulus imperial overtones by prefixing the adjective “great” (yeke). Zhao Hong, writing in 1221, thus noted that the Mongols had renamed their polity “the Great Mongol State” (Da Menggu Guo—​a direct Chinese translation of Yeke Mongqol Ulus).38 Indeed, the Mongol expression was an obvious calque on the official Chinese title of the Jin Empire: “the Great Jin” (Da Jin). The title thus indicated pretensions to a wider rule than just over the Mongols or nomads in general, and placed the Mongols in direct competition with the Jin for overlordship in eastern Asia. Further steps in the construction of an imperial identity were made after Chinggis Khan’s death. Ögödei, Chinggis Khan’s third son and successor, was the first to call himself not merely khan but khaghan (qa’an)—​meaning “khan of khans.” It seems he adopted the title with determination, since it became both his imperial title and personal epithet and many sources call him simply “the Qa’an.”39 This title had unmistakably imperial associations, as it was the main title of the rulers of the Rouran and Göktürk empires which dominated Mongolia and the central Asian steppe from the fourth to the eighth centuries.40 Adopting the title was therefore a very clear sign that Ögödei wished to cloak himself in the prestige of these former empires. The title seems also to have been adopted from a need to differentiate the new ruler of the Mongol world empire from other less powerful leaders, including the members of his 24

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

own family who had been granted appanages and therefore were khans in their own right. As Igor de Rachewiltz noted: “The title of qan became unsuitable . . . because this was a title traditionally associated with the leader of a tribe or tribal confederation. Mongol expansion and world rule called for the adoption of another, more exalted title.”41 Ögödei further evoked a sense of continuity with previous empires by establishing his capital at Qaraqorum in the Orqon Valley of central Mongolia. Chinggis Khan had used this area as a camping place, but it was Ögödei who converted the spot into a permanent capital by building his palace there. This decision to build at Qaraqorum was significant as the Orqon had rich associations with the kaghans of the eighth-​century Göktürk Empire, who had left behind the ruins of their capital and several monumental inscriptions around the valley.42 The Uyghur, similarly, had situated their imperial capital of Khar Balgas in the valley. Both empires had chosen the Orqon Valley for its central location in a region, known as Ötüken-​Yiš, that Turkic peoples believed blessed its possessors with good fortune (qut) and the mandate of heaven to rule. A burial stele erected in memory of the Göktürk prince Kul Tegin declares that so long as a “Türk Kaghan resides in the Ötüken-​Yiš there will be no grief in the polity.”43 It is therefore significant that the Chinggisids chose to locate their capital here and not somewhere near the sacred mountain of Burqan Qaldun, which was more strongly associated with their own Mongol traditions and with the life of Chinggis Khan himself.44 The Persian historian ‘Ata Malik Juvaynī was present at the establishment of Qaraqorum and left an account of the obvious interest that his Mongol employers took in the imperial past of their new city. He recalled that there are also the ruins of a town and a palace on the banks of this river [the Orqon], of which the name is Ordu-​ Baligh . . . Outside the ruins of the palace, opposite the gate, there lie stones engraved with inscriptions, which we have seen ourselves. During the reign of Qa’an these stones were raised up, and a well was discovered, and in the well a great stone tablet with an inscription engraved upon it. The order was given that everyone should present himself in order to decipher the writing.45 It was also at this time that Chinggis Khan himself became definitely associated with the symbols and traditions of previous steppe empires. The Secret History, the bulk of which was probably written a few years after Chinggis Khan’s death, records that he was born holding a blood clot in his hand—​an early augury that he had been marked out by Fortune. The same source also traces his ancestry back to a mythical princess, Alan-​Qo’a, who had been impregnated by a luminous being—​a beam of light being a stock motif in Turko-​Mongolian legends that “denotes divine selection.”46 Unlike the Turkic Orqon inscriptions, however, which emphasize the will of Heaven, the Mongols emphasized more the power of Heaven.47 25

Florence Hodous

A Mandate to Rule the World The customs that regulated relations between nomadic tribes on the steppe were a powerfully formative influence on Mongol notions of interstate relations. We have already seen earlier in this chapter that the foremost consideration for the early Chinggisid state in its relations with other polities was not imperial ideology per se (such as fulfilling the “mandate of Heaven”), but rather vigorous vindication of the personal honor of Chinggis Khan against his many enemies. For Mongol tribal leaders, the pursuit of vengeance for offenses against their person, family, or tribe was less a matter of wounded private feelings than a binding duty. The Mongolian language even distinguished between ös and haci—​the personal desire to vindicate one’s honor and the social duty to do so (respectively). The compulsory nature of private vendettas and the degree to which they made up for the lack of a public system of law enforcement in medieval Mongolia has led scholars to speak of a Mongol “vengeance system.” This cultural imperative led, unsurprisingly, to a tenacious cycle of blood feuds and grievances that perpetuated themselves over decades and generations.48 A logical corollary of the “vengeance system” was that social rewards accrued to Mongol leaders who successfully vindicated their honor. Temüjin’s biography provides a clear illustration of this, as the very blood feuds that blighted his early life also provided the primary means by which he was to gain power. The quest for vengeance against those who had harmed him provided the young Temüjin with a socially unimpeachable justification for carrying out the constant small-​scale raids and warfare that established his reputation and provided the booty that he required to attract followers and retainers.49 Once Chinggis had been acclaimed as khan, his pursuit of personal vendettas continued and increasingly embroiled the Chinggisid state in conflict with its neighbors. Indeed, the first campaigns of the nascent Mongol Empire against Qara-​ Khitai, Khwarazm, and the Tangut were less “wars of conquest” than “wars of vengeance,” as the khan pursued fugitive rivals who escaped his wrath and punished other rulers who slighted him.50 In the absence of specific disputes, Chinggis Khan was willing to engage in peaceful, though not necessarily equal, relations with other polities. In 1218, for example, Chinggis responded positively to an embassy from the Khwarazm Shah Muhammad and sought to establish peaceful trading relations. In proposing a treaty of mutual peace and friendship, however, Chinggis addressed Muhammad with condescension as being “on a level with the dearest of my sons.”51 The khan’s benevolent disregard quickly turned to anger, however, after he learned that the Khwarazmian governor of Utrar (in modern Kazakhstan) had executed a large party of Mongol merchants and seized their wares. The Secret History has an enraged Chinggis Khan declare: “How can my ‘golden halter’ be broken by the Sarta’ul [Khwarazm] people? . . . I shall set out against the Sarta’ul people, to take revenge, to requite the wrong for the slaying of my hundred envoys with Uquna at their head.”52 26

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

Although questions of honor and vengeance would thus remain important throughout Mongol history, their relations with other states were increasingly grounded in the notion that the Mongol khans possessed a “mandate of Heaven” granting them sovereignty over the whole world. The earliest unambiguous evidence of this ideology comes from a series of ultimatums sent out from Güyük Qa’an to several foreign rulers beginning in 1247 and demanding their unconditional submission.53 It has often been assumed that this claim to universal authority was rooted in Mongol traditional religion and its presumed belief in a supreme, all-​powerful god, “the Eternal Sky” (Möngke Tengri). Marie-​Lise Beffa has shown, however, that there is no evidence of such a belief in early Mongol documents like the Secret History and that so-​called tengrism was a later development arising from the Mongols’ encounter with other faiths.54 As an ideology for both internal and external consumption, the notion that the Mongols possessed a special “mandate of Heaven” served multiple purposes. On the one hand, it appealed to nomadic traditions of ancestor reverence and the belief that certain people were born specially endowed with divine power or charisma (Mongolian: su, Turkic: qut); on the other hand, its logic was also easily grasped by sedentary people who might reasonably conclude that only a dynasty supported by God could conquer so much so quickly.55 The new Mongol ideology was communicated to their subjects and neighbors by various means, including formal demands of submission, the summoning of vassal rulers to Mongol courts, and the “re-​education” of the royal hostages such vassals were required to leave with the Mongols when they returned home.56 When Chinggis Khan conquered Bukhara, for example, he is reported to have ascended the pulpit (minbar) of the main mosque and loudly proclaimed himself the instrument of God’s punishment.57 Whether or not this incident occurred as reported, it is certain that by the time of Möngke’s conquests such proclamations were routinely issued to peoples that the Mongols had recently conquered and to those whom they wished to conquer. This notion of the Mongol Empire as the instrument of the will of Heaven could have grim consequences when combined with pre-​imperial Mongol ideas about vengeance. Wholesale massacres of civilian populations become justifiable in this context not as acts of wanton cruelty, but rather as signal retribution justly visited upon those who had rebelled against divine providence.58 Whereas Mongol leaders had once sought to avoid the recurring cycle of vendettas by exterminating the extended families and clans of their enemies, under the empire Mongol generals wiped out entire cities and regions both to punish and to pre-​empt intransigent resistance. The Mongols carried out these massacres systematically: the entire population of cities that refused to submit were marched onto a nearby open space and then divided up, with each soldier in the army made responsible for dispatching a preset number of captives. Artisans and the inhabitants of cities that submitted were, on the other hand, generally spared. At the height of the predominance of this new, world-​conquering ideology in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Mongol relations with foreign powers were less than friendly. In many senses, this was unavoidable as Mongol official ideology 27

Florence Hodous

made international relations redundant. Other states were, ultimately, illegitimate and they could either submit to Mongol rule voluntarily or wait for a Mongol army to impose submission upon them in the near future. Mongol missives to other rulers typically contained a demand for submission and ended with the thinly veiled threat: “If you contravene [this order], what do we know? God knows.”59 Such letters were sent to a range of kings and potentates from Mamluk Egypt and France in the West to Java and Japan in the East. Peremptory commands and unilateralism characterized Mongol relations with foreign powers until well into the fourteenth century, even though by then the Mongol Empire had stopped expanding. The Chinggisids adopted a slightly more conciliatory tone, however, toward faraway rulers whom they did not plan to conquer immediately. Mongol leaders were also not above deception and protestations of goodwill in order to win military cooperation or at least dissuade distant enemies from helping nearer ones. The Ilkhanate, for example, sought without much success to enlist the aid of the crusader states of the Levant and the princes of Western Christendom in their struggle against the Mamluk Sultanate. Thus, whereas the Ilkhans’ letters to the Mamluk sultans were menacing and offered a “peace” premised entirely on submission, the Ilkhans diplomatically sent envoys to the Franks who were either Christians or else presumed to possess some credibility with Christians.60 The leader of a Mongol delegation to the council of Lyons in 1274 (and possibly the entire delegation) even let themselves be publicly baptized. The message conveyed by such acts was deliberately misleading, as the Ilkhans sought to give the impression that they were more favorable to Christianity than was actually the case—​ specifically, that they had accepted baptism or were on the point of doing so.61 Overtures to distant powers became more numerous and significant as rifts opened up between Chinggis’s successors. In the 1260s, for example, the Golden Horde came increasingly into conflict with the Ilkhanate over a range of issues including competing claims to territory and grazing grounds. The Golden Horde sought to strengthen its position by cultivating friendlier relations with the Ilkhanate’s Mamluk enemies. The conversion of the khan of the Golden Horde, Berke, to Islam in the 1250s added a religious dimension to the inter-​Chinggisid conflict, as Hülegü remained a patron of traditional Mongolian beliefs and of Buddhism. A shared Islamic faith did not entail the abandonment of the Mongol claim to world rulership, however, as Berke still sought to educate the Mamluk sultan Baybars about Mongol laws.62 Even as the various Mongol appanage states began to diverge from each other and assimilate local political traditions, they were careful to select only those elements that could contribute to (or at least be reconciled with) Chinggisid claims to universal rule. The Yuan emperors who ruled from Dadu, for example, continued to insist on their status as world rulers, despite the fact that after Qubilai, their actual campaigns against foreign states were few and far between. As qa’ans, the Yuan considered themselves overlords by right of the entire Mongol Empire, regardless of the internal divisions of that empire among the members of the Chinggisid family. In the second decade of the fourteenth century, a Yuan general thus reprimanded a Chaghatai envoy who had referred to an 28

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

order from the Chaghatai khan as an “imperial order” (jarliq). The general reminded the envoy that only the edict of a true qa’an (i.e., the Yuan emperor) qualified as an “imperial order.”63 Kim Hodong has even argued that the title used in Chinese documents—​ Da Yuan (“Great Yuan”)—​did not refer narrowly to the Yuan dynasty, as historians have often assumed, but rather to the entire Mongol world empire.64 Similarly, it seems that one of the reasons the Yuan showed such a preference for Tibetan Buddhism was that, unlike Confucianism and Daoism, it was a trans-​regional faith and had already proven its utility as the state religion of a number of previous multicultural empires such as the Tibetan, Qara Khitan, Tangut, and Uyghur.65 Islam, likewise, possessed greater appeal as a universal and potentially expansionist faith. When the Ilkhan Ghazan formally adopted Islam in 1295, however, he was careful to insist that his conversion by no means made him equal or inferior to the Mamluk sultan—​on the contrary, like his predecessors Ghazan insisted that it was the latter who should submit to the Ilkhanate.66 Chinggisid rulers continued to espouse the ideal of world conquest long after this had ceased to be a viable possibility. Sporadic warfare between the individual khanates in 1260–​1301 certainly belied the ideal of a Mongol imperial project, but the Mongols themselves treated such internecine strife as a minor affair, which would soon be resolved and followed by new conquests. When peace was finally made in 1304, for example, and the western khanates briefly agreed to recognize the nominal suzerainty of the Yuan qa’an, Qubilai’s grandson Temür Öljeitu, the reigning Ilkhan (also named Öljeitu), hastened to boast that the postal relay stations had been reestablished, linking all the territory “from Nangiyas [i.e., southern China], where the sun rises, as far as the Ocean Sea [i.e., the very West, the ocean surrounding the Eurasian landmass].” The Ilkhanate’s court chronicler Waṣṣāf recommended that the Mongols celebrate the restoration of familial unity by redirecting their energies toward the conquest of their Mamluk, Byzantine, and Frankish neighbors.67 It was only under the last of the Ilkhans, Abū Sa’īd, that a Chinggisid recognized the fundamental alteration in their international status. Between 1320 and 1323, the Ilkhan appears to have negotiated a peace settlement with the Mamluks stipulating an end not only to serious warfare but even to mutual raiding, as well as an agreement that the hajj should proceed every year under the flags of both the Mamluk sultan and the Ilkhan. Reuven Amitai has argued that this agreement marks Abū Sa’īd’s formal admission of the equal status of another ruler and therefore the de facto abandonment of the Chinggisid ideal of universal domination. The loss of this unifying ideology may even have contributed to the break-​up of the Ilkhanate after Abū Sa’īd’s death in 1335.68

Legacies of the Mongol Empire Perhaps the greatest political legacy of the Mongol Empire was that it stood for centuries as the exemplar of world empire. This meant that future empire-​builders deliberately adopted key features of Mongol rule, from styling themselves khan to adopting 29

Florence Hodous

Turko-​Mongol enthronement rituals and proclaiming their adherence to “Mongol” laws. Above all else, however, direct descent from Chinggis Khan became an indispensable requirement for any ruler aspiring to imperial status in Central Asia—​and in many regions beyond. Members of the Chinggisid dynasty, and they alone, could claim to be the legitimate rulers of the steppe and of the wider world beyond. This principle of the supremacy of Chinggisid descent over all other bloodlines—​even other cadet branches of the Borjigid clan to which Chinggis belonged—​took time to establish. Indeed, it was the product of concerted Mongol policies from the time of Chinggis until at least that of his grandson Qubilai. The tensions around the succession to the throne as well as attempts to create unity can be seen at the enthronement as qa’an of Chinggis’s son Ögödei. In a show of unity, Ögödei’s elder brother Cha’adai took his right hand while his uncle Temüge Otchigin (Chinggis Khan’s youngest brother) took his left hand. According to Juvaynī they then “by the resolution of aged counsel and the support of youthful fortune established him on the throne. Ulugh-​Noyan [Tolui, Ögödei’s younger brother] took a cup, and all present in and outside the Court thrice knelt down and uttered prayers, saying: ‘May the kingdom prosper by his being khan!’ ”69 By thus leading Ögödei to the throne and offering him wine, his most dangerous rivals indicated publicly their submission to the new khan. In reality, however, the new qa’an’s male relations had not given up their ambitions: both Temüge and Tolui’s descendants would later attempt to seize the throne. Temüge Otchigin made his move in 1246 right after the death of Ögödei Qa’an. He sent a large army to the capital and frightened the regent Töregene (Ögödei’s wife) to such an extent that she considered fleeing.70 However, her son Güyük fortuitously returned from the west with his army and Temüge retreated. The new qa’an Güyük then defeated and executed his great uncle. The historical sources, many of which were composed by historians attached to the eventual winners in the succession struggles, downplay Temüge Otchigin’s attempt as an insignificant rebellion with hardly any support. In fact, Otchigin was a serious contender for the throne and in 1246 it was still clearly possible for one of Chinggis Khan’s brothers, or even someone not directly descended from him, to become qa’an. The last threat from the descendants of Chinggis Khan’s brothers was a rebellion against Qubilai Qa’an launched in 1287 by Nayan, a great-​great-​grandson of Temüge Otchigin,71 together with the support of princes Shiktür (a grandson of Chinggis’s elder brother, Qasar) and Qada’an (descendant of Chinggis’s second brother, Qachi’un). Qubilai quickly quelled the revolt and executed Nayan, but the bloodless method of the latter’s execution testified to the fact that the prince remained a recognized member of the imperial family even in rebellion.72 After 1287, however, political legitimacy in the Mongol world had come to be restricted to the direct descendants of Chinggis Khan, to the exclusion of other collateral lines of the Borjigid clan. Once established, this principle dictated that rulers in Inner Asia for many centuries thereafter had either to claim Chinggisid origins or set up puppet khans with Chinggisid pedigrees if they were to gain legitimacy, as will be discussed in the next section. 30

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

In addition to the Chinggisid credentials of rulers, the aftermath of the Mongol conquest also led to a new importance for dynastic law, for, despite the fact that the Mongols were actually quite lenient in legal matters, the concept of Yasa, that is, a body of law expressing the Chinggisid dynasty’s identity, ideologically became very important. While in China it had long been accepted that each dynasty should produce its own laws, in the eastern Islamic world, it was in the post-​Mongol period that rulers began to not only patronize particular Sunni schools of law, but actively intervene and regulate the textbooks, the doctrines taught, and hierarchy of Islamic legal scholars. Guy Burak sees the development of a state-​affiliated body of Islamic legal scholars in the Ottoman Empire as far from an isolated case, but rather sees similarities including in the Timurid and Uzbek appointment of muftis and the sponsorship of legal texts in Mughal India. What was new was not that the state played a role in the development of law, but that the relationship and inevitable tensions between dynastic and Sharia law were conceptualized, and solved, in new ways.73 Another major legacy of the Mongols was their unprecedented impact on the ethnic map of Eurasia. Peoples with illustrious histories such as the Khitans, Tanguts, Qipchaqs, and Uyghurs all but disappeared as coherent communities, being subsumed into Mongol armies, appointed as officials or allocated as subjects all across the empire, or otherwise relocated. Out of the chaos caused by the formation of the Mongol Empire, moreover, emerged new peoples (sometimes named after particular Mongol princes), such as the Nogays, Tatars, Kazakhs, and Uzbeks (see below). The scale of the transformations caused by the Mongol Empire can hardly be overstated.74 While some of this displacement was unintended as people fled before the Mongol armies, many of the demographic and political changes brought about by the creation of the Mongol Empire were the product of specific, deliberate policies. The first of these was Chinggis Khan’s tactic of breaking up hostile nomadic groups and assigning them to several different, geographically dispersed army units, with the aim of undermining their group identity and making them instead loyal to him alone. Further, the Mongols had a propensity to view conquered populations as “livestock” or mobile property that could be moved thousands of kilometers, just as the Mongols themselves were used to continual resettlement.75 The khans tended in particular to move and resettle people who possessed skills that were useful to their attempts to expand and develop the empire. Thomas Allsen, the foremost researcher on these population movements, has argued that population resettlement was so integral to Mongol empire-​building that “the Chinggisids seized Central and West Asia with the human resources of East Asia and then expanded and secured their holdings in the East with personnel transported from western Eurasia.”76 Chinggis thus took large numbers of Chinese soldiers trained in the use of mangonel catapults with him in his campaign against Khwarazm, knowing that Chinese siegecraft would be highly useful in taking the walled cities of the Silk Road. When these sieges were successful, the Mongols took pains to identify and spare skilled artisans of all kinds, who were then dispatched to the camps of local Mongol commanders or even 31

Florence Hodous

to the court of the great khan himself. The Mongols particularly valued rich garments as symbols of status, for example, so Muslim weavers of gold brocade from cities like Herat were relocated to strategic locations across the empire in order to provide the elite with access to their coveted wares.77 Persian physicians and translators were similarly sought after and often enjoyed illustrious careers in Mongol service. Even more important than military engineers and artisans for the construction of the empire were the servitors who possessed administrative and financial skills. Following the conquest of western Turkestan, for example, Chinggis Khan sought out specialists among the local elite who were “skilful in the laws and customs of cities” whom he appointed as governors.78 Such skilled people could be appointed across the empire to places far from their homes. The Mongols employed many northern Chinese administrators, for example, to govern Central Asia, while Muslim financial specialists became very influential in the Yuan Empire. Qubilai thus appointed a Khwarazmian, Sayyid-​i Ajall Shams al-​Dīn ‘Umar, as governor of the province of Yunnan in southwestern China and tasked him with integrating that province more firmly into the Chinese realm. The new governor is credited with both promoting Islam and building the first Confucian temple in Yunnan as part of his civilizing mission.79 Another policy with long-​term effects was Chinggis Khan’s demand of most peoples who submitted to him that they provide troops to fight in his campaigns. This request both tested the loyalty of new subjects and maintained the momentum of Mongol expansion. The large, multiethnic armies that resulted often fought, and sometimes settled, far from their places of origin. Moreover, the Mongols did not hesitate to use conquered populations for other, nonmilitary purposes. Some were conscripted to resettle regions of the empire that had become depopulated. There were even several instances of sedentary people being forced to look after the Mongols’ animals. While the actual process of imperial expansion was thus generally bloody and disruptive, Mongol rule, once established, had positive effects too. The empire greatly facilitated travel and communications across Eurasia, despite relatively frequent conflicts between the khanates in Central Asia. The Mongols also established an extensive postal system (jam), which linked the far-​flung provinces and appanages of the empire through a network of mounted messengers, dedicated roads, and relay stations spaced thirty or forty kilometers apart. This system not only guaranteed that messages could pass quickly and securely from one part of the empire to another, but that travelers and merchants had regular places to rest and get fresh horses. The khans initially allowed merchants to use this state-​run postal system for their own purposes free of charge, but over time Mongol rulers increasingly restricted the postal service to government agents and official envoys.80 The Mongols further sought to encourage the development of long-​distance exchanges by ensuring the safety of roads, by simplifying and regulating tariffs, and by sponsoring associations or cartels of merchants (ortaq) that financed and facilitated caravan expeditions.81 The Mongol khans actively sought to attract merchants to their courts, for example, by offering them loans at favorable interest rates and by buying goods at well above market prices.82 32

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

The mobility of people and goods under Chinggisid rule created a unique era of cultural and technological exchanges in areas as disparate as religion, law, monetary policy, agriculture, medicine, history-​writing, geography, and astronomy. In the Ilkhanate capital of Tabriz, for example, Ghazan Khan brought together an estimated three hundred artists in the early 1300s and charged them with producing lavishly illustrated manuscript copies of a new history he had commissioned his vizier, Rashīd al-​Dīn, to write in Persian. The work, entitled Compendium of Chronicles (Jāmiʿ al-​Tawārīkh), was intended to serve as an official history of the Mongols and therefore described political events occurring across the entire expanse of their world, from the Holy Roman Empire to China. Rashīd al-​Dīn drew on sources in Latin, Mongolian, Persian, and Chinese to produce one of the first truly global histories ever written. The artwork that adorned his Compendium of Chronicles was just as much a testament to Mongol cosmopolitanism as the text. The artists of the Ilkhanate drew on a wide range of artistic inspirations from Italy, Byzantium, Persia, Central Asia, and China to produce pages in which an image depicting a scene from the life of the Buddha was followed by one of the Prophet of Islam, or an Alexander the Great in Persian dress might slay a sinuous, Chinese-​style dragon. The result of this cultural effervescence was a new art form, the “Persian miniature,” which broke with centuries of religious strictures in the Islamic world banning representative art. This new and rather heterodox art would survive the breakup of the Ilkhanate to thrive and develop further under the sponsorship of a succession of southwest Asian dynasties from the Timurids to the Safavids, Mughals, and Ottomans, all of whom associated it with elite imperial culture.83

Mongol Decline and Successor States From the very beginning, the Chinggisids struggled with the challenges of imposing unity and coherence on the many disparate elements that constituted their vast empire. It had required prodigious efforts to unify the various Mongol groups, then to secure the obedience of the peoples they conquered, and finally to control fissiparous tendencies within the Chinggisid family itself. From the mid-​fourteenth century onward, however, the Chinggisid khanates would all fail to meet these challenges—​with the most daunting obstacle proving to be their inability to rein in the rival ambitions of the Chinggisid princes. Long years of warfare with the Mamluks and the Golden Horde, for example, wore down the Ilkhanate and when the ninth Ilkhan died suddenly without heirs in 1335 the realm rapidly disintegrated as its generals and governors began to assert their de facto independence.84 The Golden Horde’s capture of Tabriz in 1357 effectively marked the end of the Ilkhanate as a coherent state. Similar processes of decline affected the other khanates, as intrigues, rivalries, famine, and plague eroded the ability of Chinggisid rulers to rule. A particular problem that weakened each of the khanates was the spread of the bubonic plague or Black Death, which raged across Eurasia in the mid-​fourteenth century. The very growth in trade and communications that the Mongols had fostered 33

Florence Hodous

so assiduously seems to have created the conditions for this pandemic.85 In China, the Yuan also faced a popular uprising, led and organized by a millenarian secret society known the White Lotus, which succeeded in driving the Mongols from China between 1351 and 1368. A host of pretenders and would-​be restorers promptly sought to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of a strong central state in the Chinggisid khanates. Many of these, in Central and Western Asia, sought to draw on both Chinggisid and Islamic sources of legitimacy. The situation was most confused in Persia, where competing warlords carved out independent fiefdoms and put one or another powerless Chinggisid “khan” on the throne as a figurehead. China presented a special case, as the subject population drove the Mongols from the country and resisted any restoration of their rule again. The remnants of the Yuan dynasty regrouped in Mongolia, however, and continued to insist on their right to govern all East Asia. The so-​called Northern Yuan ruled, in name at least, over their Mongolian homeland into the 1600s, but, aside from brief periods when an unusually strong khan arose, in practice Mongolian political life returned to the many rival confederations of pre-​Chinggisid times.86 The Chaghatai Khanate too suffered divisions in the 1340s, when it broke apart into separate Western and Eastern khanates. The Western Chaghatai Khanate would, however, temporarily reverse this trend by providing the staging ground for the most successful attempt to revive the Chinggisid Empire. It had not been long since the defeat and expulsion from China in 1368 of the last qa’an of the Yuan dynasty, when Tīmūr Lang (Tamerlane), a Turkic-​speaking Mongol claiming descent from a follower of Cha’adai, took power in Transoxiana. In a series of dramatic conquests from 1370 to 1405, Tīmūr’s armies—​composed mostly of Turkic-​speaking warriors rather than true Mongols—​swept across Central and Southwestern Asia. They conquered Persia in 1383–​93, which in turn led to a bloody conflict with the Golden Horde in 1389–​95, culminating in their sacking of the trading posts and seizure of the Golden Horde khan Toqtamish’s camp and personal treasury. Tīmūr continued to expand into Mesopotamia, sacking Baghdad in 1395 and then again in 1401. In 1398, he crossed the Indus River and invaded the Delhi Sultanate, reaching as far as Delhi itself—​which he likewise sacked. Returning westward, the restless conqueror warred against both the Mamluk Sultanate and the rising empire of the Ottomans in 1400–​1402, wreaking destruction upon Aleppo and Damascus and capturing the Ottoman sultan, Bayazid I, at the battle of Ankara. In 1404, he was preparing for the conquest of the Ming Empire when he died in the city of Otrar in modern Kazakhstan.87 Throughout his political and military career, Tīmūr lived in the long shadow cast by Chinggis Khan. In part, this was by choice inasmuch as Tīmūr made it his life’s work to restore the Chinggisid Empire to its original dimensions. His campaigns matched those of Chinggis in many senses: the exemplary discipline of his army, the lightning speed of his movements, and the considerable brutality visited upon his foes. Like Chinggis, Tīmūr could also be merciful and he made a habit of sparing artisans and bringing 34

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

them back to adorn his new capital, Samarqand. Tīmūr welcomed these comparisons with the Great Khan and portrayed himself as the “restorer . . . of the entire Chinggisid world order.”88 Within the context of internal Chinggisid disputes, Tīmūr sided with the Ögödeids and the Cha’adaids against the descendants of Chinggis’s fourth son, Tolui: Möngke, Qubilai, and Hülegü, whom he saw as illegitimate usurpers of power in China and Persia. The Chinggisid legacy thus gave Tīmūr a model to aspire to, but it also created certain problems. Although Tīmūr was undefeated in battle and of noble Mongol birth, he was not a Chinggisid and so could not legitimately call himself a qan let alone qa’an. It is a striking testimony to the power of the Chinggisid mystique that a man who had conquered Persia, the Delhi Sultanate, and the Ottoman Empire still felt constrained for many years to rule in the name of a puppet khan of impeccable Chinggisid descent. Even after Tīmūr dispensed with this fiction and began to rule in his own name, he never saw fit to assume any title more exalted than that of “Son-​in-​Law” (Güregen)—​a title he enjoyed solely because of his marriage to a Chinggisid princess, Saray Malik. Tīmūr also repeated the mistakes of his Chinggisid models by dividing his empire into governorships that he shared out among his sons and grandsons. The predictable result was a cyclic pattern of struggles for power among his descendants. Upon Tīmūr’s death, for example, one of his sons and two grandsons promptly contested the succession, each with their own armies, treasuries, and advisors. The Timurid Empire survived the death of its founder by several generations, but it was plagued by fratricidal conflicts and had lost control of most of its former territory by the late 1400s. The longest lasting of the four original Chinggisid khanates, that of the Golden Horde, followed a pattern of division and decline similar to those of its neighbors. The war between Tīmūr and Khan Toqtamish in the 1380s–​1390s exhausted the strength of the Golden Horde and during the mid-​1400s it dissolved into competing successor states, each ruled by descendants of Chinggis’s eldest son, Jochi. In each case, failed Chinggisid contenders for the khanate of the entire Golden Horde consoled themselves by setting up independent states in a portion of the khanate’s territories. The central territories of the Golden Horde that had stretched along the length of the Volga and its tributaries thus became divided between the new khanates of Kazan in the north and Astrakhan in the south. The Jochid prince Hacı Giray migrated westward to establish his own khanate in the Crimean Peninsula and the northern shores of the Black Sea, while yet another branch of the family established a khanate of Siberia in the easternmost lands of the Golden Horde in the Ob River watershed. Finally, a large Turko-​Mongol confederation known as the Nogay Horde, named after a great-​ grandson of Chinggis, Nogay Khan, took over the steppe lands to the north and east of the Caspian Sea. Each of these successor states were prone to political turmoil, which weakened their ability to confront increasing pressure over the course of the 1500s–​1600s from their former vassals, the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. One by one, they would be absorbed into the rising Russian Empire, into Poland-​Lithuania, and into the Ottoman Empire. 35

Florence Hodous

Figure 1.2  Central Asia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B. Golden (eds), The Cambridge History of Inner Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). The last of the major Chinggisid successor states was that of the Shaybanids or Uzbeks, who, as descendants of Jochi’s fifth son Shībānī, began to claim seniority among all the branches of the Jochid family (and therefore the khanate of the Golden Horde) during the mid-​1400s. The original seat of the Shaybanids was in western Siberia along the Tura River, but they came to control most of the eastern Qipchaq Steppe and in the early 1500s they took advantage of the chronic instability of the Timurid Empire to expand southward into the rich lands of Central Asia. The key figure in this expansion was Muhammad Shaybānī (ca. 1451–​1510), who began his career in the service of the Timurid ruler of Samarqand, before turning against his master and seeking to displace the Timurids entirely. His Uzbek forces conquered the Timurid capital of Samarqand in 1500 and over the next seven years systematically ejected the Timurids from their other strongholds in Fergana, Tashkent, Bukhara, Khwarazm, and Herat. In the process of carving out this new empire in Transoxiana, of course, the Shaybanids made many enemies, including the surviving Timurids of 36

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

the Mughal Empire, the Eastern Chaghatai Khanate, and the Safavids (who would defeat and kill Muhammad Shaybānī in 1510). Like all the other successor states, the Shaybanid Khanate suffered further divisions. These began in 1465, when the princes Girey and Janibek rebelled against the authority of the Shaybanids and formed their own independent state, which became known as the Kazakh Khanate and their followers ‘Kazakhs.” The Shaybanid possessions would become further divided into the independent khanates of Bukhara (1500–​1920), Khiva (1511–​1902), and Khokand (1709–​1876) (see Figure 1.2).89 By the early 1500s a host of contending, petty khanates had thus replaced the awesome juggernaut that had once been the Chinggisid Empire, leaving Inner Asia fragmented beyond any hope of reunification. Each of these khanates, however, remained intensely aware of their origins in the Chinggisid Empire and sought to recreate it in miniature in their own domains. Each held fast to the doctrine of Chinggisid dynastic legitimacy, retained Chinggisid titles and symbols, and preserved Chinggisid ceremonies and court protocol. Many of the khanates continued to hold quriltais, for example, while the rank of individual warriors serving in the armies of the successor khanates often depended on the place their ancestors had occupied in the army of the Great Khan.90 A striking example of the persistence of the Chinggisid imperial idea is that when the Qing Empire began to unravel as a result of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, a council of notables in Outer Mongolia took advantage of the chaos to declare their independence from China and the restoration of the Yeke Mongqol Ulus—​the Great Mongol Ulus. They also selected as head of state or “holy qa’an” (bogd qa’an), the most senior Buddhist cleric in Mongolia, the eighth Jebtsundamba, who was popularly believed to be the reincarnation of a Chinggisid prince of the Toluid line. Inner Asian politics would thus remain bound up with and, in many sense, defined by the Chinggisid legacy for many centuries after that empire was no more.

Notes

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/​2007–​2013)/​ERC Grant Agreement n. 31239. Many thanks to Dr. Marie Favereau, Dr. Francesca Fiaschetti, Dr. George Lane, as well as Prof. Brian Farrell, Dr. Jack Fairey, and the anonymous reviewers who read and commented on this chapter. 1 Nicola Di Cosmo, “State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History 10, no. 1 (1999), 20–​1. See, for example, Christopher Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 11–​23. 2 For a description of these groups, and why it may not be useful to call them “tribes,” see David Sneath, The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 39–​63, 93–​120; Christopher Atwood, “How the Mongols Got a Word for Tribe—​and What It Means,” Menggu shi yanjiu 蒙古史研究/​Studia Historica Mongolica 10 (2010), 63–​89.

37

Florence Hodous

3 For convenience and as a concession to common usage, the word “qan” will be rendered throughout this chapter as “khan” except in explicitly Mongolian phrases. 4 Jennifer Holmgren, “Observations on Marriage and Inheritance Practices in Early Mongol and Yuan Society, With Particular Reference to the Levirate,” Journal of Asian History 20, no. 2 (1986), 131–​4, 148–​9. 5 Igor de Rachewiltz, “The Title Činggis Qan/​Qaγan Re-​examined,” in Gedanke und Wirkung: Festschrift zum 90. Geburtstag von Nicholaus Poppe, ed. W. Heissig and K. Sagaster (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1989), pp. 281–​98. 6 Aleksandr Sh. Kadyrbaev, “Turks (Uighurs, Kipchaks and Kanglis) in the History of the Mongols,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 58, no. 3 (2005), 249–​53. 7 Michal Biran, Chinggis Khan (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). 8 James Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe (London: Phoenix Press, 2001); Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–​1410 (Harlow, England; New York: Pearson Longman, 2005). 9 Thomas Allsen, Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands, 1251–​1259 (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 30–​6. 10 George Lane, Early Mongol Rule in Thirteenth-​ Century Iran: A Persian Renaissance (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), pp. 15–​37. 11 Thomas Allsen, “Sharing Out the Empire: Apportioned Lands under the Mongols,” in Nomads in the Sedentary World, ed. Anatoly M. Khazanov and André Wink (Richmond:  Curzon, 2001), pp. 172–​90. 12 Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Igor de Rachewiltz (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), vol. 1, § 238. 13 Michael Brose, Subjects and Masters: Uyghurs in the Mongol Empire (Bellingham: Western Washington University Press, 2007). 14 Ishayahu Landa, “Imperial Sons-​in-​Law on the Move: Oyirad and Qonggirad Dispersion in Mongol Eurasia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 22 (2016), 161–​98. 15 John Masson Smith, “Dietary Decadence and Dynastic Decline in the Mongol Empire,” Journal of Asian History 34, no. 1 (2000), 35–​52. 16 Bruno De Nicola, Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206–​1335 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Morris Rossabi, “Khubilai Khan and the Women in His Family,” in Studia Sino-​Mongolica: Festschrift für Herbert Franke, ed. Wolfgang Bauer (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1979), pp. 153–​80. 17 Denise Aigle, Le Fārs sous la domination mongole:  politique et fiscalité, XIIIe-​XIVe s. (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iraniennes, 2005); Lane, Early Mongol Rule, pp. 96–​152. 18 Christopher Atwood, “Validated by Holiness or Sovereignty: Religious Toleration as Political Theology in the Mongol World Empire of the Thirteenth Century,” International History Review 26, no. 2 (2004), 237–​56. 19 Thomas Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 20 Chōkuto, Chingisu Kan no hō チンギス・カンの法 [The Law of Chingis Khan] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2010), p. 83; Denise Aigle, “Mongol Law versus Islamic Law. Myth and Reality,” in The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 134–​56. 21 ʿAṭā Malik ibn Muḥammad Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, trans. John Andrew Boyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 205–​206;

38

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

22

23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

3 6 37

for the original, see ʿAṭā Malik ibn Muḥammad Juvaynī, Ta’rīkh-​i Jahān-​Gushā, ed. Mīrzā Muḥammad Qazwīnī (London: Luzac, 1912), pp. 162–​3. Rashīd al-​Dīn, Jāmi’ al-​Tavārīkh, ed. M. Roushān and M. Mūsavī (Tehran:  Nashr-​ i Alburz, 1994), pp. 1019, 1027; Rashīd al-​Dīn, Rashiduddin Fazlullah’s Jamiʻuʼt-​ Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Cambridge, MA: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1998–​ 99), pp. 499, 503; Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī, ʿAbd al-​Razzāq ibn Aḥmad, Al-​Ḥawādith al-​Jāmi’ah (Baghdād: Al-​Maktabah al-​‘Arabīyah, 1932), 332–​3, 362–​4, 478. Bettine Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (960–​ 1368) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 208–​20. Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, pp. 495–​500; Juvaynī, Ta’rīkh-​ i Jahān-​Gushā, pp. 232–​6. Florence Hodous, “Faith and the Law: Religious Beliefs and the Death Penalty in the Ilkhanate,” in The Mongols’ Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid Iran, ed. Bruno De Nicola and Charles Melville (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 106–​29. John of Plano Carpini, “History of the Mongols,” trans. Christopher Dawson, in The Mongol Mission (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), pp. 9–​10. Michael Weiers, Zweitausend Jahre Krieg und Drangsal und Tschinggis Khans Vermächtnis (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), pp. 78–​86; Veronika Veit, “Characteristic Elements in the Process of Identity Building in Central Asia: The Example of the Mongols (an Excursion through History),” in Political Strategies of Identity Building in Non-​Han Empires in China, ed. Francesca Fiaschetti and Julia Schneider (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), pp. 82–​4. Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, pp. 202–​203; Juvaynī, Ta’rīkh-​ i Jahān-​Gushā, p. 160. ‘Abd Allāh ibn Faz̤l Allah Waṣṣāf al-​Ḥaz̤rat, Geschichte Wassaf’s, trans. Joseph Hammer-​ Purgstall, ed. Sibylle Wentker (Wien:  Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 75–​6, 78–​9. On quriltai, see Ron Sela, Ritual and Authority in Central Asia: The Khan’s Inauguration Ceremony (Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asia Studies, Indiana University, 2003). Florence Hodous, “The Quriltai as a Legal Institution in the Mongol Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal 56 (2012/​13), 87–​102. George Lane, “Intellectual Jousting and the Chinggisid Wisdom Bazaars,” in The Mongols and Post-​Mongol Asia: Studies in Honour of David O. Morgan ed. Timothy May, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26, nos. 1–2 ( 2016), 235–47.” A. K. S. Lambton, Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia: Aspects of Administrative, Economic and Social History 11th–​14th Century (London: Tauris, 1988), pp. 54–​5; Aigle, Le Fārs sous la domination mongole, pp. 88–​91. Ghiyās̲ al-​Dīn Khwāndamīr, Dastūr al-​Wuzarāʼ, ed. Saʻīd Nafīsī (Tehran: Iqbāl, 1976), p. 318; Ḥāfiẓ-​i Abrū, Ẕayl Jāmīʿ al-​Tawārīkh Rashīdī, ed. Khānbābā Bayānī (Tehran: Anjuman-​i Āṣār-​i Millī, 1972), p. 118. Elizabeth Endicott-​West, Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administration in the Yuan Dynasty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 45; Elizabeth Endicott-​West, “Imperial Governance in Yuan Times,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46, no. 2 (1986), 545, 549; David O. Morgan, “Who Ran the Mongol Empire?,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1 (1982), 130. Secret History, vol. 1, § 202. Igor de Rachewiltz, “Some Remarks on the Ideological Foundations of Chingis Khan’s Empire,” Papers on Far Eastern History 7 (1973), 32–​5.

39

Florence Hodous

38 From Zhao Hong’s, Mengda Beilu, quoted in Igor de Rachewiltz, “The Genesis of the Name ‘Yeke Mongγol Ulus,’” East Asian History 31 (2006), 55. 39 Igor de Rachewiltz, “Qan, Qa’an and the Seal of Güyüg,” in Documenta Barbarorum, ed. Klaus Sagaster and Michael Weiers (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983), p. 273; John A. Boyle, “On the Titles Given in J̌ uvainī to Certain Mongolian Princes,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 19, nos 1–​2 (1956), 152. 40 Peter Golden, “The Türk Imperial Tradition in the Pre-​Chinggisid Era,” in Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-​Twentieth Centuries, ed. David Sneath (Bellingham, WA:  Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2006), pp. 40–​2. 41 Rachewiltz, “Qan, Qa’an and the Seal of Güyüg,” p. 273. 42 Rachewiltz, “Ideological Foundations,” pp. 28–​9. 43 Golden, “The Türk Imperial Tradition,” p. 49. 44 Thomas Allsen, “Spiritual Geography and Political Legitimacy in the Eastern Steppe,” in Ideology and the Early State, ed. Henri J. M. Claessen and Jarich G. Oosten (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 118–​28. 45 Juvaynī, Ta’rīkh-​i Jahān-​Gushā, p.  40; Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, p. 55. 46 Golden, “The Türk Imperial Tradition,” p. 44; Secret History, vol. 1, § 21. 47 Paul D. Buell and Judith Kolbas, “The Ethos of State and Society in the Early Mongol Empire: Chinggis Khan to Güyük,” in The Mongols and Post-​Mongol Asia: Studies in Honour of David O. Morgan, ed. Timothy May, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, 26/​1–​2 (January 2016), 50; Rachewiltz, “Ideological Foundations,” pp. 28–​9. 48 Larry V. Clark, “The Theme of Revenge in the Secret History of the Mongols,” in Aspects of Altaic Civilization II, ed. Larry Clark and Paul Draghi (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1978), pp. 33–​57. 49 Roberte Hamayon, “Mérite de l’offenseur vengeur, plaisir du rival vainqueur,” in La vengeance: Études d’ethnologie, d’histoire et de philosophie, ed. Raymond Verdier (Paris: Cujas, 1980), vol. 2, p. 116. 50 Thomas Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns: Mongol Military Operations in the Volga-​Ural Region, 1217–​1237,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 3 (1983), 5–​23. 51 John A. Boyle, “Dynastic and Political History of the Il-​Khans,” in The Cambridge History of Iran: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. John A. Boyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), vol. 5, p. 304. 52 Secret History, vol. 1, § 254 and vol. 2, p. 923. 53 Eric Voegelin, “The Mongol Orders of Submission to the European Powers, 1245–​1255,” Byzantion 15 (1941), 378–​413. 54 Marie-​Lise Beffa, “Le concept de tänggäri, «ciel» dans l’Histoire Secrete des Mongols,” Études mongoles et siberiennes 24 (1993), 218; Marie Dominique Even, “L’Au-​delà dans les représentations religieuses des Mongols,” in La mort et l’au-​delà: une rencontre de l’Orient et de l’Occident, ed. Paul Servais (Louvain-​la-​Neuve: Bruylant-​Academia, 1999), p. 166. 55 Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 46. 56 Anne Broadbridge, Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 8. 57 Juvaynī, Ta’rīkh-​i Jahān-​Gushā, p.  81; Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, p. 105. 58 Françoise Aubin, “Some Characteristics of Penal Legislation among the Mongols (13th–​ 21st Centuries),” in Central Asian Law: An Historical Overview. A Festschrift for the

40

Inner Asia, 1100s–1405

Ninetieth Birthday of Herbert Franke, ed. Wallace Johnson and Irina F. Popova (Topeka, Kansas: Society for Asian Legal History, 2004), pp. 125–​6. 59 Voegelin, “The Mongol Orders of Submission,” p. 411. 60 Reuven Amitai-Preiss, “An Exchange of Letters in Arabic between Abaγa Ilkhan and Sultan Baybars (A.H. 667/​A.D. 1268–​1269),” Central Asiatic Journal 38, no. 1 (1994), 11–​12,  24. 61 Peter Jackson, “World-​Conquest and Local Accommodation:  Threat and Blandishment in Mongol Diplomacy,” in History and Historiography of Post-​Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honour of John E. Woods, ed. J. Pfeiffer, Sh. A. Quinn, with the collaboration of E. Tucker (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), pp. 4–​5, 11–​14. 62 Broadbridge, Kingship and Ideology, p. 58. 63 Liu Yingsheng, “War and Peace between the Yuan Dynasty and the Chaghadaid Khanate (1312–​1323),” in Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World, ed. Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), pp. 341–​2. 64 Kim Hodong, “Mong’gol che’guk kwa Tae Wŏn’ 몽골帝國과 大元,” Yŏksa hakpo 歴史學 報 192 (2006), 221–​53; Kim Hodong, ‘The Unity of the Mongol Empire and Continental Exchanges over Eurasia,” Journal of Central Eurasian Studies 1 (2009), 32. 65 Herbert Franke, From Tribal Chieftain to Universal Emperor and God: The Legitimation of the Yüan Dynasty (München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978), pp.  52–​5. 66 Reuven Amitai-Preiss, “Mongol Imperial Ideology and the Ilkhanid War against the Mamluks,” in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. Reuven Amitai-​Preiss and David O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 66–​7, 71–​2. 67 Kim Hodong, “The Unity of the Mongol Empire and Continental Exchanges over Eurasia,” Journal of Central Eurasian Studies 1 (2009), pp. 15–​42; Jackson, The Mongols and the West, p. 183. 68 Reuven Amitai, “The Resolution of the Mongol-​Mamluk War,” in Mongols, Turks and Others, ed. Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 381, 384. 69 Juvaynī, Ta’rīkh-​i Jahān-​Gushā, p. 147; Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, p. 218. 70 Yuanshi 146, p. 3464. 71 Yao Dali 姚大力, “Guanyu Yuanchao ‘dong zhuhou’ de jige kaoshi 关于元朝‘东诸侯’的几个 考释,” in Mengyuan Zhidu yu Zhengzhi Wenhua 蒙元制度与政治文化 (Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, 2011). 72 On bloodless execution methods and their significance, see Hodous, “Faith and the Law.” 73 Guy Burak, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Post-​Mongol Context of the Ottoman Adoption of a School of Law,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 3 (2013), 589–​99. 74 Michal Biran, “The Mongol Transformation: From the Steppe to Eurasian Empire,” in Eurasian Transformations: Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystallizations, Divergences, Renaissances, ed. Johan P. Arnason and Björn Wittrock (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), p. 357. 75 Janet Abu-​Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A. D. 1250–​ 1350 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 155. 76 Thomas Allsen, “Population Movements in Mongol Eurasia,” in Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors, ed. Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015), p. 129. 77 Thomas Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 78 Secret History, vol. 1, § 263.

41

Florence Hodous

79 Jacqueline M. Armijo-​Hussein, “Sayyid ‘Ajall Shams al-​Din: A Muslim from Central Asia, Serving the Mongols in China, and Bringing ‘Civilization’ to Yunnan,” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1997. 80 Adam J. Silverstein, Postal Systems in the Pre-​modern Muslim World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 81 Thomas Allsen, “Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners, 1200–​ 1260,” Asia Major 2, no. 2 (1989), 83–​126; Elizabeth Endicott-​West, “Merchant Associations in Yuan China: The Ortoγ,” Asia Major 2, no. 2 (1989), 127–​54. 82 The practice was called zhongmai in Chinese. Kim Chanyoung, “The Yuan ‘Zhongmai Baohuo 中賣寶貨’: Etymology and Practice 원대(元代) 중매보화(中賣寶貨)의 의미(意味)와 그 특성(特性),” Journal of Central Asian Studies 중앙아시아연구 1 (2007), 23–​46. 83 Sheila R. Canby, “Depictions of Buddha Sakyamuni in the Jamiʿ al-​Tavarikh and the Majmaʿ al-​Tavarikh,” Muqarnas 10 (1993), 300–​305. 84 Charles Melville, “The End of the Ilkhanate and After: Observations on the Collapse of the Mongol World Empire,” in The Mongols’ Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid Iran, ed. Bruno De Nicola and Charles Melville (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 309–​35. 85 Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), pp. 405–​408. 86 Veronika Veit, “The Eastern Steppe: Mongol Regimes after the Yuan (1368–​1636),” in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B. Golden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 157–​81. 87 Beatrice Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1989). 88 Beatrice Manz, “Tamerlane and the Symbolism of Sovereignty,” Iranian Studies 21, nos 1–​2 (1998), 119. 89 Yuri Bregel, “The New Uzbek States:  Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand:  c. 1750–​1886,” in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B. Golden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 392–​411. 90 Biran, “The Mongol Transformation,” pp. 358–​9.

42

Chapter 2

The Great Ming and East Asia:  The World Order of a Han-​Centric Chinese Empire, 1368–​1644 Jinping Wang In November 1367, Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–​98) issued a Northern-​Expedition proclamation when he sent two of his most brilliant generals to attack the remaining Mongol forces of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–​1368) in north China. The proclamation conveyed important messages about a new imperial dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang was about to build, emphasizing his determination to rid China of Mongol influence and restore the civilization of the Han Chinese (deriving from the name of the Han Dynasty, 206 bce–​220 ce), who were and remain today the majority ethnic group in China. A few months later, having forced the last Yuan emperor to flee Beijing for the steppe and having eliminated most of his domestic rivals, Zhu Yuanzhang pronounced himself emperor of the new dynasty of “Great Ming” (Daming 大明, meaning “Great Brightness”) in Nanjing in January 1368. He also named his reign Hongwu (“Expansive Martial” 洪武), and modern scholars often refer to him as Emperor Hongwu or just Hongwu. In the early years of his reign, Hongwu continuously sent edicts to rulers in frontier regions and neighboring states such as Annam (modern Vietnam), Korea, and Japan. Employing language similar to that used in the 1367 proclamation, he claimed legitimacy as a new Chinese emperor and demanded allegiance. These documents, the 1367 proclamation and the subsequent edicts, set the basic tone for the worldview of the new Ming Empire. This worldview stressed the empire’s territorial unity under the centralized rule of the Zhu royal family, who identified themselves as Han Chinese and followed an official orthodoxy very closely associated with Confucianism. This worldview highlighted two different approaches to foreign relations between Ming China and other entities. One approach was based on a Sino-​steppe demarcation, regarding China as geopolitically and culturally separate from the world of the northern steppe controlled by the Mongols. The other approach was oriented around a hierarchy in which China was a hegemonic suzerain state and non-​Chinese entities were subordinate vassal states that acknowledged the Chinese supremacy. Throughout his reign, Hongwu employed these approaches to forge the Ming into the Han-​centric Chinese empire he envisioned, an imperial empire that openly promoted the supremacy of Han-​Chinese styles of governance, institutions, and culture. Hongwu’s son Zhu Di (Emperor Yongle, r.  1402–​24), after usurping his nephew’s throne and moving the capital to Beijing in 1415–​21, differed from his father in taking

43

Jinping Wang

more aggressive and expansionist approaches to reshaping the Ming Empire in terms of foreign relations. Yongle also introduced new modes of imperial governance and set into motion such sweeping changes that he was later seen as the “second founder” of the Ming dynasty both by his successors and by historians.1 The diversified traditions of empire-​building established by the two founders strongly foreshadowed the ways in which later Ming rulers understood and governed their empire. Meanwhile, the empire was continuously changing in accordance with variations in individual rulers’ desires, capabilities, and government policies and practices, as well as in response to fluctuating geopolitical situations within and beyond China. After the mid-​sixteenth century, the integration of domestic and global economy tied the destiny of the Ming Empire closely to world developments, forcing the Ming rulers to adjust their policies to cope with emerging crises both at home and at their borders. This chapter emphasizes the crucial importance of the Hongwu and Yongle emperors in shaping the characteristics of the empire. Specifically, it discusses how Hongwu laid the cornerstone of the empire’s political legitimacy, how he and Yongle established the empire’s foundations for governance, frontier management, and foreign relations, and how these foundations were perpetuated or changed throughout the rest of the dynastic history. The material presented here aims to demonstrate how the Ming rulers defined their empire, and how their perceptions interacted with political, economic, social, and cultural changes over time. The chapter also pays particular attention to the ways in which the Ming inherited the legacies of earlier Chinese empires and of their immediate Mongol predecessors, the Yuan dynasty. Proceeding chronologically, this chapter examines the Ming Empire from four perspectives: political legitimacy, imperial governance, frontier managements, and foreign relations.

Political Legitimacy Zhu Yuanzhang used two crucial Chinese discourses—​the distinction between hua (“Chinese,” but more literally “brightness” 華) and yi (“barbarians” 夷), and the Mandate of Heaven—​to legitimize his regime as a new Chinese empire. The 1367 Northern-​ Expedition proclamation provides the best illustration of the uses of these discourses. It begins with an elaboration of the discourse of Hua-​Yi distinction: “Ever since the ancient times, rulers have governed All under Heaven. It has always been the case that China occupied the center to bring the barbarians under control, while barbarians remained in the peripheries, respecting and submitting to China. I have never heard that barbarians occupied China and governed All under Heaven.”2 The Hua-​Yi discourse stressed the demarcation between Chinese and non-​Chinese along the lines of ethnicity, culture, and geography, and highlighted Chinese cultural superiority. It developed in the Warring States period (476–​221 bce) and was integrated with the notion of “All under Heaven” (Tianxia 天下)—​meaning moral uniformity of the world—​in the Han dynasty to shape the traditional Chinese worldview. In this 44

The Great Ming and East Asia

worldview, China, where the Han Chinese lived and Han-​Chinese culture flourished, is the center of the world, hence the “middle kingdom” (Zhongguo 中國). “All under Heaven” also refers to the extended Chinese world that included fluctuating groups of non-​Han peoples, who were “organized through a grade system similar to that of Chinese society.”3 The Chinese emperor is superior to all rulers of those non-​Han peoples, or “barbarians,” who show their respect and accept their status as vassals by submitting periodic tribute to the Chinese throne.4 In this sense, “All under Heaven,” as the highest level of sovereignty in the imperial Chinese context, is the notion in classical Chinese that most closely resembles the concept of empire in English. Since the Han dynasty, a Chinese dynastic empire based on the “All under Heaven” worldview can be understood in both internal and external dimensions. Internally, it must be a dynastic-​state ruled by one royal family, and it must maintain a unified rule of China proper, the region that has traditionally been understood as China (though its geographical boundaries have changed overtime). The ideology of “Great Unity,” as Yuri Pines eloquently argues, constitutes the political legitimacy for a Chinese dynastic empire throughout China’s imperial history.5 Externally, the Chinese empire must maintain a web of functioning hierarchical relations with neighboring non-​Chinese entities that submit to China through a tributary system. The ruling dynasty of a tributary state had the privilege (or obligation) of sending periodic tribute and trade missions to the capital of the Chinese empire. In return, the Chinese empire recognized that dynasty as the legitimate and rightful rulers of that state. As Hiroshi Danjō points out, the geographical concept of All under Heaven as a Chinese dynastic empire has both a narrow and a broad sense: the former refers to the actual territory of a Chinese dynasty, while the latter refers to the combination of Chinese and non-​Chinese worlds.6 Among earlier imperial empires, only three dynasties achieved the de facto status of an “All under Heaven” empire in its broad sense by territorially unifying the Chinese and non-​Chinese worlds. Both the Han dynasty—​ruled by Chinese—​and the Tang dynasty (618–​907)—​whose ruling house was half Chinese but emphasized their Chinese identity—​expanded the Chinese territorial rule into the non-​Chinese world (e.g., central Asia), establishing Sino-​centric “All under Heaven” empires. Subsequently, after three centuries of fragmentation, the Yuan dynasty (1271–​1368), for the first time, brought China proper, the formidable steppe, and many other regions of China’s frontier again into a unified empire. Yet, not only was the Yuan ruled by the Mongols—​northern barbarians in the Chinese view—​but it also reversed the hierarchical order between Chinese and non-​Chinese, categorizing the Mongols as the most superior class and Han Chinese as the lowest. The Yuan was thus not a Sino-​centric but a Mongol-​centric empire over All under Heaven. From the traditional perspective of the Hua-​Yi distinction, the Mongols turned the Chinese world upside down, and the right thing for the Chinese to do, therefore, was to reestablish Han-​Chinese supremacy over non-​Chinese. This argument was precisely what many late Yuan rebel leaders, including Zhu Yuanzhang, advocated in order to mobilize Han Chinese against the Mongols. Zhu Yuanzhang used the Hua-​Yi discourse 45

Jinping Wang

to characterize his anti-​Mongol rebellions as a pivotal Chinese mission to expel the barbarians. As he articulated in the 1367 proclamation: Among millions of people, a sage was to be born to expel the northern barbarians, recover [the land of] Central Brightness, set up the principles and essentials of government, and bring relief to the populace . . . For China’s people, Heaven surely commands a Chinese to bring peace to them. How could barbarians rule China? I fear that the Central Land has long been polluted by the stink of mutton and the people have been troubled. Therefore, I led heroic men sparing no efforts to making a clean sweep. My goal is to expel the Mongol barbarians, eliminate violence, make the populace all have their places, and cleanse China of humiliation.7 The Hua-​Yi discourse undeniably appealed to the Han ethnocentric sentiment that was boiling over in late Yuan China. Zhu Yuanzhang’s campaign slogan, “Expel the northern barbarians, and recover the land of the Central Brightness [i.e., China],” became so influential that the modern Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-​sen (1866–​1925) later borrowed it in the early twentieth century during his revolution against the Manchu Qing Empire (1644–​1911). In addition to the Hua-​Yi discourse, Zhu Yuanzhang, as the 1367 proclamation demonstrates, also employed the Confucian discourse of Mandate of Heaven, with particular emphasis on the sage-​king ideal, to consolidate his claim of being the sole legitimate ruler of China. Zhu Yuanzhang claimed that the Yuan’s legitimacy as a Chinese dynasty was “given by Heaven” after the previous Song dynasty (960–​1276) lost Heaven’s blessing, but that the luck of both the Song and the Yuan dynasties had run out. Heaven now brought a sage—​meaning Zhu Yuanzhang himself—​to restore the proper order in China.8 This statement unmistakably invokes the notion of sage-​kings based on the influential Confucian text Mencius, which states, “Every five hundred years a true King should arise.”9 Before the Northern Expedition Zhu Yuanzhang allegedly had the following conversation with a Confucian scholar named Xu Cunren: “The Majesty said, ‘Mencius said that every five hundred years a sage-​king was bound to rise.’ Cunren responded, ‘It has been five hundred years since Emperor Taizu of the Song Dynasty. Now it is the time to unify All-​under-​Heaven under one monarchy.’ ”10 This conversation has two implications. First, Emperor Taizu, the founding emperor of the Northern Song (960–​1127), was one of China’s sage-​kings, while Zhu Yuanzhang was the next one who gained Heaven’s blessing to establish a unified Chinese empire. Second, although the Yuan founder Qubilai Khan (r. 1260–​94) gained the Mandate of Heaven, he, as a northern barbarian, could not be a sage-​king. Adopting both the Mandate of Heaven and the sage-​king discourses, therefore, legitimized a non-​Chinese dynastic founder like Qubilai Khan as Heaven’s chosen ruler but effectively denied him status as an ideal ruler for a Chinese dynastic empire. 46

The Great Ming and East Asia

The early Ming regime took great pains making its claim to rule All under Heaven by emphasizing its achievement in unifying Chinese territory and reestablishing tributary relations with its neighboring entities. In the first decade of his reign, the Hongwu emperor sent foreign rulers many edicts, which presented an exhausting list of domestic rivals he had eliminated and massive territories his regime had gained. In these edicts, Hongwu repeatedly stressed what he had achieved to “restore China’s traditional territory.”11 As Wang Gungwu has correctly argued, Hongwu’s strong interest in developing tributary relations with neighboring states in his early reign was largely due to his purpose of seeking neighbors’ acknowledgment of his legitimacy.12 That acknowledgment itself contributed to consolidating the legitimacy of the Ming as a new Chinese empire. In addition to the territorial and foreign-​relation dimensions, Hongwu’s construction of the Ming Empire’s legitimacy also had historical and cultural dimensions. The vigorous Ming founder identified his new regime with three earlier dynasties—​Han, Tang, and Song—​as great Chinese empires to strengthen its political legitimacy. However, while the Han and the Tang clearly represented Chinese dynastic empires, this was less the case with the Song. The Song dynasty coexisted with several non-​Chinese states—​Khitan Liao, Tangut Xixia, Jurchen Jin, and later the Mongol-​Yuan, with which it exchanged ambassadors and signed peace treaties. In other words, the Song, especially the Southern Song (1127–​1276) that lost half of China proper to the Jurchen Jin, was more a dynastic state than a dynastic empire.13 The Song emperors and intellectual elite compensated for the dynasty’s spatial loss by proclaiming their dynasty the cultural center of the world, a proclamation reinforced by a renewed Hua-​Yi discourse underlining the ethnic identity of Hua as Han Chinese and the demarcation between China and the non-​Chinese world geographically and culturally. Hongwu identified with the Song, in spite of its territorial limitations, because of the Han-​centric Hua-​Yi discourse that underpinned both the Song and Ming as Han-​ Chinese dynasties. In the long period of history from the Han to the mid-​Tang, due to the emergence of many non-​Han dynasties and the prominent presence of non-​Han peoples in China, the Hua-​Yi discourse had emphasized culture as the major criterion for differentiating Chinese from non-​Chinese. This discourse accommodated the reigns of non-​Han rulers who entered China proper and accepted Chinese culture, or became sinicized.14 In the Song dynasty, ethnicity and geography became overriding criteria of the Hua-​Yi discourse due to the continuing coexistence of the Song with other non-​Chinese states.15 As we will see, Hongwu’s domestic and frontier policies demonstrated that he upheld the Song rhetorical elements of Hua-​Yi thought that stressed two important points. First, a Chinese dynastic state’s legitimacy grew out of its role in preserving Han-​Chinese institutions and culture. Second, China should be physically demarcated from non-​Chinese entities, especially the nomads beyond China’s northern borders. As we shall discuss later, Yongle’s reign, by contrast, witnessed a new interpretation of the Hua-​Yi discourse that justified Yongle’s outward-​looking foreign policy. 47

Jinping Wang

Imperial Governance In domestic governance, the Hongwu emperor claimed to restore Han-​Chinese culture and institutions that had peaked in the previous Song dynasty. This claim was partly carried out in practice. Indeed, as John Dardess has observed, compared to the Yuan regime that was culturally polyethnic, the Ming was more similar to the Song as a culturally homogeneous regime, in which “the ruling house and the higher political and military echelons shared the same Chinese ethnicity as the majority of the population, and no privileges or concessions were given to non-​Chinese languages and culture.”16 Meanwhile, although Hongwu declared that he wanted to undo the Mongol legacy, he in fact adopted many Mongol institutions. Inheriting both the Song and Yuan political legacies, Hongwu fundamentally changed Chinese institutions by formulating sustained principles of imperial autocracy that lasted six centuries through the Ming to the succeeding Qing empires. To shape the government, society, and culture of the empire into a unified and hierarchical whole, Hongwu employed a system of laws, regulations, and rituals to establish three bulwarks of Ming institutions focusing on the monarchy, the bureaucracy, and the community.17 Later rulers, starting with the Yongle emperor, ignored or significantly altered many elements of the Ming institutions established by Hongwu and, for better or worse, created new dimensions of imperial governance.

Monarchy and Bureaucracy Hongwu’s most significant legacy in Ming imperial governance was to create a new type of absolute monarchy, which was a product of the Mongol Empire in its worst era of chaos and brutality. His vision of monarchy was shaped by two “facts” that he believed accounted for the failure of the previous Yuan: Mongol rulers delegated too many duties to powerful ministers, and the Yuan failed to keep society under control due to the laxity (or leniency) of its bureaucratic system. To avoid what he perceived as Yuan weaknesses, Hongwu strove to be, as John Dardess has put it, an autocratic head of state “personally responsible for devising effective means for handling and controlling the world.”18 Hongwu justified his vision of absolute monarchy through establishing a new state ideology. The basis was provided by Neo-​Confucianism, which had been the main imperial ideology in China since the Southern Song dynasty, albeit with one significant modification. Neo-​Confucianism, as typified by the teaching of such Song scholars as Zhu Xi (1130–​1200), advocated self-​cultivation, community responsibility, and a politics grounded in a fixed code of morality. While Neo-​Confucianists thus offered a distinctive justification for political power and authority, they also believed that moral authority was separate from and transcended the political authority exercised by rulers. Not only did the literati need to cultivate themselves to become sages through Neo-​Confucian learning, but the ruler too, as a human 48

The Great Ming and East Asia

being like every other human, needed to cultivate himself through mastery of the Neo-​Confucian literary canon.19 Neo-​Confucianism thus greatly elevated the role of the literati in imperial politics by making them the moral and political advisors of the ruler. Such explicit tutelage was unacceptable to the Hongwu emperor. He firmly rejected his Neo-​Confucian advisors’ proposals to revive the ideal Song political tradition that allowed the literati to govern with, and not just for, the ruler. Instead, Hongwu established what we might think of as a new “imperial Neo-​Confucianism,” in which the emperor as sage-​king possessed both moral and political authority. In doing so, Hongwu redefined the “partnership,” as Benjamin Elman described it, between the ruler and scholar-​officials, making sure that the collaboration between state and literati was on the ruler’s terms.20 In his attempt to justify the concentration of all power in the emperor himself, Hongwu profoundly transformed the character of Chinese government and politics. He controlled the bureaucracy through terror and carried out many bloody political purges against his officials in the 1380s. An initial purge centered on Prime Minister Hu Weiyong (d. 1380), and a string of purges that followed resulted in the deaths of over 40,000 of the latter’s supposed adherents. The Hu Weiyong purge was particularly important in that it led to an imperial decision to permanently abolish the position of prime minister, traditionally the head of the civil bureaucracy. This decision marked a watershed in the history of imperial China. After the abolition of the position of prime minster came the dismantling of three coordinating executive agencies that respectively dealt with administration, military affairs, and impeachment of the bureaucracy and the monarchy. These agencies were all split into smaller units without any unified, overall supervision other than the emperor himself.21 From 1380 onward, the old Chinese imperial power structure, characterized by institutional collaboration between the monarchy and the bureaucracy headed by a prime minister, ended. Henceforward, the emperor took over direct management of the entire administration of the empire, functioning as both its monarch and its chief minister. Although Hongwu worked diligently to be the sole arbiter in government operations, it soon became clear that he alone could not handle the entire burden of governance. He therefore created a new institution that became known as the Grand Secretariat (Neige 內閣) to recruit help among lower-​ranking civil officials, whom he used as palace secretaries. These grand secretaries were employed entirely at the whim of the emperor and had none of the executive powers prime ministers had previously enjoyed. Hongwu thus established a new model of autocracy in which the emperor was no longer restrained by any laws or institutions. Meanwhile, Hongwu enhanced the roles of imperial family members in state governance. In Hongwu’s vision, the empire was the property of the Zhu imperial clan alone, and imperial governance was essentially a family enterprise.22 He created a new imperial state that had origins in both the Chinese and Mongol traditions of familial empire. Chinese traditions in this regard manifested under the Ming in at least three ways. First, seeing the political chaos that the lack of any clear principles of succession 49

Jinping Wang

had caused under the Yuan, Hongwu returned to the Chinese principle of primogeniture in imperial succession. The majority of later Ming rulers obeyed this principle, allowing the Ming imperial clan to maintain relatively high internal stability. Second, Hongwu revived the ancient feudalistic institution of enfeoffed princedoms, granting his sons freehold estates in order, as Chan has noted, to “invest his sons with substantial power and responsibilities within a familial and dynastic framework.”23 Third, Hongwu promulgated meticulous family laws, completed in 1373 and updated in 1395, known as August Ming Ancestral Injunctions (Huang Ming Zuxun 皇明祖訓).24 While regulating many aspects of the imperial clan’s life, the thirteen-​section Ancestral Injunctions functioned as both imperial family and state laws, articulating fundamental state policies that Hongwu expected all his descendants to follow, such as never restoring the position of prime minister.25 The Mongol elements in Hongwu’s design of familial empire were most visible in the influence of a Mongol-​style patrimonialism. Hongwu thus appointed the enfeoffed imperial princes to command his main forces stationed along the empire’s frontiers, a policy modeled on the successful Yuan practice of sending hereditary princes to frontier stations as military leaders.26 Among the twenty-​four princes Hongwu enfeoffed, the nine princes stationed at the northern borders wielded the most important military power, which helped the ambitious Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan in Beijing, to successfully usurp the throne of his nephew—​Emperor Jianwen (r. 1398–​1402)—​after a four-​year civil war. Zhu Di, becoming the Yongle emperor, inherited some Ming institutions his father created, but changed many others. Above all, he continued his father’s enterprise of establishing ideological orthodoxy, and consolidated imperial Neo-​ Confucianism through empire-​wide education and cultural endeavors. Yongle’s regime published and disseminated three large collections of Neo-​Confucian books and commentaries in 1414–​15: the Great Collection of Commentaries for the Four Books, the Great Collection for the Five Classics, and the Great Collection on Nature and Principle. The imperial government established this trilogy as the official textbooks that students at all government schools were to use to prepare for the civil service examinations after 1415.27 Through education in a standard school system and the civil service examination system, millions of students over the next five centuries closely studied the three collections and subscribed to the imperial ideology defined by them. On the familial model of empire-​building, Yongle gradually abolished his father’s policy of appointing imperial princes as military commanders and introduced the policy of “restrictions toward princes,” which was followed by all later emperors.28 From then on, Ming princes, though still given princely titles, palatial mansions, and annual stipends for life, had neither political nor military power over their princely kingdoms. They could not even travel without the emperor’s explicit approval. Many of them devoted their lives to patronizing religions or sponsoring cultural projects.29 Yongle and his successors thus completely abandoned Hongwu’s design of making the imperial princes into a military elite responsible for guarding the empire's security. 50

The Great Ming and East Asia

By denying the imperial family members any major military role, Yongle pushed further his father’s centralization of imperial power in the hands of the emperor. In addition, Yongle initiated the Ming political tradition of allowing forces from the inner court, especially eunuchs, to participate in the exercise of executive power as the emperor’s personal representatives. Yongle, as a usurper himself, trusted neither bureaucratic officials at the outer court nor members of the imperial clan. To consolidate his power, Yongle promoted and relied on two forces from the inner court: a police apparatus for secret investigations, and an army of eunuchs used extensively, as Tsai has noted, for “intelligence gathering, military supervision, diplomatic missions, and the like.”30 Most importantly, he turned to eunuch assistants to manage the flow of documents that demanded imperial attention. Yongle’s choice of eunuch assistance, historians have argued, was “one inevitable makeshift response to the destruction of the leadership in the outer court that had provided rulers in earlier dynasties with responsible executive assistance.”31 Hongwu and Yongle thus planted deep the seeds of the Ming absolutism. Although they framed the autocracy within the Neo-​Confucian ideology of sage-​kings, they created a new type of relationship between the monarchy and the bureaucracy based on the Mongol imperial tradition that saw officials as mere retainers and servants of the great khan. After their respective efforts to deny the constitutional rights of the civil bureaucracy and the imperial family members to govern with the emperor, imperial governance in principle became the enterprise of the emperor alone. Yet, for this system to work, strong rulers like Hongwu and Yongle were absolutely necessary, and strong rulers were precisely what the Ming Empire usually lacked. Most Ming rulers after Yongle were either weak or eccentric. Although still acting within the institutional framework bequeathed by Hongwu and Yongle, they unintentionally increased the power of both the civil bureaucracy and the eunuchs, and often lost power either to their grand secretaries or to top palace eunuchs. Yongle’s grandson, Emperor Xuande (r. 1425–​35), though still a relatively strong ruler, played a critical role in increasing the power of both scholar-​officials and palace eunuchs. He recruited grand secretaries from the prestigious Hanlin Academy and intimately involved them in the empire’s decision-​making. He promoted the role of censorate officials responsible for impeaching “wrongdoing” of both the emperor and his officials, and introduced the civilian rule over the military establishments.32 All of these reforms elevated scholar-​officials drawn from civil service examinations to the most prominent status in the government. Meanwhile, Xuande created the Inner Palace School in 1426 and appointed Hanlin Academy scholars to teach eunuchs to read and write. Top palace eunuchs now received formal literary education and administrative training. From Xuande’s reign onward, eunuchs established nationwide bureaucratic organs that reached into all aspects of the Ming political, military, and fiscal administration. For instance, after the mid-​fifteenth century, eunuchs were regularly stationed in military garrisons as supervisors and functioned as de facto state officials.33 Consequently, a bureaucracy that had traditionally included military officers and civil officials at the outer court shifted to the tripartite forces of civil, military, and 51

Jinping Wang

eunuch officials at both the outer and inner courts. With scholar-​officials and eunuchs being institutionally placed as two sets of imperial advisors, the civil bureaucracy and the eunuch bureaucracy now functioned in tandem to govern the empire. The conflict between the grand secretariat and the eunuchs became an element in basic power struggles to control government decisions after the mid-​fifteenth century. When the emperor was weak and the civil bureaucracy was unable to stand up to the manipulations of powerful eunuchs, the court politics was dominated by eunuch dictatorship, a characteristic political ill of the Ming Empire. The two typical examples were the first reign of Emperor Yingzong (r. 1435–​49, 1457–​64) who blindly trusted the eunuch Wang Zhen, and the reign of Emperor Zhengde (r. 1505–​21), who was interested more in entertainment than in affairs of state. In the sixteenth century, the increasingly bitter struggle between absolute monarchy and civil bureaucracy exacerbated the inadequacies of the Ming autocracy. The civil bureaucracy in the sixteenth century, as Ray Huang eloquently argues, actively sought to constrain the emperor and to dictate his behavior, often in the name of adhering to the ancestral institutions.34 Two constitutional crises that occurred during the reigns of the Jiajing (r. 1521–​67) and Wanli (r. 1572–​1620) emperors provided the best examples. When Jiajing, who succeeded sonless Emperor Zhengde as the latter’s younger male cousin, insisted on elevating his deceased father to the ranking of emperor, over two hundred officials demonstrated at court. Jiajing responded to his officials’ disapproval by flogging and arresting the demonstrators, among whom seventeen died of abuse and the rest were sent into exile. During the reign of the Wanli emperor, Jiajiang’s grandson, scholar-​officials unremittingly opposed the emperor’s choice for crown prince, continuously pressuring Wanli to obey the succession principle of primogeniture. Unlike his violent and aggressive grandfather, the frustrated but equally vengeful Wanli emperor carried on a long-​term passive resistance against his bureaucrats. He secluded himself in the palace for almost thirty years, refusing to discuss state affairs, to hold court meetings, or to fill vacant government positions.35 Underlying the fearless or bold actions of Jiajing and Wanli’s officials was a firmly established civil bureaucracy resistant to functioning only as the instrument of absolute monarchy. Yet, while scholar-​officials in the sixteenth century used the rhetoric of adhering to ancestral institutions to restrain the power of the emperor, the same rhetoric inhibited the bureaucrats from making any structural changes that would allow them to have constitutionally delegated executive power. Deadlock between the monarchy and the civil bureaucracy continued throughout the late Ming and played an important part in the empire’s eventual fall.

Community As an absolute ruler seeking total control of his domain, the Hongwu emperor also launched a series of socioeconomic reforms intended to realize his visions of an ideal social order. The goal was to achieve what Sarah Schneewind has described as “a stable, 52

The Great Ming and East Asia

tiered society, minimally managed by a bureaucracy and carefully coordinated with a spiritual hierarchy.”36 The implementation of those reforms was often assisted by strict legal enforcement. While many of Hongwu’s reforms failed, others had long-​lasting impacts on Chinese society and economy.37 Only the most significant aspects of the Ming Empire’s social and economic policies will be treated here. First, Hongwu’s program of “enculturation” largely succeeded in restoring Han-​ Chinese rituals and social customs. In the name of “using Chinese ways to transform barbarian ways,” Hongwu instructed all his subjects to follow Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals and forbad Chinese to adopt Mongol customs such as using popular Mongol names, dressing in Mongol costumes, or performing Mongol-​ style greeting and drinking 38 rituals. Whoever dared to disobey, even unintentionally, faced harsh legal punishment. For example, according to a placard issued by Hongwu in 1392, any child who shaved his forehead and left a strand after the Mongol custom was to be castrated and his entire family, regardless of social status, was to be sent into military exile at a distant border. The same punishment was to be imposed even on the barber who assisted in the commission of the crime.39 The enforcement of such cruel penalties helped to partially actualize Hongwu’s visions of a revived Han-​Chinese culture in people’s daily life. The new dress code established during Hongwu’s reign would become an enduring symbol of Han-​Chinese culture for adherents of the Ming dynasty, even after China fell under non-​Chinese rule again in the seventeenth century.40 Second, the Ming reinstalled the civil service examination system and used it as a major instrument for regulating social hierarchy and social mobility. Hongwu implemented the civil service examination system in 1384, and Yongle further developed the system during his reign. After 1425, with few exceptions, only jinshi (“presented scholar” 進士) degree holders, who succeeded in all three levels of civil service examinations, were allowed to fill higher civil offices that ranked above 7b in the bureaucracy.41 Unlike the examination systems under the Song and Yuan practices, in addition to the most prestigious jinshi degrees, the Ming created two more state-​recognized degrees—​ licentiates (shengyuan 生員) and provincial graduates (juren 舉人), who respectively passed local and provincial levels of civil service examinations. A licentiate was exempted from labor services and received a stipend from the state, while a provincial graduate was eligible for government appointment at the lowest rank (that of 9b). The Ming state thus accorded to all degree holders or gentry a permanent sociopolitical status superior to commoners, allowing them to play dominant moral and social leadership roles in the local society.42 This social structure was perpetuated in the succeeding Qing dynasty, contributing to the formation of the well-​known gentry society in late imperial China. Third, Hongwu established an official religion that combined a Confucian classical core with state-​recognized popular cults and aimed to use divine powers to serve the empire’s governing order. According to Romeyn Taylor, Ming law from the reign of Hongwu mandated that all local officials in prefectures and counties must perform state rites that had been adapted from ancient Confucian texts. Some of these rites were 53

Jinping Wang

performed at open-​air altars for celestial and terrestrial spirits of Wind, Cloud, Thunder and Rain, Soil and Earth, and Mountains and Rivers. Others were performed in official temples and shrines, especially the Temple of Civility (Wenmiao 文廟)—​dedicated to Confucius and a pantheon of Confucian scholars and worthies.43 The Ming official religion absorbed many popularly worshipped deities such as the city gods, who, as local administrators in the underworld, were expected to assist and oversee the governance of local officials in this world. Hongwu and his successors also constantly appointed Daoist priests to summon the ferocious powers of divine marshals to enhance the empire’s military powers.44 Last, and also most influentially, Hongwu reformed the empire’s tax collection system. As he only cared about agriculture and gave little thought to markets or commerce, Hongwu established a rural model of static communities for taxation and local control based on an administrative community (lijia 里甲) system. In this system, eleven households composed one jia, and ten jia made up a li. Each jia had one wealthy household (as measured by landholdings and number of adult males) as its chief, and the ten resulting jia chiefs acted in rotation as the community head. These lijia leaders were made wholly responsible for a broad variety of tasks, with tax collection as the principal function.45 The Ming state controlled the lijia communities by collecting detailed information about every household: its household category (civilian, military, artisans, etc.), its members, the number of taxable males, and the land it owned. Such documents, known as the Yellow Registers (Huangce 黃冊), mainly served the governmental purpose of requisitioning labor services and land taxes, the latter being collected chiefly in the form of agricultural products including wheat, rice, and silk.46 The early Ming system of taxation and rural control encountered numerous challenges from the very beginning, including lijia leaders who evaded taxation and labor services, and lijia members who disappeared from the community registers.47 The ultimate problem was the government’s inability to keep land and population records up to date. Although the Yellow Registers were supposed to be updated every ten years, and were indeed compiled twenty-​seven times throughout the dynasty, most registers after 1412 simply copied earlier versions, leaving the empire’s textual basis for taxation profoundly divorced from the reality.48 Regardless of several reforms initiated by local governments to solve those problems, the breakdown of the original rural administrative and social institutions became too obvious to ignore in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.49 After the mid-​sixteenth century, a rising population (which had reached about 200 million by 1600) and the dramatic expansion of commercialization forced the Ming Empire to seriously adjust its social and economic policies, especially its tax system. Around the 1570s, the Ming government under the chief grand secretary Zhang Juzheng (1525–​82) created the Single-​Whip method of taxation (its name referring to the braiding of separate strands into one whip). This method fundamentally changed Ming China’s tax system from an agrarian model to a commercial one. The Single-​Whip tax system integrated corvée labor obligations with land and poll taxes and commuted the whole into a single tax, levied on land rather than persons and payable in silver rather than rice 54

The Great Ming and East Asia

or other commodities.50 The establishment of this new monetarized model of taxation occurred at a time when the Chinese economy was becoming increasingly integrated into an emerging global economy and the affairs of the Ming Empire became inseparable from world developments.

Frontier Management In establishing the empire’s territorial integrity, the two Ming founders—​Hongwu and Yongle—​defined the limits of their polity in essentially similar ways. Although neither ruler had any intention of reincorporating the northern steppe controlled by the Mongols into the Ming Empire, both were determined to inherit the former territory of the Chinggisids in several regions that had traditionally not belonged to the Han-​ Chinese world such as Liaodong, Tibet, and the southwestern borderlands of modern-​ day Yunnan. The founding emperor’s words in the Ancestral Injunctions demonstrate the ways in which he approached the empire’s relations with its foreign neighbors, both at its borders and overseas. It reads: The Four Barbarians are all separated from China by mountains and seas and located at the corners of our territory. Gaining their land is not sufficient to provide us supplies, and gaining their people cannot make them follow our orders. If they overreach themselves to disturb our borders, then they are evil. If they do not constitute a threat to China and we raise armies to invade them, this is not good either. I am afraid that later descendants might rely on China’s wealth and strength and cling to temporary military achievements. Be sure to keep in mind that you should not start wars and kill people without a good reason. However, the northern barbarians have shared borders with China and have engaged in wars with China generation after generation. We must train generals and soldiers to be prepared in advance against them.51 Notably, although Hongyu used the same label—​yi (barbarians)—​to refer to all non-​ Chinese, he differentiated between them using two criteria: their geographical distance from China and their historical relations with China. In doing so, he singled out the northern nomads—​and the Mongols in particular—​from other barbarian peoples due to the continuous threat they posed to Ming borders. For the Ming Empire, the relationship with the Mongols was essentially a matter of frontier management at its critical northern borders, while the relationship with other non-​Chinese entities, especially its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia, was a matter of establishing a Sino-​centric international 55

Jinping Wang

order operated through a tributary system. We will focus on the former in this section and the latter in the section that follows. While the Mongol Empire had amalgamated the steppe and China into a single unified empire, the Ming Empire, from the very beginning, chose to separate them. As Zhu Yuanzhang clearly stated in his 1367 proclamation: “Those who claim allegiance to me shall live permanently in peace in the land of Central Brightness, while those who go against me shall remove themselves beyond the frontier fortresses.”52 This command stressed a world bifurcated between China and the steppe along the northern borders marked by frontier fortresses known as sai (塞) in Classical Chinese. The notion of saiwai (塞外), which literarily means lands beyond the frontier fortresses and was used to refer to the nomadic world of the steppe, had existed in Chinese historical reality and cultural imagination long before the Ming.53 For many centuries, Chinese dynasties had seen nomads as “an alien threat to be bought off, walled off, or driven out.”54 Successive dynasties had tried to cut off the steppe from China by building long walls to connect fortresses on the northern borders, but these efforts had never succeeded. The northern borders were more often than not nebulous zones that proved unamenable to sharp demarcation. Through most of Chinese history, these northern frontier fortresses were by no means the equivalent of the Great Wall that most people know today. It was only during the Ming Empire that the Great Wall became a physical marker of the territorial boundary between the Chinese world and the steppe world. Even the Ming, moreover, did not adopt a full-​fledged Great Wall strategy until the mid-​fifteenth century. Before then, Ming rulers adopted dual strategies of offensive campaigns and defensive fortifications to defend their frontiers (Figure 2.1). For most of its history, the Ming had the good fortune not to face any unified Mongol polity on its borders. Instead, the Mongol tribes had divided following the expulsion of the Yuan from China in 1368 into the Eastern Mongols (referred to in Ming sources as the Dada 韃靼) led by the Northern Yuan, and the Western Mongols or Oirats (referred to as Wala 瓦剌), and these two confederations were generally at bitter odds with each other. Hongwu and subsequent Ming rulers adopted a strategy of realpolitik in formulating their policies toward these neighbors, based on the changing geopolitics of three key sections in the long northern frontier.55 These three sections corresponded to the northwestern borders of the Ming Empire with the Western Mongols and the polities of Central Asia, the central northern borders of the Empire with the Eastern Mongols on the central Mongolian steppe, and the northeastern borders with Korea and the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria.56 Along the entirety of these northern borders, Hongwu adopted the Mongol-​ Yuan practice of a hereditary garrison system and stationed the Ming’s main forces in garrisons around Beijing and Nine Command Posts (jiuzhen 九鎮) built along the most strategically crucial frontier areas. These Command Posts, each with a walled city, were guarded by garrisons (weisuo 衛所) made up of professional soldiers from hereditary military households. While the Ming hereditary military household system originated with the Yuan, the method of sustaining the garrison system borrowed from 56

newgenrtpdf

The Great Ming and East Asia

57

Figure 2.1  Northern Border Garrisons and the Great Wall. From Frederick W.  Mote and Denis Twitchett (eds), The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–​1644, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 390.

Jinping Wang

the old Chinese practice of military colonies, which made soldiers grow their own food while they stood ready to serve in the army.57 In addition, although generally hostile to commerce, Hongwu actively mobilized mercantile incentives in the interests of imperial defense. To supplement the economies of these military colonies, Hongwu introduced a salt barter system, which allowed merchants to transport grain, and occasionally other military supplies like horses, to northern defense zones in exchange for government-​ monopolized salt vouchers. To reduce transportation costs, merchants recruited farmers to migrate to frontier regions and develop commercial colonies, which occupied a significant position in the Ming logistical framework after the Yongle era.58 The focus of the early Ming frontier policy was to deal with the Mongol forces at the central northern borders and the northeastern borders. Early in his reign, Hongwu actively launched a series of military campaigns against the Northern Yuan. Some historians thus argue that Hongwu saw himself as a successor to the Mongol-​Yuan Empire and had an ambition of annexing the Mongolian steppe.59 A recent study by Zhao Xianhai, who has made the most thorough investigation of the Great Wall defense systems in the Ming dynasty, demonstrates the opposite: Hongwu did not see the steppe as part of China’s territory.60 Hongwu even openly said to a Mongol ruler of the Northern Yuan, ‘You rule the steppe, and I rule China.”61 He launched the crucial military campaigns against the Mongols in 1372, not in order to occupy the Mongolian steppe but to eliminate the remaining Mongol forces that continued to threaten Ming borders. The failure of the 1372 campaigns presaged the painful reality of continuous conflicts between Ming China and the Northern Yuan regime, which forced Hongwu to change his frontier policy from an all-​out offensive to both offensive and defensive strategies. The Ming armies started to build a series of fortresses and passes in strategic regions on the northern borders, establishing a complex of three-​layer defense systems.62 Hongwu designed them, as Julia Lovell has correctly argued, to “function not as a fixed frontier but as bases from which to launch further campaigns and influence steppe affairs.”63 While defensive strategies started to dominate Ming frontier management at the central northern borders after the 1372 campaigns, offensive strategies showed positive results at the northeastern borders. The focal point in the northeastern frontiers was Liaodong, which was under the control of a Mongol marshal named Naqaču. From 1368 to the 1380s, Naqaču placed himself in a delicate triangular relationship between the Northern Yuan, Korea, and the Ming. In order to eliminate opportunities for the Northern Yuan to create alliances with Naqaču and Korea, the Ming launched a successful military campaign to conquer Liaodong. With Naqaču’s surrender in July 1387, the Ming established a Regional Military Commission (duzhihuishi si 都指揮使司) in Liaodong, marking a permanent Ming presence in the region.64 The Ming ruled Liaodong through cooperation with the more submissive Uriyangqad Mongols and the Jurchen people, who had control of a large portion of the Inner Mongolian steppe and southern Manchuria. The Hongwu and Yongle emperors created guard units respectively among the Uriyangqad Mongols and the Jurchens, allowing their chieftains to lead their 58

The Great Ming and East Asia

own people and to trade their products for Chinese rice, textiles, and manufactured products with Ming subsidies.65 Meanwhile, the Ming also kept these groups under the close supervision of Ming border offices. In this way, by 1404 the Ming successfully brought the Uriyangqad Mongols and the Jurchen people under loose Ming suzerainty. The geopolitics of Inner Asia changed dramatically in the early fifteenth century, making the northwestern frontiers the primary source of border crises for the Ming Empire. The rising Timurid Empire at that time united the Western Mongols and was poised to march eastward with the intention of bringing China once more into a consolidated steppe empire. Ming China under the Yongle emperor was spared a destructive war with the Timurid Empire only because their leader, Tīmūr Lang,  died in 1405 just before launching an invasion of China. In response, Yongle launched five punitive military campaigns that penetrated deep into Mongol territory, aiming to degrade the capacity of the Mongols to mount their own offensive against the Ming. Like his father, Yongle did not intend to annex Mongolia, as can be seen from his decision to withdraw garrisons from seven of the eight forts established in the steppe by his father.66 Yongle adopted a new divide-​and-​rule policy to pacify both the Eastern and Western Mongols. His frontier policy, as summarized by Shi-​shan Henry Tsai, followed two basic patterns: the offering of “incentives” that included trade privileges and periodic gifts, and “deterrents” meant to discourage the Mongols’ aggressiveness.67 Yongle mainly used the “deterrents” model to contain the Eastern Mongols and the “incentives” model to buy off the Western Mongols. He thus actively sent embassies to the Western Mongols during his early reign and responded enthusiastically to their first tribute mission in 1408, bestowing seals and princely titles on three Western Mongol leaders. Many Western Mongol tribes at the time were willing to subscribe to the Ming tributary system in exchange for access to the lucrative trade and profitable gifts from the Ming court. This approach was meant not just to keep the northwestern borders relatively peaceful but also to drive a wedge between the Western and Eastern Mongols. Yongle succeeded in gaining the alliance of the Western Mongols in his 1409 campaign to effectively crush the Eastern Mongols. However, after the threat posed by the Eastern Mongols dissipated, Yongle was less willing to offer additional special privileges or to make concessions to the Western Mongols, who responded by waging war on the Ming. As a result, the Eastern Mongols, who had reached a fragile truce with the Ming, capitalized on the weakened state of the Western Mongols and rose again. After Yongle rejected their requests for trading privileges, the Eastern Mongols attacked Ming borders, prompting the last three campaigns of the Yongle emperor against the Mongols in 1422 and 1423.68 For the two decades that followed Yongle’s death in 1424, the Ming in general adopted a less activist foreign policy while continuing to pursue his strategy of divide and rule to deal with the Mongols. This strategy began to lose ground in the 1430s when the Western Mongols decisively defeated their eastern counterparts. In the 1440s, a powerful Western Mongol leader named Esen (d. 1455) compelled the prince of the 59

Jinping Wang

vital oasis state of Hami (an erstwhile Ming tributary) to accept Western Mongol overlordship, then marched east to overwhelm the Uriyangqad Mongols who had submitted to the Ming. While reuniting the Mongols and establishing his authority over massive territories that stretched between today’s Xinjiang and Korea, Esen also voluntarily took part in the Ming tributary system in order to receive Chinese goods such as tea, textiles and grain to supply his tribal peoples. His large “tribute” missions—​an average of 1,000 men per year between 1442 and 1448—​put a heavy economic burden on the Ming Empire.69 After the Ming court tried to regulate Esen’s “tribute” missions, Esen responded by attacking Ming China. In 1449 the Ming Empire had its first, and most serious, collision with the newly unified and hostile steppe power led by Esen. The reigning emperor, Yingzong, whom F.  W. Mote characterized as “foolish and incompetent,” followed the advice of the eunuch dictator Wang Zhen to lead a huge army against the Oirat Mongols. The result was the disastrous Tumu Incident, in which the Mongols captured Yingzong alive at the Tumu Fort, approximately fifty miles northwest of Beijing.70 In addition to causing a series of power struggles over succession at the Ming court, the Tumu Incident marked a watershed in the Ming Empire’s northern frontier policy. A full-​fledged defensive policy stressing the wall-​building strategy took shape with the ideological support of renewed calls for “defense of the boundaries between Hua and Yi.” The Neo-​Confucian scholar-​official Qiu Jun (1421–​95), a firm proponent of the Hua-​Yi discourse, proposed that Ming rulers build extended fortifications to substantially strengthen Ming border defenses. In the decade after the Tumu Incident, the Ming built new fortifications at about fifty important passes while linking the preexisting nine Command Posts and passes along the inner and outer lines of the northern fortresses. The frontier fortresses were now transformed from walls of border defense to walls of border demarcation, bringing the Great Wall into its final shape. Stretching some 1,500 miles from the Jiayu Pass in the far west in Gansu Province to the Shanhai Pass east of Beijing, the Great Wall, for the first and only time, functioned as a physical border separating the Chinese and steppe worlds. Despite constant raiding and incursions in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, these newly strengthened border defenses combined with the continuing internal dissensions to prevent the Mongols from posing a serious threat to the Ming Empire. The Ming-​Mongol conflict remained at a stalemate until the mid-​sixteenth century, when tensions at the northern borders escalated again. By 1547, the Eastern Mongols under the leadership of Prince Altan (1507–​82) came to control all of southern Mongolia and the strategic Ordos region, and began to raid into Ming territory every year, usually in the spring and early autumn, preceded by requests for trading privileges. The Jiajing emperor, who loathed the Mongols, consistently refused to consider their petitions for trade and insisted on an offensive strategy against the Mongols. Altan responded by besieging the imperial capital of Beijing in September 1550 and mounted increasing raids along the entire northeastern and northern central borders over the next two decades.71 60

The Great Ming and East Asia

Ming-​Mongol tensions at the northern borders eased only when both sides sued for peace after the death of the Jiajing emperor in 1567. In 1571, the Ming signed a peace treaty with Altan’s Eastern Mongols, lifting the ban on border trade and granting Altan investiture as a tributary prince. The Ming eventually adopted the economic-​incentive strategy to deal with the persistent Mongol threat, paving the way to relatively peaceful Ming-​Mongol relations over the following sixty years. The economic context of the 1571 peace agreement, as Zhao Shiyu has argued, lay not just in the Mongols’ needs of certain products from China but also in the emergence in the sixteenth century of new trade networks that connected the northern borders of the empire to the booming commercial economy of south China. In fact, as will be discussed later, the two most significant frontier issues for the Ming Empire in the sixteenth century, the so-​called northern barbarians (beilu 北虜) and the southern Japanese pirates (nanwo 南倭), were inherently connected through the circulation of silver across the borders of the empire.72 In comparison with the turbulent northern borders of the empire, frontier management in the southwest was characterized more by policies of colonization and acculturation. The Ming had annexed Yunnan and Guizhou provinces under the reigns of the Hongwu and Yongle emperors, achieving control over the region initially by force of arms but then through the establishment of provincial administrative offices (in 1382 and 1413, respectively). The new Ming rulers of Yunnan and Guizhou inherited a Yuan institution known as the native administration system (tusi 土司), which offered official titles and other privileges to local hereditary chieftains in exchange for their nominal submission. Yet unlike the Yuan who had left the local native tusi to enjoy a high degree of independence from the state, the Ming were determined from the beginning to assert its control over the southwest. The Ming state therefore actively confiscated territory from the native chieftains in order to set up a new administrative apparatus, organized along Chinese lines and run by state-​appointed officials. In order to crush any resistance, the Ming also established more than fifty military garrisons on lands confiscated from the indigenous population.73 Meanwhile, the Ming state encouraged the migration of Han-​Chinese settlers into these areas to establish state farms and promote Chinese patterns of land tenure and agricultural techniques. The state also established Confucian schools in these areas to “civilize” local people, particularly the heirs to the native-​official posts.74 In their daily administrative practices, however, the Ming officials often took an approach opposite to the overriding rhetoric that stressed the unifying power of the centralizing state and Chinese civilization in transforming non-​Han peoples. As Leo Shin has convincingly argued, Ming political and intellectual elites actively practiced ethnic demarcation and categorization to create and perpetuate a set of parameters marking out cultural boundaries between the Han majority and non-​Han minorities instead of eliminating such boundaries. In addition to keeping the indigenous population segregated from and unequal to Han-​Chinese settlements, Ming officials often reinforced the distinction between the two by categorizing the former as “barbarians” (manyi 蠻夷), who remained outside the state’s formal administrative structure, while the latter were 61

Jinping Wang

“registered subjects” (min 民), who provided taxes and labor services. Meanwhile, Ming officials sought to differentiate the indigenous non-​Han populations further by arbitrarily dividing them into ethnic subcategories according to such criteria as “place of abode, physical appearance, or perceived level of orderliness.” Such practices of demarcation and categorization were strengthened along with the reinforced Hua-​Yi discourse after the mid-​fifteenth century, as evidenced by Qiu Jun’s proposals that Ming rulers follow the Hongwu emperor’s Ancestral Injunctions to restore clear boundaries between Chinese and non-​Chinese.75 The rigidified status boundaries from the mid-​ Ming onward, as David Faure persuasively demonstrates in the case of the Great Vine Gorge in Guangxi, resulted not in sinicization but in a more robust sense of indigenous identity among the inhabitants of some southwestern borderlands.76 In its western borderlands, the Ming adopted a policy of divide and rule in Tibet by supporting different indigenous political and religious orders. Hongwu also established three Regional Military Commissions, but filled them with former Yuan office holders or indigenous leaders who at least nominally had submitted to the Ming. Unlike the Mongols, who had mainly patronized the Sakya sect of Vajrayana Buddhism and used Sakya lamas as their agents to consolidate Yuan rule in Tibet, Yongle established relations with a variety of other religious leaders in Tibet and granted resounding titles and lavish gifts to lamas who visited his throne. This religious policy, upheld by later Ming rulers, contributed to the thriving tribute missions by Buddhist lamas that characterized Ming-​Tibet relations. Scholarly interpretations of such Ming-​Tibet relations are highly controversial. Some argue that the Ming had no direct political control over Tibet,77 while others claim that the Ming Empire successfully incorporated Tibet into its territory.78 Those who reject both of these positions tend to contend that the Ming did not bring Tibet under a centralized administration as the Yuan had done, but rather exercised a looser suzerainty over Tibet.79 The latter argument is more convincing when Ming-​Tibet relations are considered within the context of the overall history of Ming frontier management. As Shen Weirong has convincingly argued, the Hua-​Yi discourse had a profound impact on framing Ming-​Tibet relations. On the one hand, the Ming actively sought to control Tibet and to prevent border problems with the Tibetan “western barbarians” (xifan 西藩) through the use of political maneuvers, economic incentives, and military threats. On the other hand, although the Ming court welcomed lama tribute missions and several Ming rulers since Yongle were personally interested in Tibetan Buddhism, the Ming government persistently forbad communications between Chinese and Tibetans.80 In short, the Ming Empire had different goals and strategies for managing its borderlands in different directions. At its northwestern and central northern frontiers, the Ming adopted all three major strategies—​offensive campaigns, economic incentives, and construction of defensive works—​to secure China proper from the dangerous steppe world controlled by the Eastern and Western Mongols. At its northeastern and western frontiers, the Ming combined military deterrents with political and economic incentives to project varying degrees of influence on the Uriyangqad Mongols, Jurchen 62

The Great Ming and East Asia

tribes, and the Tibetans who acknowledged the Ming supremacy but maintained a considerable degree of autonomy. Only at its southwestern frontiers did the Ming show an assertive posture in bringing non-​Han territory in Guizhou, Yunnan, and Guangxi provinces within China proper by establishing a regular Chinese administrative apparatus to gradually replace the native administrative system. After the Tumu Incident, the reinforced Hua-​Yi discourse that emphasized the demarcation between Chinese and non-​Chinese affected Ming frontier policies at almost all of its borderlands. The same notion of strategic demarcation also appeared in the empire’s foreign policy toward overseas states, which was inseparable from the empire’s management of its southeastern coastal frontiers.

Foreign Relations with Other East Asian States The Ming Empire used political and economic incentives with occasional military action to establish hierarchical suzerain-​vassal relations with foreign states to its east and south through a unique tributary trade system. Together with a lasting ban on maritime activities on China’s coast, the tributary system shaped a Sino-​centric world order in East Asia that lasted more than 300 years before crumbling in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Ming was unique among all empires in the history of imperial China for its use of the tributary system to define and regulate all its foreign relations. Again, the two founding emperors were instrumental in creating the Sino-​ centric world order in East Asia, albeit with very different approaches. Hongwu established a peaceful foreign policy toward most states underpinned by two fundamental approaches: ritual and economic. Hongwu wrote in the Ancestral Injunctions, for example, that his successors should avoid attacking fifteen foreign states, including four—​Korea, Japan, and two Ryukyu states—​in East Asia and eleven in Southeast Asia. In 1369, he formalized the relationship between the Ming emperor and the vassal kings of these states in the ‘rituals of vassal kings for paying tributes,” giving vassal kings a nobility rank equivalent to “imperial prince” (qinwang 親王), the highest rank of domestic enfeoffed princes, and bureaucratic rank of 1a, the highest in the early Ming bureaucracy. However, after 1394 Hongwu downgraded all vassal kings’ rank of nobility to the secondary “commandery prince” (junwang 郡王, sons of imperial princes), and their bureaucratic rank to 2a or 2b. The only exceptions were the rulers of Korea and Japan, who were always treated as imperial princes, demonstrating that the Ming strategically treated its two most important East Asian neighbors differently from the others.81 Hongwu also introduced an innovation to ritually integrate some vassal states—​ especially Korea, Annam, and Champa—​into the Ming Empire’s spiritual sphere. In 1369 Hongwu ordered that mountains and rivers within the three states be recorded in the Canon of Sacrifices (sidian 祀典) and included in Ming official sacrifices to spirits of mountains and rivers within the empire’s territory. Then in the next year Hongwu 63

Jinping Wang

sent envoys to the three states to perform the rites to spirits of mountains and rivers with a sacrificial eulogy allegedly composed by the emperor himself. The Ming envoys installed memorial steles inscribing the eulogy in the three vassal states and erected 148 altars “for the rites of wind and cloud, thunder and rain, and mountains and rivers” in present-​day northern Vietnam.82 All these actions were common in Chinese domestic administrative units, but it was unprecedented for them to take place in a non-​Chinese vassal state. The steles, altars, and Chinese-​style rites unmistakably marked the presence of the Ming government in its vassal states. They also served to symbolically integrate the vassal states into the empire’s official spiritual hierarchy. Hongwu was enthusiastic about developing and consolidating the tributary relations of the Ming Empire with non-​Chinese states and entities. In his thirty-​one-​year reign, he sent 35 diplomatic missions—​the most of any Ming emperor except the Yongle emperor—​to seventeen vassal states. He even created a new document system to prevent false tribute missions by checking the authenticity of tallies that had been issued to vassal states. The Ming records documented more than 280 tribute missions from the seventeen vassal states in Hongwu’s reign.83 Yet, from the second half of his reign, Hongwu began to focus on economic approaches in his foreign policy. Turning his attention to the financial burden caused by tribute relations, Hongwu tried to operate the tributary system at the lowest cost by preventing many tribute missions from entering China and bringing all foreign trade under the tributary umbrella. This was a critical reform of Chinese tributary system, because traditionally the system had been separate from foreign trade, especially in the previous Song and Yuan periods. Hongwu’s tributary trade policy also responded to a new international situation in East Asia that began in the mid-​fourteenth century: increasing depredations by the so-​ called Japanese pirates (wokou 倭寇) that caused many problems in the Chinese coastal areas. Hongwu adopted strategies in both the international and domestic spheres to prevent the maritime troubles from threatening domestic stability. Hongwu diplomatically enticed or intimidated the Japanese government to cooperate in cracking down on the “Japanese pirates.” From 1368, Hongwu continuously sent envoys to Japan, requesting Japan’s submission to the Ming. After Prince Kaneyoshi (1320–​83) sent envoys to submit tributes to the Ming in 1371, the Ming recognized the prince and conferred on him the title “King of Japan,” resuming the tributary relation between China and Japan that had been broken off for seven centuries. Ming-​Japan relations, however, deteriorated when Hongwu became increasingly suspicious about Japan due to the Japanese envoys’ arrogance and the Japanese government’s hesitation in destroying the Japanese pirates. In 1386 using a fabricated case that charged a Ming military officer with colluding with the Japanese government to assist the former Prime Minister Hu Weiyong to rebel against the emperor, Hongwu definitively cut off the suzerain-​vassal relationship with Japan.84 With the diplomatic approach not working well, Hongwu increasingly resolved on a domestic solution by initiating a campaign of maritime prohibition and maritime defense on China’s coastal borders. In 1374 Hongwu ordered the closure of the Maritime Trade 64

The Great Ming and East Asia

Offices in Ningbo, Quanzhou, and Guangzhou, and after 1381 repeatedly ordered a ban on all private overseas trade and forbad people from contacting foreign traders, using foreign commodities, and going overseas. From 1384 the Ming government began to build a series of fortresses and stationed garrison units along the coast in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.85 As Hiroshi Danjō argues, Hongwu thus established the unique Ming tributary system, which integrated three systems into one: the tributary system, foreign trade, and the maritime prohibition.86 The Yongle emperor took a more expansionist approach to overseas relations. In order to buttress his political legitimacy, Yongle aimed ambitiously to improve China’s image abroad through expensive maritime expeditions, and an increased number of tributary countries. Yongle sent his trusted eunuch Zheng He (1371–​1433) and fleets of huge junks—​each one over sixty meters long—​to the Indian Ocean seven times, reaching as far as eastern Africa. The Ming naval expeditions led by Zheng He, as Edward Dreyer observes, often used military force to resolve local disputes in favor of the Ming, and thus showcased the military might of the Ming Empire.87 Unlike his father, Yongle always treated foreign tributary missions with great largesse and without concern for cost. As a result, many countries rushed to send tribute missions to China after learning how lucrative such missions were. For instance, the number of Siamese tributary missions to China increased from five in the 1390s to more than thirty during the 1420s.88 In East Asia, the newly established Chosŏn dynasty (1392–​1897) in Korea entered into a tributary-​ suzerain relationship with the Ming after 1401, both in name and reality. Also during Yongle’s reign, the Japanese Ashikaga shogunate acknowledged China as its suzerain, and Ming China and Japan resumed the suzerain-​vassal relationship. Yongle took his expansionist foreign policy to a new level when he launched an invasion of Vietnam in 1406 in order to increase Ming influence. Supported by their great economic power and advanced military technology including firearms, the Ming occupied Vietnam for the next twenty years and made the region Ming China’s fourteenth province, Jiaozhi.89 After taking control of the region, the Ming immediately employed methods it had used in its southwestern borderlands: bringing Chinese troops into the region to maintain control, setting up new organs of civil administration under prefectures and counties, and establishing Confucian schools to teach local people Chinese ways. More importantly, as Geoff Wade points out, the Ming also set up three new Maritime Trade Offices in Jiaozhi, indicating “the desires of the Ming to control maritime trade to the south and exploit the economic advantage of such control.”90 Most interestingly, Yongle’s reign witnessed a new interpretation of the Hua-​Yi discourse that justified Yongle’s outward-​looking foreign policy. According to Hiroshi Danjō, Yongle was the first ruler in Chinese history to state that “Hua and Yi are in one family (Huayi yijia 華夷一家).” This new rhetoric of unity differed sharply from the earlier discourse of Hua-​Yi distinction, without essentially contradicting it. As Danjō has argued, the discourse of Hua-​Yi unity emphasized not a territorial unification of the Chinese world and non-​Chinese world—​although Hongwu and Yongle had certainly attempted this in some regions—​but a ritual governing order between China and 65

Jinping Wang

its vassal entities and states through the operation of the tributary system. Meanwhile, at the society level, Chinese and non-​Chinese were still geographically and culturally demarcated, which was the focal point of the Hua-​Yi distinction discourse. Thus, for example, while expanding state-​operated foreign relations and foreign trade, Yongle upheld and consolidated Hongwu’s policy of maritime prohibition.91 In other words, as political entities, Hua and Yi could be unified in a Sino-​centric ritual order. But as society and culture, Hua and Yi had to be distinguished and segregated. Yongle’s discourse concerning Hua-​Yi unity casts a new light on his reasons for attempting to bring non-​Chinese elements into the imperial court. In his study of the Ming court, for example, David Robinson argues that Yongle used ties with Tibetan Buddhism and various court practices to emphasize that the dynasty had inherited the mantle of the Mongol empire and to enhance the image of Yongle himself as a universal ruler and a successor of Qubilai khan. Other court practices suggestive of this motivation included the introduction of Korean palace women and eunuchs within the Forbidden City, the commissioning of portraits of the Ming emperor on horseback armed with bow and arrow and clothed in Mongolian garb, the enrollment of Mongol and Jurchen warriors into the elite Brocade Guard (Jinyiwei 錦衣衛), and the maintenance of large and varied hunting parks to hold martial spectacles.92 Robinson is right to emphasize that we should understand the Ming court not merely in the context of enduring traditions of Chinese courts but also in the wider stage of contemporary Eurasian courts that inherited aspects of the Mongol legacy, such as the Timurids, the Moguls, and the Ottomans. However, Yongle’s court practices could also be interpreted as his claim to be the universal ruler of All under Heaven, who ritually held the dual identity as the ruler for both Chinese and non-​Chinese. Nevertheless, Yongle’s new interpretation of the Hua-​Yi discourse left an important legacy to the Ming tributary system. Seeing himself as the universal ruler of All under Heaven, the combined Chinese and non-​Chinese worlds, Yongle redefined the relationship between the Ming emperor and vassal kings as both ruler-​subject and father-​son or grandfather-​son relationships. According to Danjō, the Ming, like earlier Chinese empires, recognized vassal kings through granting investitures, seals, gowns, and caps. Yet, beginning with Yongle’s reign, the Ming uniquely granted specific gowns and caps that were reserved for Ming princes in order to suggest fictive kinship ties between the Ming emperor and vassal kings.93 The tributary system of the Ming Empire thus subtly included a kinship dimension of ritual ties between the Ming and its vassal states. The wide projection of the Ming power to the rest of world that characterized the Yongle era did not last long. The financial cost became a particularly huge burden on the Ming following an economic downturn in the mid-​fifteenth century. Ming China, like much of the rest of Eurasia, experienced serious climatic and agricultural problems that were exacerbated by a sharp contraction in the supply of precious metals.94 When the extreme expense of maritime expeditions and tribute trade exhausted the empire’s treasury, Yongle’s successors after Xuande simply abandoned the maritime expeditions 66

The Great Ming and East Asia

in the name of following Hongwu’s ancestral institutions. Over the rest of its dynastic history, the Ming Empire dominated the East Asian world order mainly through the tributary trade system. The relationship between Ming China and Chosŏn Korea in the 1500s was an example of the intimate foreign relations that were possible between the Ming and its vassal states within the framework of the tributary trade system. As Seung B. Kye has observed, Korea reinforced its political bonds with Ming when “the Chosŏn elite began to view the Ming emperor as a ritual father as well as the suzerain.” In addition to obligatory tribute missions three times a year, Chosŏn Korea frequently sent voluntary missions in the 1500s, which were welcomed by the Jiajing emperor. Beginning from 1535 and frequently thereafter, the Chosŏn court debated contentiously about whether or not Chosŏn Korea was part of Ming China. This controversy was even submitted to the Ming court for an authoritative interpretation in 1542. Interestingly, the Ming’s answer was “not,” which attested to the above-​mentioned reinforced Hua-​Yi discourse that emphasized the demarcation between Hua and Yi in the Jiajing era.95 We should not assume, however, that Ming-​Chosŏn relations were typical of the Ming Empire’s relations with the rest of East Asia. As Cha Hyewon argues, Chosŏn Korea was unusual in its command of classical Chinese language, its acceptance of and engagement with Confucian culture, and the exceptional degree to which Koreans were willing to observe tributary rites and accept Ming demands in exchange for practical benefits. Ming China and most other tributary states, on the contrary, simply intended to maintain the status quo through the formation of a superficial tributary relationship.96 Indeed, if Ming-​Korea relations showcased the success of the Ming Empire’s tributary trade system in establishing a Sino-​centered world order in East Asia, Ming-​Japan relations in the sixteenth century underscored one of the system’s failures. As the Ming court had limited Japanese trade with China to three tributary ships sent every ten years, there were tremendous financial inducements for the coastal people of both Japan and China to evade state decrees and engage in illegal trade. Governmental attempts to suppress smuggling by force led to armed resistance from a wide range of groups that the state attempted to dismiss as “Japanese pirates,” but which in fact included Japanese samurai, Korean sailors, Portuguese mercenaries, and many Chinese traders and local gentry, all of whom profited from the illicit trade. During the reign of Jiajing, scattered encounters along the coast between the Ming navy and “Japanese pirates” reached their zenith and escalated to become full-​scale military campaigns in 1552–​59.97 The Ming struggle to contain the “Japanese pirate” problem during the Jiajing period was symptomatic of its larger difficulties managing the social and political effects of the vigorous expansion of both foreign trade and the empire’s domestic commercial economy. The domestic and foreign affairs of the Ming Empire were increasingly integrated into world developments, especially an emerging global economy driven by increased production and circulation of silver in the sixteenth century. Above all, Spanish and Portuguese traders brought to China a large quantity of New World silver with which to purchase Chinese luxury goods. Together with additional trade via 67

Jinping Wang

China’s tributary states, as much as half of the silver mined in the New World may have ended up in China. In addition, much Japanese silver, the production of which suddenly increased after the 1530s, also made its way to China, amounting to perhaps as much as 200 tons per year in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.98 By a relatively conservative recent estimate, the Chinese economy between 1550 and 1644 imported in total 7,000–​10,000 tons of silver ingots.99 The tributary system allowed the Ming state to monopolize the lucrative foreign trade and prevented individuals from benefiting in maritime trade, which inevitably prompted smuggling. As Japan’s official tributary trade with China came to a halt in 1551, the boom in trade from the meeting of smugglers and Chinese mainland merchants became a significant factor in the formation of what Japanese scholars called “piratical circumstances” in the late sixteenth century.100 Many Ming officials had realized that the only solution to the “Japanese pirates” problem was to relax the existing ban and to legitimize private trade.101 After the ban was partially lifted in 1567 by Emperor Longqing (r. 1567–​72), the Ming Empire’s tributary relations began a significant shift to trade relations with other East Asian countries in economic terms.102 Meanwhile, the monetization of silver, which was pushed ahead by the Single-​Whip tax system, began to link the empire’s two most critical border threats—​the “northern barbarians” and “southern Japanese pirates.” To subsidize the increasing military expenses at the northern borders, the Ming government had to transport annually four million taels of silver from the south to the north, virtually the same amount of foreign silver flowing into the southeastern coast through maritime trade.103 If the Spanish largely depended on silver exports to China to finance their worldwide trading empire in the sixteenth century, the Ming Chinese relied heavily on imported silver from the New World and Japan to finance the empire’s existing order, which was at the verge of collapse under both international and domestic pressures. Sixteenth-​century Ming China paid close attention to Japan not only due to piracy, smuggling, and the thriving maritime trade but also because of Japan’s increasing influence in East Asia. This awareness of Japanese influence was best manifested in a Ming map entitled “Da Ming Hunyi Tu 大明混一圖” (Map of the Great Ming’s Unification), likely produced in the Jiajing era. It presents Japan as much bigger than the Korean peninsula and includes detailed and accurate geographical information about Japan.104 Japan’s increasing influence in the East Asian world order culminated in the invasion of Korea in 1592–​98 by Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a game-​changing event in East Asian history. After Hideyoshi unified Japan and rose to power in 1582, he began to challenge Ming supremacy in East Asia and planned to conquer China via an invasion of Korea. As Chosŏn Korea’s suzerain and ritual father, Ming China had a tributary responsibility to Korea. Moreover, seeing Korea as “the lips that protected China’s teeth,” the Wanli emperor and his officials recognized the defense of Korea as being in its strategic interest and decided to intervene militarily.105 The Ming eventually won the resulting seven years’ war against Japan and preserved the empire’s preeminent position in the East Asian world. 68

The Great Ming and East Asia

While scholars still debate whether the war in Korea pushed Ming military and economic resources to their breaking point, the war unquestionably precipitated instabilities both on the northern borders and in domestic local societies. During the seven years of war, it was necessary to transfer substantial forces away from the northern borders, leaving those borders weakly defended. As a result, the Jurchen people who later called themselves the Manchus seized their opportunities to rebel in the early seventeenth century and posed a pressing threat in Liaodong, particularly after winning the Mongols as allies. The border crisis exacerbated the empire’s domestic problems: the court’s financial deficit, the factionalism and corruption of the bureaucracy, and domestic peasant rebels. To make matters worse, at a time when the empire desperately needed a vigorous despot to make its despotic political system function, the last two Ming emperors—​Tianqi (r. 1621–​27) and Chongzhen (r. 1627–​44)—​proved themselves even more incompetent than Emperor Wanli, who at least made some correct military decisions. The mentally deficient Tianqi Emperor entrusted the reins of state to the eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–​ 1627), who brought the empire to its darkest decade of violence, corruption, and eunuch dictatorship. The paranoid Chongzhen, despite his best intentions, accelerated rather than slowed the Ming collapse by a string of ill-​considered policies.106 In 1637, the late-​Ming scholar Zhang Dai described the deeply troubled empire he was witnessing: Upon reflection, I find that the entire world has come to be like this: Dead soldiers, dead bandits, death spread everywhere. The defeat in Liaodong is like a piece of rotting flesh, The poison spread by hostile spears more powerful than the plague. Heavy exploitation of the people is like an ulcer, Weakening our spirit and eating away at our strength.107 Although it was the Manchus from Liaodong who eventually broke through the Great Wall, conquered China, and established the Qing Empire after 1644, it is clear that, as Zhang Dai reckoned, the Ming Empire had already collapsed from within under the weight of incompetent governance. The political ills of the Ming institutions drove its domestic subjects to rebel and to topple the Ming dynasty, in a dramatic reverse reenactment of the creation of the dynasty 300 years previously.

Conclusion In a recent summary article, the prominent Ming historian Edward Farmer asked whether the Ming was an “empire,” given that Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu emperor, lacked any interest in expanding the territory of his dynasty either by sea or by land, and pursued cultural homogeneity instead of diversity. By defining the empire as a multiethnic polity that integrates massive territories, Farmer cast the Ming as less an empire than an ethnically Han monarchy ruled by men who happened to call themselves emperors.108 While 69

Jinping Wang

it may be debatable whether the Ming qualified as an empire according to Farmer’s strict criteria, in terms of Chinese political philosophy and historical experience there is no question. The Ming self-​consciously constructed their state as a Han-​Chinese empire, in which the traditional Chinese worldview of All under Heaven combined with the Hua-​Yi discourse to bring both Chinese and non-​Chinese peoples and polities into a coherent hierarchical political system. As an immediate successor of the mighty Yuan Empire, the Ming took resources of political legitimacy and statecraft from the historical precedents of both earlier Chinese empires and that of the Mongols. When establishing the Ming dynasty to replace the Yuan, Hongwu used the Chinese discourse of Hua-​Yi distinction to legitimize his regime and to define the Ming as a Han-​centric Chinese empire, though in reality he inherited much of the political and territorial substance of the Mongol-​Yuan Empire. Drawing elements from both the traditional Han-​Chinese empires and the Mongol-​Yuan Empire, the two Ming founders—​Hongwu and Yongle—​developed a hybrid polity with a Han-​ centric core in their empire, building within and beyond the Ming borders. Most significantly, by choosing existing Chinese and Mongol traditions and inventing a new imperial tradition, the two Ming founders created new standards for imperial governance and permanently reshaped the Chinese imperium. In his famous book Waiting for the Dawn published in 1663, Huang Zongxi, a seventeenth-​century Han-​Chinese scholar who witnessed the dynastic transition from the Ming to the Qing, severely criticized the Ming institutions, and held the two founders—​especially the Hongwu emperor—​responsible for the empire’s lack of good governance.109 Huang Zongxi might be right, but no one can deny the historical significance of Hongwu and Yongle in creating a new pattern of imperial rule for China. This new pattern was characterized by three major features:  the imperial Neo-​Confucianism that functioned as the empire’s ideological orthodoxy, the institution of absolute monarchy that constitutionally forbad delegation of executive authority to the bureaucracy, and the tributary trade system that regulated suzerain-​vassal relations between China and neighboring polities in a Sino-​centric East Asian world order. This pattern of ideas, institutions, and expectations defined the Ming Empire itself and heavily influenced the subsequent Qing dynasty. Moreover, the model of late imperial autocracy initiated by the Ming and strengthened by the Qing left a significant legacy in modern Chinese political culture, particularly in the sense that the performance of the state’s bureaucracy often hinged on the will and capacity of individual rulers.

Notes 1 Zhu Yuanzhang received his temple title Taizu (Grand Progenitor), and Yongle received two: first Taizong (Grand Ancestor), and then Chengzu (Formative Progenitor) after 1538. 2 Ming Taizu shilu 明太祖實錄 [Veritable Records of Emperor Taizu of Ming] (Taipei Academia Sinica, 1962), 26: 401. In order to illustrate the worldview of the Ming Empire, this chapter

70

The Great Ming and East Asia

will rely more on contemporary Ming sources such as the Veritable Records (shilu 實錄) than on the official Ming History (Mingshi 明史), which, completed by the Qing historians in 1739, reflects the worldview not of the Ming but of the Manchu Qing. 3 Edward Q. Wang, “History, Space, and Ethnicity: The Chinese Worldview,” Journal of World History 10, no. 2 (1999), 287. 4 Zhaoguang Ge, Zhaizi Zhongguo: Chongjian youguan “Zhongguo” de lishi lunshu 宅茲中 國: 重建有關中國的歷史論述 (Taipei: Lianjing, 2011), pp. 109–​11. 5 Yuri Pines, The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), chap. 1. 6 Hiroshi Danjō, Mindai kaikin chōkō sisutemu kai chitsujo 明代海禁=朝貢システム華夷秩序 (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2013), p. 420. 7 Ming Taizu shilu, 26: 402. 8 Zhu Yuanzhang had to legitimize the Yuan dynasty in the correct succession of Chinese dynasties due to his complicated affiliation with the Song. In his early rebel years, Zhu Yuanzhang had endorsed the popular propaganda of restoring the previous Song dynasty and affiliated himself with one of two rebel states that used “Song” for their state name and advocated the Hua-​Yi thought. See Hok-​Lam Chan, “The ‘Song’ Dynasty Legacy: Symbolism and Legitimation from Han Liner to Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 68, no. 1  (2008), 107–​33. 9 D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 4.13: 50. 10 Ming Taizu shilu, 19: 272–​3. 11 Ming Taizu shilu, 34: 599; 37: 749–​51; 39: 787. 12 Wang Gungwu, “Ming Foreign Relations: Southeast Asia,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, Part 2, ed. Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 303. 13 Scholars are still debating whether the Song qualifies as a Chinese empire. While Wang Gungwu uses “a lesser Chinese empire” to describe the Song, Peter Bol believes that the equation of “All under Heaven” with the “empire” had lost viability in the Song. See Wang, “The Rhetoric of a Lesser Empire: Early Sung Relations with Its Neighbors,” in China among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th–​14th Centuries, ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London:  University of California Press, 1983), pp.  47–​65 ; Peter Bol, Neo-​Confucianism in History (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 120. 14 Wang, “History, Space, and Ethnicity,” p. 288. 15 Ge, Zhaizi Zhongguo, pp. 44–​7. 16 John Dardess, “Did the Mongols Matter?,” in The Song-​Yuan-​Ming Transition in Chinese History, ed. Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), p. 117. 17 Edward Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation (Leiden:  E.J. Brill, 1995), pp. 4, 9, 17. 18 John Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 185–​7. 19 Bol, Neo-​Confucianism in History, pp. 119, 132. 20 Benjamin L. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 13. 21 Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 89–​90. 22 As Richard Wang pointed out, the Ming definition of imperial clan adopted the Song-​ dynasty practice to include all male and female descendants of the emperors in the male line

71

Jinping Wang

as long as they bore the imperial surname Zhu. See Richard Wang, The Ming Prince and Daoism: Institutional Patronage of an Elite (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. xix. 23 Hok-​Lam Chan, “Ming Taizu’s Problem with His Sons: Prince’s Qin’s Criminality and Early-​ Ming Politics,” Asia Major 20, no. 3 (2007), 48. 24 Zhu Yuanzhang updated the Ancestral Injunctions to strengthen the emperor’s authority while eliminating princes’ power for two reasons: his disappointment with his sons’ many crimes and his decision to make his grandson Zhu Yunwen his successor after Yunwen’s father, the Crown Prince Zhu Biao, suddenly died in 1392. See Chan, “Ming Taizhu dui huangzi de chuzhi:  Qinwang Zhu Shuang zuixing yu Ming chu zhengzhi” 明太祖對皇子的處置—​ 秦王朱樉罪行與明初政治, in Ming chu de renwu, shishi yu chuanshuo 明初的人物、史事與傳 說 (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2010), pp. 90–​6. 25 This practice of blurring imperial family laws and state laws in the name of ancestral injunctions had been common in previous Chinese empires since the Han dynasty, and was particularly popular in the Song dynasty. See Deng Xiaonan, Zuzong zhifa: Beisong qianqi zhengzhi shulüe 祖宗之法: 北宋前期政治述略 (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2014). 26 For the detailed similarities and differences between the Yuan and Ming princely powers, see Xianhai Zhao, Mingdai jiubian changcheng junzhenshi: Zhongguo bianjiang jiashuo shiye xia de changcheng zhidu shi yanjiu 明代九邊長城軍鎮史:  中國邊疆假說視野下的長城制度史 研究 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2012), pp. 134–​9. 27 Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China, pp. 37–​9. 28 In a recent volume on the Ming court, David Robinson draws attention to the significance of Ming princes and argues that in addition to the central node of the Ming court in Beijing, princely establishments in the provinces constituted a greater court that extended throughout much of the empire. But it has to be pointed out that the princely courts after the Yongle period almost completely lost their political and military significance. David M. Robinson, “The Ming Court and the Legacy of the Yuan Mongols,” in Culture, Courtiers, and Competition: The Ming Court (1368–​1644), ed. D. M. Robinson (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 365-​411. 29 For studies on Ming princes sponsoring religions and cultural projects, see Wang, The Ming Prince and Daoism; and Craig Clunas, Screen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013). 30 Shih-​Shan Henry Tsai, Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2001), p. 78. 31 Frederick W. Mote, “The Ch’eng-​hua and Hung-​chia Reigns, 1464–​1505,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7, ed. Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 365. 32 Hok-​Lam Chan, “The Chien-​Wen, Yung-​Lo, Hung-​His, and Hsüan-​Te Reigns, 1399–​1435,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7, pp. 279, 291–​4. 33 Zhao, Mingdai jiubian changcheng junzhenshi, p. 540. 34 Ray Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 85–​6. 35 Ibid., pp. 75–​8. 36 Sarah Schneewind, “Visions and Revisions: Village Policies of the Ming Founder in Seven Phases,” T’oung Pao 2, no. 87 (2001), 356. 37 According to Sarah Schneewind, the Hongwu emperor repeatedly failed in implementing his policies and had to modify his visions at least seven times. See ibid. 38 Jia Zhang, “Bie Huayi yu zheng mingfen: Mingchu de richang zali guifan” 別華夷 與正名分: 明初的常雜禮規範, Fudan xuebao: shehui kexue ban 復旦學報: 社會科學版 3 (2012), 21–​30;

72

The Great Ming and East Asia

and “Chongzheng yiguan:  Hongwu shiqi de fushi gaige” 重整衣冠:  洪武時期的服飾改革, Zhongguo wenhua yanjiusuo xuebao 中國文化研究所學報 58 (2014), 113–​58. 39 Hok-​Lam Chan, “Ming Taizu’s ‘Placards’ on Harsh Regulations and Punishments Revealed in Gu Qiyuan’s Kezuo zhuyiu,” Asia Major 22, no. 3 (2009), 28–​9. 40 Liyue Lin, “Guguo yiguan:  Dingge yifu yu Ming Qing zhiji de yimin xintai” 故國衣 冠:  鼎革易服與明清之際的遺民心態, Taiwan shida lishi xuebao 台灣師大歷史學報 30 (2002), 39–​56. 41 Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China, p. 41. The Ming continued a traditional Chinese Nine-​Rank system to rank its officials. In this system, the highest rank is 1a and the lowest 9b. 42 Takanobu Terada, Mindai kyoshin no kenkyu 明代鄉紳の研究 (Kyoto:  Kyoto University Press, 2009), pp. 6–​8. 43 Romeyn Taylor, “Official Altars, Temples and Shrines Mandated for All Counties in Ming and Qing,” T’oung Pao, Second Series, Vol. 83. Fasc.1/​3, State and Ritual in China (1997), 96–​104. 44 Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel (Honululu: Hawai’i University Press, 2015), pp. 132–​8. 45 For studies on the lijia system, see Fangzhong Liang, “Lun mingdai lijiafa he junyaofa de guanxi” 論明代里甲法和均徭法的關係, “Yitiao bianfa” 一條鞭法, in Liang Fangzhong jinjishi lunwen ji 梁方仲經濟史論文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), pp. 577–​603; “The Socio-​ Economic Development of Rural China during the Ming,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, pp. 458–​64. 46 Fangzhong Liang, “Mingdai de huangce” 明代的黃冊, in Liang Fangzhong jingjishi lunwenji jiyi 梁 方仲經濟史論文集集遺 (Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe, 1990), pp. 163–​84. 47 For the problems of the administrative community system, see Zhiwei Liu, Zai guojia yu shehui zhijian: Ming Qing Guangdong diqu lijia fuyi zhidu yu xiangcun shehui 在國家與社 會之間:  明清廣東地區里甲賦役制度與鄉村社會 (Beijing: Chinese Renmin University Press, 2010), pp. 54–​5. 48 Liang, “Mingdai de huangce,” pp. 178–​9. 49 For the government reforms countering tax and corvee evasion as well as community breakdown in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see “The Socio-​economic Development of Rural China during the Ming,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, pp. 477–​89. 50 Liang, “Yitiao bianfa,” pp. 34–​89. 51 Wu Han, Wu Han shuo Ming shi 吳晗說明史 (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxuechubanshe, 2012), p. 94. 52 Ming Taizu shilu, 26: 404. 53 For instance, poems about the world at and beyond the frontier fortresses, known as “biansai shi 邊塞詩,” constituted a major theme in traditional Chinese poetry. 54 Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 32. 55 Alastair Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 66. 56 Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 82–​3. 57 For the Mongol origins of the Ming hereditary military household system, see Henry Serruys, “Remains of Mongol Customs in China during the Early Ming Period,” Monumenta Serica 16, nos 1–​2 (1957), 144–​5; Romeyn Taylor, “Yuan Origins of the Wei-​so System,” in Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies, ed. Charles Hucker (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 23–​40.

73

Jinping Wang

58 Sanmou Li, “Mingdai shiyan maoyi yu bianfang bianken 明代食鹽貿易與邊防邊墾,” Yanyeshi yanjiu 鹽業史研究 1 (2006), 11–​12. 59 Edward L. Dreyer, “Military Origins of Ming China,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7, pp. 102–​103. 60 Zhao, Mingdai jiubian changcheng junzhenshi, pp. 46–​58. 61 Ming Taizu shilu, 119: 1936. 62 Zhao, Mingdai jiubian changcheng junzhenshi, pp. 76–​9. 63 Julia Lovell, The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000BC –​AD2000 (New York: Grove Press, 2006), p. 188. 64 Hok-​Lam Chan, “Naqaču the Grand Marshall: A Mongol Warlord in Manchuria during the Yuan-​Ming Transition,” in The Early Mongols: Language, Culture and History: Studies in Honor of Igor de Rachewiltz, ed. V. Rybatzki, A. Pozzi, P. W. Geier, and J. R. Krueger (Bloomington, Indiana: The Denis Sinor Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, 2009), pp. 31–​46. 65 Tsai, Perpetual Happiness, p. 157. 66 The Kaiping garrison, north of Beijing, remained as the only Ming garrison in the steppe until it was withdrawn as well six years after Yongle’s death. Lovell, The Great Wall, p. 189. 67 Tsai, Perpetual Happiness, pp. 154–​5. 68 Morris Rossabi, “The Ming and Inner Asia,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, pp.  227–​31. 69 Lovell, The Great Wall, pp. 191–​2. 70 Frederick W. Mote, “The T’u-​mu Incident of 1449,” in Chinese Ways of Warfare, ed. Frank A. Kierman, Jr. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 243–​72. 71 James Geiss, “The Chia-​ching Reign, 1522–​1566,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7, pp. 467–​8, 471–​7. 72 Shiyu Zhao, “Shidai jiaoti shiye xia de Mingdai ‘beilu’ wenti 時代交替視野下的明代”北 虜“問題,” Qinghua daxuexuebao: zhexue shehui kexueban 清華大學學報 (哲學社會科學版) 1 (2012), 63–​74. 73 John E. Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200–​1700 (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 234–​44. 74 Geoff Wade, “Engaging the South: Ming China and Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 51, no. 4 (2008), 578–​638. 75 Leo K. Shin, The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 137, 149, and 159–​65. 76 David Faure, “The Yao Wars in the Mid-​Ming and Their Impact on Yao Ethnicity,” in Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, ed. Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2006), pp. 171–​89. 77 Josef Kolmas, Tibet and Imperial China (Canberra: Centre of Oriental Studies, 1967), p. 32; Turrell V. Wylie, “Lama Tribute in the Ming Dynasty,” in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, ed. Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi (Oxford:  Proceedings of the International Seminar on Tibetan Studies, 1979), pp. 335–​40. 78 Zhong Liu, “Lun mingchao Xizang guishu yu lingzhuzhi de yanbian 論明朝西藏 歸屬與 領主制的演變,” Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究 5 (1994), 55–​69; Gaiping Zhao, Yuan Ming shiqi zangchuan fojiao zai neidi de fazhan ji yingxiang 元明時期藏傳佛教在內地的發展及影響 (Beijing:  Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 2009), pp. 177–​98; Zhao Luo, “Mingchao zai Xizang de zhuquan diwei明朝在西藏的主權地位,” Zhongguo zangxue 中國藏學 3 (2011), 18–​41.

74

The Great Ming and East Asia

79 Weirong Shen, “Ping meiguo zangxuejia weili de ‘Mingchao de lama jingong’:  jianlun yuanming shiqi de Xizang zhengce” 評美國藏學家魏里的《明朝的喇嘛 進貢》:  兼論元 明時期的西藏政策, Xibei mingzu yanjiu 西北民族研究 2 (1988), 217–​26; Qixiang Tan, “Lishi shang de zhongguo he zhongguo lidai jiangyu” 歷史上的中國和歷代疆域, Zhongguo bianjiang shidi yanjiu中國邊疆史地研究 1 (1991), 41. 80 Shen, “ ‘Huairou yuanyi’ huayu zhong de mingdai hanzang zhengzhi yu wenhua guanxi” ‘懷 柔遠夷’話語中的明代漢藏政治與文化關係, Guoji hanxue 國際漢學2 (2005), 213–​40. 81 Danjō, Mindai kaikin chōkō sisutemu kai chitsujo, pp. 353–​61. 82 Momoki Shiro, “Nation and Geo-​Body in Early Modern Vietnam: A Preliminary Study through Sources of Geomancy,” in Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century: The China Factor, ed. Geoff Wade and Sun Laichen (Singapore: NUS Press, 2010), p. 139. 83 Danjō, Mindai kaikin chōkō sisutemu kai chitsujo, p. 140. 84 Ibid., pp. 241–​76. 85 Ibid., p. 140. 86 Ibid., pp. 69–​101. 87 Edward L. Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–​1433 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), pp. 147–​8. 88 Gang Zhao, “Restructuring the Authority of the Ancestor:  Zhu Yuanzhang’s Role in the Evolution of Ming Maritime Policy, 1400–​1600,” in Long Live the Emperor! Uses of the Ming Founder across Six Centuries of East Asian History, ed. Sarah Schneewind (Minneapolis: Society for Ming Studies, 2008), pp. 89–​91. 89 Laichen Sun, “Military Technology Transfers from Ming China and the Emergence of Northern Mainland Southeast Asia (c.1390–​1527),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (2003), 509–​10. 90 Wade, “Engaging the South,” p. 589. 91 Danjō, Mindai kaikin chōkō sisutemu kai chitsujo, pp. 405–​409. 92 See David M. Robinson, “The Ming Court and the Legacy of the Yuan Mongols”; Robinson, Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court (Cambridge and London:  Harvard University Press, 2013). 93 Ibid., Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court, pp. 361–​70. 94 William S. Atwell, “Time, Money, and the Weather: Ming China and the ‘Great Depression’ of the Mid-​Fifteenth Century,” The Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 1 (2002), 84–​7, 92–​7. 95 Seung B. Kye, “Huddling under the Imperial Umbrella: A Korean Approach to Ming China in the Early 1500s,” The Journal of Korea Studies 15, no. 1 (2010), 41–​66. 96 Hyewon Cha, “Was Joseon a Model or an Exception? Reconsidering the Tributary Relations during Ming China,” Korea Journal 51, no. 4 (2011), 33–​58. 97 Kwan-​Wai So, Japanese Piracy in Ming China during the Sixteenth Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1975). 98 Dennnis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571,” Journal of World History 6, no. 2 (1995), 202. 99 Richard von Glahn, “Cycles of Silver in Chinese Monetary History,” in The Economy of Lower Yangzi Delta in Late Imperial China, ed. Billy K. L. So (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 17–​71, esp. 31–​44. 100 Saeki Kōji, “Japanese-​Korean and Japanese-​Chinese Relations,” in The East Asian War, 1592–​1598, ed. James B. Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 18. 101 Zhao, “Restructuring the Authority of the Ancestor,” p. 95. 102 Wade, “Engaging the South,” p. 616. 103 Kishimoto Mio, “Hou shiliu shiji yu qingchao 後十六世紀與清朝,” Qingshi yanjiu 清史研究 2 (2005), 84.

75

Jinping Wang

104 Noriko Miya, Mongoru teikoku ga unda sekai zu モンゴル帝国が生んだ世界図 (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbun shuppan sha, 2007), pp. 289–​90. 105 Kenneth Swope, “Ming Grand Strategy and the Intervention in Korea,” in The East Asian War, 1592–​1598, ed. James B. Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), pp.  180–​1. 106 Kenneth Swope, The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618–​44 (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 209–​10. 107 Jonathan Spence, Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man (New York: Viking, 2007), p. 188. The translation of the poem is Professor Spence’s. 108 Edward L. Farmer, “Yiguo zhi jiazhang tongzhi: Zhu Yuanzhang de lixiang shehui zhixu guannian 一國之家長統治： 朱元璋的理想社會秩序觀念,” in Mingtaizu de zhiguo linian jiqi shijian 明太祖的治國理念及其實踐, ed. Zhu Honglin (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Chinese University, 2010), pp. 1–​18. 109 Huang Zongxi, Ming yi daifang lu 明夷待訪錄 [Waiting for the Dawn] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), p. 8.

76

Chapter 3

East Asia under the Expanding Qing Frederik Vermote Introduction On April 25, 1644, the Ming emperor Zhu Youjian sought to evade capture by the rebel peasant army that had seized control of Beijing by taking his own life. Loyalists of his dynasty would continue to hold out in southern China for another four decades, but in the north the Ming Empire ended with this act of self-​destruction. A new dynasty known as the Qing, erstwhile Jurchen clients of the Ming on their northeastern frontiers, moved quickly to fill the vacuum. The new rulers were not content merely to inherit the old, Han-​centric Ming Empire, but sought instead to incorporate the Han into a new multiethnic state that—​as under the Yuan—​was ruled by a non-​Han and enthusiastically expansionist elite. This chapter will cover the rise and consolidation of the new Qing Empire, from the efforts of Nurhaci (r. 1583–​1626) to weld the seminomadic Jurchen into a coherent state to the apogee of Qing power under the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–​ 95), by which point the dynasty had come to rule over a geographical expanse more than twice the size of Ming China (Figure 3.1).1 This chapter seeks in particular to examine the Qing dynasty’s ability to push consistently, through each expansion, the limits of empire.2 Each time the Qing conquered a new people and territory, be it Taiwan or the Jungar Mongols, they tested their own empire-​building skills. Particularly at the frontiers of empires, control over new subjects consisted of a reciprocal accommodation, as those old and new to Qing rule reinterpreted the empire’s concept of sovereignty. Key themes of the chapter will therefore be the limits of imperial expansion, the fault lines of ethnic and cultural difference, the balance of centralization versus decentralization, and the management of Qing relations with other polities along their empire’s frontiers.3 A final theme within this chapter is the effects of frontier expansion. What happened when empires collided with each other and had to reconcile their expansionist aspirations with the need for clear and durable borders? Marching west, for example, the Qing encountered the Russian Empire, another land-​based polity then engaged in large-​scale territorial expansion into the Eurasian steppes. The final part of this chapter will analyze how the Qing Empire sought to establish control and sovereignty over its new northern and western frontiers. In these areas, the Qing pursued a policy of establishing their authority not only over territory, but also over the people who lived and moved across the new frontier, including intermediaries such as fur traders, Mongol tribes, and Jesuit missionaries who often had their own, diverging imperial allegiances.

77

newgenrtpdf

Frederik Vermote

78

Figure 3.1  The Qing Empire in 1759. From Jacques Gernet, trans. J. R. Foster, A History of Chinese Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

Jurchen Origins As the last people to rule China using a dynastic model before China became a republic in 1912, the Qing dynasty inherited two millennia of imperial statecraft and traditions dating back to the Qin unification in 221 bce. As we have seen, the Chinese dynastic model presumed an emperor (huangdi 黃帝) at its center, possessing the “Mandate of Heaven” (tian ming 天命) to rule “All under Heaven.”4 While the development of this old Zhou doctrine is especially associated with Chinese elite culture and the political unification of Han China, we have already seen that it was also embraced by many non-​Han rulers of Turkic, Mongol, Tibeto-​Burman, or Tungusic descent. Indeed, a list of the imperial entities that controlled a least a million square kilometers of the territory of modern China reveals that non-​Han dynasties (and dynasties of mixed descent) claimed the mandate to rule “All under Heaven” for a longer period of time, cumulatively, than did Han rulers.5 The Manchus were thus the last in a long line of non-​Han contributors to Chinese imperial history, and it was the Manchu symbiosis of seminomadic and Han traditions that would take China into the twentieth century and beyond the imperial mold. Before 1635, the Manchus were known as “Jurchen,” a group of Tungusic-​speaking peoples living in the region of northeast Asia, often referred to as Manchuria, at the meeting point of the modern territories of China, Korea, and Russia. The historic heartland of the Jurchen stretched from the Liaodong peninsula in the south, Korea and the Pacific in the east, the Gobi Desert and pasturelands of Mongolia in the west, and the Songhua and Amur rivers in the north. The Jurchen homeland was, as Gertrude Roth Li has noted, “a place where forest, steppe, and agricultural lands overlap.”6 Reflecting this geographical diversity, the Ming divided the Jurchen into three distinctive groups: the “Wild Jurchen” hunters of the northern forest and steppe, who were furthest removed from Chinese agrarian culture; the “Songhua Jurchen” who lived a more settled existence as pastoralists and farmers along the Songhua river and its tributaries; and the “Jianzhou Jurchen” of the Changbai mountain range in the modern province of Jilin.7 Qing scholars struggle tracing the shifting shape of Jurchen or Manchu identity before their sudden rise to prominence: were they entirely nomadic people, seminomadic people, including many areas of permanent agricultural settlement, or a combination of all the above? In any case, centuries of physical proximity, trade, and warfare resulted in strong Chinese cultural and political influences on the Jurchen. In recognition of this, Chinese states such as the Ming distinguished “wild” Jurchen from those that had been “civilized” and incorporated into the Chinese world, albeit often only symbolically or nominally. Chinese states frequently recognized the more powerful Jurchen chiefs, for example, by granting them official military titles.8 The Jurchen first began to impinge on Chinese political affairs at the end of the eleventh century, at a time of competition between three great imperial states—​ the Song, the Liao (ruled by the Turkic Khitan people), and the Xi Xia (ruled by the Tibeto-​Burman Tangut)—​for control of East Asia.9 As part of Emperor Huizong’s

79

Frederik Vermote

efforts to weaken his Liao rivals, the Song encouraged Jurchen living on the northern frontiers of the Liao to rebel against their nominal overlords. The plan was to crush the Liao between a Song offensive advancing from the south and a Jurchen diversion that would harry Liao forces from the north, resulting ultimately in the restoration of northern China to Song control.10 In practice, the opposite occurred: the Song offensive against the Liao quickly faltered, whereas the Jurchen surpassed all expectations, defeating the Liao Empire and driving its Khitan rulers westward into Central Asia.11 Perceiving the weakness of the Song, the Jurchen next turned on their former allies and advanced deep into the south, even capturing the Song capital of Kaifeng together with Emperor Huizong and his heir apparent in 1127.12 The Song dynasty regrouped to survive another 152 years in southern China, but they would never regain the north. In place of the Northern Song and the Liao, the victorious Jurchen established themselves as a new imperial dynasty known as the Great Jin. The early influence of Sinic imperial ideology on the Jin can be seen from the fact that already in 1115, at a time when the Jurchen had yet to defeat either the Liao or the Song, the Jurchen leader Aguda (1068–​1123) was already styling himself “emperor” (huangdi), wore Chinese imperial regalia, and had adopted Chinese regnal and dynastic titles (Shouguo 收國 and Jin 金, meaning “Receiving Statehood” and “Golden,” respectively).13 Elaborating on governmental innovations made by the Liao before them, the Jin sought to accommodate the diversity of their subjects by establishing parallel administrations. Han subjects, in other words, continued to be ruled by Han laws and institutions, while the Jurchen became a hereditary imperial elite, set apart from their new subjects by the use of Jurchen language, Jurchen dress, the practice of martial skills such as horse riding and archery, and organization into socio-​military units known as meng-​an (lit. “one thousand”).14 For all the successes of the Great Jin, however, the dynasty had the misfortune to come to prominence only a century before the rise of Chinggis Khan. In the early thirteenth century, the Jin Empire would fall victim to the Mongol expansion, with Ögedei capturing the last Jin stronghold of Caizhou in 1234. Following the loss of their empire, some Jurchen made their peace with the new Mongol-​dominated Yuan regime while others retreated to their ancestral lands. Manchuria, in many ways, returned to its pre-​ Jin condition of wild frontier area and the Jurchen divided into fractious clans and tribal confederations. As with many other steppe peoples, the Jurchen retained a collective memory of the Great Jin as a sort of imperial “ideology in reserve” that might one day be deployed under the right conditions.15

Formation of the Manchus Jurchen imperialism experienced a renaissance in the seventeenth century thanks to Nurhaci (1559–​1626), a particularly gifted, ruthless, and ambitious leader of the Jianzhou 80

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

Jurchen. Beginning with his rise to power as a minor chieftain in 1583, Nurhaci and his sons, Hong Taiji (1592–​1643) and Dorgon (1612–​50), gradually unified the Jurchen and many neighboring groups (including Mongols and Han Chinese) into a confederacy under the leadership of Nurhaci’s clan, the Aisin (lit. “Golden”) Gioro. In the process, they also began to build the foundations of the political, cultural, and military institutions of the future Qing Empire. Although the Ming Empire had been instrumental in the deaths of Nurhaci’s father and grandfather, he posed at first as an ally of the Ming and leveraged the support of the latter against his Jurchen rivals. He also increasingly monopolized the lucrative trade with the Ming, by which forest products such as furs and ginseng were exchanged for the silver bullion that Nurhaci needed to pay his growing armed forces. In return, Nurhaci offered the Ming court assistance against the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592–​98 and was honored with the rank of general. Nurhaci thus seemed during his early years like any other Jurchen chieftain who collected Ming titles and participated in the Ming tributary system. In particular, such participation required Nurhaci’s formal acceptance of the Ming emperor as the legitimate holder of the “Mandate of Heaven.” In 1616, after the defeat of the last Jurchen tribe to resist the Aisin Gioro, however, Nurhaci broke with his obedience to the Ming by proclaiming himself to be the “bright khan, nurturer of all nations” (geren gurun-​be ujire genggiyen han) of a restored, “Latter Jin” (Hou Jin 後金) dynasty.16 In doing so, he let the Ming know that he was no longer a loyal subject and that he aspired to control everything north of the Huai river, the same territory the Jin held in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The next key ideological development came in 1636, when Hong Taiji dispensed with the pretension of being Latter Jin—​always a problematic claim inasmuch as the Aisin Gioro were not lineal descendants of the original Jin dynasty. Instead, he proclaimed himself emperor of a new dynasty, the “Great Qing” (大清), and of a new people—​no longer “Jurchen” but “Manchu.” While Nurhaci’s Latter Jin dynasty might conceivably have coexisted with the Ming, in the same way that the first Jin dynasty ruled part of China while the Southern Song dynasty ruled China south of the Huai river, Hong Taiji’s dynasty was an even stronger provocation. As Timothy Brook has observed, “The symbolism of the new dynastic name implied that the Qing, a water image meaning clear or pure, would submerge the Ming, a fire image of sun and moon together.”17 Whereas Nurhaci seems to have imagined his state as a Manchurian polity perched on the imperial threshold of its agrarian Chinese neighbors, sticking close to the environmental frontiers of the steppe peoples, Hong Taiji was about to escape these confines and create an empire that was a direct rival to the Ming and appealed to Han-​ Chinese symbolism—​like water dousing out fire. The Qing’s goal was to conquer all of China. The new name of his empire, Daicing, had a double meaning in both Manchu and Mongolian of “warrior,” further indicating its aggressive character.18 Hong died in 1643 just before the final raid one year later into northern China, which became a full-​ scale invasion of the Ming Empire.19 81

Frederik Vermote

The fall of the Ming and the (second) rise of the Jurchen/​Manchus has been attributed to a range of military, cultural, economic, and, most recently, climatic factors. Traditionally, contemporaries analyzing this episode in China’s imperial dynastic history argued that weak emperors manning the helm of the Ming dynasty were the main reason for the fall of the Ming. The final three Ming rulers—​the Wanli, Tianqi, and Chongzhen emperors—​fit well within the traditional model of the dynastic cycle, according to which all founding emperors were strong, to be followed by less powerful ones who however had the support of powerful and “righteous” ministers and generals, until, finally, weak, lazy, and possibly “evil” emperors neglected the affairs of the state and allowed power to dissipate to eunuchs and other unsavory characters (in the eyes of the Confucian scholarly elite).20 According to this view, beginning with the negligent Wanli emperor, the Ming were inevitably headed for disaster and it was “natural” that the Manchus conquered the Ming. Even recent historians who do not ascribe to the simplistic model of the dynastic cycle have often described the Manchus as an “unstoppable” force.21 This cyclical perspective on Chinese imperial history was satisfying, as Valerie Hansen has noted, inasmuch as “it always justified rule by the reigning dynasty.” Other historians, however, have objected that this explanation “makes for fine histrionics but poor history.”22 While it is true that the Wanli emperor was notoriously disconnected from the empire’s affairs after 1600, he was a strong military leader able to direct and employ Ming armies and generals who stopped the Japanese in Korea during the 1590s.23 A decade earlier, the Wanli emperor similarly employed Chief Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng whose tax reform was “the most important transformation of the Chinese economy prior to industrialization.”24 The Wanli emperor may indeed have disengaged from any serious acts of ruling in the first two decades of the seventeenth century, however, he is not the despot who lost the empire. Even as factionalism and fighting at the Ming court came to a peak, Ming armies were, on occasion, able to contain Manchu forces, belying any notion of the Manchus’ “unstoppability.”25 In the end, however, poor leadership was clearly a critical area in which the Manchus outmatched the Ming.26 Economic factors also played a role in the fall of the Ming and the rise of the Qing. The income of Zhang Juzheng’s tax reform flooded the Ming treasury with silver, which was then spent on suppressing domestic rebellions and stopping a Japanese invasion. William Atwell has also pointed out changes in international trade patterns, particularly global silver flows, which may have resulted in a pervasive economic depression during the final Ming decade. Against this assertion, Richard von Glahn has argued that any short-​term contraction in silver was not significant enough to cause a general economic recession and that Ming trade abroad and the market at home remained robust until 1642. The most besetting problem for the Ming was instead a series of “catastrophic harvests and popular rebellions.”27 Silver did influence the outcome of the conflict between the Ming and the Qing in a different way, however, inasmuch as the Ming’s desire for ginseng, which it bought from the Jurchen with silver, caused the reexport to Manchu coffers of “as much as 25 percent of the silver [the Ming] took in from Europe and the New World.”28 82

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

Finally, two recent historians have reinterpreted the fall of the Ming and rise of the Qing using the history of climate and weather.29 The hostilities between these two empires occurred at a time that climatologists have dubbed “The Little Ice Age,” a global period of crisis in the mid-​seventeenth century.30 Why did so many states and empires experience some sort of political, cultural, or social crisis while at the same time “abnormal climatic conditions” lay at the basis of “the longest as well as the most severe episode of global cooling recorded in the Holocene Era [the last 11,700 years]”? Certainly, the rise and expansion of the Qing Empire coincided with a period of unusual climactic events. Subtropical Fujian, for example, experienced heavy snowfall in 1618. In 1640–​41, the northern lands of the empire experienced the worst drought conditions in 500 years, while “tree-​ring series for East Asia show 1643–​44 as the coldest years in the entire millennium between 800 and 1,800.”31 Across the empire, harvests failed and more and more Ming officials petitioned the court for disaster relief. Such extreme weather would continue into the second half of the century, but the decade of the 1640s was the most catastrophic and, as Timothy Brook has observed, “made the era almost impossible to govern.”32 In many ways, then, weather proved the coup de grace that, in combination with economic crisis, domestic rebellions, famines, and lack of central control due to factional infighting at the court, ended the Ming empire. Global cooling did not just affect the Ming, however; the latitude of the region where the Jurchen lived was north of the temperate zone and colder temperatures could have even greater impact than in the south. In many parts of Manchuria, a fall in mean average temperature of even two degrees reduced harvest yields by a stunning 80 percent.33 As a result, the Jurchen were themselves suffering from hunger and deprivation in the early 1600s, and the temptation posed by the grain storehouses of the Ming must have been powerful. Chronically adverse weather may thus have been a factor explaining the shift from sporadic Manchu raids against the Ming in the 1620s–​1630s to full-​blown invasion in 1644. The Qing leadership, however, realized that new conquests might bring as many problems as they solved. When Nurhaci’s advisors urged him to invade the Ming lands as a means of alleviating the famine at home, for example, he objected saying:  “We do not even have enough food to feed ourselves. If we conquer them, how will we feed them?” He continued: “Now we have conquered so many Chinese and animals, how shall we feed them? Even our own people will die. Now during this breathing spell let us first take care of our people and secure all places, erect gates, till the fields and fill the granaries.”34 In 1644, despite such misgivings, the Manchus—​led by Nurhaci’s brother, the Prince Regent Dorgon (1612–​50)—​prepared once again to conduct raids into the Ming’s northern provinces.35 Fortuitously for the Manchus, in April of 1644, the Ming state had reached its nadir of internal dissolution after a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng conquered and sacked the Ming capital. With the suicide of the Chongzhen Emperor, Ming commanders in the field found themselves caught between the demands of a usurping commoner—​Li Zicheng, who had declared himself emperor—​and their redoubtable Manchu enemy; many opted for the latter and Ming defectors quickly swelled the ranks 83

Frederik Vermote

of the Qing army. Most critically, the Ming general Wu Sangui, commander of the strategic Shanhai pass in the Great Wall, formally requested that Dorgon help him to expel Li Zicheng from Beijing and avenge the fallen Chongzhen Emperor. The Qing seized upon this invitation and promptly dispatched an army to Shanhai. There, the combined forces of Prince Dorgon and Wu Sangui inflicted a decisive defeat upon Li Zicheng and his bandit army on May 27, forcing them to withdraw first from the frontier and then from Beijing. On June 5, Dorgon and his army entered Beijing and took possession of the imperial palace and regalia. He proclaimed to the somewhat bewildered inhabitants that there would be no Ming restoration—​the “Mandate of Heaven” had henceforward passed to the Qing.36 On November 8, 1644, Dorgon’s nephew, Fulin, the young Shunzhi Emperor (1638–​61), was formally installed in Beijing as the ruler of All under Heaven.

Imperial Consolidation and Expansion Occupation of the Ming capital was one thing; the establishment of effective Qing rule over the vast and unsettled provinces of China was quite another. It took two decades for the Qing to fight their way down to the southernmost frontiers of the former Ming Empire, defeating or co-​opting one loyalist commander after the other, until General Wu Sangui had captured and executed the last of the Ming princes, Zhu Youlang, in 1662.37 The work of pacification did not end there. A local notable family of Ming loyalists, the Zheng, held out in Fujian and posed a serious threat to the new dynasty. In 1658, for example, Zheng Chenggong (1624–​62), known as “Koxinga,” pushed deep into Qing territory to besiege Nanjing with 150,000 troops.38 More dangerously, Koxinga evicted the Dutch from Taiwan in 1661 with the clear intention of using that island as a staging ground for the reconquest of the Chinese mainland. The Qing responded with vigor and sought to break the anti-​Qing resistance in southern China by weakening the maritime communities that provided its military and economic bases. The Qing therefore revived a long-​lapsed Ming ban on unlicensed sea travel, tightly restricted foreign trade, and destroyed many private ships. The Kangxi Emperor further issued two evacuation edicts in 1661–​62 ordering all residents within ten to fifteen miles of the coast from Shandong to Guangdong to move inland on pain of death.39 Tremendous dislocation and misery ensued, but the Zheng remained defiant. The Qing campaign to drive the Zheng from their island sanctuary had to be delayed another decade as the Kangxi Emperor confronted yet another serious threat to the empire in the form of the “Three Feudatories Rebellion” of 1673–​81. From the days of Nurhaci, the Qing had been acutely aware that the conquest of the Ming Empire could not be achieved by Manchu troops alone—​there were simply too few Manchus relative to the size of their intended prize. Securing the acquiescence and active cooperation of Han-​Chinese subjects was therefore essential and, in practice, the “Manchu conquest of China” was indeed carried out overwhelmingly by Han-​Chinese soldiers and officials who had defected to the Qing cause. In recognition of these invaluable services, the 84

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

Qing dynasty had appointed three of its most accomplished Han generals to rule as governors over the provinces in southern China that they had only just brought under Qing control—​Wu Sangui (1612–​78) in Yunnan and Guizhou, Shang Kexi (1604–​76) in Guangdong, and the family of Geng Zhongming (1604–​49) in Fujian. Initially, the three governors had been allowed to treat their provinces as virtual fiefdoms. As it became obvious to them in the early 1670s that the Qing court did not intend to let this arrangement become either permanent or hereditary, they rose in rebellion. The contest was thus not so much between partisans and opponents of Qing rule, per se, but rather within the Qing elite between centripetal and centrifugal visions of how the empire would operate.40 It took the young Kangxi Emperor eight years to put down the Three Feudatories rebellion and another two to finally conquer Taiwan, but by the end of 1683 Qing rule over all of the former Ming territories was firmly established. The following century that encompassed the successive reigns of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors is often referred to as the “High Qing,” being a period marked by internal security, economic and cultural achievements, and territorial expansion. Having defeated the Zheng, for example, the Qing relaxed the coastal evacuation orders in 1669 and embraced a more open set of maritime policies in 1684.41 On land, the three emperors undertook a series of ambitious campaigns that nearly doubled the size of the Qing Empire. The dynasty extended its rule westward into Outer Mongolia (effectively under Qing control by 1697), Tibet (1720), Kokonur/​Qinghai (1724), Jungaria (1757), and the Tarim Basin (1759). By the late 1700s, the forces of the Qianlong Emperor were even campaigning in lands as far distant from the imperial center as Nepal and the Toungoo and Đại Việt empires in Southeast Asia.

Institutions of Empire The first three Qing dynasts—​Nurhaci, Hong Taiji, and Dorgon—​deliberately set out to create institutions that would unite their followers into a coherent group, while at the same time distinguishing that imperial elite from their future subjects. In particular, they were responsible for two of the most emblematic features of the Qing Empire: the banner system and the fostering of Manchu language and group identity.

The Banner System The Qing banner system began as a reorganization of Nurhaci’s army and followers into four companies of roughly 300 warriors and their households, with each company distinguished by a blue, red, white, and yellow banner (Manchu: gūsa; Chinese: qi旗). As Nurhaci’s army and followers increased, the number of banner companies was doubled from four to eight, and then further divided along ethnic lines to produce eight Manchu banners, eight Mongol banners, and eight Han banners. These banners became the elite 85

Frederik Vermote

of the Manchu armed forces, a status revealed by the fact that the banners came under the personal command of the emperor or one of the imperial princes and enjoyed a virtual monopoly over artillery and other gunpowder weapons. Three-​quarters of the Qing soldiery, by comparison, were enrolled in a “Green Standard Army” that stood outside the banner system and took its orders from the Ministry of War, rather than directly from the imperial house. These mostly Han soldiers of the Green Standard Army manned garrisons all over the empire and functioned as police in many rural areas, where they were less disruptive to local society than Manchu banner soldiers. In this way, as Elliot has observed, the Qing “use[d]‌ Han to rule Han.”42 Although many aspects of the banner system remain unclear, its importance to the Qing is obvious.43 Certainly, the banner system was much more than just an army, incorporating as it did not only soldiers, but their extended families, servants, slaves, and—​by extension—​even the subject peoples over whom a particular banner garrison exercised authority. As the Qing conquest proceeded apace, the banners also became important vehicles for settlement and administration of the newly acquired lands. Bannermen garrisoned urban centers and outposts, administered the large estates they had been awarded in return for their services, and served in the local bureaucracy as officials. Membership in a banner passed from father to son and, as membership bestowed considerable privileges and connections to the imperial center, the banners increasingly became a hereditary aristocracy. Indeed, many historians have described the banner system as a form of feudalism, with the distinction that “the system of proprietorship that underlay it was not land but rather slaves.”44 As such, Qing banners served simultaneously as units of military organization, civil administration, and economic production. Through the banner system, the Qing also created an imperialized form of society, in which prior clan, tribal, ethnic, and religious ties were subsumed into the banner structure and subordinated to service to the dynasty.45 The bannermen even referred to themselves as slaves (aha or nucai) of the emperor.46 This system, as Burbank and Cooper have observed, “recalls Chinggis Khan’s and Tamerlane’s efforts to fracture established loyalties” as well as the reliance of Mamluk, Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal rulers on military slaves to create a dynastic counterpoise to less reliable tribal and feudal elites.47 Particularly in the early years of the empire, the banner system was a critically important means of incorporating non-​Manchu elites into the Qing imperial project. Ethnic Hans, Mongols, Koreans, and other Tungusic groups could gain membership in a banner either directly, by enlisting as a soldier, or indirectly, by having a family member marry into a banner. The fact that most bannermen were non-​Manchus throughout the history of this institution underlines the Qing desire to build hybrid institutions that would accommodate and mirror the internal diversity of their multiethnic state.48 Over time, of course, the banner system lost some of this openness to outsiders as bannermen sought to protect their elite status and the borders around ethnic privilege and difference hardened. Between the conquest era of the 1640s and the late 1700s, the continuous territorial expansion of the Qing Empire kept the banners relevant. With the start in the 1760s of the “Great Qing Peace,” which would last until the Opium Wars of the nineteenth 86

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

century, however, the utility of the banners declined.49 Some historians have argued that the great peace from 1760 onward “was so overwhelming that it removed the stimulus of war.”50 The dulling of the banner and other army forces through multiple generations of inaction may indeed have been a central factor in the “great military divergence” that had opened up between Europe and Qing China by 1850.51 Certainly, by 1850, the banner system was no longer an effective military organization. There were various reasons for this. The first was technological: banner soldiers were using firearms that were at best thirty to forty years old—​in theory, the maximum time period allowed for use before the Qing government was supposed to replace them. The soldiers did not have much say in this: they were responsible for the purchase and upkeep of their own bows, swords, knives, armor, and banners, but the government was responsible for arming them with firearms. There were cases, especially toward the end of the High Qing period, “where some cannons and other firearms had been used for over 100 years.”52 On a structural level, the banners were an increasing financial burden on the central state by the mid-​eighteenth century, since the privileged and hereditary bannermen received a much larger chunk of the overall Qing military budget relative to the Green Standard Army than their services on the battlefield warranted.53 By the end of the long reign of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–​96), the empire found it difficult to carry the ever-​increasing financial burden of sustaining both its enlisted forces soldiers and the contracted laborers who provided logistical support for all military campaigns. It became obvious that the Qing military apparatus was in need of serious reforms, but Qianlong’s successors did little to address this need. Instead, the logistical and financial costs of the Qing military system continued to rise, such that in the early nineteenth century the once “abundant state treasury was almost depleted” when it had to suppress rebellions between 1795 and 1806 by the Miao tribes of southwestern China and the White Lotus Society.54 In response, the government sought to curb military expenses simply by underfunding all Qing forces, both the banners and the Green Standard Army. When the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, the facility with which the rebels besieged and decimated the Manchu banner garrison in Nanjing revealed the extent to which the Qing Empire’s former elite forces had become unfit for battle, having been systematically underpaid for more than a generation. Not only had their stipends failed to keep pace with the cost of living, but they had a reputation for squandering whatever money they did receive from the state in reckless living.55 By the nineteenth century, then, the banner system—​much like the Ottoman janissary corps or the Mogul jāgīrdārs—​had become inimical to the very empire it had once helped to build up.

Manchu Language If the Qing had used the banner system to integrate a diverse range of elite groups and unite them in service of the new dynasty, they also needed means of distinguishing loyal from disloyal subjects and the new imperial elite from the masses. The Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties had used parallel systems of administration to keep their conquering 87

Frederik Vermote

ethnos—​Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol, respectively—​separate from their Han subjects; the Qing similarly sought to harness Jurchen ethnicity and recreate it as a marker of dynastic identity and apartness. Most famously, in 1645, Prince Dorgon issued a Tonsure Decree (Tifa Ling 剃发令) imposing the Jurchen hairstyle on all non-​Manchu subjects as a visible indicator of their submission to Qing authority. Former subjects of the Ming were given a stark choice: shave the front of their heads over the temples and braid the remaining hair in a long, single queue down the back—​or face execution. The Manchu queue would remain mandatory on all Qing subjects until the 1910s, with the specifically licensed exceptions of Taoist priests, Buddhist monks, Turkic Muslims, and the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands. The imperial uses of Manchu ethnicity can be seen most clearly, perhaps, in Qing attitudes toward the Jurchen language. As with the banner system, Qing policies on language were formulated early by the founding fathers of the Qing Empire and reached their most explicit formulation under Qianlong. As Elliott has noted, “Emperors from Hong Taiji on all made the link between language and identity, but none perhaps as consistently as the Qianlong emperor.”56 The formal remaking of the Jurchen vernacular into an official “Manchu” language of state began early in 1599, when Nurhaci ordered that the Mongolian alphabet be adapted to the sounds of Jurchen so that his officials could produce documents comprehensible to ordinary Manchus.57 Prior to this, Jurchen statesmen had had to produce documents written in literary Chinese and Mongolian, or else they had attempted to use Chinese characters for Jurchen in much the way that Chinese characters had been appropriated elsewhere to write Khitan, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.58 The emergence of the Manchu script and annalistic documents written in Manchu were thus symptomatic of an evolving and expanding bureaucracy. Over the next decades Manchu became part of the multilingual Qing correspondence, together with Chinese, Mongol, and Tibetan (or Uighur depending on the region and people involved).59 The ongoing nature of dynastic interest in written Manchu can be seen from alterations to the script ordered in the 1700s by Qianlong. Surviving state documents in “old Manchu” were promptly rewritten in the reformed “new Manchu” script. As many scholars have noted, Manchu had many uses, both as a marker of difference and as an “exclusionary” language of state. It provided, for example, an excellent vehicle for preserving the secret nature of communications affecting national security. Manchu banner soldiers, for example, were expected to speak Manchu both in their personal lives and in their official communications with the emperor and the imperial court. It was not uncommon, moreover, for the court to omit key information when translating Manchu documents into Chinese. The frequency of such deliberate acts of self-​censorship have prompted Manchu scholars to periodically remind students of the necessity of learning Manchu, and not just Chinese, if one is to appreciate the inner workings of the Qing. Apart from serving as a “security language” for military affairs, Manchu also served as a badge of intimacy within the imperial service. Scholars such as Beatrice Bartlett 88

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

and Mark Elliott have noted the more personal relationship between Qing emperors and their bannermen, in contrast to the less intimate communications with their Han-​ Chinese officials. Written exchanges between the Kangxi emperor and General Boji of the Bordered White Banner, for example, could be very casual in tone: “I am fine. It is cool now outside the passes. There has been enough rain, so the food is very good. There is nothing to do. Because my mind is unoccupied, I am looking really rather well. You’re an old man—​are grandfather and grandmother both well?”60 On other occasions, the emperors’ feelings were still intimate but not so positive. The Yongzheng Emperor wrote the following to a Manchu lieutenant general: “I hear tell you’ve been drinking. If after receiving my edict you are not able to refrain, and so turn your back on my generosity, I will no longer want to value you or use your services. Act in accordance with my fond and well-​meant instructions.”61 The importance of Manchu to the dynasty is also evident from the reaction of later emperors to the creeping Sinicization of the Manchu elite. As Chinese became the dominant language at court and in the army, the Yongzheng Emperor noted with disapproval that bannermen were even using Chinese when just “joking around.” Alarmed, the emperor issued the following edict in 1734: The study of Manchu by banner soldiers is of the utmost importance. Hereafter let the members of the senior bodyguard, the imperial guard and all those who guard palace gates and keep watch speak only in Manchu. No Chinese should be allowed. As far as training, when the soldiers are assembled and at the parade ground, they should also be made to use only Manchu.62 Several years later, the Qianlong Emperor renewed this call for exclusive use of Manchu. From then on until the end of the eighteenth century, the dynasty made vigorous efforts to reverse the decline of Manchu language and identity. The Qing state realized, for example, that much of the weakness of Manchu compared to Chinese sprang from its lack of a literary corpus outside official edicts. The court therefore began to sponsor generously the production of new texts in Manchu.63 The Qianlong emperor’s penchant for monumentalism was reflected in the style of his literary commissions intended to preserve and revive the Manchu language—​and with it “the Manchu Way.” Besides ordering scholars to copy the dynasty’s seventeenth-​ century archival sources into “New” Manchu, Qianlong also authorized the compilation of a first “national history” of the early Qing. Qianlong was particularly displeased that no translations of the Buddhist scriptures had been made into Manchu when they had long ago been translated into the languages of the Mongols and Chinese, two peoples that, Qianlong noted, “were beholden to” the Manchus as “officials and servants.” He therefore sponsored a massive translation project to render the entire Buddhist canon into Manchu translation—​a project that took one hundred translators eighteen years to finish and resulted ultimately in a set of 108 volumes. The emperor sponsored two 89

Frederik Vermote

more works of (invented) history, namely, the Ode to Mukden (Mukden-​i fujurun bithe) and the Researches on Manchu Origins (Manjusai da sekiyen-​i kimcin bithe).64 Both of these were transparently intended to preserve the Manchu identity, language, and history for generations to come. Despite all such efforts, the knowledge of the Manchu language among ethnic Manchus, banner soldiers, and even the dynastic successors of Qianlong himself continued to erode. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the last Qing emperor knew only one word in Manchu: Ili! (“Arise!”).65 In 2016, the New York Times reported that the last native speaker of Manchu to reside in the Manchu’s original homeland in the northeast corner of China had died.66 The only people who today still speak Manchu are to be found in the northwest of Xinjiang province on the border with Kazakhstan, where it is preserved by the descendants of Manchu soldiers ordered to settle this newly conquered province back in 1764. As Mark Elliott has argued, “The Qing dynastic enterprise depended both on Manchu ability to adapt to Chinese political traditions and on their ability to maintain a separate identity.”67 It is in this context that we can appreciate how critical the banner system and the maintenance of a Manchu identity were to the Manchus’ ability to rule and hold their empire together. Not surprisingly, the rise and fall of both institutions coincided rather precisely with the division made by most historians between the “High Qing” period pre-​1800, and the nineteenth-​century period of decline when the Qing were dubbed the “sick man of Asia.” Whereas prior to the 1800s, for example, both the banners and Manchu identity had flourished and been instrumental in the establishment and expansion of the Qing Empire, by the nineteenth century both had become obsolete and were in the process of being replaced with Han-​Chinese equivalents. Written and spoken Manchu thus gave way to cultural Sinicization, while the dynasty increasingly discounted the banners and came to rely on regionalized military forces led by Confucian scholars such as Zeng Guofan (1811–​72) to defend the state from internal rebellions and external threats.68

Government Ministries In terms of the internal structure of the Qing Empire and its practices, Qing statecraft was in many ways similar to that of the Ming—​a similarity that is hardly surprising given that both the Ming and the Qing had built upon common foundations laid down by the Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties before them. The Qing thus continued the Ming practice of ruling through a Department of State Affairs (Shangshu Sheng 尚书省) made up of Six Boards or Ministries—​Revenue, Personnel, Rites, War, Justice, and Works—​under the supervision of a Grand Secretariat (Neige 内阁). Two ministers, however, one Han and one Manchu, were appointed to head each ministry and keep an eye on each other. In addition, the Qing preserved the Ming institution of the Censorate (Yushitai 御史台), a group of more than fifty “whistle-​blowers” who monitored the behavior of officials. They also brought back to prominence the Hanlin Academy, a “post-​graduate school” of promising young aspirants eager to enter the 90

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

bureaucracy, and who were always ready to voice criticism.69 Perhaps most importantly, the Qing continued the long-​standing practice in China of using the civil service examination system based on classical Chinese literary texts to staff the imperial bureaucracy. The Qing also brought with them some innovations in state institutions. The Jurchen, for example, like many peoples of the Eurasian steppe, viewed warfare and governance as processes that required frequent consultation among interested stakeholders—​most especially among the members of the imperial elite. Nurhaci and his sons had regularly held such consultations with their kin, generals, and advisors, and after the Qing emperors moved to Beijing they continued to consult with a Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers (Yizheng Wang Dachen Huiyi 议政王 大臣会议) on important matters of state. Besides helping to keep the bonds of loyalty fresh between the throne and its most important servitors, the “Grand Council” (as it was known after 1733)  also helped the emperors to sidestep its own Grand Secretariat, which too often had acted as a bottleneck controlling the flow of information between the emperor and his officials. The Qing also created a new Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu 内务府) to care for the needs and internal affairs of the palace. The responsibilities of this body grew over time to include a wide range of activities, from the production of arms and armor to carrying out trade missions to secure luxury items for the court. The Imperial Household Department was also different in that it was staffed by bondservants (booi) rather than the Chinese eunuchs who had so dominated the old Ming court. The territorial administration of the Qing Empire betrayed a similar mix of Ming continuities and Manchu innovations. The financial and administrative heart of the empire, for example, was formed by the eighteen provinces of “the Middle Kingdom,” China (Manchu:  Dulimbai Gurun), roughly comparable in name and extent to the fifteen provinces of the Ming Empire.70 The emperors appointed a pair of civil and military governors to administer each of these provinces, which as under the Yuan and Ming, were further subdivided into prefectures, subprefectures, and counties. Set apart from this regular and centralized provincial system lay both the Manchurian homeland of the dynasty and the Qing conquests in Tibet, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Jungaria, and the “Muslim Frontier” (Huijiang 回疆) of modern-​ day Xinjiang. These territories were formally administered by bannermen military viceroys, although in practice local political figures such as the dalai lamas of Tibet, the hakim begs of Xinjiang, or the tribal khans of Mongolia enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy under the oversight of a Qing imperial “resident” (known as an amban). Manchuria itself was a special case. In an attempt to preserve the “purity” of the ethnic character of their homeland, the Qing excluded the region from the provincial structure of China and preserved it as a special military governorate. To further fortify Manchuria against foreign influences, the entire region was fenced off with an elaborate “Willow Palisade” (Liutiao Bian 柳條邊) composed of trenches and embankments planted with rows of interwoven willow trees. Both Han settlers and 91

Frederik Vermote

Mongol pastoralists were forbidden from traveling or settling past the bounds of the Willow Palisade. In theory, it was to remain an exclusive preserve for Manchus and those honorary Manchus, the soldiery of the imperial banners (including, by extension, Han and Mongol bannermen). Finally, beyond the thick belt of military governorates that stretched from the Himalayas to the Pacific lay the various states that the Qing considered its tributaries (fanshu 藩属) and dependencies (shudi 属地). This long list of tributary states—​from the perspective of the Qing, at least—​included the khanates of Central Asia, Nepal, the Toungoo Empire (Myanmar), Lan Xang (Laos), Siam, Đại Việt, Chosŏn Korea, and the Sulu Sultanate, as well as Russia, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. Already in 1638, six years prior to the Manchu conquest of Ming China, the Qing dynasty had established another important state body—​the Mongol Department (Monggo yamun)—​t o manage relations with its Mongol allies and rivals. As the territories controlled by the Qing expanded, moreover, the Mongol Department became the Ministry for Administering the Outer Regions (Manchu:  Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan/​C hinese:  Lifan Yuan 理藩院)—​a nd its purview extended to all political relations with the various territories beyond the borders of the empire’s core provinces.71 This expansive charge included management of such sundry tasks as the distribution of ranks and emoluments to vassal rulers, collection of taxation, regulation of trade, maintenance of postal routes, and the registration of Buddhist lamas.72 In many ways, the new ministry expanded and built upon the examples provided by early dynasties. The Yuan, for example, had established a Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs (Xuanzhengyuan 宣政院) to supervise Buddhist affairs throughout the empire as well as the temporal administration of Tibet, while the Ming had (to a more limited extent) tasked its Ministry of Rites (Libu 禮部) with managing the dynasty’s relations with tributary states.73 That this expanded empire belonged to the Manchus alone, however, was made clear by the exclusion of Han literati almost entirely from employment in the Lifan Yuan and the carrying out of most of the ministry’s internal communications in Manchu or Mongolian rather than Chinese.74 It should be noted that the Qing had no other foreign ministry, as such, until 1861, so the Lifan Yuan was responsible for managing relations both with regions like Xinjiang that were under de facto Qing control and with entirely independent states like Russia. Administratively, then, the Qing treated diplomatic relations with other states as, quite literally, a domestic affair.

Control of Frontiers and Subjects Ideologically and administratively, then, the Qing behaved as though they were the only true, hegemonic empire or great power in the world. Other states might exist but they did so by the sufferance and paternal regard of the Qing emperor. As the Kangxi 92

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

Emperor wrote in 1687 to the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, the leader of the Gelug school of Buddhism in Mongolia: To establish and unite into one the great kings of the world, one must be compassionate to both the inner [i.e., the 18 provinces of China] and outer [i.e., lands outside China], have no distinction between those near and far, [as if] all were one, and bestow grace upon the 10,000 nations. When the wise teaching has spread in the world, tribute will be given yearly [to the Qing].75 What happened in practice, however, when the Qing came up against other empires with similarly universalist ambitions or with sufficient strength to challenge the Son of Heaven? How did the Qing deal with such peers, establish borders, or manage relations with them? After the conquest of the lands previously occupied by the Ming Empire drew to an end in the 1680s, the major threats to the Qing over the next century all seemed to come from its far western and northern frontiers and this is where the dynasty focused its attention under the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors. The vast region of Inner Asia stretching from the Pacific to the Altai Mountains and the Kazakh Steppe might appear at first blush to have posed little threat to the Qing, being poor and sparsely settled as it was. Experience had proven it to be the very cockpit of empire in Asia, however, the crucible from which the Chinggisid empires of the past had emerged and, indeed, the Manchus themselves. Conquest or at least effective control of this region and its peoples therefore was fundamental to the larger Qing imperial project. While Qing policies aimed at pacifying the lesser Mongol, Tibetan, and Tungusic peoples of the region was broadly successful, the Qing watched with concern as two neighboring states with imperial pretentions—​Romanov Russia and the Jungar Khanate of the Oirat Mongols—​expanded toward China’s borders. Russian fur-​traders and Cossack adventurers had been actively exploring the river systems of Siberia over the course of the 1600s. By 1649, they had reached the Amur River and began making military incursions into northern Manchuria itself. Worse, they had started to make explicit claims to the tribute and obedience of the local people. An exploratory Russian expedition in 1650–​53 led by Yerofey Khabarov, for example, had built forts along the Amur, burned Manchu villages, defeated a larger force of Manchu troops, and demanded that the local people and their rulers submit to the Russian tsar.76 Further west in the 1650s, the Jungar or Oirat Confederation under Galdan Khan had begun to unite the western Mongols and seemed poised to create a reunified empire of all the Mongols on the Qing’s vulnerable northwestern frontiers. The subsequent Jungar conquest of the Turkic Muslim principalities of the Tarim Basin in 1678–​80 and joint Russo-​Jungar attacks in 1687–​88 against the rival Khalka Confederation underlined the threat that the Jungar Khanate posed to Qing strategic interests in the region. Clearly, something had to be done, but what? In the past, a succession of Chinese empires from the Qin to the Ming had sought to contain the political disorder that spilled 93

Frederik Vermote

off the steppe through a reliance on the tribute system, “setting barbarian against barbarian,” and the construction of a defensive network of walls and garrisoned forts. The Qing, less intimidated by the steppe, perhaps, on account of their own origins, opted for a more aggressive, forward strategy and sought to project their direct authority far beyond the established limits of urban settlement. This strategy resulted in radically different policies toward the two rivals of the Qing in Inner Asia. Toward the Jungar Khanate, the Qing adopted a policy of direct confrontation and, ultimately, of extermination. Beginning in 1690, Qing armies—​in many cases led by the emperor himself—​undertook a succession of aggressive campaigns against the Jungars. Despite mounting costs and many frustrating reverses, by 1758 the conquest of the Jungar Khanate—​the last of the large steppe nomad empires—​was complete. Not content with political submission, the Qianlong Emperor issued orders for the physical eradication of the Jungar populace after a final, ill-​fated rebellion against Qing authority led by Prince Amursana in 1755.77 The very name of the Jungars was to be expunged, all men capable of bearing arms massacred and women and children enslaved. One Qing historian estimated that of the original Jungar population, 40 percent had died of smallpox, 20 percent had fled into exile, 30 percent had perished at the hands of Qing forces, and the remainder had all been enslaved.78 In their place, the Qing state resettled Jungaria with colonists from the rest of the Qing Empire and from the neighboring Turkic Muslim cities of the Tarim Basin. Toward Russia, by comparison, the Qing opted for a much milder policy of diplomatic engagement, compromise, and watchful coexistence. In truth, the Qing Empire’s struggle against the Jungars made a more conciliatory policy toward Russia essential if the Jungars were to be isolated from outside aid and assistance. More specifically, the Qing concluded two formal treaties with the Russian Empire: the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 and the Kiakhta trade treaty in 1727. These treaties are of particular interest for historians of the Qing Empire, and not merely because they would set the tone for Russo-​Qing relations into the early twentieth century.79 They were the first treaties to be signed by the Qing with a European power and the only ones to be signed when the Qing could still negotiate from a position of relative strength. As such, they provide a unique window on Qing political attitudes. As Peter Perdue has noted, one of the reasons the negotiations between Russia and the Qing were so unusual was precisely because of their conflicting universalist imperial claims and ideologies. Neither empire “believed in equal-​status negotiations between sovereign states [and] both acted from hierarchical assumptions of tribute, vassalage, and deference.”80 Even the simple act of talking to one another raised thorny issues of protocol. If the Russians were seen as visiting the Qing, for example, Manchu practice would have demanded that they kowtow to the representatives of the Son of Heaven and render tribute; if the Qing were seen to be visiting the Russians, they would have been walking into a figurative minefield strewn with potential insults to the dignity of their imperial master, as well as raising the awkward question of how a foreign embassy could “receive” representatives of the Qing on lands that the Qing 94

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

still considered theirs! To avoid such difficulties, the two parties simply omitted to meet at all, formally. Instead, they pitched two tents next to one another and communicated across the ambiguous void space between their two splendid, imperial solitudes. Two other factors allowed the two empires to square the circle and treat each other as de facto equals. The first was the existence of a common rival to the expansion of both states: the Jungar Khanate. This was a particularly motivating consideration for the Qing. If for Russia, the greatest benefit to be secured through the treaties of Nerchinsk and Kiakhta was primarily economic, the Qing dynasty wanted assurance that it could commence hostilities against the Jungars without fear that Russia would assist them in the form of materiel, manpower, or asylum from pursuit by Qing forces.81 The second essential factor to the success of the negotiations was the existence of third-​ party mediators, who, while pursuing their own agendas, made it possible for the two empires to negotiate at arm’s length. In the case of Nerchinsk, these intermediaries were Mongols and—​most importantly—​Jesuits, who acted as interpreters and advisers to the Qing. By the time of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, Jesuit missionaries had been operating in the Chinese mainland for almost a century. Yet they had struggled to secure permission to evangelize in China, so the Jesuits realized they needed to reinvent themselves as desirable imperial subjects of the Qing. To this end, the Jesuits learned Chinese and presented themselves in the dress of Confucian scholars. In a further attempt to make themselves useful to the Chinese elite, they showcased Western technology, cartography, and mnemonic methods as a means of establishing their credentials before introducing their religion. While some Chinese never stopped wondering why the Jesuits went to such lengths to talk about religion, the Jesuit strategy did eventually secure them a role at both the Ming and Qing courts as scholars, astronomers, cartographers, diplomats, and religious experts—​all skills that the Qing recognized as essential to the repertoire of any empire.82 Indeed, if there was one organization that incorporated the global movement of people, ideas, and goods from 1550 until 1750, it was the Society of Jesus.83 In particular, the Jesuits acted in many places across Asia as freelance “imperial consultants,” offering their specialized services to multiple imperial states in exchange for influence and freedom to promote the Catholic faith. In South Asia, for example, Jesuits sought to carve out a niche for themselves at the court of the Mughal emperor while acting as translators and interpreters for the Portuguese; in Guam, they implemented Spanish colonizing policies; in Japan, Jesuits acted as advisers to great feudal lords like Oda Nobunaga while simultaneously promoting Spanish and Portuguese interests there.84 Qing emperors saw their Jesuit advisors precisely in this light as agents who were not to be trusted but who might be very useful, especially when operating in strategically and politically volatile areas such as frontier regions between competing empires. It was this reputation for utility that moved Kangxi to send two Jesuits to Nerchinsk to assist at the meeting with the Russian delegation: Jean-​François Gerbillon (1654–​ 1707) and Tomé Pereira (1645–​1708).85 Although the pair presented a united front to the 95

Frederik Vermote

outside world, the two men did not get along on their first mission together, a situation aggravated by the ongoing dispute between French and Portuguese Jesuits in China since the arrival of the first French Jesuits in 1685 over whether to steer Qing policy in favor of Portuguese or French interests.86 Despite this rivalry, the Jesuits served the Qing well at Nerchinsk. The Kangxi Emperor had been anxious, for example, to prevent Mongols from acting as go-​betweens at the negotiations. Mongolian was the obvious language for the negotiations to be carried out in as it served as a lingua franca along the northern frontier, but the rise of the Jungars had thrown the Mongol world into an uproar and the emperor felt that Mongols—​especially any Mongols that the Russians might use—​ could not be trusted. The Jesuits therefore outmaneuvered the Mongol intermediaries by convincing the Russians that there were not enough Mongolian translators, that those present were incompetent, and that the negotiations would be more “objective” if carried out in Latin, which the Jesuits spoke fluently as did one Polish member of the Russian delegation.87 Having gained de facto control of communications between the two parties, Gerbillon and Pereira helped to steer negotiations toward Kangxi’s principal goals. The resulting treaty, produced in Latin with Russian and Manchu translations, demarcated for the first time an exact (albeit incomplete) boundary between the lands of the Qing and those of Russia by using the Gorbitsa and Argun rivers and the Stanovoy Mountains (Arts I and II).88 The Qing were left secure in their possession of Manchuria, while the Russians were left with the troubled area between the Argun River and Lake Baikal that bordered on the lands of the Jungars. The achievement of a bilateral agreement to respect the sovereignty of each empire over their respective subjects was quite as significant as the demarcation of territory. Whereas the porous frontier had long made it possible for bandits and rebels of all descriptions to evade Russian or Qing authority, for example, the Treaty of Nerchinsk specified that henceforward both parties were bound to apprehend and surrender any fugitives or criminals back to their empire of origin (Arts IV and VI). The Qing clearly gained most from the negotiations, but the Russians could comfort themselves that their merchants were guaranteed entrance to China for the purposes of trade and travel (Art. V) and that the agents of the Russian tsar had not been forced to make any of the usual humiliating marks of submission to Qing supremacy. By the end of the 1600s, then, the Qing and Russian empires had cooperated to bring about a profound change in the character of the region. The most defining geopolitical characteristic of this vast region of Inner Asia for more than four centuries prior had been its fluidity. It was rare to find clear, effective, and durable control of space, robustly enforced by state power, anywhere in a region that remained volatile, contested, and predominantly populated by nomadic peoples. As a result, political power in the region was understood to be rooted in control of people rather than territory. The expansion of the Qing and Russian states toward each other brought this formlessness to an end as they subjugated the peoples, polities, and space between them through brute application of force majeure. In this effort, the two great empires found a point of common 96

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

interest that drew them to cooperation rather than conflict. Neither wished to allow peoples, power, and trade to move as they wished through this vast region. Both sought to tie down peoples, by fixing and enforcing clear frontiers, controlling movements, overbearing and absorbing local military power, and regulating economic activity. The Jungar Khanate, by comparison, was a less promising partner. Being still in a very early phase of its state formation, the Jungar Mongols were seen as deeply subversive of the sort of stabilization of the Inner Asian frontier that the Qing and Russian empires wanted. Jungar plans to unite the Mongol peoples across imperial borders posed a direct threat to the Qing, who relied heavily on Mongol supporters, and would have interfered with Russian plans for expansion around Lake Baikal and into Central Asia. The nomadic forces of the Jungars moved opportunistically across the steppe, often crossing into Russian or Qing territory in search of pastures, plunder, and safe refuge from their enemies. Clearly, the Jungars were not ready in the late 1600s for the sort of tacit imperial association that Russia and the Qing were contemplating—​and the price of the Jungars’ nonconformity was their obliteration. Henceforward, Inner Asia was to be the frontier zone not of many polities but of two great empires, who concentrated on consolidating their control of this space until the fall of the dynasties that reordered it.

The Qing in Decline Despite the increase of centrifugal forces across most Asian states from the seventeenth century onward, there is little evidence prior to the nineteenth century to suggest that the Qing were losing control over their peripheral or most recently acquired territories, as was happening in other major Eurasian empires such as the Ottomans or the Mughals.89 To some extent, this was due to the Manchus’ jealous reluctance to recognize or permit the devolution of state power onto local potentates.90 The Qing dynasty had instead insisted on keeping administrative control firmly in its hands. Newly conquered regions such as Xinjiang or Taiwan were placed under various forms of military rule, whereas Mongolia was ruled by military garrisons or tribal nobilities.91 The Qing also sought to strengthen its hold over contested areas by planting settlements of loyal colonists selected from the banners or various parts of China. The long struggle required to subdue regions such as Taiwan, Jungaria, and the former holdouts of Ming or Zheng loyalists in southern maritime China ensured that the imperial center remained suspicious of conquered people for a long time. However, such deeply engrained distrust could prevent the Qing from gaining an accurate picture of developments in these regions. In the southeastern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, for example, a chronic lack of connections between official circles and the society around them meant that the outbreak of the First Opium War in 1839 caught the dynasty completely unaware of the local ramifications of the growing European mercantile presence in the region.92 In the short term, however, the 1700s was an era of serene repose for the Qing Empire, marked by peace and a sense of easy superiority. The dynasty had subdued or reconciled 97

Frederik Vermote

all apparent threats from both overland and by sea. No new nomadic empire would rise on the northwestern frontier to challenge Qing authority again, while European maritime contacts were conducted entirely on the Qing Empire’s terms. The Qing’s trade balance was, as it had been for a long time, positive, in the sense that the outside world eagerly sought out China’s products and was willing to pay China’s price for them. The empire of Qianlong had thus arrived at a golden age, both economically and militarily. Over the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the Qing began to fall victim to their own success. Economically, the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors’ laissez-​ faire attitude left the state fiscally weak at a time when the empire’s population was booming, but its productive capacities were not keeping pace.93 Toward the beginning of the nineteenth century domestic social ailments such as the millions of Qing subjects addicted to opium signaled a sea change in the Qing’s relationship with the outside world and, more particularly, with Western empires such as Britain that were actively promoting the opium trade. The Qing government came to the logical conclusion that the opium trade was an unacceptable drain on the resources and good order of the empire, but when it moved to interdict the trade it ran up against the stubborn resistance of a British Empire that was better equipped than the Qing to defend the interests of its merchants and smugglers. The result was the Anglo-​Qing Opium Wars (1839–​42 and 1856–​60), two mismatched contests that abruptly laid bare the Qing’s failure to keep abreast of military and technological developments among its imperial rivals. Defeat in the First Opium War came as a particularly rude shock for the Qing court, following as it did two centuries in which the Qing had been militarily equal or superior to all its challengers. In most of its encounters with the British army and navy, Qing forces were bested and the British acquired a stranglehold on the riverine and coastal trade of the empire with disturbing ease. As a Qing contemporary to these events grimly observed in 1843: “From the time of the piracy in the Ming period, there have been more than two centuries passed here without military disaster, and now we have been twice violated by the British.”94 Although the Qing Empire was thus territorially intact at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it could no longer present a convincing façade of easy superiority over all rivals.

Qing Legacies Between 1600 and 1800, the accomplishments of the Qing dynasty had been truly extraordinary. Beginning from a small frontier chieftaincy they had created one of the largest and most populous empires in the world, which at its height in the late 1700s ruled over perhaps 360 million subjects and extended over thirteen million kilometers from Kyrgyzstan to the Ryukyu Islands and from the Amur River to Hainan in the South China Sea.95 The legacies of such an entity to the state of modern China are obvious and immense, not least of these being the very concept of a Han-​dominated but multiethnic China 98

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

itself. Prior to the Qing, “China” had referred only to the core lands of Han history and culture between the Great Wall and the highlands of Southeast Asia and from the Sichuan Basin to the East China Sea. The Qing, as a matter of policy, had insisted from the outset on conflating their empire—​all of it—​with “the Middle Kingdom.” Wherever the dynasty acquired territory in Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, or anywhere else, in other words, the new lands and people automatically became part of a single, Chinese imperial “family,” a notion that was expressed in a recurring slogan of the dynasty that “centre and periphery are one family (Zhong wai yi jia 中外一家).” In 1755, the Qianlong Emperor explicitly criticized the popular, non-​dynastic view of China, “according to which non-​Han people cannot become China’s subjects and their land cannot be integrated into the territory of China. This does not represent our dynasty’s understanding of China, but is instead that of the earlier Han, Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties.”96 While the Qing’s Han subjects may not initially have accepted the dynasty’s expansive vision of “China” as their own, the long-​term impact of the Qing Empire’s frontiers is undeniable when looking at a map of the People’s Republic of China today. In Peter Perdue’s evocative phrase, the Qing’s two centuries of aggressive imperial expansion became “the sceptre that haunts the modern [Chinese] nation.”97 The Qing managed to redefine more than just China, however. At its height, the Qing Empire served as the very paragon of “empire” for much of Eurasia. Courts from Ayudhya to Seoul fretted about where they fit within the Qing system of tributaries and imitated Qing imperial protocols and practices. In the East, of course, there was nothing new in such emulation as China had long exercised a hegemonic influence over the culture and politics of the larger Sinosphere that included much of the Himalayas, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan. By the 1700s, however, many Europeans too had come to regard China as the very paradigm of a perfect empire and the Qing as model emperors. The admiration of European statesmen and scholars was directed not merely at the size and wealth of the Qing Empire, but precisely at its administrative structures, laws, and political policies—​ in other words, its reputation for exceptional imperial statecraft.98 Francois Quesnay, one of the leaders of the influential Physiocratic school of economic thought, promoted the Qing as the very model of rational autocratic government and one that “deserves to be taken as a model for all states.”99 Voltaire, similarly, declared China to be “the wisest and best governed nation in the universe,” and singled out specific features such as its religious tolerance, the examination system, and the Qing system of bureaus and councils for particular praise. “The human mind cannot imagine a better government,” he enthused, “than one where all is decided by great tribunals subordinate to one another and staffed by men who have proven themselves qualified for their task by having taken several difficult examinations.”100 If the Qing thus occupied a key ideational space among Asian polities as the grandest and best of empires, a correspondingly gaping vacuum opened up as the Qing began demonstrably to decline in power and authority over the course of 99

Frederik Vermote

the mid-​nineteenth century. Europeans were the first to begin casting aspersions on Qing statecraft, initially from pique at their treatment by the Qing and new ideas in Europe itself about models of governance, but increasingly on the basis of practical experience with the failings of the Manchu administration and armed forces. Western observers increasingly viewed China not as a model of sagacity and policy, but as an object lesson in what modern empires could no longer afford to be: backward, inward looking, unenterprising, and uninterested in the latest innovations in science, technology, and administration.101 Asian statesmen too began to have their doubts when the Qing proved unable to protect their “dependencies” from European incursions or from imperial Japan. One by one, the Qing’s neighbors stopped sending tributary missions to the imperial court in Beijing, either by choice or more frequently because rival empires prevented them from doing so:  the Kazakhs sent their last mission in 1823, Siam in 1852, Toungoo Burma and the Ryukyu Islands in 1875, Vietnam in 1882, Korea in 1894, and Nepal in 1908.102 The impression that the Qing imperial order was failing meant that Asian states that had once looked to Chinese models scrambled to learn the new repertoire of European imperialism. As the Japanese Foreign Minister Munemitsu Mutsu observed: “Japanese students of China and Confucianism were once wont to regard China with great reverence. They called her the ‘Celestial Kingdom’ and the ‘Great Empire,’ worshipping her without caring how much they insulted their own nation. But now, we look down upon China as a bigoted and ignorant colossus of conservatism.”103 With a contradictory mixture of naiveté and perspicuity, statesmen and intellectuals across East Asia argued that just as the assimilation of Chinese culture had formerly meant recognition and a certain status within the Chinese imperial schema, so in the nineteenth century Westernization was the only way to secure a place within the emerging European-​dominated world system. As the headline of one Japanese newspaper declared somewhat paradoxically in 1884: “Japan must not be an Oriental country”!104 The new watchwords of empire in Asia were no longer to be Sinicization, tributary relations, and “All under Heaven,” but Westernization, “Progress,” free trade, constitutional monarchy, race, and nation.

Notes 1 William Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge:  Belknap Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 1. 2 Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton (eds), Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 3 Tonio Andrade and William Reger (eds), The Limits of Empire: European Imperial Formations in Early Modern World History: Essays in Honor of Geoffrey Parker (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), pp. xix, 1, 4.

100

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

4 For an important introduction, see Mark Edward Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 62. 5 For such a list, see: Peter Turchin, “A Theory for Formation of Large Empires,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 2 (2009), 193. 6 Gertrude Roth Li, “State Building before 1644,” in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9 Part One: The Ch’ing Empire to 1800, ed. W. J. Peterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 9. 7 Ibid., pp. 10–​11. 8 Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990, 1999, 2013), p. 26; Roth Li, “State Building before 1644,” p. 14. 9 F. W. Mote, Imperial China, 900–​1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), chaps  1–​8. 10 Dieter Kuhn, The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 61–​70. 11 Tonio Andrade, The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016), pp. 33–​4. 12 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Emperor Huizong (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2014), chaps  13–​17. 13 Hok Lam Chan, “The Dating of the Founding of the Jurchen-​Jin State: Historical Revisions and Political Expediencies,” in Tumen Jalafun Jecen Aku: Manchu Studies in Honour of Giovanni Stary, ed. Alessandra Pozzi, Juha Antero Janhunen, and Michael Weiers (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), pp. 55–​72. 14 Herbert Franke, “The Chin dynasty,” in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 6 Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–​ 1368, ed. Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 265–​91; Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015), p. 306. 15 Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 184; and Philip Carl Salzman, When Nomads Settle (New York: Praeger, 1980), pp. 1–​20. 16 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, p. 15; Spence, The Search for Modern China, p. 28. 17 Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 249. 18 Mark Elliott, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World (New York: Longman, 2009), p. 55. 19 Brook, The Troubled Empire, p. 256. 20 Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), p. 6. 21 Kenneth M. Swope challenges these conceptions from a military point of view in his works A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail (Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 2009) and The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618–​ 1644 (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). 22 Hansen, The Open Empire, p. 6; Brook, The Troubled Empire, p. 241. 23 Swope, A Dragon’s Head, pp. 7, 295. 24 Brook, The Troubled Empire, p. 119. 25 Swope, The Military Collapse, chap. 2. 26 See also Wang Jinping’s conclusion to Chapter 2 in this volume. 27 William S. Atwell, “A Seventeenth-​Century ‘General Crisis’ in East Asia?,” Modern Asian Studies 24, no. 4 (1990), 664–​5; and Richard von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000–​1700 (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1996);

101

Frederik Vermote

Richard von Glahn, The Economic History of China: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 311. 28 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, p. 14. 29 Brook, The Troubled Empire; Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2013). 30 Parker, Global Crisis, pp. xvii–​xix. 31 Ibid., pp. 125 and 135. 32 Brook, The Troubled Empire, p. 73. 33 Parker, Global Crisis, p. 18. 34 Jiu Manzhou Dang, vol. 1, p. 103, quoted in Roth Li, “State Building before 1644,” pp. 39–​40. 35 Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 48. Brook, The Troubled Empire, p. 250. 36 Parker, Global Crisis, p. 137. Brook, The Troubled Empire, p. 254. Mark Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 3. 37 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, p. 25. Lynn A. Struve, The Southern Ming 1644–​1662 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). 38 Tonio Andrade, Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 84–​98; Xing Hang, Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c.  1620–​1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 115–​24. 39 Dahpon David Ho, “Sealords Live in Vain: Fujian and the Making of a Maritime Frontier in Seventeenth-​Century China,” PhD dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 2011, p. 129. 40 For a first-​person account of this conflict penned by a soldier in the Qing ranks, see:  The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth-​Century China: “My Service in the Army” by Dzengšeo, ed. and trans. Nicola Di Cosmo (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 41 Gang Zhao, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–​ 1757 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013). 42 Elliott, The Manchu Way, pp. 128–​9. 43 David M. Farquhar, “The Origins of the Manchus’ Mongolian Policy,” in The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 204. Also: Elliott, The Manchu Way, p. 39; Rowe, China’s Last Empire, p. 15. 44 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, p. 15. 45 Elliott, The Manchu Way, p. 39. 46 Pamela Kyle Crossley, Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 14–​15. 47 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 207. 48 Elliott, The Manchu Way, p. 364. 49 Andrade, The Gunpowder Age, as explained in appendix 1, p. 311. 50 Ibid., p. 234. 51 Ibid., chap. 16. 52 Yingcong Dai, “Military Finance of the High Qing Period: An Overview,” in Military Culture in Imperial China, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 315. 53 Ibid., p. 307. 54 Ibid., pp. 312–​13.

102

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

5 5 Ibid., p. 301; Elliott, The Manchu Way, pp. 313–​22. 56 Elliott, The Manchu Way, p. 299. 57 Pamela K. Crossley and Evelyn Rawski, “A Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch’ing History,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 53, no. 1 (1993), 66. 58 The Jin had gone furthest in this direction, having used the Khitan system of ideographic characters (which was based, in turn, on Chinese) to create an official “Jurchen script.” Interestingly, Nurhaci opted to commission an entirely new alphabet rather than revive the ideographic Jurchen script. 59 Joanna Waley-​Cohen, “The New Qing History,” Radical History Review 88 (2004), 198. 60 Quoted in Elliott, The Manchu Way, p. 161. 61 Similarly, to a Xi’an garrison general who sent a “rambling missive” complaining about his age, the emperor wrote the following sarcastic riposte: “You are after all, still only one year older than you were last year?” This specific general continued to annoy the Yongzheng Emperor, especially after blaming Heaven for his misfortune. To this, the emperor “angr[ily] retort[ed]:  ‘So many guilt-​ridden doomed knaves pass before me saying that the crime was Heaven’s and that it just “happened” to them. What good is this stupid idea?’ ” Both quotations can be found in ibid., p. 162. 62 Yongzheng Emperor, in ibid., p. 295. 63 Crossley and Rawski, “A Profile of the Manchu Language,” p. 91. 64 Elliott, Emperor Qianlong, pp. 57–​8. 65 Elliott, The Manchu Way, p. 290. 66 http://​www.nytimes.com/​2016/​01/​12/​world/​asia/​china-​xinjiang-​manchu-​xibe-​language. html?smid=tw-​nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&_​r=3 (accessed January 20, 2016). 67 Elliott, The Manchu Way, p. 40. 68 Stephen R. Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), Introduction. 69 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, p. 34. 70 In a few cases, larger Ming provinces were divided into new, smaller entities (e.g., Huguang was divided into Hunan and Hubei). 71 Pamela Kyle Crossley, “The Lifanyuan and Stability during Qing Imperial Expansion,” in Managing Frontiers in Qing China: The Lifanyuan and Libu Revisited, ed. Dittmar Schorkowitz and Ning Chia (Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 101–​103. 72 Wang Hui, “The ‘Tibetan Question’ East and West: Orientalism, Regional Ethnic Autonomy, and the Politics of Dignity,” in Wang Hui, The Politics of Imagining Asia, ed. Theodore Huters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 187. 73 On the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs, see: Luciano Petech, “Tibetan Relations with Sung China and with the Mongols,” in China among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbours, 10th–​14th centuries, ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 190–​4. For the role of the Ministry of Rites in Ming and Qing relations with tributary (and aspiring tributary) states, see: Dittmar Schorkowitz and Ning Chia (eds), Managing Frontiers in Qing China: The Lifanyuan and Libu Revisited (Leiden: Brill, 2016), esp. Introduction and chaps 1, 4, and 5. 74 Crossley and Rawski, “A Profile of the Manchu Language,” p. 77. 75 From the Manchu MS Engke amuγulang-​un qorin jirγuduγar on-​u dangsa, quoted in Johan Elverskog, Our Great Qing: The Mongols, Buddhism and the State in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), p. 77. 76 George Lantzeff and Richard Pierce, Eastward to Empire: Exploration and Conquest on the Russian Open Frontier, to 1750 (Montreal and London:  McGill-​Queen’s University Press, 1973), pp. 159–​67; David Bello, “Rival Empires on the Hunt for Sable and People in

103

Frederik Vermote

Seventeenth-​Century Manchuria,” in Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria, ed. Norman Smith (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), pp. 53–​79. 77 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, p. 74; Perdue, China Marches West, particularly part 4 and 5. 78 Wei Yuan, Shengwuji, quoted in Perdue, China Marches West, p. 285. 79 During the early years of the Cold War, Russian and Chinese historians would even see in these treaties the origins of the future “fraternal alliance” of the USSR and the PRC, declaring them to be “the only equal treaties between China and the West.” Perdue, China Marches West, p. 173. 80 Ibid., p. 172. 81 Ibid. 82 Jean-​Pierre Duteil, Le mandat du ciel: le rôle des jésuites en Chine, de la mort de François-​ Xavier à la dissolution de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1552–​1774 (Paris: AP Éditions-​Arguments, 1994), p. 42; Natalie E. Rothman, Brokering Empire: Trans-​Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012), p. 7. 83 Tom Taylor, “Introduction to the Forum on Jesuits in World History: Scholarly Approaches and Classroom Resources,” World History Connected 10, no. 3: http://​worldhistoryconnected. press.illinois.edu/​10.3/​forum_​taylor.html (accessed January 15, 2016). 84 Cynthia R. Wiecko, “Jesuit Missionaries as Agents of Empire: The Spanish-​Chamorro War and Ecological Effects of Conversion on Guam, 1668–​1769,” World History Connected 10, no. 3: http://​worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/​10.3/​forum_​wiecko.html (accessed January 15, 2016). 85 He was also the Vice-​Visitor. Nicolas Standaert (ed.), Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One: 635–​1800 (Leiden:  Brill, 2001), p.  315; Joseph Dehergne, Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine (Rome: Institutum Historicum, 1973), p. 200; Joseph Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-​ Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689): The Diary of Thomas Pereira, S.J. (Rome: Institutum Historicum S.J., 1961). 86 The Kangxi Emperor was aware of this rivalry between the French and Portuguese factions. E. A. Voretzsch, François Froger: Relation du premier Voyage des François à la Chine: fait en 1698, 1699, 1700 sur le vaisseau L’Amphitrite (Leipzig: Verlag der Asia Major, 1926), p. 93. January 1699, f. 87v. According to Pereira, he himself chose Gerbillon as a companion, but, since Gerbillon did not communicate with his superior, this is not very likely. See also Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-​Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk, p. 177. 87 Perdue, China Marches West, p. 167. 88 For the different versions of the treaty, see:  D. Z. Bakradze, Sbornik dogovorov Rossii s Kitaem, 1689–​1881 gg (St Petersburg:  Izdanie Ministerstva Inostrannykh Del., 1889), pp. 1–​10; [China] Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, misc. series no. 30 (Shanghai:  Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1917), pp.  3–​13; Lo-​shu Fu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-​Western Relations (1644–​1820) (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966), p. 101. 89 This section is informed by John E. Wills Jr., “Contingent Connections: Fujian, the Empire, and the Early Modern World,” in The Qing Formation in World-​Historical Time, ed. Lynn Struve (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 197–​8. 90 Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context. Volume 2: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 740. 91 Peter C. Perdue, “China and Other Colonial Empires,” The Journal of American-​East Asian Relations 16, no. 1/​2 (2009), 85. 92 Wills, “Contingent Connections,” p. 198. 93 von Glahn, The Economic History of China, p. 361.

104

East Asia under the Expanding Qing

94 Xirui, from the introduction to his father Guangcheng’s Daoguang gengzi renyi Zhapu manzhou zhufang xunnan lu, quoted in Crossley, Orphan Warriors, p. 116. 95 On the population of the Qing Empire, see: Mote, Imperial China, 900–​1800, pp. 905–​906. On its territorial extent, see: Richard Smith, The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), p. 85. 96 Quoted in Gang Zhao, “Reinventing China: Imperial Qing Ideology and the Rise of Modern Chinese National Identity in the Early Twentieth Century,” Modern China 32, no. 1 (2006), 4. 97 Peter Perdue, “Empire and Nation in Comparative Perspective: Frontier Administration in Eighteenth-​Century China,” in Shared Histories of Modernity: China, India and the Ottoman Empire, ed. Huri İslamoğlu and Peter Perdue (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 42. 98 Walter Demel, “China in the Political Thought of Western and Central Europe, 1570–​ 1750,” in China and Europe: Images and Influences in Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Thomas H.  C. Lee (Hong Kong:  The Chinese University Press, 1991), pp. 45–​64; Ashley Eva Millar, A Singular Case: Debating China’s Political Economy in the European Enlightenment (Montreal and Kingston:  McGill-​Queen’s University Press, 2017), chaps 4 and 5. 99 Prefatory comments to Despotisme de la Chine, in François Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, ed. Christine Théré, Loïc Charles, and Jean-​Claude Perrot (Paris : Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, 2005), vol. 2, p. 1010, n. 12. 100 From his Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations, et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII, in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire ([Kehl]: Imprimerie de la Société Littéraire-​Typographique 1784), vol. 19, p. 327. 101 David Jones, The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought (Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave, 2001), chaps 2 and 3. 102 Jin Noda, The Kazakh Khanates between the Russian and Qing Empires: Central Eurasian International Relations during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Leiden and Boston:  Brill, 2016), pp. 191–​3; Erika Masuda, “Import of Prosperity:  Luxurious Items Imported from China to Siam during the Thonburi and Early Rattanakosin Periods (1767–​ 1854),” in Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-​Chin Chang (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 161–​2; Anthony Reid, A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), p. 250; [Henry Ernest Stanton], History of the Third Burmese War: 1885, 1886, and 1887. Period I (Calcutta:  Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1887), chap. 9. 103 Munemitsu Mutsu, Kenkenroku: A Diplomatic Record of the Sino-​Japanese War, 1894–​95, ed. and trans. Gordon Berger (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1982), pp. 27–​8. 104 Hinohara Shōzō, “Nihon wa Tōyōkoku taru bekarazu,” Jiji Shinpō, November 11, 13, and 14, 1884.

105

Chapter 4

Southwest Asia, 1300–​1800: Ottomans, Safavids, and the Turco-​Persianate Imperial Tradition Jack Fairey Introduction The lands of Southwest Asia, bounded by the waters of the Mediterranean, Indian, Black, and Caspian seas and by the rivers of the Nile and Danube, hold a special place in the global history of empire. The region has been the staging ground for some of the world’s earliest imperial polities, dating back to what many historians consider the first such state: the Akkadian Empire of the third millennium bc.1 The lands of the “Near East” would go on to form the geographical and spiritual core of many of the most important empires in history, ranging from the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great to the Byzantine and Abbasid empires. As a result, the region has been a particularly productive and influential laboratory for the development of imperial ideas, practices, and institutions. Southwest Asia witnessed, for example, the earliest and most successful attempts to combine empire-​building with monotheism in several different forms, beginning with Akhenaten’s promotion of the cult of Aten in Egypt during the fourteenth century bc and reaching its apogee between the third and eighth centuries ad with the Sassanid adoption of a militant Zoroastrianism, the Roman adoption of Christianity, and the creation of the first Islamic caliphate.2 This long association with imperial forms continued into the early-​ modern era and at the dawn of the 1500s the region had come to be divided between two great empires: those of the Ottoman and Safavid dynasties. Despite their many differences, these two rival empires shared similar origins, drew on a large body of common literary and imperial culture, and heavily influenced each other over three centuries. They can therefore fruitfully be studied together as what we might call the “Turco-​Persianate empires of Southwest Asia.” The geographical qualifier is important, since the two empires belonged to a larger Turco-​Persianate cultural and political world that linked the courts of Istanbul and Isfahan with those of Bukhara, Samarqand, Kabul, Delhi, and Lahore. This chapter is therefore linked in vital ways with those on Inner and South Asia.

History of the Imperial Idea: Persia Two particularly dominant lineages of empire had emerged in Southwest Asia by the era of the Crusades: those of Persia and of the Greco-​Roman world. The Persian was the 107

Jack Fairey

elder of the two traditions, tracing its origins to the Median and Achaemenid empires of the sixth to fifth centuries bce. It also exercised the greatest influence over the region and over the Ottoman and Safavid empires in particular, whereas the Greco-​Roman tradition became more associated with Christendom. In Persian literary culture, the art of being an imperial ruler or shāh was seen as coeval with the origins of organized society and a critical factor in human advancement. The first king of Persian legend, Keyumars, was responsible for introducing not only governance by “crown and throne” (tāj va takht) to the world, but also religion, clothing, domestication of animals, and all the other benefits of civilization. Ferdowsi, in his epic Book of Kings (Shāhnāma), neatly encapsulated this ideology of imperial benevolence in his description of the succession of Keyumars’s grandson: The just and prudent Hushang was now master of the world, and he set the crown on his head and ruled in his grandfather’s place. He reigned for forty years, and his mind was filled with wisdom, his heart with justice. Sitting on the royal throne, he said, “From this throne I rule over the seven climes, and everywhere my commands are obeyed.” Mindful of God’s will, he set about establishing justice. He helped the world flourish, and filled the face of the earth with his just rule.3 The most distinctive feature of the Persian “shahs of shahs” (shāhanshāh) was thus that their authority was universal in scope, embracing all seven of the concentric climes into which Ptolemaic and Avestan geography divided the surface of the earth. An emperor did not have to control literally every inch of the globe to qualify as world-​ ruling; it sufficed to have a foothold in each clime (ekalim/​kishvar).4 While global extension was the external mark of imperial authority, its essence was supposed to be righteousness rather than oppressive violence. Every work of Persianate political theory would repeat the maxims of Ardashīr I, founder of the Sassanid dynasty, that “kingship and religion are twins” and that the legitimacy of a ruler depended on his ability to provide justice, prosperity, and protection.5 So central was virtue to this imperial ideal that God was believed to endow shahs with a divine splendor (farr) that shone perceptibly from their faces and was depicted in art as a halo or flaming aura.6

History of the Imperial Idea: Greco-​Roman World Whereas Persian imperial ideology appeared early and in a relatively well-​developed form, the Greco-​Roman world moved more fitfully toward a different vision of empire (Greek: basileia, Latin: imperium). The main trajectory of political life in the Mediterranean world during the 500s–​200s bce was republican and antimonarchic in the main, and prone to defining itself specifically in opposition to the “tyranny” of 108

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

empires—​which were associated with Persia.7 This tension appears in the very word imperium, which began during the early years of the Roman Republic as an intrinsically antimonarchic term identifying those civil magistrates who, in the absence of a king, exercised the right of life or death over other citizens. The cognate title of imperator—​ or commander—​was similarly a republican honorific awarded by the Roman senate to victorious generals.8 Even after powerful consuls like Julius and Augustus Caesar managed to concentrate monarch-​like power in their hands, they were careful to eschew the title of “king” (rex) in preference for republican honorifics like “extraordinary magistrate” (dictator) and “first senator” (princeps)—​titles that emphasized their dependence on the consent of senate, army, and citizenry. Imperialism in the Greco-​Roman world would thus continue to be linked over the centuries to a sense of delegated power, circumscribed authority, and military command.9 Empire in the Greco-​Roman world would also remain permanently linked to the notion of the city-​state, albeit one expanded to become a cosmopolis—​the whole world a single city as the orator Aelius Aristides boasted in 155 ad.10 This sense of the empire as city-​state writ large meant that Rome and its successors made a fundamental distinction between “citizens” and subject peoples that transcended both class and ethnicity. The centrality of the imperial city also meant that whereas Persianate empires like the Safavids were free to construct their own imperial capitals where they wished, the influence of Greco-​Roman ideals on the Ottomans meant that they could not claim the imperial mantle until they had conquered Constantinople in 1453. As the humanist George of Trebizond wrote in a letter to Sultan Mehmed II in 1466: “he is emperor who by right possesses the seat of the empire, but the seat of the Roman Empire is Constantinople.”11 In order to bolster their relatively uncertain position relative to “the City,” emperors in the Greco-​Roman world looked to divine sanction. This was most notable in the Greek-​ speaking East, where Macedonian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Persian traditions of rule encouraged Hellenic rulers from the time of Alexander the Great to be franker about the monarchic nature of their reign and to claim divine parentage or recognition as minor divinities in their own right as “savior” (sōtēr) and “manifest god” (theos epiphanēs). The emperors of Rome would eventually give up such claims in the fourth century ad in favor of a new form of divine association: the adoption of Christianity as the imperial faith. Emperors were henceforward no longer gods, but instead—​as the new Church declared Constantine and his mother Helena—​“equals to the Apostles” (isapostoloi) who preserved, promoted, and represented the Christian faith. In the opinion of grateful clergymen like Eusebius, Christianity and empire were henceforward “two great powers proceeding from a single starting point” since both opposed the unity of God to the evils of polytheism in religion and polyarchy in politics.12 This being so, there could only be one true empire on earth, just as there was only one true faith. All other states existed through delegation or usurpation, and all princes owed their obedience ultimately to the Roman emperor. Christians gave expression to their sense of the sacral quality of their emperors by surrounding them with elaborate rituals and symbols, ranging from 109

Jack Fairey

the reservation of purple as an imperial color to the practice of prostrating before them (proskynēsis).13 So close had faith and imperial identity become intertwined by the Middle Ages that Patriarch Anthony IV of Constantinople could declare in 1395: “it is impossible for Christians to have a church but not an empire. For the empire and the church have a great unity and community and cannot be separated from one another.”14

History of the Imperial Idea: Caliphate The convergence of imperial and religious identities reached its acme in the mid-​ seventh century with the expansion of Islam outward from the Arabian Peninsula to overwhelm Sassanid Persia and all of Roman North Africa and the Levant. Like the caesars and shahs before them, the Umayyad caliphs and their Abbasid successors embodied the identity of religion and state (dīn wa dawla). As deputy (khalīfa) of the Prophet, the caliph was formally “commander of the faithful” (amīr al mu’minīn) and head of the entire Islamic community (ummah). Islam provided the caliphate with a new state language (Arabic), a legal system (the Sharia), and a pool of judges, scholars, and potential bureaucrats (the ulema).15 Religion also provided the caliphate with a central organizational principle for organizing and administering its subject populations. At the pinnacle of society were Muslim Arabs; below them were converts to Islam from other ethnic groups who were affiliated to the dominant group as clients (mawālī) of individuals; finally, non-​Muslims were allowed to remain and organize themselves into semiautonomous communities so long as they accepted a contractual arrangement (dhimmah) with the caliphate pledging their obedience, payment of a special tax (jizya), and acceptance of a series of legal disabilities and restrictions. The mawālī system of patronage would disappear following the Abbasid Revolution of 750, but the division between Muslims and non-​Muslim “people of the contract” (‘ahl al-​dhimmah) would remain a fundamental feature of governance in Southwest Asia down to the establishment of the Ottoman and Safavid empires.16 Just as the Roman Empire had grown out of the city-​states of the Mediterranean, the caliphate showed its origins in the tribal society of Arabia. The caliphate itself was limited to descendants of the Quraysh tribe to which the Prophet had belonged, and every branch of state from the army to the civil service was riven by disputes between northern (Qaysī) and southern (Yemeni) tribal groupings and between different branches of the Quraysh tribe (particularly the Banū Hāshim and Banū Umayya).17 This was an important development as the Roman and Persian empires had ruled over tribal peoples, but tribalism per se had played little role in the life of the imperial center. In comparison, their successors in the region from the Umayyads to the Safavids gave tribal groups and political concepts much greater prominence (albeit often unwillingly). The incorporation into the Islamic world of many other nomadic peoples from Inner Asia and North Africa helped, moreover, to ensure that tribalism would remain a politically potent force in Southwestern Asia. 110

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

For all these innovations, of course, the Umayyad caliphs and their successors down to the Seljukid sultans also absorbed large amounts of imperial practices, images, and ideas from both the Byzantine and Sassanid administrations they had supplanted. Historians have suggested, for example, that the iqṭā‘ system of prebendal grants, which would become a characteristic feature of virtually all Turco-​Persianate states, derived its ultimate origins from the Byzantine system of assigning tax revenue to state servitors known as pronoia.18 Similarly, Muslim scholars assimilated many elements of Hellenic thought, such as Greek theories of social evolution and the use of Galen’s medical theories about the humors of the body as a conceptual tool for thinking about the “health” of states and societies.19 Overall, however, the Umayyads and Abbasids drew most heavily and obviously on Persian court culture in their efforts to transform, in Andrew Marsham’s words, “Arabian tribal customs of consultative leadership . . . into a theatre of universal imperial monarchy.”20

The Türkmen Dynasties Well into the ninth century, Southwest Asia continued to be divided along a bipolar axis between the two main strains of imperial tradition. Even as the Byzantine and Abbasid empires declined, their main challengers continued to align themselves with either Greco-​Roman Christendom or Persianate Islam. The Serbian and Bulgarian empires, for example, presented themselves as legitimate inheritors of the mantle of the Roman Empire, while Armenian and Georgian princes eagerly adopted Byzantine titles and practices. On the Iranian plateau, local dynasts such as the Ṣaffārids, Sāmānids, and Būyids consciously modeled their courts on that of Baghdad and presented themselves either as vassals of the caliph or as successors in their own right to the Sassanid shahs.21 Between the ninth to thirteenth centuries, the arrival in the region of successive waves of nomadic raiders, mercenaries, slaves, and settlers from Central Asia disrupted this bipolar status quo and hastened the decline of both Byzantine and Abbasid rule. This period of disruption began in earnest with the arrival of large populations of Oğuz Turks (also known as Türkmen) on the Iranian and Anatolian plateaus in the 800s–​900s, both as nomads with their herds and as military slaves and foederati. At first, the newcomers strove to legitimize their power within existing imperial frameworks. Turkic warlords like the Ghaznavids (977–​1186) and the Seljuks quickly assimilated Islam and Persianate court culture and posed as protectors of the caliphate. In addition to the authority they enjoyed over their own people as chieftains, Seljuk dynasts claimed to be “sultans of East and West”—​regents who ruled, ostensibly, on behalf of the Abbasid caliphs.22 The influx of peoples from Central Asia became more disruptive from the 1000s to 1200s, however, as they increased in numbers and failed to establish regimes as stable as those they were displacing. The Seljuks, for example, struggled to control the other Türkmen groups arriving from Central Asia. Many of the latter evaded obedience by moving 111

Jack Fairey

westward toward the Anatolian frontier with the Byzantine Empire.23 The Byzantines were even less successful at managing these incursions, and Byzantine rule in central Anatolia collapsed following the Seljuk victory at Manzikert in 1071.24 The Seljuk Empire itself rapidly fragmented after the death of Sultan Malikshāh in 1092, as the brother, sons, governors, and vassals of the deceased sultan turned against each other. The arrival of the Mongols, beginning with the destruction of the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219 and crowned by the sack of Baghdad in 1258, marked a major watershed in the imperial history of the region, as it did almost everywhere else in Asia. The following century saw increased migration westward from Inner Asia, the final dissolution of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the reduction of the Seljuk and Byzantine empires to shadows of their former selves. In their place, the Mongols briefly unified most of Persia, Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia, and the Caucasus under Hülegü and his heirs as a “subordinate khanate” (Ilkhanate) of the Mongol Empire between 1256 and 1335. As already described in Chapter 1, however, the power and cohesion of the Ilkhanate was to be short-​lived. By the end of the 1300s, all of the traditional pillars of imperial legitimacy in Southwestern Asia—​Rome, Persia, the Caliphate, and even the Chinggisid Ulus—​thus lay in ruins, with little certainty over what would arise to take their place. At the cultural-​civilizational level, three centuries of conquests and migrations helped to create a new hybridized culture in most of the Islamic world that fused together Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Mongol elements. Politically, however, the repeated pattern of disruption and dissolution meant centuries of political fragmentation as centralized authorities gave way to a succession of ephemeral principalities dominated by Inner Asian newcomers. Iranian historians thus refer to the post-​Mongol era as the period of “the Türkmen dynasties,” while Turkish historians refer to it as the era of “frontier chieftaincies” (uç beyliks) and “splinter kingdoms” (tevâif-​i mülûk). Beneath the multiplicity of states, however, lay many underlying similarities arising from common culture and socioeconomic structures. Historians have detected, for example, a basic tension between two different modes of state organization within all the states built upon Turkic martial prowess and Persian statecraft. In each case, the nomadic horsemen who provided the mainstay of Türkmen armies tended to prefer centrifugal, confederative political structures that reproduced the interior life of the war-​band, with its comradeship, freedom, ties of loyalty, and the generous sharing of spoils gained through constant, low-​level raiding (gaza/​akın).25 The same groups also tended to insist on the preservation of characteristically Inner Asian political traditions such as collective sovereignty and the practice of tanistry among the menfolk of the ruling family.26 In religion, the Türkmen also favored less conventional forms of Islam such as Sufism and Shi’ism. Historians such as Babak Rahimi thus speak of the emergence across the Anatolian and Iranian plateaus of a common “Sufi-​knightly culture,” combining “mystical religiosity with the warrior ethos of bravery, independence and, above all, honour.” Opposed to these was the bureaucratic-​imperial state faction composed by princes, their courts and personal slaves, educated urbanites, and the orthodox ulema, who supported the princes in order 112

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

to revive centralized political rule and the reign of Sunni Islamic law.27 In Iranian history, this idea of a fundamental struggle between “Turk and Tajik” (Türkmen nomad and Persian urbanite) over control of the state dates back to Seljuk times and also formed an important part of Ottoman historiography.28 The late 1300s to early 1400s thus witnessed a new synthesis of political traditions as Abbasid, Sāmānid, and Seljuk court culture combined in new ways with what many historians have referred to as the “steppe (or inner) Asian imperial tradition” of the Mongol and Türkmen ruling elites.29 It is out of this chaotic but creative milieu that the Ottoman and Safavid empires would emerge.

Ottomans: From Beylik to Sultanate Ibn Khaldūn observed in the fourteenth century that the formation of any lasting polity depended on ʻaṣabīyyah—​an esprit de corps or sense of group solidarity.30 Nomadic peoples like the Türkmen and Mongols possessed such group solidarity in spades during their rise to prominence, but struggled to build a new identity that could incorporate outsiders or combat fissiparous tendencies within the founding elite. The success of both Ottomans and Safavids thus depended on their ability to use imperial ideologies and practices to overcome both of these barriers. The documented history of the Ottomans begins with the foundation of the first Ottoman state as one of the many Türkmen beyliks in the northwest corner of Anatolia (Byzantine Bithynia) in the early 1300s. The founder of the dynasty, Ertuğrul, was a leader of the Kayı clan of the Oğuz Turks in Merv, Turkmenistan, and a recent convert to Islam. Like many others, he had fled before the Mongol advance in the early 1200s and ended up enlisting under the banner of a junior branch of the Seljuk Sultanate that had established itself in Anatolia. While ostensibly in the service of this Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, Ertuğrul captured the small town of Thebasion (Söğüt) in 1231 and began to carve out a small fiefdom for himself in the Sakarya Valley. His son, Osman, therefore claimed authority as an emir or bey on three principal bases: (1) descent from the hereditary leaders of the Kayı clan; (2) vassalage to the Seljuk Sultan Kayqubad; and (3) de facto conquest of much of Bithynia between 1302 and 1337.31 The slow disintegration of the Sultanate of Rum following its submission to the Mongol Ilkhanate in 1243 after the battle of Kösedağ left vassals like Osman free to pursue their own aggrandizement. Key to the ability of Osman and his descendants to create an independent polity seems to have been their skill at building a new sense of ‘aṣabīyyah and legitimacy that did not depend on either Oğuz, Seljuk, or Byzantine antecedents. Exactly how the early Ottoman dynasts achieved this has been the subject of much controversy, but it seems clear that they managed to balance and reconcile the expectations of both “Turks and Tajiks.” On the one hand, the Ottomans identified themselves first and foremost as gazis, who welcomed all Muslims—​and a great many renegade Christians—​into the ranks of their war band. The seminal moment, 113

Jack Fairey

according to Heath Lowry, seems to have been a meeting around 1320, when a small group of Türkmen chieftains and disgruntled Byzantine warlords agreed to form what Lowry has evocatively dubbed a “plundering confederacy” under Osman’s leadership.32 Karen Barkey has similarly stressed the importance to the future of the Ottoman state of their early success as social “brokers” and coalition builders between the different ethnic, religious, and political groups on the frontier.33 Another effect of these origins on the future empire was that the Ottoman state grew, in many senses, directly out of the household of the dynast. Osman began almost immediately to claim independence by minting his own coins around 1320, although he did so without giving himself any titles other than “Osman son of Ertuğrul.”34 In 1326 the Ottomans conquered their first sizable city, Bursa, which thereafter served as their first capital. Another advantage that Osman possessed over most other frontier beys was that his lands immediately abutted the Byzantine Empire and the route across the Turkish Straits into Europe. He could therefore attract manpower with the prospect of perpetual warfare and its attendant spoils. The Byzantine civil war of 1341–​47 provided a critical opportunity when one claimant to the throne, John VI Kantakouzinos, offered to marry his daughter, Theodora, to Osman’s heir, Orhan, and then invited Ottoman troops across the Dardanelles into Thrace to harry his rival’s forces.35 Between 1352 and 1354, the Ottomans used this opening to establish a permanent bridgehead on the Gallipoli Peninsula from which they launched forays in all directions. Decades of warfare had already exhausted the Byzantine, Serbian, and Bulgarian empires and Orhan’s successor, Murad I, expanded rapidly at their expense. By Murad’s death in 1389, the Ottomans had conquered all the lands of the second Bulgarian Empire, reduced the Serb princes and the Byzantine emperor himself to vassalage, and absorbed most of the neighboring emirates of Karası, Hamid, and Germiyan. From ca. 1365 to 1370, the Ottomans signaled their shift of focus to Europe by establishing a new and more splendid capital at Edirne (Adrianople). Osman’s descendants from the time of Orhan began making grander political claims. The earliest monumental Ottoman inscription, from Bursa ca. 1337, describes Orhan as the “Exalted Great Emir, Warrior on behalf of God [i.e., Mujāhid], Sultan of the Gazis, Gazi son of the Gazi, Champion of the State and Religion, and of the Horizons, Hero of the Age.”36 A decade later, Orhan was styling himself “sultan of justice” (sulṭān al-​‘adl).37 Such titles were still, however, relatively modest, especially in comparison with the sweeping imperial claims being made by their Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian, Mamluk, and Timurid rivals.38 Ottoman dynasts continued, in a sense, to represent themselves as primus inter pares for most of the 1300s and to rely on the loyal support of their retainers and clansmen. It is worth noting, for example, that two of Osman’s key military supporters, Evrenos Bey and Köse Mihali, were entitled malik (king) and amīr al-​kabīr (great emir). As late as 1390, one of Köse Mihali’s descendants was recognized in official ottoman documents as Great Emir . . . King of the Gazis and Mujahidin.39 What is most striking about Ottoman titulature in the 1300s, then, is that it was relatively modest, that it was all done in proper Arabic, and drew directly on Seljuk precedents.40 114

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

Ottomans: Imperialism as Crisis Management While Ottoman imperial claims appeared during a period of expansion and military success, they became more developed and consistent during a period of reverses and uncertainty. The Ottomans suffered a particularly jarring and extended crisis in the first two decades of the 1400s that hinged precisely on questions of who the Ottomans were. Osman, Orhan, and Murad I (r. 1361–​89) had presented themselves primarily as gazi emirs, whose authority rested lightly on the (mostly Türkmen and Christian) followers they led to wealth and glory. After Murad’s death in battle against the Serbs at Kosovo Polje in 1389, his son Bayezid behaved much more like the imperial rulers that the Ottomans were replacing. For raisons d’état, for example, Bayezid launched lightning campaigns of conquest not only against Christian states in the Balkans but also against Muslim neighbors in Anatolia. He thus rapidly subdued the beyliks of Saruhan, Aydın, Menteşe, Kastamonu, İsfendiyaroğlu, and Karaman in 1390–​91. Bayezid I was also the first Ottoman ruler to attempt to move away from the less organized regimes of his predecessors toward a more formal and centralized state structure. As a counterbalance to the power of his Türkmen retainers, Bayezid sought to create a proper court, complete with a chancellery, bureaucracy, and an enlarged personal household of slaves whose loyalty was to him personally rather than to tribe, faith, or family. In order to fund this enlarged imperial household, Bayezid used another long-​standing imperial practice: that of appropriating most of the new lands conquered by his hosts and insisting that these lands be held in trust by his servitors as prebendal grants (tımars) rather than as private property.41 The gazi chieftains, who had carved out virtual fiefdoms for themselves, chaffed against these developments. They partic ularly disliked taking the field against other Türkmen Muslims at the command of a sultan who drank heavily and surrounded himself with slave-​troops and the levies sent by his Christian vassals and allies. Ordinary Türkmen, similarly, resented Ottoman attempts to control their movements and demote them from free warriors to tax-​paying commoners.42 These tensions came to a head when the Chaghatai warlord, Tīmūr Lang, invaded eastern Anatolia in 1402 as part of his quest to revive the global empire of the Chinggisids. The beys of Anatolia flocked to Tīmūr’s banner and complained of their ill treatment at the hands of the Ottomans. Tīmūr was happy to oblige and announced his intentions of coming to their defense. In an illuminating exchange of letters with Bayezid, Tīmūr accused the Ottomans of oppressing Muslims and of being crypto-​Christians.43 It is noteworthy that at this point in the development of Ottoman ideology, Bayezid rejected both world conquest and the overthrow of legitimate monarchs. He implicitly criticized Tīmūr for seeking world domination and emphasized that the Ottomans had come into their state by honest means, having fought loyally on behalf of the Seljuk sultanate and liberated new lands from the oppressive rule of unbelievers. Bayezid added that the Ottomans had adopted such policies as a question of principle rather than ability, since “the world and what is in it are like a little hillock in the gaze of our power. If we had 115

Jack Fairey

set out to destroy countries and persecute subjects in world-​conquest, we would easily have captured everything from east to west. Instead we have struggled in repelling the opponents of Muhammad’s religion.”44 When the two armies met in battle near Ankara, events belied Bayezid’s rhetoric: the Türkmen and Muslim Anatolians rejected Bayezid’s policies by abandoning him en masse. The only troops who fought on to the end for their master were his slave-​troops and Serbian allies. Bayezid himself was captured and ended his days in captivity. The disaster at Ankara was compounded by a vicious period of civil warfare (Fetret Devri) between Bayezid’s four sons from 1402 to 1413 until one claimant, Mehmed I, finally emerged victorious.45 No sooner had one period of civil war ended than another began as Mehmed I was forced to defend his throne from further rebellions in 1416–​20 by restive peasants and nomads. The latter seem particularly to have resented the increasing demands of the Ottoman state as it sought to establish and expand its authority.46 Even following the suppression of these rebellions, the Ottomans continued to struggle over the next century to control the Türkmen of Anatolia. The latter gave expression to their resistance to the new imperial regime by embracing heterodox religious ideas and practices—​most notably Shi’ism—​that set them at odds with the Orthodox Sunni identity of the Ottoman court. The threat posed by these elements became ever more dangerous to the Ottomans over the fifteenth century, especially with the rise of the Safavids, who actively proselytized Anatolian Türkmen. In 1511, the latter rose again in a serious rebellion, led by a figure named Şahkulu (“Slave of the Shah”), which briefly paralyzed southwestern Anatolia. Sultans Bayezid II and Selim I responded with a bloody persecution of Shi’ites and Safavid sympathizers.47 The crises of the Fetret were followed by a period of truly meteoric territorial expansion under the reigns of four sultans. Mehmed II (r. 1444–​46 and 1451–​81) conquered Constantinople, putting a final end to the Roman Empire in the East, and solidified Ottoman control over Anatolia, the Aegean, and the Balkans south of the Carpathian Mountains. Mehmed’s son Bayezid II (r. 1481–​1512) consolidated these gains and prepared the ground for a series of aggressive campaigns by his successor, Selim I (r. 1512–​ 20), which repulsed the Safavid threat and destroyed the Mamluk sultanate. In less than five years, the Ottomans had brought all of eastern Anatolia, the Levant, Arabia, and Egypt into submission. The Ottoman Empire is usually seen as having reached its apogee under Süleyman I  (r. 1520–​66), when it achieved both its greatest territorial extent and a system of imperial administration that later generations would consider normative.

Safavids: From Sufi Ṭarīqah to Millenarian Empire Unlike the situation in Anatolia and the Balkans, where the Ottomans had early emerged as the sole dynasty capable of conquering the entire region, Persia and Mesopotamia saw a succession of imperial experiments following the disintegration of the Ilkhanate. 116

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

From 1335 to 1384, the Mongol Jalayir tribe had attempted to keep alive something of the Ilkhanate’s former glory in western Persia, but Jalayirid power never recovered from the devastating invasions of 1385–​1405 as two Chinggisid successor states, the Chaghatai under Tīmūr Lang and the Golden Horde under Toqtamish, fought for control of the region.48 Timurid rule over Persia and Mesopotamia was fleeting, however, and the lands of the Ilkhanate were soon torn between two Türkmen confederacies. The first of these, the Qarā Qoyunlu (Black Sheep) confederacy, was ascendant from 1432 until 1467, when the Aq Qoyunlu (White Sheep) confederacy defeated and supplanted them. The Safavids thus arose at the end of a prolonged period of political volatility and, like the Ottomans, owed their initial prominence to a talent for appealing to multiple constituencies:  first and foremost different Türkmen clans, but also Persians and other ethnic groups.49 Whereas the Ottomans had grounded their identity in the role of gazi chieftains, the Safavids started out as a Sufi movement (ṭarīqah) founded at Ardabil in 1301 by Sheikh Ṣafī al-​Dīn. Although the founder of the movement seems to have belonged to a Tajik family of Gilani landowners, he managed to attract many Türkmen followers and his successors married into Türkmen noble families.50 Under Ṣafī al-​Dīn’s descendants, and particularly Sheikh Junayd (ca. 1420s?–​ 60), the ṭarīqah-​yi Ṣafaviyyah underwent an extraordinary evolution, transforming itself from a devout brotherhood of prayer into a military order espousing its own millenarian creed. An ideological drift from Sunni to Shi’ite theology accompanied this change, and under Junayd’s grandson, Ismā’īl I, the order officially embraced an extremist version of Twelver Shi’ism. As a sign of their commitment to the Twelve Imams, the brotherhood adopted a distinctive red cap or “crown” (tāj) with twelve gores, leading to the sobriquet of “red head” (qizilbāsh).51 The central lodge of the order in Ardabil resisted these changes and sought to remain true to the founder’s teachings, but the followers of Junayd and his progeny marginalized these traditionalists. The new movement carried out an active program of proselytization and appealed particularly to Türkmen tribal groups in the mountainous regions of eastern Anatolia and western Iran. So successful was the movement that Shah Ismā’īl could boast in a letter to Selim I in 1514 that “most of the inhabitants of the [Ottoman Empire] are followers of our forefathers.”52 In addition to the promotion of their own particular religious ideas, the Safavid movement made explicit claims to political authority and contemporary critics accused the Safavid family of an unseemly worldliness. As in all Sufi orders, a Safavid disciple (murīd) bound himself by personal ties of spiritual obedience to the guide (murshid) or elder (pīr) of the order. In the Safavid case, however, discipleship also entailed unquestioning political and military submission to a sheikh who claimed increasingly to be not just a saint, but sultan, messiah (mahdī), and voice of God himself. Such sweeping claims and their rising military strength brought the militant wing of the Ṣafaviyyah into direct conflict with the overlords of Ardabil during the mid-​1400s. The Qarā Qoyunlu sultan, Jahānshāh, ordered Sheikh Junayd to disperse his armed supporters and when 117

Jack Fairey

Junayd refused, Qarā Qoyunlu forces expelled him from Ardabil. After seven years of wandering in exile, Junayd eventually took refuge with Jahānshāh’s rival, Uzun Ḥasan of the Aq Qoyunlu. The new alliance was cemented by the marriages of Uzun Ḥasan’s sister and daughter with Junayd and his son, Ḥaydar. Aq Qoyunlu patronage did not survive Uzun Ḥasan’s death, however, as the successors quarreled among themselves and turned against their father’s ambitious Safavid clients. The heads of the Safavid family were either killed or imprisoned in the ensuing internecine struggle. A difficult decade followed in which the Safavids had to struggle for their very survival. Safavid fortunes improved dramatically in 1499 with the succession of Ismā’īl I to the leadership of the order. The 14-​year-​old Safavid leader set out to make a name for himself by leading a gaza against Christian Georgia. Thousands of Qizilbāsh tribesmen flocked to his banners and the host set out in March of 1500. The road to Georgia led through Shirvan, however, and Ismā’īl’s jihad quickly turned into a settling of old scores with the Yezidid princes of Shirvan (who had killed both Ismail’s father and grandfather in battle). Safavid forces wrought a fearful vengeance, decapitating the ruling shīrvānshāh, violating the graves of his predecessors and massacring thousands of their subjects. When the smoke cleared, the Safavids found themselves the unexpected masters of Shirvan. They completed this conquest the following year by routing an Aq Qoyunlu army sent to dislodge them. Ismā’īl’s new political status was sealed in 1501 by his capture of Tabriz, the pleasant capital that had previously served as imperial seat for Ilkhanids, Jalayirids, Qarā Qoyunlu, and Aq Qoyunlu.53 From Azerbaijan, the nascent Safavid state rapidly extended its reach during the next decade over modern Iran, Iraq, and Turkmenistan, as well as much of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 1511, Ismail even sent troops to help the founder of the Mughal Empire, Bābur, briefly recover his ancestral lands from the Uzbek Shaybanids. In exchange for this aid, Bābur was to recognize Safavid suzerainty. The dramatic expansion of the Safavids stirred millenarian expectations that Ismā’īl was the mahdī and that his victories heralded the end of time. It was also attended by ostentatious displays of violence against those accused of being enemies either of the Safavids or Shi’ism generally. Qizilbāsh armies carried out mass killings of civilians in many cities and roasted and ate several Aq Qoyunlu notables in a manner calculated to spread terror.54 In a limited sense, then, one can see both the Ottoman and the Safavid states as being founded on the ideology and practice of gaza—​the Ottomans practicing it primarily against Christians in defense of Sunni Orthodoxy, and the Safavids practicing it primarily against other Muslims in defense of Shi’ism.55 The meteoric expansion of Ismā’īl’s new state brought it quickly into conflict with the Ottomans, who were expanding eastward and fretted about Safavid proselytization in Anatolia. The two young empires finally came to grips with each other at the battle of Çaldıran in 1514, where the Ottoman army led by Selim I demonstrated the decisive superiority of its well-​organized and provisioned slave army, armed with muskets and artillery, over the traditionally armed qizilbāsh cavalry archers of Ismā’īl. Ismā’īl’s forces were decimated and Selim pushed on to occupy Tabriz. Selim was 118

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

unable to convince his men to winter there and continue their pursuit of Ismā’īl into the highlands, and so was forced to withdraw. Despite this strategic retreat, the first Ottoman-​Safavid war had clearly been a disaster for the Safavids. It marked a watershed in the dynasty’s history, entailing both territorial losses in the west and a serious loss of prestige and authority internally. The Safavids would never again be able to demand the unquestioning obedience of their murīds and had to find alternative sources of authority.56 From 1514 onward, the Safavids sought to bolster their position by evoking Persian and Timurid imperial traditions and downplaying their earlier claims to a messianic vocation. Especially after Isma’il’s heir, Ṭahmāsp, lost the lands his father had acquired in the west around Erzincan and Diyarbakır, the Safavids increasingly identified their state with Iran and Persian culture rather than with the Türkmen tribes of eastern Anatolia.57 In the short term, however, the Safavids continued to rely on their qizilbāsh supporters, whose leaders (amīr) dominated the military and figured prominently in the new government. Competition between the different tribes (uymak) for control of the resources of the state began almost immediately, and after the death of Ismā’īl tensions boiled over into open warfare in 1524–​33 between the principal qizilbāsh tribes for control of the crown prince.58 Shah Ṭahmāsp was finally able to assert himself over the various factions, but he would continue to confront serious internal challenges for the rest of his fifty-​two-​year reign. He nevertheless consolidated Safavid rule sufficiently to be able to resist repeated invasions from the Shaybanids in the east and the Ottomans in the west at a time when both states were at the zenith of their military power. Like the Ottomans, the Safavids struggled to impose a centralized state authority on the Türkmen warriors who had brought them to power and the new court was riven by factions made up of the various Türkmen tribes, Iranian aristocrats, and Caucasian servitors of the court. The throne became a pawn in these factional struggles once again upon Ṭahmāsp’s death, resulting in the assassination of one Safavid prince (Ḥaydar ‘Ali) in 1576, the probable assassination of another (Ismā’īl II) in 1578, the execution of the heir apparent (Ḥamza) in 1586, and the overthrow of a reigning shah (Moḥammed Khudābanda) in 1587. By the end of the sixteenth century, the empire was so beset by internal disorders as to cast the very future of the state into question. It was not until the accession of ‘Abbās I (r. 1587–​1629) that the Safavids finally managed to replicate Ottoman success in replacing a debilitating reliance on Türkmen tribesmen with some version of the military-​slave institution. ‘Abbās came to power understandably wary of the qizilbāsh emirs, whom he blamed for the deaths of his mother and brother and the overthrow of his father, Moḥammed Khudābanda. ‘Abbās immediately set about breaking their power, first through signal punishment of the worst offenders and then, more lastingly, by accelerating the process Ṭahmāsp had begun of creating a standing army and bureaucracy of personal slaves (kul/​ghulām).59 ‘Abbās and his successors would remunerate these primarily Caucasian and Circassian administrators and warriors directly out of state coffers, thereby ensuring that they owed their loyalty primarily to the shah rather than to any tribe or chieftain. The viability of this plan depended, in turn, 119

Jack Fairey

upon ‘Abbās’s success in transferring massive amounts of land and revenue from the control of local qizilbāsh elites to his treasury, specifically through the passage of private and “state” or indirectly administered land (mamālik) to the personal household of the shah (khaṣṣa).60 By the end of ‘Abbās’s reign, he had transformed the military and administrative structure of the empire. The advantages of these reforms were quick to appear and the reign of Shah ‘Abbās is remembered as the Safavid golden age, judged both by military successes against the Ottoman, Shaybanid, and Mughal empires, economic prosperity, and achievements in the arts. ‘Abbās’s crowning achievement was the creation of a glittering new imperial capital at Isfahan in 1598, from which the shah ruled over an empire that stretched the length and breadth of the Iranian Plateau, from the Caucasus and Mesopotamia to Khorasan, the Hindu Kush, and Baluchistan.

Imperial Self-​Understanding The violent resistance of key supporters of the Ottomans and Safavids to greater state centralization was intended to frighten both dynasties into relying on methods of governance that were less effective, but more familiar and less offensive to Türkmen sensibilities. Instead, both dynasties concluded from the upheavals of the Ottoman Fetret and the Safavid factional wars that it would be dangerous to rely on their Türkmen supporters and Central Asian political traditions. The custom of investing an entire bloodline with political sovereignty and of parceling territory up between them as local princes, for example, had led to the fratricidal dissolution of Turkic polities from the Seljuks to the Aq Qoyunlu. In order to combat these centrifugal tendencies, both dynasties began to promote official ideologies that privileged a single individual—​the ruling dynast—​over his male relatives and broadened the former’s support base by reaching out to (or simply creating) new elite groups.61 Did Southwest Asians possess a political concept approximating that of “empire”? The evidence from their official proclamations, correspondence, and self-​ representations indicates they did. Already in the 1300s, for example, the Ottoman chancellery was issuing official documents in Greek and Italian and in these documents the Ottomans (or at least their scribes) deliberately deployed Western words for empire and emperor. During the reign of Mehmed II (Figure 4.1), for example, his scribes issued decrees (ferman) proclaiming him “by the grace of God, Emperor of all Asia and Greece” (Dei gratia totius asye et grecie Imperator) and referred to his possessions as “my Empire” (Imperio mio).62 Similarly, when Greek subjects wrote formal petitions to the Ottoman sultan in their own language, they often addressed him as emperor (autokratōr, basileus).63 The Safavids, by comparison, only began diplomatic relations with Christendom in the early 1500s and thereafter corresponded less frequently with European princes than did their Ottoman neighbors. It is clear from the surviving correspondence, however, that the Safavids 120

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

Figure 4.1  Portrait of Mehmed II, the Conqueror (Edirne, 1432–​Gebze, 1481), Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, painting by Gentile Bellini (ca. 1429–​1507), 1480. Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi (Topkapi Museum) (Photo by DeAgostini/​Getty Images). understood the distinction made in Western Christendom between imperator and rex, and that—​by Western criteria—​they did not quite qualify as the former. They thus seem to have accepted that even an ally like the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V would not address Ismā’īl as a peer—​only as “The Most Serene and mighty Prince, the Lord Shah Ismā’īl Sufi, King of Greater Persia” (Serenissimo ac potentissimo Principi Domino Xaka Izmael Sophi magno Persarum regi).64 By comparison, Ottoman possession of Constantinople gave Charles little choice but to address his nemesis Süleyman I as “emperor of Turkey and Asia, Greece, etc.” (imperatori Turcarum ac Asiae, Graeciae, etc.).65 It is striking that when one of ‘Abbās the Great’s ambassadors to the West, Uruch Bey, wrote an account of the Safavid Empire in Spanish he referred to the Romans, Achaemenids, Habsburgs, and even Ottomans as having emperors (emperadores) while the shahs qualified only as kings of Persia (reyes de Persia).66 121

Jack Fairey

Questions of self-​classification become more difficult to answer, however, when we turn from correspondence in European languages to Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian documents. These languages had large political vocabularies, but titles and honorifics (alqāb va ‘anāwīn/​elkâb ve unvan) were often ambiguous in content and inflationary scribal usage aggravated their imprecision. Just about any petty ruler, in other words, could be addressed as sultan and even caliph either out of flattery or ambition. Certainly, there was no one word that substituted for the modern sense of empire in all situations. No one term, for example, subsumed at one and the same time a dynasty, the personnel and administrative structures of their state, its territories, and subject populations. The closest parallels were sultanate (salṭanat) or “shah-​dom” (padişahlık/​pādishāhī), but more poetic terms like “world governance” (cihanbani/​jahānbānī), “refuge of the world” (cihanpenah/​jahānpenāh), “world conquest” (cihangiri/​jahāngīrī), and “world sovereignty” (cihandari/​jahāndārī) were used to distinguish emperors more clearly from other kinds of rulers. If we look at what the most important polities of Southwest Asia called themselves, however, we see that the most common terms used were devlet/​dawlat and memalik/​ mamālik.67 Unfortunately, neither term is particularly illuminating. Memalik merely meant something possessed or under sovereignty (hence the cognate word mamluk for slaves) and could refer to dependent lands, districts, provinces, territories within a state, independent states, and great empires.68 Devlet/​dawlat was similarly vague. It is often translated into English as “state,” but the word only acquired this connotation in the late seventeenth century under European influence. Originally, it was an Arabic word referring to a “turn,” and later developed additional meanings that included a dynasty, fortune, the divine charisma of a ruler, prosperity, and success.69 That the Ottomans and Safavids saw empires as distinct from other polities can be seen from the pains they took to present themselves as heirs and successors of other world conquerors, such as the mythical Jamshīd, Alexander the Great, Chosroes, Chinggis Khan, and Tīmūr Lang. The importance of a translatio imperii led the Safavids, for example, to emphasize their descent from the Prophet through ‘Ali and from Uzun Ḥasan, the Aq Qoyunlu “pādishāh of Iran” (pādishāh-​i Īrān), and to present themselves as the latest iteration in a long line of Persian empires stretching from the Achaemenids to the Timurids. Ismā’īl I  thus identified himself specifically with the emperors and conquerors of Persian history and legend, boasting in verse: “I am Faridūn, Chosroes, Jamshīd and Zohak. /​ I  am the son of Zāl [Rustam] and of Alexander.”70 Ottoman sultans made similar claims. Selim I, for example, referred to himself in a poem as having “checkmated the Shah of India, when I played the chess of empire (dawlat) upon the board of suzerainty (mulk),” and of his name being “graven upon the coinage of world sovereignty” (sikke-​i mulk-​i jahān).71 Selim’s grandson, Süleyman I, was memorialized in stone as the “possessor of the kingdoms of the world, shadow of God over all peoples, sultan of the sultans of Arabs & Persians.”72 The long list of titles that accompanied such claims included Caesar, Shah of Shahs, Great Khan 122

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

(Kağan), and “Master of the Auspicious Conjunction (of Jupiter and Saturn)” (Ṣāḥib-i Qirān)—​titles explicitly borrowed from the Roman, Persian, Chinggisid, and Timurid emperors.73 Self-​conscious reference to and imitation of earlier world empires was thus expected in the Turco-​Persianate world and encouraged in young princes.74 Such comparisons with previous world-​conquerors also underline the extent to which Southwest Asian visions of empire had become by the 1500s quintessentially dynastic, personal, and—​in sharp contrast with Inner Asian traditions—​territorially impartible.75 As their name indicates, the Ottoman and Safavid empires were always grounded on loyalty to a particular dynasty and neither developed much sense of the state as an entity that could exist apart from the charisma of its founders. Individual dynasts might be overthrown in extreme circumstances, but the line itself was irreplaceable. This attention to dynastic bloodline is all the more striking for the fact that Southwest Asian societies did not otherwise vest particular significance in noble birth or possess hereditary aristocracies. Among the Ottomans, for example, all sons of a reigning sultan were considered potential successors, regardless of their birth order, the social origins of their mothers, and whether they were produced from legal wedlock or a fleeting tryst. Also noteworthy is that until the early 1600s the Ottomans had no fixed rules of succession. Instead, all adult princes were given concrete opportunities to prove themselves by acting as the governor of a province under the guidance of an appointed tutor (lala/​atabey). Upon the death of a reigning sultan, there was a brief interlude of uncertainty and fratricidal conflict as all the adult princes vied for the throne. Once a prince had gained control of the capital and the adherence of most of the armed forces, he became sultan de jure and would execute all other male claimants to the throne—​ including infants and pregnant members of the imperial harem.76 This brutal solution to the fissiparous tendencies of other Turkic and Mongol dynasties was finally replaced in the seventeenth century by a milder system that gave the succession automatically to the eldest male member of the dynasty. All other princes were sequestered away for life within a section of the imperial harem known as the “cage” (kafes), in what Fletcher has dubbed the last step in the Ottomans’ “transition from grand khan to agrarian bureaucratic emperor.”77 Why were certain bloodlines seen as more exalted than those of ordinary people? Historians have speculated that Ottoman and Safavid claims were ultimately grounded in Inner Asian notions of a ruler’s qut or divine charisma. Certainly, the prophetic dream foreshadowing empire was a standard trope in Turco-​Persianate political culture. Seljuk, the founder of his eponymous dynasty, was supposed to have dreamt that he ejaculated sparks of fire all over the world from east to west.78 Tīmūr Lang dreamt of a great tree, symbolizing his posterity, which reached to the heavens and rained fruit upon the earth.79 Osman, similarly, dreamt that a tree grew out of his chest and spread its branches to enshadow the entire world.80 Sheikh Ṣafī al-​Dīn was said to have dreamt of himself as a sun that filled the world with light.81 The corollary of such divine selection was a responsibility to protect Islam and administer justice. The Ottomans and Safavids insisted on their mandate to maintain 123

Jack Fairey

the divinely instituted “order of the world” (nizam-​i ‘âlem), including both social justice and religious orthodoxy.82 Protection of Islam and justice was expected, however, of any government, not just empires, so imperial aspirants had to show that the degree of protection they offered was exceptional and affected the entire world. In the early years, this meant a heavy reliance on the ideology of gaza—​that the Ottomans, for example, were an antemurale Islamismi. After the Ottoman conquest of Arabia in 1516–​17, the sultans promptly adopted the title of khādim al-​Ḥaramayn al-​Sharīfayn—​protector of the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem and, by extension, of the Hajj. The Ottomans placed considerable stock in this guardianship as it clearly differentiated them from other Muslim rulers who could claim to be patrons of the ulema, upholders of the Sharia, and zealous guardians of justice. It forced even the Safavids to treat the Ottomans with a modicum of respect, as Shi’ites could not make pilgrimages to the Holy Places without Ottoman approval. The Ottomans therefore guarded their position jealously, issuing orders in the late 1500s, for example, that prohibited Mughal royalty from distributing moneys too ostentatiously in Mecca.83 The Ottomans would increasingly claim to be the caliphs and imams of all Muslims everywhere. While Ottoman rulers thus claimed a dual role as both sultan and caliph of all Sunnis, the Safavids put forward mirror claims for the Shi’ite world. As shahs, Ismā’īl and his successors reigned as heads of state; as murshids, they guided the Ṣafaviyyah order; as deputies of the hidden Imam, they championed the cause of Shi’ism everywhere.84 Victory in battle was an extremely important part of imperial ideology exactly because it demonstrated divine support. Indeed, the need for such evidence justified the Ottomans’ lack of a formal rule of succession as a short but sharp period of fratricidal strife gave God a chance to show his hand.85 When one town refused to take sides between two warring Ottoman princes in the early fifteenth century, for example, its representatives declared: “You will confront each other and whoever receives the devlet (i.e., from God) will also receive the fortress.”86 Abdülvâsi Çelebi thus ascribed the victory of Mehmed over his brother Musa during the Fetret to the fact that “although devlet existed in Musa, /​The devlet of Mehmed was truly greater.”87 In the 1500s, the Ottoman and Safavid preoccupation with divine sanction took an increasingly eschatological turn. This was most obvious in the case of Ismā’īl, but the Ottomans too began to speak of their sultan as the shadow of God (zil’ullah), messiah of the last days (mehdi-​yi ahir üz-​zaman), renewer of the age (müceddid), and possessor of the end of time (ṣāḥib-​ i zamān-​i ākhar).88 Armed with such a mandate, an Ottoman or Safavid ruler considered himself the sole legitimate source of political authority under heaven. All land belonged, ultimately, to him and all laws sprang from his will, from those of his predecessors (as kanun/​qānūn), or from God—​either in the direct form of the Sharia or indirectly as customary laws (örf).89 In keeping with this imperative, no state official could exercise their office without a patent (berat) in which the sultan listed the duties of the position and licensed the holder to exercise a share in the sultan’s imperial prerogatives 124

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

sufficient to carry out these duties. Similarly, Ottoman and Safavid law divided all lands and sources of tax revenue into six categories: (1) endowments dedicated to God for the funding of pious works (evkaf/​awqaf); (2) lands administered directly by the palace and its officials (hassa/​khaṣṣa); (3) state-​owned lands (miri) awarded as temporary prebendal grants (tımar/​tiyūl) in exchange for service; (4) land “abandoned” (metruk) to public use such as pastureland, roads, and so on; (5) waste land judged “useless” (mevat) for agriculture; and (6) de facto private property (mülk) belonging to particular individuals or groups (albeit preserving the legal fiction that ownership of all such lands belonged ultimately to the sultan).90 The personal nature of imperial rule was underlined by the fact that upon the death of a sultan all licenses and awards (as well as all international treaties) became void and had to be confirmed or reissued by the new sultan. Such measures gave the state administration and armed forces the appearance of being little more than an extension of the sultan’s person and household. The most notorious and distinctive example of this was the increasing reliance of both Ottoman and Safavid rulers over the 1400s–​1500s on personal slaves (kul) to staff the most elite units of the army and key posts in the civil administration. The attraction of such kuls was that, being personal property, they could be selected, appointed, transferred, dismissed, and even executed based solely on merit and the whim of the sovereign. As Fletcher has pointed out, slaves thus served a ruler as “surrogate nomads,” who built a separate ‘aṣabīyyah around him.91 The golden ages of the Ottoman and Safavid empires were therefore closely linked to a move away from the earlier reliance on tribal levies and locally based prebendal cavalrymen (sipahi) toward a musketeer infantry and a corps of professional administrators. Both empires staffed the latter largely with enslaved Christians (Balkan Christians in the Ottoman Empire; Georgians and Armenians in the Safavid Empire) and ensured their loyalty to the dynasty by salarying them. The necessary funds had to be secured by converting lands that had formerly been prebendal grants benefiting local figures (timariots in the Ottoman Empire; qizilbāsh emirs in Safavid Persia) into khaṣṣa and tax-​farms that put cash directly at the disposal of the central administration and the palace.92

Imperial Visions of World Order Southwest Asian empires saw the political world as being divided into a definite and fairly clear hierarchy with themselves at the apex. Claims to paramountcy and superior prestige are reflected in standard Ottoman and Safavid titles such as “sultan of sultans” (sulṭān al-​salāṭin), “most honoured of sultans” (ashrāf-​i salāṭin), and “bestower of crowns upon the kings (Chosroes) of the world” (tacbahş-​ı Hüsrevan-​ı cihan/​tājbakhsh-​ e Khosrovān-​e jahān). Ottoman sultans lost no opportunity to remind other rulers gently of this preeminence. An Ottoman letter to the Sa’di sultan of Fez thus mentioned: “our imperial threshold . . . the kissing of which honours the lips of the kings of the Orient 125

Jack Fairey

and the Occident.”93 A good illustration of the Ottoman worldview is the following intitulatio from a letter of Süleyman I to King François I of France in 1526: I, Sultan Süleyman Shah Khan, son of Sultan Selim Khan, son of Hazret Sultan Bayezid, Sultan of Sultans of the Age, Paragon of Kağans, Bestower of Crowns upon the Chosroes of the world, Shadow of God the Most Gracious, Sultan and Padishāh of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, of the Balkans and Anatolia, of Damascus and Aleppo, Karamania and Rome, the lands [vilayet] of Dulkadir, Diyarbakır and Azerbaijan, the lands [vilayet] of Van, Buda and Timişoara, of Egypt, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Hebron and all Arabia and Yemen, . . . and of the many other lands conquered by the irresistible force of my noble forefathers and illustrious ancestors—​may God illuminate their tombs—​ and which my August Majesty has made subject to my flaming sword and victorious blade, to thee, François, Christian king [kıral] of the country [vilayet] of France.94 Such an address reveals the Ottomans’ sense of themselves as direct lords of a combination of lands and successors to world dominion, as well as their implicit sense of the order that ranked these states and lands.95 Ottoman adoption of the title khan, for example, was a nod to the unique charisma of Chinggis, despite the fact that Osman was not of Chinggisid descent (indeed, he was a refugee of the Mongol advance) and the Ottomans therefore had no legitimate right to the title. The Ottomans also afforded an extraordinary degree of formal consideration to rulers of Chinggisid blood. The Chinggisid khans of the Crimea, for example, paid no tribute despite their nominal status as Ottoman vassals.96 Below the Chinggisids were “brother” Muslim emperors, pādishāhs, and sultans. Practical realities forced the largest Muslim states—​those of the Ottomans, Safavids, Moguls, Shaybanids, and Sa’dis—​to grant each other a degree of mutual, albeit grudging, recognition. Beneath these came other lesser Muslim rulers and, finally, non-​Muslim princes. The Ottomans were generally reluctant to give Christian rulers parity with Muslims and therefore evolved a host of confessionally exclusive titles for them. Friendly Christian monarchs of great powers like France were granted special recognition as çasar (not kaysar), but most were dubbed kıral or some other explicitly Christian title like duke, tekfur, voivoda, knez, and so on. The Ottomans thus insisted on referring to their Habsburg and Russian counterparts not as caesar or emperor, but as the Christian kings (kıral) of Vienna, Spain, and Moscow and, in the case of the Byzantine emperor, as “the Roman tekfur.”97 There was considerable variance over time and space, however, in how strictly this hierarchy was observed, especially as Ottoman power declined during the 1600s–​1700s and Christian powers could no longer be belittled in cavalier fashion. The Safavids, as a weaker state, were 126

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

less discriminating than the Ottomans and addressed just about any foreign ruler as pādishāh—​even explicitly republican figures such as the doge of Venice and the stadtholder of Holland.

Borderlands How did Ottomans and Safavids imagine the limits of their empires? This is a difficult question to answer, as both states seemed to have a relatively vague sense of their own physical limits.98 This was not from lack of geographical information per se, but rather because the Ottomans and Safavids inhabited a world in which borders were, to quote Palmira Brummet, “broad, porous, and impermanent.”99 Borders were also multiple in the sense that several different kinds coexisted and overlapped each other. Among the Ottomans, for example, there was a solid core of lands that were more or less under the direct control of the sultan—​“the two seas and two lands,” made up of the Mediterranean and the Black seas and the Balkans and Asia Minor. The most distinctive feature of these lands is that they were tax paying and fully integrated into the prebendal system. The next sort of frontier was that of semiautonomous states such as Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Egypt, the republic of Ragusa, and the Kurdish emirates of eastern Anatolia. These paid annual tribute but were not administered directly from Istanbul.100 The Safavids possessed a similar schema for understanding their empire, with the lands under the direct control of the shah (khaṣṣa) at the ideological center, then the prebendal “state provinces” (mamālik) and tribute-​paying vassal territories, such as Daghestan, Kartli, Kakheti, Ardalan, Luristan, and Arabistan. A special class of tributary recognized by both the Ottomans and Safavids were hereditary chieftainships (yurtluk-​ocaklık/​ulka), which included transhumant groups who moved relatively freely back and forth across state borders. In many cases, the Ottoman-​ Safavid border was literally coterminous with the disposition of particular Kurdish and Bedouin tribes and shifted in accordance with their seasonal, communal migrations (Figure 4.2).101 The outermost fringe of the empire was what Ottomans called the “ever-​victorious frontier” (serhadd-​i mansure) and the “realm of jihad” (dar al-​cihad). These were marcher regions that Ottoman forces were actively seeking to occupy or raid.102 Most Ottoman borders thus defied exact definition as the lines of control consisted of thick bands of defensible points such as towns, forts, and castles, the agricultural lands that supported them, and natural features like mountains and rivers.103 Control over these was, however, in a constant state of flux. Such borders as existed thus tended to reflect little more than the “state of play” when the last truce went into effect. A striking example of the political ambiguities of these marches was the practice of condominium rule that evolved during the bitter Ottoman-​Habsburg wars for control of the Danubian basin. Some villages in the contested zone ended up paying taxes to both Ottoman and Habsburg authorities, regardless of which side had the upper hand at the time. One 127

newgenrtpdf

Jack Fairey

128

Figure 4.2  Ottoman-​Safavid territories, ca. 1660. Map provided by Jack Fairey.

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

Ottoman official thus wrote to a Habsburg opponent concerning their common interest in the affairs of “your village, Nagyegrös, [which] is in my possession in Turkey, I mean, it is in your possession [i.e., as a feudal fief] in Hungary.”104 This is not to say, of course, that permanent political barriers were unimaginable. As Dariusz Kołodziejczyk and Sabri Ateş have pointed out, the Ottomans did possess the concept of a fixed border (sınır) and rigidly observed several in practice.105 The Ottomans thus upheld the established land border of Venetian-​controlled Dalmatia as well as long stretches of the border with Poland. The situation was rendered more complicated, however, by the fact that the Ottomans did not consider Venice and Poland to be fully independent states, but rather vassals under ultimate Ottoman sovereignty. Indeed, the sultans made the rendering of formal tribute a precondition for their signature of the very treaties establishing the borders in question.106 Finally, the Ottomans saw their imperial authority as extending to more notional frontiers set by Hanafi jurisprudence, which divided the world into the realms of belief and unbelief—​the so-​called House of War (Dar-​ül-​Harb) and the House of Islam (Dar-​ ül-​Islam). This division meant, on the one hand, that the Ottomans saw themselves as possessing a religious and legal right to expand their territory perpetually at the expense of the House of War, including Christendom, Safavid Persia, and even far off lands like China.107 On the other hand, Ottoman claims to be “lord of coinage and the Friday sermon” (sahib-​i sikke ve hutbe) meant that Sunni Muslims of all lands owed their allegiance ultimately to the Ottomans. As Casale has shown, this juridico-​religious framework allowed the Ottomans to represent their authority as extending to Gujrat, Calicut, the Maldives, Aceh, China, and wherever else Muslim communities acknowledged the sultan as caliph.108 In 1560, the seafarer Seydi Ali Reis even placed an admission of the legitimacy of Ottoman claims in the mouth of the Mughal emperor Humāyūn, who supposedly admitted to Ali that “no man on earth [is] worthy of the title of ‘Pādishāh’ ” but the Ottoman caliph.109

Institutions The common legacy of Islamic law, administrative history, and Persian literary culture ensured that the Ottoman and Safavid administrations shared many comparable institutions and structures. Both empires, for example, relied on a corpus of Greek and Persian advice literature (“ethics”—​akhlāq, “advice for rulers”—​naṣīhat al-​mulūk) to understand how polities functioned and how they should be ruled. It was widely accepted, for example, that societies since the days of Jamshīd naturally contained four groups corresponding roughly to the four humors of the physical body: “men of the pen” who upheld religion and administered the state, “men of the sword” who enforced order, “men of transactions” who traded, and commoners who created the wealth that supported all. Each required the services of the other three classes. A ruler, as head or heart of the body politic, had the task of maintaining this “order of the 129

Jack Fairey

world” and the “circle of equity” by keeping these elements distinct and balanced.110 The Ottomans further clarified the dynamics of this social model by dividing their subjects into a “protected flock” (reaya) of commoners and a “ruling institution,” which, although known collectively as the “soldiery” (askeri) comprised both “lords of the sword” (arbāb al suyūf) and “lords of the pen” (arbāb al qalām) who staffed the imperial service and law courts. It was the duty of the askeri to maintain order, security, and justice, for which purpose they were entitled to bear arms and collect revenues from the reaya. The latter supported the ruling institution through taxes and law-​abiding obedience.111 A further important distinction made in both empires was between Muslims and non-​ Muslims. Both empires tolerated a wide range of religious beliefs, from Zoroastrianism to Catholicism, but the state itself was always understood as belonging in a more fundamental sense to the official state confession: Hanafi Sunni orthodoxy in the Ottoman Empire and Twelver Shi’ism among the Safavids. “Dissenting” faith groups were therefore organized into semiautonomous communities (taife) or nations (millet). In exchange for loyalty, payment of a special tax (cizye/​jizya) and acceptance of their legal inferiority, non-​Muslims were left to manage most of their own affairs, including their own separate legal courts, schools, and charitable organizations.112 Finally, both empires shared a common courtly culture that was reflected not only in shared aesthetics, but in many shared administrative structures and titles. The highest state functionary in both empires was, for example, the “grand vizier” (sadrazam) who presided over a council of state (divan) composed of other subordinate viziers, generals, ulema, and chief scribes (reisülküttab). Both states were also unusual for the degree of state control and conformity that they sought to impose on Islamic religious scholars through the creation of an office of chief jurisprudence (şeyhülislam in the Ottoman Empire, ṣadr in the Safavid). Critically, both empires took part in a common chancellery culture that stretched across the Islamic world from Central and South Asia to North Africa. As Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal scribes all modeled their official and unofficial documents on templates from the same manuals on the art of epistolography (‘ilm al inshā‘), they produced official and unofficial documents that were alike not only in form (utilizing, e.g., similar titles, modes of address, protocols, and rhetorical conventions) but also in function.113 Notwithstanding variations over time and between places and individual writers, for example, it would have been broadly understood from Marrakesh to Delhi that any document bearing the title ‘arz would be some manner of formal petition and that it would possess a predictable structure—​beginning with a formal invocation and concluding with the date, place of writing, signature, and seal of the petitioner.114 This shared chancellery culture enabled a sophisticated diplomacy (tarassul) among states that otherwise would have had difficulty reconciling their conflicting political and religious claims. A good example was the convention that whenever a Muslim ruler conquered new territory, he would issue a special epistle, known as a fathnāma, announcing the victory to his Muslim peers, who were expected to respond 130

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

with polite expressions of congratulation. Such exchanges between potential or actual rivals were obviously fraught, and the fathnāma genre allowed princes to navigate the fine line between self-​assertion and insult by imposing a range of courtesies and pious expressions.115

Ottoman and Safavid Legacies The intermediary position of the Ottoman and Safavid empires between Western Christendom and the rest of Asia ensured that their successes and failures had far-​reaching repercussions for all other imperial polities on the Eurasian continent. The rise of the Ottomans in the late 1400s to early 1500s, for example, served both to obstruct and stimulate European expansion abroad, as the Ottomans seemed poised to gain control of the spice trade with the Indies and to annex many parts of Eastern Europe and the Italian and Iberian peninsulas.116 By the mid-​1500s, the Habsburg and Ottoman dynasties had come to see each other as imperial nemeses, locked in a struggle for global dominance that stretched from the plains of Hungary to the straits of Melaka. The Portuguese, similarly, saw os Rumes (Ottomans) as the most serious threat to their presence in Asia during the early 1500s. Ottoman naval forces succeeded in expelling the Portuguese and Spanish from the Red Sea and most of the Persian Gulf, but failed to drive them from the Indian Ocean itself—​a failure with sweeping consequences for all polities in the region.117 As agents of Western Christian states moved steadily eastward, they carried with them expectations and strategies for dealing with local states that were born in part out of their encounters with the empires of “the Grand Turk” and the “Grand Sophy.” Many European merchants thus learned from their dealings with Ottomans and Safavids how to negotiate commercial concessions with the Muslim rulers of India and Southeast Asia. They arrived in the Indies, for example, convinced of the need for translators skilled in Arabic and Persian and the necessity of securing favorable concessions and extraterritorial privileges. The semiautonomous Levant companies that Western rulers had created to deal with the unique trading conditions existing under the Ottomans became models for the East India companies that would later play such a critical role in the history of Asia.118 Many personnel who came to serve in the East Indies and China had cut their teeth in the Levant, North Africa, or the Persian Gulf, and they sought to replicate similar arrangements.119 It should come as no surprise that these same agents deployed further east strategies that had already proved so successful for Spain and the Italian city-​states in the Near East and North Africa: the establishment of commercial-​ defensive enclaves (“forts and ports”), divide and rule policies, the cultivation of local patrons, the turning of economic means to political ends, and strategic use of Western technological advantages. If the Ottomans and Safavids provided Europeans with opportunities for studying Asian states, they provided a similar window for Asian empires onto the West. By the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire would stand out as the sole, great Muslim power 131

Jack Fairey

to have survived the rising tide of European imperialism. As such, their successes and failures provided object lessons for other Asian rulers—​if they cared to study them.120 The survival of the Ottoman Empire, in particular, proved to Muslims across Asia from the Dutch East Indies to the westernmost provinces of the Qing Empire that it was possible to build a modern caliphate that could hold its own against Christian empires. The Ottomans played a role in keeping such hopes alive, from the sixteenth-​century military missions sent to equip and train Sumatran Muslims in “European” gunpowder technology to nineteenth-​century efforts to promote pan-​Islamism from South Africa to Qing China.121 From the 1830s on, however, the Ottomans and their Persian neighbors (the Qājār dynasty after 1796) increasingly invested in the construction of a new international order based less on faith than temporal interest and mutual respect. In 1856, for example, the Ottoman Empire became the first non-​Christian state to join the Concert of Europe, and by the 1870s Ottomans and Persians increasingly identified not just with other Muslim states but also with the struggle of other “Asian” empires like China and Japan to find their way in a Western-​dominated world.

Notes 1 Antony Black, A World History of Ancient Political Thought (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 34. 2 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 17–​18, 61–​5, 90–​2, 444–​5. 3 Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, trans. Dick Davis (New York: Penguin, 2007), p. 3. 4 Persian writers also sometimes equated the seven climes politically with the seven great “realms” of India (Hind), China (Chīnistān), Central Asia (Tūrān), Rome (Rūm), Africa, Arabia (Arabestān), and, at the center of it all, Iran. A. Miquel, “Iḳlīm,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 3, pp. 1076–​8. 5 For the “Testament of Ardashīr” (‘Ahd Ardashīr), see:  Mario Grignaschi, “Quelques spécimens de la littérature Sassanide conservés dans la bibliothèque d’Istanbul,” Journal Asiatique 254 (1966), 72. 6 Linda Darling, A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East: The Circle of Justice from Mesopotamia to Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 39–​46; J. Duchesne-​Guillemin, “La Royauté iranienne et le Xᵛarənah,” in Iranica, ed. G. Gnoli and A. V. Rossi (Naples: Istituto per lo Studio del Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1979), pp. 375–​86. 7 Ryan Balot, Greek Political Thought (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 146–​53; Albrecht Dihle, “City and Empire,” in Conceiving the Empire: China and Rome Compared, ed. Fritz-​Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.  5–​11. 8 For a review of the development of the concept of imperium in Republican Rome, see: T. Corey Brennan, “Power and Process under the Republican ‘Constitution,’” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, ed. Harriet Flower (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 36–​50. 9 Dihle, “City and Empire,” pp. 18–​23.

132

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

10 Aelius Aristides, “Ρώμης Εγκώμιον,” in Aristides ex recensione Guilielmi Dindorfii (Leipzig: Libraria Weidmannia, 1829), vol. 1, p. 348. 11 George of Trebizond to Mehmed II on February 25, 1466. In Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, ed. William Hickman, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 249. 12 Eusebius, “Εις Κωνσταντίνον τον βασιλέα τριακονταετηρικός,” in Historiae Ecclesiasticae, ed. Friedrich Heinichen (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1868), vol. 1, p. 293. 13 George Ostrogorsky, “The Byzantine Emperor and the Hierarchical World Order,” The Slavonic Review 35, no. 84 (1956), 3–​7. 14 Patriarch Anthony IV of Constantinople to Grand Prince Vasilii I  of Moscow. In Franz Miklosich and Josef Müller (eds), Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi Sacra et Profana (Vienna: Carl Gerold, 1862), vol. 2, p. 191. 15 For a classic formulation of the theory of the imamate/​caliphate, see: Abu’l Ḥasan ‘Ali al-​ Māwardi, The Laws of Islamic Governance/​Al-​Aḥkām al-​Sulṭāniyya w’al-​Wilāyāt al-​Dĩniyya, trans. Asadullah Yate (London:  Ta-​Ha Publishers, 1996), pp. 10–​36. Also see:  Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 197–​9, 206–​11. 16 For a concise review of the treatment of non-​Muslims, see: Claude Cahen, “Dhimma,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2, pp. 227–​31; and Patricia Crone, “Mawlā,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 6, pp. 874–​82. Also see: Milka Levy-​Rubin, Non-​Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 17 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, pp. 227–​30; Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 10–​13. 18 Claude Cahen, ‘L’evolution de l’iqṭā‘ du IXe au XIIIe siècle:  Contribution à une histoire comparée des sociétés médiévales,” Annales: Économies, Societés, Civilisations 8, no. 1 (1953), 25–​52. For this and other proposed Byzantine influences on Islamic states, see: Speros Vryonis, Jr., “The Byzantine Legacy and Ottoman Forms,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23/​24 (1969/​1970), 273–​5. 19 Vasileios Syros, “Shadows in Heaven and Clouds on Earth: The Emergence of Social Life and Political Authority in the Early Modern Islamic Empires,” Viator 43, no. 2 (2012), 377–​ 406; Vasileios Syros, “Galenic Medicine and Social Stability in Early Modern Florence and the Islamic Empires,” Journal of Early Modern History 17, no. 2 (2013), 1–​53. 20 Andrew Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 313. 21 Clifford Bosworth, “The Ṭāhirids and Ṣaffārids,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. R. N. Fry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), vol. 4, pp. 129–​30; R. N. Frye, “The Sāmānids,” in ibid., vol. 4, p.  146; Ami Ayalon, “Malik in Modern Middle Eastern Titulature,” Die Welt des Islams N.S. 23/​24, nos. 1–​4 (1984), 308. On the Balkans, see: Paul Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–​ 1204 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 316–​23; Alain Ducellier, “Balkan Powers:  Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria (1200–​1300),” in The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c. 500–​1492, ed. Jonathan Shepard (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 801–​802. 22 Clifford Bosworth, The History of the Seljuq State: A Translation with Commentary of the Akhbār al-​dawla al-​saljūqiyya (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 19. 23 Songül Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs: Evolution of a Dynasty (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 19–​53; Claude Cahen, Formation of Turkey (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2001), pp.  7–​14.

133

Jack Fairey

24 Speros Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 69–​130; Michael Angold, “Belle époque or crisis? (1025–​1118),” in The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c. 500–​1492, ed. Jonathan Shepard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 609–​10. 25 Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–​1600 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), pp. 31–​2, 186–​8, 194–​7. 26 Joseph Fletcher, “Turco-​Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3–​4 (1979/​80), pt. 1, 237–​42. 27 Babak Rahimi, “Between Chieftaincy and Knighthood: A Comparative Study of Ottoman and Safavid Origins,” Thesis Eleven 76, no. 1 (2004), 90–​1, 95–​7. 28 See discussion in: “Tādjīk,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol 10, pp. 62–​4; Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 31–​3; and Vladimir Minorsky, Tadhkirat al-​Mulūk (London: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, 1943), p. 188. Also see: Maria Subtelny, “Centralizing Reform and Its Opponents in the Late Timurid Period,” Iranian Studies 21, no. 1 (1988), 123–​51; Hodgson, Venture of Islam, vol. 2, p. 407. 29 Nicola Di Cosmo, “State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History 10, no. 1 (1999), 4–​8, 25; Peter Gold, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), pp. 13–​14, 110; Fletcher Jr., “Turco-​ Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire,” 236–​51. 30 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, an Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), vol. 2, pp. xi–​xii, 123–​33. 31 İbrahim Kaya-​Şahin, Âşıkpaşa-​zade as Historian:  A Study on the Tevârîh-​i Âl-​i Osman, unpublished MA thesis, Sabancı University, 2000, pp. 70–​88. 32 Heath Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), p. 46. 33 Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 10, 28–​36, 44–​52. 34 İbrahim Artuk, “Osmanlı Beylig ̈inin Kurucusu Osman Gazi’ye Ait Sikke,” in Birinci Uluslararası Türkiye’nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihi (1071–​1920) Kongresi Tebliğleri, ed. O. Okyar and H. İnalcık (Ankara: Meteksan Yayınları, 1980), pp. 27–​32. 35 Anthony Bryer, “Greek Historians on the Turks: The Case of the First Byzantine–​Ottoman Marriage,” in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages; Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-​Hadrill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 471–​93. 36 Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State, pp. 35–​6. 37 İbrahim Artuk and Cevriye Artuk, İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri Teşhirdeki İslami Sikkeler Kataloğu (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 453–​6. 38 Serb and Bulgarian rulers both referred to themselves as emperors (tsar), while Tīmūr Lang declared himself “pādishāh, master of the auspicious conjunction and sultan of sultans of the world” (pādişāhı ṣāḥib-​kırān ve sulṭān-​ı selāṭin-​ı cihān) and the Mamluks were led by their “sultan of Islam and of the Muslims” (sulṭān al-​Islām wa’l Muslimin), “master of kings and sultans, heir to kingship, sultan of the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks” (sayyid al-​muluk wa’l-​ salāṭin, warith al-​mulk, sulṭān al-​‘arab wa’l ‘ajam wa’l-​turk). Abdurrahman Daş, “Ankara Savaşı Öncesi Timur ile Yıldırım Bayezid’in Mektuplaşmaları,” Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 15 (2004), 164; Reuven Amitai, “Some Remarks on the Inscription of Baybars at Maqam Nabi Musa,” in Mamluks and Ottomans: Studies in Honour of Michael Winter, ed. David Wasserstein and Ami Ayalon (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 47–​8; P. M. Holt, “The Position and Power of the Mamlūk Sultan,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38, no. 2 (1975), 244; Matthew Melvin-​Koushki, “The Delicate

134

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

Art of Aggression:  Uzun Hasan’s Fathnama to Qaytbay of 1469,” Iranian Studies 44, no. 2 (2011), 204. 39 Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State, pp. 60–​4. 40 Ibid., pp. 44, 86. 41 Halil İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest,” Studia Islamica 2 (1954), 104–​105. 42 Joseph von Hammer-​Purgstall, Histoire de l’empire Ottoman depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours, trans. J. J. Hellert (Paris: Bellizard, Barthès, Dufour et Lowell, 1836), vol. 1, pp. 316–​ 20; Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 112. 43 Ali Anooshahr, The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), pp. 124–​5. 44 Bayezid to Tīmūr. The original is in Feridun Bey’s chancery manual Compositions of Sultans (Münşe’atü ‘s-​Selatin). This translation is from Anooshahr, pp. 125–​6. Also see: Abdurrahman Daş, “Ankara Savaşı Öncesi Timur ile Yıldırım Bayezid’in Mektuplaşmaları,” Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 15 (2004), 141–​67. 45 The most complete history of this conflict in English is:  Dimitris Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402–​1413 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). 46 Barkey, Empire of Difference, pp. 154–​75. 47 Rıza Yıldırım, “Turkomans between Two Empires: The Origins of the Qizilbash Identity in Anatolia (1447–​1514),” PhD dissertation, Bilkent University, Ankara, 2008, pp. 303–​415, 549–​87. 48 J. A. Boyle, “Dynastic and Political History of the Īl-​Khāns,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), vol. 5, pp. 413–​16; K. Z. Ashrafyan, “Central Asia under Timur from 1370 to the early Fifteenth Century,” in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, ed. M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (Paris:  UNESCO, 1998), vol. 4, pt. 1, pp. 332–​7. 49 Andrew Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 8–​17. 50 Mohammad Karim Youssef-​Jamali, “The Life and Personality of Shah Ismā’īl I  (1487–​ 1524),” PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1981, pp. 1–​15; Savory, Iran under the Safavids, pp. 5–​9; Rahimi, “Between Chieftaincy and Knighthood,” 92–​3. 51 Shahzad Bashir, “The World as a Hat: Symbolism and Materiality in Safavid Iran,” in Unity in Diversity: Mysticism, Messianism and the Construction of Religious Auithority in Islam, ed. Orkhan Mir-​Kasimov (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 343–​66; Yıldırım, “Turkomans between Two Empires,” pp. 223–​4. 52 Shah Ismā’īl to Selim I. In Asnād va nāmah’hā-​yi tārīkhī va ijtimā‘i-​yi dawrah-​i Safavīyah, ed. Z. Sabitiyan (Tehran: Ibn Sina, 1964), pp. 112–​17. 53 Roger Savory, “The Struggle for Supremacy in Persia after the death of Timūr,” Der Islam 40, no. 1 (1965), 35–​65. H. R. Roemer, “The Safavid Period,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2006), vol. 6, pp. 209–​12; Colin Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion and Rhetoric (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 20–​4. 54 Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran, pp. 23–​5; Shahzad Bashir, “Shah Isma’il and the Qizilbash: Cannibalism in the Religious History of Early Safavid Iran,” History of Religions 45, no. 3 (2006): 234–​56. 55 Michel Mazzaoui, “The Ghazi Backgrounds of the Safavid State,” Iqbal Review 12, no. 3 (1971), 79–​90. 56 Savory, Iran under the Safavids, pp. 46–​7.

135

Jack Fairey

5 7 Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran, pp. 46–​50, 66–​7. 58 Roemer, “The Safavid Period,” vol. 6, pp. 233–​40. 59 Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran, pp. 176–​80; Roemer, “The Safavid Period,” vol. 6, pp. 263–​6; Sussan Babaie, Kathryn Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz-​McCabe, and Massumeh Farhad, Slaves of the Shah, New Elites of Safavid Iran (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 6–​19. 60 Babaie et al , Slaves of the Shah, New Elites of Safavid Iran, pp. 9, 51, 60, 71–​7. 61 For a study on this process among the Ottomans, see Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid, pp. 200–​20. 62 Sultan Mehmed II to Doge Giovanni Mocenigo, April 24, 1480. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Miscellanea documenti turchi, documento n. 14. Also see the safe conduct issued by Mehmed II for Tomaso Malipiero, February 25, 1478, in Victor Ménage, “Seven Ottoman Documents from the Reign of Meḥemmed II,” in Documents from Islamic Chanceries, ed. Samuel Stern and Jean Aubin (Oxford: Cassirer, 1965), pp. 85–​6. 63 Romanian writers, similarly, referred to the Ottoman dynasts in their own language as împăratul turcesc. See, for example, the many references in: Grigore Ureche, Chronique de Moldavie depuis le milieu du XIVe siècle jusqu’à l’an 1594, trans. Emile Picot (Paris: Libraire de la société asiatique de l’école des langues orientales vivantes, etc, 1878). 64 Emperor Charles V to Shah Ismā’īl, August 25, 1525. In E. Vehse, Memoirs of the Court, Aristocracy, and Diplomacy of Austria (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856), vol. 2, p. 491. 65 Emperor Charles V to Sultan Süleyman II, ca. 1545. In ibid., p. 490. 66 Juan de Persia [Uruch Beg], Relaciones de Don Juan de Persia (Valladolid: Juan de Bostillo, 1604), pp. 13, 29, 35, 52, 60, 165. 67 The official names for the Ottoman Empire, for example, were the Memalik-​i Mahrusa-​i Şahane (“Well-​Protected Domains of the Shah”) and the Devlet-​i Âliyye (“Sublime Devlet”). The Safavid Empire was similarly the Mamālik-​i Mahrūsa and Mamālik-​i Īrān (“Domains of Iran”). 68 André Miquel, “Mamlaka,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 6, p.  313; Francis Johnson, A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English (London:  H. Allen, 1852), pp. 588, 1247, 1250; Roger Savory, “The Safavid Administrative System,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (Cambridge and New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 1986), vol. 6, pp. 351–​2. 69 F. Rosenthal, “Dawla,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2, pp.  177–​8; Marinos Sariyannis, “Ruler and State, State and Society in Ottoman Political Thought,” Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013), 96–​104. The importance of the word is shown by the fact that when Greeks wrote addresses to the Ottoman government in their own language they frequently referred to it as devléti in preference to the usual words for state or empire. 70 Vladimir Minorsky, “The Poetry of Shah Isma’il I,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 10, no. 4 (1942), 1047a. 71 Gazel by “Selimi” (Sultan Selim), 1520. English translation in E. J. W. Gibb, Ottoman Poems (London and Glasgow: Trubner, 1882), vol. p. 33; original Persian text in Hasan Gültekin, “Yavuz Sultan Selim’in Farsça Beyitleriyle Tercümeleri,” Turkish Studies 10, no. 8 (2015), 1241–​2. 72 Inscription on the Süleymaniye mosque, composed in 1557 by Şeyhülislam Ebu’s-​Su’ud. The text can be found in Cevdet Çulpan, “İstanbul Süleymaniye Camii Kitabesi,” in Kanuni Armağanı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1970), pp. 291–​9. 73 On the significance of the title of Ṣāḥib-i Qirān, see: Cornell Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleyman,” in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: La Documentation Française, 1992), pp. 162–​7; Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire (London and New York: I.B.

136

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

Tauris, 2012), pp. 47–​8; Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 300–​301. 74 So much was this the case that al-​Juvaynī singled out as extraordinary the fact that Chinggis Khan had managed to create the Mongol empire without such imitation, “from the page of his own mind, without the toil of perusing records or the trouble of conforming with . . . all that has been recorded touching the practice of the mighty Chosroes of old and all that has been written concerning the customs and usages of the Pharaohs and Caesars.” ‘Ala-​ad-​Din ‘Ata-​ Malik Juvaini, The History of the World Conqueror (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), vol. 1, pp. 23–​4. 75 Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–​1650: The Structure of Power (Basingstoke and New  York:  Palgrave, 2002), p.  98; Leslie Pierce, The Imperial Harem (New  York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 15–​27. 76 Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–​1650, pp. 96–​115. 77 Fletcher, “Turco-​Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire,” 249; İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–​1600, pp. 60–​1. 78 Clifford Bosworth, The History of the Seljuk State: A Translation with Commentary of the Akhbār al-​dawla al-​saljūqiyya (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), p. 10. 79 The Mulfuzat Timury, or Autobiographical Memoirs of the Moghul Emperor Timur, trans. Charles Stewart (London: Oriental Translation Committee, 1830), pp. 17–​18. 80 Anonymous, Die Altosmanischen anonymen Chroniken, trans Friedrich Geise (Breslau: Selbstverlag, 1922), pt. 1, pp. 6–​7; pt. 2, pp. 12–​13. 81 Sholeh Quinn, “The Dreams of Shaykh Safi al-​Din and Safavid Historical Writing,” Iranian Studies 29, no. 1/​2 (1996), 127–​47. 82 Gottfried Hagen, “Legitimacy and World Order,” in Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power, ed. Hakan Karateke and Maurus Reinkowski (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), pp. 55–​83. 83 N. R. Farooqi, “Six Ottoman Documents on Mughal-​Ottoman Relations during the Reign of Akbar,” Islamic Studies 7, no.1 (1996), 39–​41. 84 Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran, pp. 3–​5; Hamid Mavani, Religious Authority and Political Thought in Twelver Shi’ism (London and New  York:  Routledge, 2013), pp. 188–​9. 85 Fletcher argues that internecine strife also served the purpose of “rekindling over and over again the Turco-​Mongolian version of Ibn Khaldun’s ‘aṣabiyya, namely, the solidarity and enthusiasm of each new emperor’s personal supporters, who formed the nucleus of his regime, enabling him to remain the all-​powerful master of his government.” Fletcher, “Turco-​Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire,” 243. 86 Halil İnalcık, “The Ottoman Succession and Its Relation to the Turkish Concept of Sovereignty,” in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1993), p. 60. 87 Abdülvâsi Çelebi, Ḫalīlnāme, in: Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid, p. 226. 88 Cornell Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleyman,” in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: 1992), pp. 159–​77. Although this trend is most noticeable in the late sixteenth century, Ottoman poets were already describing their sultans as Mehdi in the early 1400s. See Abdülvâsi Çelebi, Ḫalīlnāme, in Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid, pp. 222–​2. For a discussion of how many such terms had their origin in Timurid efforts to create a “new vocabulary of Sovereignty” before being appropriated by the Ottomans, see Christopher Andrew Markiewicz, The Crisis of Rule in Late Medieval Islam: A Study of Idrīs Bidlīsī (861–​926/​1457–​1520) and Kingship at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century, PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2015, pp. 295–​341, 400, 413.

137

Jack Fairey

89 Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–​1650, pp. 247–​51; Halil İnalcık, “Ḳānūn,” Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 4, pp. 556–​62; Engin Deniz Akarl, “The Ruler and Law Making in the Ottoman Empire,” in Law and Empire: Ideas, Practices, Actors, ed. Jeroen Duindam et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), pp. 87–​110. 90 Cemal Elitaş et al., Accounting Method used by Ottomans for 500 Years: Stairs (Merdiban) Method (Ankara: Turkish Republic Ministry of Finance, 2008), pp. 275–​81. 91 Fletcher, “Turco-​Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire,” 243. 92 On this process among the Ottomans, see: Barkey, Empire of Difference, pp. 75–​82. For this process in Safavid Persia, see: Babaie et al., Slaves of the Shah, New Elites of Safavid Iran, pp. 9, 51, 60, 71–​7. 93 Murad III to al-​Manṣūr, 1578. In Abderrahmane El Moudden, “The Idea of the Caliphate between Moroccans and Ottomans: Political and Symbolic Stakes in the 16th-​and 17th-​ Century Maghrib,” Studia Islamica 82 (1995), 108. 94 Süleyman I  to François I, 1526. In Ernest Charrière, Négociations de la France dans le Levant; ou, Correspondances, mémoires et actes diplomatiques des ambassadeurs de France . . . (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1848), vol. 1, pp. 116–​17. Original in Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Supplément turc 1638A (Béthune 8507), f.122. 95 A good survey of this hierarchy can be found in:  Dimitris Kastritsis, “Ferīdūn Beg’s Münşe’ātü ‘s-​Selāṭīn (‘Correspondence of Sultans’) and Late Sixteenth-​Century Ottoman Views of the Political World,” in Imperial Geographies in Byzantine and Ottoman Space, ed. Sahar Bazzaz, Yota Batsaki, and Dimiter Angelov (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 91–​110. 96 Dimitris Kastritsis, “Ferīdūn Beg’s Münşe’ātü ‘s-​Selāṭīn (‘Correspondence of Sultans’) and Late Sixteenth-​Century Ottoman Views of the Political World,” p. 99. 97 Hasan Çolak, “Tekfur, Fasiliyus, and Kayser: Disdain, Negligence and Appropriation of Byzantine Imperial Titulature in the Ottoman World,” in Frontiers of the Ottoman Imagination, ed. Marios Hadjianastasis (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), pp. 5–​28; Halil İnalcık, “Power Relationships between Russia, the Crimea and the Ottoman Empire as Reflected in Titulature,” in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire (Bloomington:  University of Indiana Press, 1993), pp. 382–​93; Mehmet Sinan Birdal, The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011), pp.  3–​4. 98 It is true, however, that the Safavids’ increasing association with Persia after Shah Ismā’īl resulted in a more geographically grounded sense of identity with what some Safavids began to call the “expansive realm of Iran.” Rudi Matthee, “Was Safavid Iran an Empire?,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53, no. 1/​2 (2010), 241–​2. 99 Palmira Brummet, “Imagining the Early Modern Ottoman Space, from World History to Piri Reis,” in The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire, ed. Virginia Aksan and Daniel Goffman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 24. 100 Hakan Özoğlu, Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State (Albany:  State University of New York Press, 2004), pp. 47–​57. 101 Sabri Ateş, Ottoman-​ Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–​ 1914 (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 177–​9; Halil İnalcık, “Autonomous Enclaves in Islamic States: Temlîks, Soyurghals, Yurdluḳ-​Ocaḳlıḳs, Mâlikâne-​Muḳâṭa’as and Awqāf,” in History and Historiography of Post-​ Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods, ed. Edith Pfeiffer and Sholeh Quinn (Wiesbaden:  Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), pp. 126–​8; Gábor Ágoston, “A Flexible Empire: Authority and Its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 9, no. 1/​2 (2003), 17–​22.

138

Southwest Asia, 1300–1800

102 Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, “Between Universalistic Claims and Reality: Ottoman Frontiers in the Early Modern Period,” in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 206–​207; Ateş, Ottoman-​Iranian Borderlands, p. 18. 103 Brummet, “Imagining the Early Modern Ottoman Space, from World History to Piri Reis,” pp. 24–​5, 49. 104 In Gábor Ágoston, “A Flexible Empire:  Authority and Its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers,” 24. 105 Kołodziejczyk, “Between Universalistic Claims and Reality: Ottoman Frontiers in the Early Modern Period,” pp. 208–​12. Also see: Ateş, Ottoman-​Iranian Borderlands, p. 19. 106 The Polish and Venetian authorities, not surprisingly, represented these payments to their home audiences as voluntary subsidies or “debts” rather than tribute. See, for example, Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 102, 108. 107 For two examples of Ottoman interest in China, see:  Seyfi Çelebi, L’ouvrage de Seyfi Çelebi:  Historien ottoman du XVIe siècle, trans. Joseph Matuz (Paris:  Maisonneuve, 1968), pp. 20, 23–​5; Ildikó Bellér-​Hann, A History of Cathay: A Translation and Linguistic Analysis of a Fifteenth-​Century Turkic Manuscript (Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series 162. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1995); Yih-​Min Liu, “A Comparative and Critical Study of Ali Akbar’s Khitāy Nāma with Reference to Chinese Sources (English Summary),” Central Asiatic Journal 27, no. 1/​2 (1983), 58–​78. 108 Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 30–​1, 122–​3, 149–​51. 109 Seydi Ali Reis, Mirror of Countries (Mir’atu’l-​ Memalik). For an English translation, see: The Travels and Adventures of the Turkish Admiral Sidi Ali Reis, trans. Ármin Vámbéry (London: Luzac, 1899), pp. 51–​3. 110 Syros, “Galenic Medicine and Social Stability in Early Modern Florence and the Islamic Empires,” 27–​8; Darling, A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East, pp. 2–​8. 111 Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–​1650, pp. 244–​6; Marinos Sariyannis, “Ruler and State, State and Society in Ottoman Political Thought,” Turkish Historical Review 4, no. 1 (2013), 104–​11; Darling, A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East, pp. 128–​51. 112 Suraiya Faroqhi, “The Ottoman Ruling Group and the Religions of Its Subjects in the Early Modern Age: A Survey of Current Research,” Journal of Early Modern History 14, no. 3 (2010) 239–​66; Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 2 vols (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982); Paraskevas Konortas, “From Tâ’ife to Millet: Ottoman Terms for the Ottoman Greek Orthodox Community,” in Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, ed. Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 169–​79. 113 Colin Mitchell, “Safavid Imperial Tarassul and the Persian Insha’ Tradition,” Studia Iranica 26, no. 2 (1997): 173–​209. 114 For discussion of the form used in the Ottoman Empire, see: Anton Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 110–​38. 115 For an excellent example, see: Matthew Melvin-​ Koushki, “The Delicate Art of Aggression: Uzun Hasan’s Fathnama to Qaytbay of 1469,” Iranian Studies 44, no. 2 (2011), 193–​214. 116 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New  York:  Harper and Row, 1972), vol. 1, pp. 137–​8; John Elliott, Spain and Its

139

Jack Fairey

World:  1500–​1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 168–​9; Andrew Hess, The Forgotten Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 117 Salih Özbaran, The Ottoman Response to European Expansion. Studies in Ottoman-​ Portuguese Relations in the Indian Ocean and Ottoman Administration in the Arab Lands during the Sixteenth Century (Istanbul: Isis, 1994). 118 A. C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935); Maurits van den Boogert, The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), pp. 38–​42. See also Chapter 10 in this volume. 119 Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China (London and New York: Allen Lane, 2011), p. 110. 120 See, for example: Selçuk Esenbel, Japanese Interest in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press, 2003), pp. 95–​124. 121 Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 57–​63, 237–​8; Hodong Kim, Holy War in China: Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864–​1877 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 149–​55.

140

Chapter 5

South Asia, 1400–​1800: The Mughal Empire and the Turco-​Persianate Imperial Tradition in the Indian Subcontinent Murari Kumar Jha Introduction As a unit of historical study, South Asia is relatively easy to define in geographical terms. The Indian Ocean surrounds it on three sides, to the east, south, and west, while the apparently insurmountable glaciers of the Himalayas, punctuated only by a small number of major passes like the Khyber and the Bolan, mark its northern limits. The subcontinent thus defined is far from homogenous, of course, being characterized instead by a geographical, linguistic, and ethnic diversity that makes it difficult to generalize across the entire region. One of the pioneers of South Asian geographic studies thus argued that four major geopolitical centers of population and trade have reasserted themselves over the centuries: the Indo-​Gangetic plain, Gujarat, the east-​central delta of the Krishna and Godavari rivers, and the southern peninsula.1 Despite the existence of these distinctive zones, few scholars would disagree with the conclusion of historian J. F. Richards that “the degrees of similarity in society and culture among all regions in the subcontinent are such that we can reasonably discuss and analyse South Asia as a unit.”2 One of the more important historical processes binding the region together as a meaningful unit of study is precisely its imperial history. State builders from an early period attempted to unify the entire Indian subcontinent under their control, from the Maurya (322–​185 bce) and Gupta (240–​550) empires to the Delhi Sultanate (1206–​1526) and the British Empire (1757–​1947). During the early modern era, in particular, several polities vied for supremacy over the region, including the Lōdī Sultanate in the north, Vijayanagara in the south, the Marathas in Maharashtra and the Western Ghats, and the various Rajput princes (from Sanskrit rāja-​putra or son of a king) and Ranjit Singh’s ‘Sikh Empire’ in the northwest. The most successful and lasting of these early modern imperial projects, however, was that of the Mughals. Founded in 1526 by Ẓahīr al-​ Dīn Muḥammad Bābur (1483–​1530), a fugitive Timurid prince from Central Asia, the Mughal Empire expanded rapidly to cover most of contemporary India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It maintained its rule, at least in name, well into the 1800s (Figure 5.2).

141

Murari Kumar Jha

This chapter therefore focuses on the Mughal Empire as the most important, representative, and influential exemplar of South Asian imperial traditions during the early modern period. The longevity of the Timurid dynasty founded by Bābur poses the questions of how the dynastic line of a Central Asian warlord had gained such wide acceptance in South Asian society, and why it remained a powerful source of legitimacy well after the decline of its military might in the eighteenth century. In order to examine these questions, this chapter begins by providing a brief narrative outline of the rise and decline of the Mughal Empire along with its structure and institutions. It will then turn to an examination of the broader context for South Asian notions of kingship and sovereignty and Mughal imperial ideology as it developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chapter will describe the most important Mughal imperial practices, their antecedents and innovations. Finally, it discusses the Mughals’ interactions with the other contemporary empires and concludes with a mention of the legacies left behind by the Mughal Empire.

Mughal Conquests and Imperial Expansion Bābur, the founder of the Mughal ruling dynasty, was the eldest son of the Timurid ruler of the Fergana Valley in modern Uzbekistan and could boast of being from a particularly distinguished lineage, being a direct descendant both of Tīmūr Lang (1336–​ 1405) on his father’s side and of Chinggis Khan on his mother’s. Although Europeans would refer to the descendants of Tīmūr in India as “Mughals” (from the Persian mughul or “mongol”), this was not the term they adopted for themselves. Instead, the dynasty emphasized its Timurid pedigree and referred to themselves throughout the period of Mughal rule as “the Lineage of the Son-​in Law” (Silsilah-​yi Guregen or just Gūrkāniyān) in oblique reference to Tīmūr’s status as husband to a Chinggisid princess (Mongol: güregen).3 Although the Timurid princes prided themselves on the military exploits of their great progenitor, they were themselves unable to hold on to the rich lands of Transoxiana that Tīmūr had made the center of his empire. Between 1500 and 1513, the Uzbeks under Muhammad Shaybāni chased the Timurids from virtually all of their former possessions. In 1506, after the death of Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (the Timurid ruler of Herat in Afghanistan), Bābur emerged as the foremost representative of the house of Tīmūr and by 1513 was holding out in the last remaining Timurid stronghold at Kabul. Probably in imitation of his grandfather Abū Sa’īd Mīrzā (1424–​69), who had ruled over much of Central Asia, Persia, and Afghanistan, Bābur signaled his imperial pretensions by assuming the title of pādishāh in 1507.4 All his attempts to reconquer Transoxiana from the Uzbeks failed, however, and his position in Kabul remained precarious. Bābur therefore turned his ambitions to South Asia in 1519. His raids into the Punjab and conquest of Lahore by 1523 replenished his army’s coffers and emboldened him to stake a claim to the northern Indian lands that Tīmūr 142

South Asia, 1400–1800

had conquered over a century ago. Bābur demanded his patrimony from the reigning sultan of Delhi and Agra, Ibrāhīm Lōdī. The latter’s refusal to concede resulted in a resort to arms by the two rivals at the Battle of Panipat in 1526. Bābur won a resounding victory and the capture of the accumulated treasure of the Lōdīs funded expeditions deeper into “Hindustan” (the Gangetic Plain). The following year, Bābur fought another important battle at Khanua in Rajasthan, defeating a grand coalition of Rajput kings headed by the legendary Rāna Sanga of Mewar. In both these battles Bābur used a combination of new military techniques, employing matchlock-​men, field guns, and cavalry. In the subsequent years of his rule, he pursued the retreating Afghan and Rajput forces over the fertile Ganga Plain toward Jaunpur and Bihar until his death in December 1530 and the succession of Humāyūn to the Mughal throne. The foundations of the new empire remained weak, however, and the rich provinces of Gujarat and Bengal were only barely pacified. In 1540 Mughal forces collapsed dramatically before Afghan forces led by Shīr Khan Sūrī, who defeated and drove Humāyūn out of Hindustan. After a decade and half long rule of the Sūr dynasty, Humāyūn recaptured the Mughal throne in 1555 thanks to the military assistance of the Safavid emperor Shah Ṭahmāsp. A  few months later Akbar became the Mughal emperor after the accidental death of Humāyūn in January 1556. The imperial conquests of Akbar progressed in three phases, corresponding roughly to the pattern established by earlier migrations and conquests in South Asia.5 During the regency of Bayrām Khan from 1556 to 1560, the young emperor secured control over the main routes passing through Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Jaunpur that formed the spine of the Mughal Empire in northern India. In the second phase, from 1560 to 1585, Akbar consolidated his hold over Rajputana, in western India, and made inroads westward into Gujarat in 1572–​73 and eastward into Bihar and Bengal in 1574–​76. Effective control over the greater parts of both these eastern provinces was only achieved, however, toward the last decade of the century. In the third phase, from 1591 to 1601, the Mughals pressed southward into the Deccan. By the end of Akbar’s reign, the Mughals were in firm possession of the fertile Ganga plain, from the lucrative coastal provinces of Gujarat and Bengal to the northwestern frontiers of Kabul and Kandahar and had established tributary relations with the Deccan kingdoms. Akbar had also seized rich booty in the course of his conquests amounting to millions of rupees from Malwa (in central India) and other kingdoms. As the empire expanded, its resource base increased and by 1595–​96 the total annual assessed land revenue of the empire stood at more than 100 million rupees.6 Akbar’s successor, Jahāngīr, was less energetic than his father in seeking further wars of conquest, as he was already in secure possession of the major north Indian routes and the richly endowed territories along them. He did, however, provide his successor, Prince Khurram, with opportunities to sharpen his military skills in several minor campaigns against Rajput chieftaincies like the Rāna of Mewar and also into the Deccan. These campaigns enjoyed modest success and Jahāngīr rewarded Khurram for his victories against the Deccani kingdoms of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur by bestowing 143

Murari Kumar Jha

upon him the appellation (laqab) of “World Shah” (Shāh Jahān). The Deccan plateau, however, remained far from subdued and in 1622 the Mughals suffered a strategic setback in the northwest when the Safavids wrested Kandahar from Mughal control.7 Upon becoming emperor in 1628, Shāh Jahān indicated his intention to renew the imperial glory of his dynasty’s Timurid past by adopting the title of “Second Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction” (Ṣāḥib Qirān-​i Sānī).8 In keeping with this title, Shāh Jahān undertook grandiose architectural projects such as the Taj Mahal. More importantly, he sought energetically to extend Mughal control into Central Asia at the expense of his Safavid and Uzbek neighbors. The results were largely disappointing. The Mughal invasion of Balkh and Badakhshan in 1646–​47 succeeded initially, but then stalled as the fractious Uzbek chieftains united their forces and looked to Persia for aid. The Mughals regained Kandahar, similarly, only to lose it again to the Safavids in 1648. Between 1649 and 1653, the Mughals laid siege to the Kandahar fortress repeatedly but without avail, at the cost of millions of rupees and thousands of lives. Mughal forces also suffered reverses on the northeastern frontier following an unsuccessful war against the Ahom kings of Assam in 1638. Elsewhere in South Asia, however, Shāh Jahān enjoyed more success. He managed to expel the Portuguese from Bengal, subdued the Rajput chieftains of western India, and secured continuing tribute from the Deccan kingdoms. In each of these cases, however, the Mughals did little more than hold in temporary abeyance the ambitions of these local powers to withheld tribute, enlarge their own military capabilities, and establish autonomous rule.9 The reign of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–​1707) that followed is often seen as the last period when the Mughals were still able to overawe their political rivals in South Asia by military means alone. During the first two decades of his reign, Aurangzeb focused military efforts on consolidating and pacifying the northeastern and northwestern frontiers of his empire. Mīr Jumla, the new governor of Bengal, thus managed to keep the Ahom king of Assam at bay for much of the 1660s by experimenting with new forms of amphibious warfare, such as the so-​called ghurabs or floating batteries and armed vessels.10 In the northwest, the Mughals bought a respite from the constant Afghan raids on merchant caravans by lavishing subsidies and administrative positions on hostile mountain tribes such as the Yūsafzai, Wazīrī, and Afrīdī. In many such frontier regions, as Jos Gommans writes, “The limits of the empire . . . were extremely narrow, and only a few yards left or right of the main road the hukūmat [‘authority’] of the Mughals came to an end and shifted into the yāghistān, the ‘land of sedition.’ ”11 For Aurangzeb, however, it was the Deccan rather than either Assam or Afghanistan that remained the quintessential yāghistān. From the 1680s onward, he spent the rest of his life seeking to conquer and annex the Shi’ite kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda, and to contain the rising threat posed by the Marathas. Originating from the modern province of Maharashtra, the Marathas were Hindus belonging to the relatively lowborn Kunbi caste of pastoral agriculturalists. During the seventeenth century, however, they distinguished themselves as light cavalrymen in the service of the various Deccan states and began to emerge as a formidable military power capable of challenging Mughal 144

South Asia, 1400–1800

authority. Under the talented leadership of Śivaji Bhonsle (1630–​80), the Marathas carved out a large dominion along the Western Ghats in Maharashtra and Karnataka between Pune and Bijapur. The Marathas caused Aurangzeb considerable embarrassment by repeatedly plundering both Bijapuri and Mughal territory, sacking the port town of Surat, and exacting millions of rupees in ransoms from pilgrim ships bound for Mecca. Unable to defeat the Marathas decisively on the battlefield, the Mughal court sought to co-​opt Śivaji by making him a Mughal vassal. The resulting rapprochement was strained and lasted for less than five years before Śivaji returned to raiding Mughal possessions in 1670. His Maratha cavalry sacked Surat for a second time and exacted more than six million rupees in plunder. In order to better counter the Maratha threat and complete the conquest of the Deccan kingdoms, Aurangzeb relocated his entire court apparatus to the south in the 1680s. By 1687, he had annexed both the kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda, conquests that yielded more than sixty million rupees along with much jewelry, gold, and silver.12 These conquests marked the acme of Mughal territorial expansion, however, and upon Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 Mughal power would steadily decline during the next century.

Structure and Institutions of the Mughal Empire The Mughals drew on three major sources of inspiration in creating the structure and institutions of the new empire:  (1) the legacy left by the polities the Mughals had displaced, (2) Central Asian and Timurid traditions, and (3) their own ingenuity. Like many other empires, the Mughals found it easiest and most prudent simply to leave in place many of the administrative and military institutions they had inherited from the Delhi Sultanate and the short-​lived Sūrī Empire of Shīr Shāh (r. 1540–​45). Most of the institutions governing lower level fiscal administration throughout the provinces remained in place, for example, and Akbar retained the tri-​metallic currency system that Shīr Shāh had initiated. The Central Asian origins of the Mughals also, however, exercised a strong influence over them, especially during the first decades after the establishment of the new empire. A good illustration of the manner in which the Mughals creatively adapted existing institutions was their use of the iqṭā‘ system of prebendal grants—​a long-​standing practice throughout the Islamic world and one that all previous South Asian Muslim rulers had relied upon.13 Like their Ottoman and Safavid neighbors, the Mughals divided their tax revenue into two principal streams. Crown lands (khāliṣa) deposited their taxes directly into the royal treasury. The rest of the state’s lands provided the basis for a complex system of “place-​holdings” (jāgīr), according to which the state bestowed a share in its tax revenues and powers on individual “place holders” (jāgīrdār) in exchange for their services.14 The Mughal state allocated four principal types of jāgīrs, depending on the nature of the service provided. High-​ranking imperial officials, for example, received what were known as jāgīr tankha in lieu of salary. Grants of mashrūṭ jāgīrs 145

Murari Kumar Jha

were tied to a particular rank in the military or civil hierarchy and were conditional on the discharge of specific set duties. Grants of inām jāgīrs, by contrast, carried no particular obligations and were not tied to civil or military rank. In practice, the Mughals often used inām jāgīrs to support individual Islamic scholars, holy men, or other meritorious people. The fourth type of grant, known as watan jāgīr, essentially regularized and licensed the power that local chieftains, warlords, and Rajputs already held de facto over their ancestral lands. Unlike normal jāgīrs, which could be cancelled or reassigned at regular intervals, a watan jāgīr was nontransferable and passed automatically to the heir of the current jāgīrdār upon his death. Another important example of creative adaptation was the hierarchy of roughly thirty-​three ranks (mansab) into which the Mughals classified their servitors. Timurid princes could look back to Chinggis Khan for the precedent of establishing a strict and clearly defined system of military ranks, but the Mughals beginning with Akbar went further by consolidating both civil and military officials into a single hierarchical table. All movement up or down the ranks depended on the favor of the emperor. Mansab were ranked depending on two types of gradations: zāt and sawār. While the zāt signified a rank holder’s relative position within the imperial hierarchy, the sawār denoted the number of cavalrymen the officer was expected to maintain. Those mansab holders (mansabdār) who held a rank of not less than 1,000 zāt constituted the “nobility” or grandees of the Mughal Empire. The numeric rank of a mansab also established the emoluments its holder could expect to receive, whether as salary, jāgīr, or a mix of both. Each mansabdār was to use the revenues thus achieved to defray their own expenses and to provision the set number of cavalrymen determined by their sawār rank. Normally, the prime minister or vazīr/​dīwān at the court formally assigned jāgīrs for a period of three years before transferring them to another assignee on a rotational basis. The more important mansabdārs often possessed title to collect revenue from jāgīr lands dispersed across the empire and had to rely on assistance from local officials and authority figures (known as zamīndārs or “land holders”) in collecting the revenue they were owed.15 The obvious benefit to the central state of such frequent circulation of jāgīrs was that it prevented officials from sinking roots in any one place and developing their own power base or hereditary claims independent of the state. As long as the imperial center remained powerful, this system worked fairly well. Even at its height, however, the Mughal state permitted some large zamīndārs and certain privileged groups such as prominent scholars, descendants of Sufi saints, former mansabdārs, and aristocratic immigrants from Central Asia to possess the same tax-​free jāgīrs for life as madad-​i ma’āsh or inām and to pass them on to their children. These hereditary jāgīrs quickly grew in size and allowed their possessors to construct exactly the sort of localized power networks that the system had been designed to prevent.16 According to Athar Ali, the total number of mansab holders (mansabdār) during Shāh Jahān’s and Aurangzeb’s reign did not exceed 8,000 and of these probably no more than 500 were mansabdārs of the highest ranks (with more than 1,000 zāt).17 M. N. 146

South Asia, 1400–1800

Pearson argues that, in practice, these figures meant that roughly 1,000 rank holders of high and medium rank constituted the core of the empire. These were the officials who bore the burden of administering an extensive and diverse geographical area with a population ranging between 70 and 120 million.18 Such a thin layer of administration had to depend on a combination of alliances and coercive authority backed by military force for collecting the land revenue. While the emperor commanded the loyalty of mansabdārs, “for all other subjects of the empire, loyalty went to the social groups to which they belonged, not to the empire or the emperor.” Pearson later modified this position in another essay by admitting that the leaders of the different social groups of the empire were themselves divided between multiple, overlapping loyalties.19 In reality, however, it oversimplifies matters to attempt to distil relations between the state, social elites, and communities into terms of loyalty versus disloyalty.20 More often than not, questions of loyalty to the empire were secondary to personal rivalries, calculations over how best to secure resources, mutual benefit, submission and defiance, alliance and outright rebellion, and so on. At the center of the Mughal administration, of course, was the emperor and the five most important officials, who worked under his close supervision. The first of these positions was supposed to be that of the “representative” (vakīl) of the reigning emperor. In practice, however, the post was a vestige from the earlier Delhi Sultanate period and by the Mughal period had become a largely honorary position, often granted to an important dignitary who headed the nobility. The most powerful official at court in fact was the vizier (vazīr), who often also held the title and exercised the functions of an exchequer (dīwān).21 Balancing the fiscal power of the vazīr/​ dīwān was the administrator and chief pay-​master of the Mughal military, known as the mīr bakhshī. The mīr bakhshī also made most of the recommendations for appointments to high-​ranking imperial mansabs. The affairs of the imperial household came under the care of the mīr sāmān, who acted as both steward and chamberlain to the emperor, while also overseeing the workshops (kārkhānā) that supplied luxury goods and finely crafted arms and armor to the palace and the imperial elite. Another important officer was the ṣadr or “foremost” of the religious establishment, who along with the chief judge (qāḍī) undertook the responsibility of maintaining law and order, the administration of charitable and religious endowments, and the dispensing of justice throughout the empire by appointing civil and judicial officers at the provincial levels.22 The structure of the court was recapitulated at the level of the provinces (ṣūba), each of which had its own governor (ṣūbadār) supported by a dīwān, bakhshī, and ṣadr who were (in theory, at least) subordinate to their superiors in the capital. At the provincial level, the Mughals also sought to prevent abuses and disproportionate concentration of power in the hands of a single official by dividing administrative responsibilities between two officials that were roughly equal in authority. For example, the provincial governor had to deal with the provincial fiscal authority (dīwān), who functioned independent of the former’s control. The resulting system of checks and balances was a key 147

Murari Kumar Jha

organizational principle that the Mughals instituted at both the central and provincial levels.23 As a land-​based and revenue extractive empire, the Mughal state depended on its ability to alienate resources from the peasantry. The success of these efforts, in turn, depended on the ability of the Mughal state to identify and quantify revenue sources accurately. One of the most important achievements of Akbar’s reign was thus to build upon the innovations in tax collection that they had inherited from the Sūrī Empire of Shīr Shāh.24 Akbar’s famous dīwān minister, the Khatri Hindu Todar Mal, was particularly important in establishing a system for accurately determining the actual resources and taxation capacity of different areas within his empire. Using a system known as the “ten years’ settlement” (‘āin-​i dahsālā), Akbar attempted to levy a reasonable tax by calculating the average production of a given area over the period of a decade.25 Revenue officials henceforward set the tax burden on peasants only after having obtained data on the revenue rate and local market prices of crops for the preceding ten years in the principal cities of Agra, Allahabad, Oudh, Delhi, Lahore, and Malwa. Even with these improvements in tax assessment, however, the Mughal state still struggled to realize the revenue that it had claimed for itself from the peasant producers of that wealth. Modern scholars have too often assumed that, as a centralized bureaucratic empire, the Mughals carried away everything over and above the subsistence level from the peasantry.26 In practice, however, few of Akbar’s successors imitated his example and carried out new land revenue assessments. Official cadastral registers quickly became outdated and the central state had increasing difficulties in obtaining exact figures on agricultural production from local officials. Moreover, the administrative mechanisms designed to extract surpluses from the peasantry did not function effectively or uniformly across the empire. In the imperial heartland of Agra, Delhi, and the surrounding provinces, for example, revenue collection was relatively efficient and well administered. However, the same cannot be said of outlying regions such as Bihar and Bengal, or the many pockets of the empire which were under the control of autonomous chieftains.27 Furthermore, as agricultural production increased over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, increased productivity did not benefit the central state but rather local zamīndārs who were better placed to detect and appropriate surpluses.28 The increased productive capacity and appropriation of resources at the local level thus strengthened exactly those centrifugal forces that sought to establish greater autonomy for themselves within the Mughal Empire.

Process of Decline It was more than mere coincidence that the three large Islamic empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals emerged and endured during the same two centuries that saw an unprecedented supply of bullion onto the markets of the world from the mines of the Americas and Japan. Did the increased availability of gold and silver contribute to 148

South Asia, 1400–1800

the effectiveness of the Mughal Empire, or did greater financial liquidity, in the long run, encourage fissiparous tendencies within it? In general terms, increased liquidity eased the problems of all large agrarian empires since it facilitated revenue collection and salarying of the bureaucracy and military and brought the hitherto largely inert merchants to the forefront. Depending on the role of money in spurring economic growth, however, monetization had divergent outcomes in different societies. In the Ottoman Empire, for example, the increasing money supply produced rampant inflation and a range of destabilizing effects. In the Mughal Empire, by comparison, inflation was minimal.29 The absence of any significant inflationary trend is often linked to the capacity of the Mughal economy to respond favorably to external demands by expanding its productive capacity. For example, an increased money supply not only aided agricultural expansion in the fertile Gangetic valley and stimulated trade and population growth, it also boosted the production of craft goods—​most notably textiles. The favorable effects of increased money supply encouraged the Mughals to take an unusually active interest in the promotion of trade and commerce, in maintaining a complex tri-​metallic currency regime, and in encouraging financial institutions manned by money changers (shroffs) and based on bills of exchange (hundīs). The state and private financial services depended on the well-​established hundī networks for transferring money in different parts of the empire. The Mughal Empire was not a mercantilist state along the lines of those found in western Europe, and it differed substantially from the model afforded by late imperial China, which supported a market economy in an agrarian society but harbored reservations about commercial capitalism except for monopolies on salt and foreign trade.30 On the contrary, merchants and “portfolio capitalists” thrived under the commercial opportunities available in the Mughal Empire. Another group that benefitted from economic growth and increased overseas trade was the zamīndārs and other Mughal officials who had managed to establish themselves as local power figures. As the effectiveness of the Mughal Empire weakened during the early eighteenth century, local political elites increasingly withheld revenue from the state and used it to increase their own military strength. Thus emboldened, local warlords increasingly ignored orders emanating from the Mughal government and began to invest themselves with the trappings of independent authority, all while continuing to pay lip-​service to Mughal suzerainty.31 In Bihar, for example, local zamīndārs entered into direct trade contracts with the Dutch East India Company during the early decades of the eighteenth century, allowing the latter to establish warehouses and purchase commodities.32 The extent to which these chieftains already saw themselves as more or less independent of the Mughal court can be gauged from their conclusion of multiple trade treaties with foreign bodies—​the various European chartered companies—​without so much as invoking the name of their ostensible suzerain, the Mughal emperor. The Bihari zamīndārs, for example, admitted their subordination to the Mughals when dealing directly with the imperial authority, but within the borders of their fiefdoms they thought and behaved like any independent sovereign. European companies such as the East 149

Murari Kumar Jha

India Company (EIC) thus found ample opportunities for inserting themselves into this process of “regional centralization” pioneered by the zamīndārs and other Mughal rank holders. When the EIC moved into Bengal in the 1760s, for example, it appeared to be acting no differently from other zamīndārs: like other zamīndārs, it diverted trade and tax revenues to fund its private armies and pursued political aggrandizement while remaining formally subordinate to the Mughal throne. Mughal political and economic dominance began to wither after the death of the last great Mughal, Aurangzeb, in 1707. Paradoxically, however, as the Mughal imperial center weakened, most of the newly autonomous regions and servitors continued to uphold formal Mughal suzerainty.33 In 1765, for example, the EIC formally became tributaries of the Mughal emperor Shāh ‘Ālam. In exchange for a tribute of 2.6 million rupees annually, the EIC became the official revenue collector (dīwān) of the Mughal emperor in the Bengal province (ṣūba)—​comprising Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The British upheld the fiction of Mughal suzerainty for almost a century, until the great rebellion of 1857 when the sepoy troops of the EIC sought to overthrow company rule in the name of the de jure Mughal emperor Bahādur Shāh II (r. 1837–​58). The British, having ruthlessly suppressed the revolt, hurriedly placed “the king of Delhi” on trial in 1858. A British court found the Mughals guilty of “high treason” and carried out sentences that effectively put an end to the dynasty. Bahādur Shāh was deposed and sentenced to live out his days in exile in Rangoon while the other royal princes were executed. With the elimination of the Mughal dynastic line, Queen Victoria assumed direct control over the affairs of India by an act of parliament.34 As the story of the rise and decline of the Mughal Empire outlined above makes clear, the Mughals at their zenith controlled an empire that was one of the largest in the world, both in terms of its economic resources and its population base. Such a congeries of peoples and territories posed difficult administrative challenges, especially as the Mughals sought to act as the chief arbitrators of the many differences arising among their servitors and subjects.35 The Mughals sought to resolve these challenges by drawing creatively on both indigenous South Asian and Central Asian administrative practices, notions of kingship, and sovereignty.

The South Asian Context of Mughal Notions of Kingship and Sovereignty South Asian traditions of statecraft possessed some notion of empire as a superior class of polity from a relatively early date. The Vedas and Classical Sanskrit epics, for example, contain political terms—​mostly derived from the verbal root “to rule” or “to shine” (rāj)—​that distinguished between a “petty king” (rājaka), a “king” (rājan), a “great king” (mahārāja), a “supreme king” or “overlord” (adhirāj), and a “paramount/​ universal ruler” (samrāt). Just as Vedic cosmology imagined the world as a “wheel-​ like enclosure” (cakravāla) with the cosmic Mount Meru at its center, so the same 150

South Asia, 1400–1800

worldview encouraged Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists alike to expect the emergence of “wheel-​turning monarchs” (cakravartin) of superior virtue, who would be victorious in all directions (digvijaya) and use their paramountcy to uphold the moral order of the universe. Vedic and post-​Vedic literature even prescribed a specific ritual sacrifice, the rājasūya yajña, to mark and consecrate the ascension of a victorious king to supremacy over all other rulers. In the epic Mahābhārata, for example, the sage Nārada urges King Yudhiṣṭhira to imitate an earlier emperor, Hariścandra, who had been a mighty king, the sovereign of all the lords of earth, and all the kings on earth always bowed to his behest . . . [H]‌e subjugated the seven continents with the might of his sword, lord of men. After he had conquered the entire world with its mountains, forests, and woods, he offered up, great king, the great Royal Consecration Sacrifice [i.e., the rājasūya].36 In practical terms, however, such “universal rule” need not actually encompass the entire world except in a moral sense. The Arthaśāstra, a monumental work on political economy written by Kauṭilīya in the fourth century bce, defined the true “field of endeavour of the wheel-​turning monarch”—​his cakravarti-​kṣetra—​as lying within the more limited space of the subcontinent, “one thousand yojanas in extent” from the Himalayas to the sea.37 The Mauryan and later the Gupta kings strove with varying degrees of success to put such notions into practice by becoming masters of the cakravarti-​kṣetra of the subcontinent and assuming grandiose titles such as “great king of kings” (mahārājādhirāj).38 The edicts of the most powerful of the Mauryan emperors, Aśoka, are more modest in that they refer to him as merely the “beloved of the gods” (devānāmpriya). His official promotion of Buddhism and a common code of social ethics (dhammā) across the subcontinent, however, were clearly evocative of a cakravartin seeking to reestablish the cosmic moral order.39 Rather than bringing about political or administrative unification of the entire subcontinent, Aśoka’s digvijaya or world conquest thus took the form of propagating dhammā through edicts carved on rocks and pillars in different parts of the subcontinent. It is generally agreed that the Mauryan state maintained varying degrees of control over its constituent parts, but that the ruler claimed sovereign authority over a number of subordinate kings and allies who agreed to adhere to the norms of dhammā.40 Since universal rulership was grounded in moral qualities and a corpus of Sanskrit literary texts and culture, rather than dynastic bloodline, religion, or de facto control, different South Asian states could—​and did—​simultaneously claim to be world empires, even as they coexisted with a host of other (ostensibly) subordinate kingdoms. Sheldon Pollock has argued that this tradition of multiple, overlapping universal polities encouraged South Asian states from the Mauryas to the Mughals to accept a “limited and layered sovereignty” and to embrace a “non-​ethnic cosmopolitanism” that did not require imperial subjects to identify with a particular religion, administrative center, 151

Murari Kumar Jha

or ethnicity.41 The resulting “Sanskrit cosmopolitanism” proved highly transportable, allowing rulers as far away as the Philippines and Indonesian archipelago to imagine the lands they ruled through the lenses of Sanskrit literary culture as duplicate cakravarti-​ kṣetras, each with their own “golden Mount Merus and purifying river Gaṅgās.”42 Beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, the incursions of Turkic and Afghan raiders into South Asia initiated a sharp break with the political traditions of the earlier Hindu states. These invaders established a succession of states from the Delhi Sultanate (1206–​1526) in the north to the Bahmani Sultanate (1347–​1527) in the Deccan that were Muslim ruled and drew their political inspirations predominantly from Mongol, Persian, and Arab sources. The ideas and traditions of the “Sanskrit cosmopolis” would persist into the early modern era, remaining dominant in Hindu and Buddhist polities such as the Vijayanagara (1336–​1646) and Eastern Ganga (1078–​ 1434) empires and the various Rajput and Sinhalese kingdoms. Turco-​Persianate political culture was clearly, however, in the ascent and had become the dominant paradigm in the largest, richest, and most powerful states of the subcontinent by the arrival of the Mughals. Increasingly, Persian (and, to a much lesser extent, Chaghatai Turkic) replaced Sanskrit as the language of South Asian governance and diplomacy, while Persian literary culture replaced its Sanskrit counterpart as the linguistic vehicle and marker of political power. It is striking that this transition in South Asia from a “Sanskrit cosmopolis” to a “Persian cosmopolis” occurred not only in Muslim states, but also in non-​Muslim ones.43 By the sixteenth century, in other words, Vijayanagaran emperors and Rajput kings were articulating political claims and projecting their rule, quite literally, in a Persian cultural idiom. Visitors to the court of Vijayanagara, for example, encountered Hindu rulers who had adopted elements of Turco-​Persianate courtly dress, gave audiences in palaces adorned with Persianate architectural features, and even referred to themselves as “sultan” (suratāḷu) or—​more tellingly—​“sultan among Hindu kings” (hindū-​rāya-​ suratrāṇa).44 When the Mughals thus began building their empire in the early sixteenth century, they could draw on an unusually rich melange of imperial ideas and practices, contained in a bewildering range of Vedic rituals and Islamic hadiths, Chinggisid laws and Timurid traditions, Sanskrit epics, and Persian mirrors for princes.

Mughal Imperial Ideas and the Articulation of Legitimacy Hard experiences taught the Mughals early on that military success on the battlefield was ephemeral and that a kingdom won by the sword in a day could be lost just as easily. Bābur had conquered Fergana, Samarqand, Tashkent, and Kabul at various times and lost most of them. He then had conquered much of north India by his brilliant victory over the Lōdī Sultanate at Panipat in 1526, only to have his son Humāyūn lose most of the same territory fourteen years later to Shīr Shāh Sūrī, the rebellious chieftain of Bihar. In their years of exile, both Bābur and Humāyūn would have had time to reflect 152

South Asia, 1400–1800

on the importance of building more lasting foundations for their state than raw military power. What ideas and principles did the Mughals arrive at for guiding their empire, and how did they legitimize their rule? The first Mughal emperors, Bābur and his son Humāyūn, naturally sought to rule in accordance with their formative experiences at the princely courts of Fergana, Samarqand, Herat, and Kabul and relied on Central Asian traditions and practices to establish their legitimacy. Besides Islam and the Timurid name, they evoked Turco-​ Mongol ideals of kingship and ostentatiously patronized the Central Asian Naqshbandī Sufi order. Bābur was only secondarily concerned with cultivating South Asian Sufi orders such as the Chishtīs, or representatives of local “Hindustani” elites such as Indian and Afghan Muslims or the Rajputs. The fact that Central Asian immigrants or Tūrānī (primarily Turkic speakers from the Chaghatai Khanate) dominated the highest positions within the imperial service under Bābur further encouraged a tendency to seek to recreate in South Asia the lost world of Timurid Transoxiana. The Mughals would retain many of these Central Asian practices and ideas, such as a deep respect for Chinggisid and Timurid law (tūra-​i Chengīzī) and the expectation that power would be shared among the extended imperial family. Whereas Bābur had seen the subcontinent as little more than a place of exile and a source of resources to be exploited, his son and successor Humāyūn (r. 1530–​40 and 1555–​56) clearly realized the dangers of this approach and made efforts to broaden his dynasty’s support base by forging alliances with the Rajputs and patronizing Indian Sufi orders such as the Shattārī.45 Such policies were even more in evidence during the long reign of the emperor Akbar (r. 1556–​1605), who had experienced directly the disadvantages of his dynasty’s reliance on Turanian support. In 1564, for example, many of Akbar’s elite Chaghatai and Uzbek servitors rebelled and offered the throne to his half-​brother, the appanage ruler of Kabul, Mīrzā Ḥākim. An important pretext for the revolt and the three years of bitter internecine strife that ensued was the claim of the rebels that Akbar had become too heterodox in his religion and too “Hindustani” in his policies, whereas Mīrzā Ḥākim remained true to Sunni orthodoxy and respected the more egalitarian Central Asian ways.46 Thereafter, Akbar and his successors sought to counterbalance the Turanian hold on power by elevating Persians, Rajputs, and Indian Muslims to high military and administrative positions. One of the consequences of this policy was increased cooperation between the Mughals and the Rajput chieftains of western India. Akbar married a Rajput princess, and his son Jahāngīr did the same. The latter’s successor, Shāh Jahān, was thus born of Jahāngīr’s marriage to the daughter of the Rajput king Udai Singh of Marwar. Such incorporation of more ethnic groups and local South Asian representatives gave a broader base to the empire, as well as increased scope for the Mughals to defuse future threats by policies of divide and rule. Mughal efforts to sink roots in South Asia also brought about changes in their self-re​ presentation. At first, the dynasty framed its claim to political legitimacy in fairly blunt and unimaginative terms: their illustrious Central Asian ancestor Tīmūr had conquered the Punjab and invaded the Delhi Sultanate in 1398 and therefore Hindustan formed 153

Murari Kumar Jha

part of the Timurid ancestral patrimony by right of blood and conquest.47 Given the internal rivalries that divided the different branches of the Timurid family, however, such a rationale was incomplete. The Mughals needed to establish that their specific line was the most deserving of Tīmūr’s descendants and the most capable. An example of the dynasty’s attempts to enhance its own image was Humāyūn’s commissioning in 1533 of a history of his reign, the Book of Humāyūn (Humāyūnāma or Qānūn-​i Humāyūnī), in order to preserve “the inventions of my auspicious mind and the improvements of my illumined thoughts . . . so that in time their light may shine near and far.”48 This work, completed a year later by Persian historian Ghiyās al-​Dīn Muḥammad Khwāndamīr (1475–​c. 1534?), took pains to underscore the superior qualities and achievements of the emperor over his Timurid kinsmen who, following Inner Asian notions of tanistry, were eager to stake their own claims to a share in sovereign authority.49 The seriousness of the latter problem can be seen from the fact that only a few years later the Mughals temporarily lost their empire to Shīr Shāh, in part because of the reluctance of one of the imperial princes, Mīrzā Kāmrān, to give up his appanage in Kabul and provide military aid to his half-​brother Humāyūn at several critical junctures in the war. While Humāyūn thus made the first serious attempts to formulate a distinctly Mughal imperial culture and ideology, it was Akbar who was primarily responsible for realizing this goal through his lavish patronage of court historians, poets, manuscript painters, and Sufis (particularly of the Chishtī order). Under Akbar and his descendants the imperial court began to produce a rich corpus of works, in a variety of media, that were not only compelling in their beauty but explicitly served Mughal political ends. Akbar, in particular, commissioned the production of a large number of politically motivated literary works, with the Book of Akbar (Akbarnāma)—​a history—​and the Institutes of Akbar (‘Āin-​i Akbarī)—​a gazetteer of the Mughal state—​being particularly concerned with the ideology of empire. Abu’l Faẓl, Akbar’s erudite historiographer and vazīr, supervised the production of the multivolume Akbarnāma, which sought not only to distinguish the Mughal Empire from its competitors but also to present Akbar as the semidivine “perfect man” (insān-​i kāmil) of Sufi theology.50 Abu’l Faẓl presented his master as a universal ruler, albeit one whose claim was based not so much on control of territory as natural headship over the entire human race.51 Abu’l Faẓl thus took pains to trace Akbar’s lineage back to the first human being, Adam, rather than to the Prophet Muhammad or one of the caliphs, thereby emphasizing that the authority of his patron extended beyond the Islamic world to embrace all of mankind. He similarly placed Akbar in a line of descent from the Mongol princess Alan Qo’a, legendary progenitress of the Chinggisids. According to Mongol tradition, one of the descendants of Alan Qo’a, Qachula Ba’atur, had a dream that seven bright stars and one brighter than the rest emanated from his chest. Ba’atur’s father interpreted the dream to mean that the seven stars presaged seven powerful descendants who would achieve primacy over their clansmen and eventually attain a royal crown. The eighth star that shone over the world and produced smaller stars illuminating the universe symbolized an eighth descendant “who would exhibit world wide sovereignty.” The Timurid tradition had been to identify the 154

South Asia, 1400–1800

seven stars with Tīmūr’s forefathers and the eighth with Tīmūr himself. Abu’l Faẓl reinterpreted the story to make Tīmūr into the first star, followed by six celestial Timurid descendants, and finally the eighth star representing the person of Akbar.52 Such universalist aspirations were further reflected in the imperial regnal names of Akbar’s successors: Jahāngīr (“world conqueror”), Shāh Jahān (“world shah”), ‘Ālamgīr (“universal conqueror”), and so on.53 If the literary composition of royal autobiographies, histories, gazetteers, and collections of poetry was thus important to Mughal efforts to present themselves as urbane, successful, and legitimate rulers, it was no less important that the Mughals establish their own ateliers (kitābkhāna) where calligraphers, book binders, and painters could carry out the physical process of producing these texts as prestigious objets d’art. Humāyūn and his half-​brother Kāmrān were responsible for setting up the first Mughal ateliers for the production of illuminated manuscripts and miniature paintings in the Persian style. These ateliers flourished under Akbar’s enthusiastic sponsorship and began to evolve a distinctive Mughal style that blended elements of Persian, Indic, and European painting. Patronage of the arts was, in itself, a long-​standing Timurid tradition, but the particular tastes of the Mughal court encouraged works that were more distinctly South Asian and innovative in character. Mughal emperors were particularly interested in the production of royal portraits that combined a realism of style with a taste for allegory and often a desire to rewrite history. For example, relations between Jahāngīr and Akbar were very contentious in life (a situation made worse by Jahāngīr’s attempt in 1599 to seize power from his father by force), but upon his accession Jahāngīr commissioned portraits of himself in poses of filial devotion toward Akbar.54 Aside from such overtly political uses, the Mughal emperors also used the arts to advance a cultural program of rapprochement and integration among their diverse subjects. In addition to commissioning the usual classics of Persian literature, history, and Islamic learning, for example, Akbar commissioned the translation into Persian of Sanskrit epics such as the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata and even a Hindu religious work, The Lineage of Viṣṇu (Harivaṃśa), complete with rich illustrations of Hindu heroes, gods, and yogis done in Persianate style. Such attempts to integrate elements of pre-​Islamic South Asian culture into Mughal life were part of a broader policy of religious tolerance toward the many non-​Muslim subjects of the Mughal Empire that became particularly marked from the time of Akbar. Perhaps the best example of Mughal attitudes was Akbar’s decision in 1579 to abolish the poll tax (jizya) that Islamic states had customarily levied on their non-​ Muslims subjects. This discriminatory tax would remain in abeyance until the reign of Aurangzeb in 1679 when it was restored. Farrukhsiyar briefly banned the jizya once again in the 1710s and his successor finally abolished the tax once and for all in the 1720s.55 Mughal policies of tolerance also meant that, despite the occasional rhetorical statement in Mughal documents and histories about the desirability of destroying the idols and temples of infidelity, in practice Mughal rulers with the notable exception of Aurangzeb left non-​Muslim religious sites and clergy in peace. On the contrary, 155

Murari Kumar Jha

Akbar was known to fund the construction of Hindu and Jain temples, take part in their celebrations, and appear in public wearing the tilaka on his forehead that was usually the mark in Hinduism of a devotee.56 The success of such policies can be gauged from the generally warm response of the  Mughals’ non-​Muslim subjects. The Jain scholar Padmasāgara, for example, welcomed the establishment of the Mughal Empire, praised the characters of its early emperors, and described the imperial capital as a haven of ecumenical tranquility: “Victorious Padshah Akbar rules in Fatehpur, the best of cities that . . . shines with houses of the four Hindu castes, Jain temples, the schools of those engaged in the six philosophies [of Hinduism] and the best palaces that are inhabited by the feet of Sufis, virtuous dervishes and Mughals.”57 Although the Mughals themselves did not generally issue documents in Sanskrit, it is telling that contemporary Sanskrit sources voluntarily echoed official Mughal ideology and referred to the emperor as “pādishāh” (pātiśāha) and “lord of Delhi” (dillīpati), whose court was “luminescent with many kings.”58 The Hindu scholar Vihāri Kṛṣṇadāsa even declared Akbar to be an avatar of Viṣṇu and praised him in Sanskrit verse as a supremely virtuous monarch, a “great ruler of the earth . . . born in order to protect cows and Brahmans.”59 Other pandits, in a similar vein, described Akbar as an avatar of Rama.60 Under Akbar and his heirs, the Mughals also began to appropriate a small number of customs and practices of distinctly South Asian and pre-​Islamic origin. Akbar thus restored the pre-​Islamic custom of holding daily “balcony audiences” (jharokhā darshan), in which the ruler appeared early in the morning at a palace balcony or window for a public audience. As mentioned above, Akbar not only wore a tilaka on his forehead, but also showed favor to members of the court by marking their brows with the same sign—​a Hindu gesture of blessing traditionally bestowed by priests and sages on their devotees and disciples. Another old royal Hindu tradition that found its way into Mughal imperial practice was the tulādān, a ceremony in which a king or prince was weighed on astrologically auspicious days (usually once or twice a year) in order that their weight in precious metals or valuable gifts might then be distributed to the poor.61 The very acts, however, that were most pleasing to Akbar’s non-​Muslim subjects also caused consternation among pious Muslims, who saw them as signs that Akbar was veering away from orthodox Islam. Several religious scholars openly accused Akbar of heresy and in 1579 the chief justice of Jaunpur issued a fatwa declaring it lawful for Muslims to take up arms against their emperor. Akbar responded by adopting a range of measures meant to bring the religious establishment to heel and establish himself as a benevolently neutral figure who stood above and guided all religions as “master of both faiths” (dūhū dīn ko ṣāḥib). Within the Islamic community itself, Akbar sought to stifle the opposition of the ulema by pressuring a council of prominent religious scholars into releasing a statement (maḥẓar) in 1579 to the effect that the emperor, as a just sovereign, had a special role as arbiter to settle disagreements over the interpretation of Islamic law in his realm. Although often referred to as the “Infallibility Decree,” this statement did not, in fact, declare Akbar to be infallible. It did, however, infer that he was the ultimate 156

South Asia, 1400–1800

authority on Islamic religious matters—​hitherto considered the exclusive preserve of the ulema. Through the maḥẓar, Akbar also took upon himself the positive obligation of tolerating the diversity of religious opinions and practices among his subjects, even those he disagreed with. Akbar increasingly identified this spirit of benevolent forbearance and accommodation as a cornerstone of his reign, referring to it as the policy of “peace toward all” (ṣulḥ-​i kull).62 Having largely ceased to observe the daily rituals and obligations of Sunni orthodox Islam by then, Akbar took the daring decision in 1582 to found his own religion with himself as its ritual center. Akbar’s new ecumenical “super-​faith,” which he modestly dubbed the “Divine Religion” (Dīn-​i Ilāhī), canonized exactly his idealized vision of the empire. Both Hindus and Muslims were welcome to join and, as the tenets of the new cult were a pastiche of elements taken from the different major religions of South Asia (primarily Sufism), new “disciples” could simultaneously continue to practice their previous faiths. In many senses, the experiment can be seen as an attempt by Akbar and Abu’l Faẓl to create the sort of intense, personal ties between sovereign and servitors that Sufism had forged between the early Safavids and their Qizilbāsh murīds. Akbar certainly seems to have restricted membership in the Dīn-i Ilāhī almost exclusively to the imperial elite, and in practice there is no evidence that the cult found any adherents beyond the intimate circle of Akbar’s closest friends and servitors. It should be needless to say that both the Muslim and Hindu religious establishments viewed the emperor’s experiment with a mix of horror and bemusement.63 Despite the failure of individual policies such as the reconquest of Central Asia or the Dīn-i Ilāhī, overall the Mughals’ various policies aimed at establishing and buttressing their rule were highly successful. How much so can be gauged from the fact that, in contrast to the tenuous position of the first two Mughal emperors, their seventeenth-​century heirs Jahāngīr (r. 1605–​28), Shāh Jahān (r. 1628–​58), and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–​1707) enjoyed widespread popular esteem and legitimacy. This legitimacy would survive the challenges the empire had to confront from a variety of different ethnic groups, chieftains, and warlords and would even persist long after the Mughals had lost the military means to compel it.

Mughal Interactions with Other Empires We have seen how the Mughals deployed symbolic means and cultural idioms to establish their political legitimacy in South Asia, but how did the Mughals carry out relations with their Central Asian, Persian, and Ottoman neighbors? How did the Mughals reconcile their universalist claims with the existence of equally powerful emperors not very far from their notional borders, which were never really sealed off or settled? By the early sixteenth century, the Mughals had lost the contest over their Central Asian homeland to the Shaybanid dynasty, who could also boast a more direct connection to the Chinggisid lineage. The Uzbeks ceased to pose any direct threat to their neighbors 157

Murari Kumar Jha

after the death of ‘Abdullāh Khan in 1598, but they remained strong enough to withstand all efforts by the Mughals to dislodge them from the lands that would become known as “Uzbekistan.” The Mughals nevertheless continued to regard themselves as the rightful rulers of Central Asia and periodically attempted to regain it. A Mughal army thus briefly conquered Badakhshan on the northeastern frontier of Afghanistan in 1646 but was unable to hold onto the region for more than a year. The Mughal official attitude toward the Uzbek khans thus remained a hostile and patronizing one that wavered over whether to treat them as usurpers or merely as wayward provincial governors.64 Mughal relations with Persia, by comparison, were generally marked by cordiality and mutual respect. Formal correspondence between the two rulers was not frequent, but it was regular and correct. After ‘Abbās I had been tardy in sending his congratulations to Jahāngīr upon the latter’s coronation in 1605, for example, the Safavid shah recognized his error and proffered as excuse that urgent matters related to the reconquest of Azerbaijan and Shirvan had made him negligent of his duties elsewhere.65 In their correspondence, both states tactfully avoided the question of whether the Mughals formally recognized Safavid supremacy, as Humāyūn had promised to do in the days when the Mughal had required Safavid military support to regain his throne. Whatever the Safavids thought privately, they implicitly acknowledged the Mughals’ claim to the imperial mantle of Tīmūr and referred to the Mughal seat of power as the “Throne of the Son-​in-​Law” (Tāj-​i Gurgan). This is not to say that tensions were entirely absent from Safavid-​Mughal relations. The initial attitude of goodwill struck up between Jahāngīr and ‘Abbās at the beginning of their reigns, for example, quickly faded as each sought to assert their rival claims to Kabul and Kandahar. The two cities were strategically important to both empires as military outposts and transit points for the caravan trade that connected South Asia with Central and West Asia. Akbar, Jahāngīr, and Shāh Jahān each won and then lost control over this frontier region, until in 1648 Shah ‘Abbās II achieved the decisive victory.66 When Jahāngīr had lost Kandahar to the Safavids in 1622, he sought to make up for his loss of prestige by commissioning the painting of a dream he had had of a meeting with Shah ‘Abbās (Figure 5.1). In the allegorically charged painting that resulted, the two emperors hover over a world map, with Shah ‘Abbās standing at a lower elevation upon a lamb that represents Persia, while Jahāngīr, his feet set firmly on a lion that sprawls over the section of the map depicting Safavid territory, leans down to embrace the shah. The claws of the lion curl menacingly above Kandahar and its eyes gaze fixedly toward Central Asia.67 The painting thus illustrates graphically the long-​cherished aspirations of the Mughals to wield effective power over these territories once held by Tīmūr and his descendants. The Safavids, for their part, clearly saw themselves as the senior partner in the relationship and took pride in the fact that the Mughals had adopted their literary culture and clearly recognized the age-​old cultural superiority of Persia.68 Compared with the prestigious Chinggisid-​Timurid genealogy of the Mughals, the Ottomans were unquestionably of humbler origins. Their guardianship over the Muslim holy places since the 1520s, however, and their assumption of the role of caliph more 158

South Asia, 1400–1800

Figure 5.1  Jahāngīr’s Dream: ‘Abbās I, Shah of Persia (left) and Jahāngīr, Emperor of India, ca. 1620. Found in the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (Photo by Fine Art Images/​Heritage Images/​Getty Images.) than compensated for their genealogical deficiencies vis-​à-​vis the Mughals.69 In practice, Ottoman caliphal claims were inconvenient but they were also of little practical consequence for the Mughals, as they had grounded their political status on other bases. The Mughals blithely sidestepped the question of whether or not to recognize Ottoman claims to the caliphate of all Sunni Muslims by positing the existence of two caliphates. In the mid-​1550s, Humāyūn thus seems to have dispatched a letter with the Ottoman 159

Murari Kumar Jha

admiral Seydi Ali Reis for Sultan Süleyman referring to the latter as the “khalīfa of highest qualities,” while at the same time announcing to the Ottomans that the “throne of khilāfa of the realms of Hind and Sind is once again graced by a monarch whose magnificence is equal to that of Solomon [i.e., of Süleyman].”70 The Ottomans, no doubt taking offense at this presumption, did not acknowledge the letter and sent no congratulatory message upon the accession of Akbar to the Mughal throne. The maḥẓar of 1579 made Akbar’s claim to a parallel caliphate more explicit by lauding him as “caliph of the age” (khilāfat al-​zamān).71 Thus, in their imperial rhetoric the Mughals presented themselves as pādishāhs of the world without rivals, although in reality the Safavids and Ottomans were no lesser sovereigns and had equally grandiose self-​perceptions. In the 1570s, Akbar began to project his empire’s influence outside the subcontinent by sponsoring parties of pilgrims, including several members of the imperial family and high-​ranking officials, to perform the Hajj in the Ottoman-​controlled Holy Cities. The Ottoman court received the news of the arrival in Jeddah of such a large, wealthy, and politically influential Mughal delegation with deep suspicion and orders were sent to the sharif of Mecca that he was not to allow the delegation to prolong their stay nor to win popular esteem by dispensing Mughal largesse to the poor and the ulema. Officially, the Ottomans justified these prohibitions on logistical grounds, claiming—​ not unreasonably—​that such a large party represented a considerable burden on local supplies of food and water. The Ottoman government clearly saw Mughal attempts to distribute rich gifts in Mecca, however, as an attempt to undermine Ottoman prestige at the Holy Places, and this at a time when diplomatic relations between Akbar and Murad were fast deteriorating and when news of Akbar’s heterodox innovations was just starting to reach Istanbul. Within South Asia itself, the Mughals regarded the lesser polities of the subcontinent such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and Shi’ite kingdoms of the Deccan as either vassals or rebels. The Mughals treated the Marathas, for example, as little more than rebellious zamīndārs and never recognized the rising Maratha Confederacy as political coequals. These rival states, in turn, vacillated over how to position themselves in relation to Mughal claims of suzerainty. Śivaji Bhonsle, for example, posed a fundamental challenge to Mughal supremacy in 1674 by declaring himself “lord of the parasol” (chhatrapati) or sovereign overlord. Śivaji, in reviving a self-​consciously Vedic investment ceremony (mahābhiṣeka) and hoary Sanskrit titles, challenged not only Mughal political authority but even the very religio-​cultural framework they used to articulate and justify their political claims. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the power of the Marathas waxed at Mughal expense and in several cases Maratha rulers deposed or elevated individual Mughal emperors. Despite this, the Marathas often found it expedient to acknowledge Mughal suzerainty de jure if not de facto. The Rajput kingdoms of western India and the Shi’ite kingdoms of the Deccan followed a similar strategy, paying tribute and  formally acknowledging their subordination to the Mughal “peacock throne” while remaining otherwise entirely autonomous. Particularly irksome to the Mughals were the close diplomatic and cultural ties that all three Deccan 160

South Asia, 1400–1800

kingdoms maintained with Persia, and the fact that in the Shi’ite sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda prayers at the Friday sermon (khuṭba) were read out in the name of the Safavid shah rather than that of the Mughal “caliph.”72 Europeans, beginning with the Portuguese, generally recognized Mughal claims to a special political status in South Asia and referred to the emperor as “the Great Mughal” (Magnus Mogol or Mogor), just as the Ottoman and Safavid emperors were known as the “Grand Turk” and “Grand Sophy,” respectively. The Mughals, for their part, tended to classify most European monarchs as kings, rather than emperors of a status comparable with themselves.73 Indeed, Sir Thomas Roe, the first English ambassador to the Mughal court, complained generally of the Mughals’ lack of interest in formal diplomatic relations and more specifically of the refusal of Jahāngīr to “bynde himselfe reciprocally to any Prince vpon termes of Equalety.”74 Otherwise, the Mughals showed little interest in European models of kingship and governance, although they did develop quite a taste for such cultural and technological productions as European paintings, globes, firearms, clocks, and so on, which they worked upon and adapted to their needs.75

Legacy of the Mughal Empire References to empire are rife in the textbooks of South Asian history—​notwithstanding the lack of any consensus as to what actually constitutes an empire, other than a vague sense of their being expansive polities.76 From the Magadha Empire ca. the sixth century bce to the Maratha and Indo-​Afghan empires of the eighteenth century, there is hardly a historical phase of South Asian history without an empire or empires. Despite this ubiquity, “empire” assumed a distinctly negative connotation in South Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a result of the experience of exploitation at the hands of British colonial authorities. The twenty-​first century, however, has seen a new interest in how empires met the challenge of governing territories containing not only geographic diversity but also a multitude of people from different ethnicities, languages, and faiths.77 While imperial repertoires of rule differed between states and evolved over time in response to changing technologies and economies, the ideas and practices of empires could be surprisingly persistent over space and time, as this chapter has tried to demonstrate. The Mughals, for example, deliberately presented themselves as a continuation of the Timurid and Mongol imperial past. In doing so, they drew on a wide range of South, Central, and West Asian traditions that aspired to universal rule while tolerating religious and ethnic differences. The longevity of the Mughal Empire may be understood precisely in terms of the lessons it thus learned on how to maintain the delicate balance between centralization and the practical imperative to tolerate and engage the ambitions of a wide range of political actors and communities. The Maurya and Gupta empires of the past, for example, provided precedents of states that asserted their suzerainty 161

Murari Kumar Jha

over many subordinate allies, while allowing these to rule their domains in autonomous fashion. The ancient Indian imperial practice of layered sovereignty found echoes in the system of semiautonomous vassals and chieftains spread across the breadth of the Mughal Empire. Mughal political arrangements resembled not only the South Asian past, but had parallels elsewhere in Southeast Asia where Indic notions of cakravartin kings ruling over imperial “mandalas” or “galactic polities” had also spread.78 Such a broad and encompassing model of rule encouraged the Mughal Empire to embrace a general policy of openness to a wide range of partners so long as they were willing to work within the larger Mughal imperial framework. A good example of

Figure 5.2  Map of India in 1757 (ca. 1912). From The Romance of India, ed. Herbert Strang (London:  Hodder & Stroughton, 1912). Artist unknown. (Photo by the print collector/​Getty Images.) 162

South Asia, 1400–1800

this was the relatively unrestricted access and freedom of travel and movement that it extended to foreigners, especially in comparison with other empires such as China. The Mughal realm was a land of opportunities, where Persian administrators and artists, Arab religious scholars and merchants, and Turani and Afghan warriors all found a warm welcome and the chance to carve out a place in the world for themselves. Europeans who came to the subcontinent were received no differently. Foreign merchants needed to arrange for the security of their persons and merchandise by hiring armed escorts, but otherwise the Mughals allowed both Asian and European merchants to move freely about their territory. During the early eighteenth century, for example, the Dutch East India Company created a private fleet of armed barges, manned by European and local soldiers, to protect their commerce on the Ganga between Hugli and Patna.79 By comparison, it would have been unthinkable in the Ming or Qing empires for a European company to form their own private militia on Chinese territory. This openness of the Mughal imperial realm can be seen as a sign of confidence in its strength rather than weakness. While the success of the Mughal Empire depended on the rulers’ capacity to learn from past imperial ideas and practices, the Mughals left an important legacy for the putative states that emerged in the wake of its decline in the eighteenth century. The Mughal Empire helped shape the history of the English East India Company in many ways through long contact and mutual exchanges since the early seventeenth century. The Company’s embassies to the Mughal court and its dealings with provincial and local authorities imparted significant lessons on how to run an empire, enforce a hierarchy, and secure legitimacy in South Asia. The Company, especially during the early phase of domination in Bengal, observed, reported, and archived the events of both political and commercial nature that unfolded in India since the earlier period, even though their perceptions were often marred by prejudice.80 Eventually as the dīwān of Bengal, the Company would formally become a vassal of the Mughals in the mid-​ eighteenth century. The later successes of British empire-​building in South Asia often depended on adapting and continuing Mughal institutions, from taxes to jurisprudence to the use of intermediaries with the different communities and administrative use of the Persian language. Like so many of the Mughals’ other rebellious zamīndārs, the British would continue to pay lip service to Mughal legitimacy till the middle of the nineteenth century, even as they had already supplanted the Mughals as the supreme arbitrator of differences arising among the various constituents of the empire.

Notes 1 F. J. Richards, “Geographical Factors in Indian Archeology,” The Indian Antiquary 62 (1933), 235–​43. According to archeologist Dilip K.  Chakrabarti, while the geographical scope of Richards’s four regions or “thrusts” may well be accepted, we should be cautious about treating the boundaries between these regions as fixed since in practice they tended to

163

Murari Kumar Jha

be fluid and shifted over time. See Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Archaeological Geography of the Ganga Plain: The Lower and the Middle Ganga (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), p. 19. 2 John F. Richards, “Early Modern India and World History,” Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (1997), 197–​209 (esp. 204). 3 Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynasty in Early Modern South and Central Asia (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 37–​8, 47. 4 Ram Prasad Tripathi, “The Turko-​Mongol Theory of Kingship,” in The Mughal State 1526–​ 1750, ed. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 118–​19. 5 Murari Kumar Jha, “Migration, Settlement, and State Formation in the Ganga Plain: A Historical Geographic Perspective,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient [hereafter, JESHO] 57, no. 4 (2014), 587–​627. 6 Shereen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire, c.1595: A Statistical Study (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 194–​5; John F. Richards, The New Cambridge History of India, Vol.1.5: The Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 76, 140. For an interesting account of the process of Mughal political expansion and the resentments of Uzbeks and Afghans against Akbar’s growing power, see André Wink, Akbar in the series Makers of the Muslim World (Oxford:  Oneworld, 2009), pp.  28–​35. 7 Jahāngīr, The Tuzūk-​i-​Jahāngīrī or Memoir of Jahāngīr, trans. Alexander Rogers, ed. Henry Beveridge (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), vol. 1, p. 395; Abraham Eraly, Emperors of the Peacock Throne: The Saga of the Great Mughals (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 261. 8 Stephen P. Blake has shown that nine different Mughal emperors claimed this title by manipulating the conjunction astrology as there were twelve different ways to calculate Persian words and phrases. See his Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 172–​3. 9 Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp.  127–​38; Dirk D.  H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–​ 1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 137–​45. 10 In the northeastern parts of the Mughal Empire, the humid environment set severe constraints on the effectiveness of Mughal cavalry. The Mughals therefore tried to adapt to local techniques of warfare in Bengal and Assam. On ghurabs (galleasses) and their suitability for the coastal and riverine warfare, see Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–​1700 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 163. 11 Jos Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-​Afghan Empire c.1710–​1780 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 109–​13, quotation on p. 109; see also Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp. 165–​71. On Mughal adventures in Assam, see Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Life of Mir Jumla: The General of Aurangzeb (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1951), pp. 278–​83. 12 For a military response to the Maratha problem of the Mughals which weakened the empire irreparably and contributed significantly in its decline, see M. N. Pearson, “Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal Empire,” The Journal of Asian Studies [hereafter, JAS] 35, no. 2 (1976), 221–​35; Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp. 208–​42; for the coronation of Śivaji, see Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1973), pp. 201–​19. 13 André Wink, Al-​Hind: The Making of the Indo-​Islamic World (Leiden:  E.J. Brill, 1996), vol. 2, pp. 216–​17. For a discussion on iqṭā‘, see Richard M. Eaton, Cambridge History of India, vol. 1.8: A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Lives (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2005), vol. 1.8, pp. 25–​6; Stephen F. Dale,

164

South Asia, 1400–1800

The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 100. 14 On khāliṣa lands, see Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp. 76–​7; for other tax-​free land grants, pp.  92–​3; Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707–​1740 (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1972), pp. xix–​xxvii. 15 Irfan Habib, “The Mansab System, 1595–​1637,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 29th Session, Patiala (1967), 221–​42; Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (1966 repr./​revised edn, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 11–​14. 16 For example, toward the end of Jahāngīr’s reign the governor of Bihar, Mīrzā Rustam Safrī, was pensioned off and received an annual sum of 1,20,000 rupees. The eldest son of Safrī, Mīrzā Murād too received an annual pension of 40,000 rupees from Shāh Jahān and settled in Patna. These pensioners certainly developed local roots along with those who received land grants. Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān lavished land grants as madad-​i ma’āsh and presumably also under other titles such as inām, aima, and so on to many notables and grandees in turbulent eastern parts of the empire; see R.  R. Diwakar (ed.), Bihar through the Ages (1959 repr., Patna: Government of the State of Bihar, 2001), pp. 491–​ 4. For a reference to Bhojpur chieftain Gajpati holding Bhojpur and Bihiya in jāgīr, see Shahpurshah Hormasji Hodivala, Studies in Indo-​Muslim History: A Critical Commentary on Elliot and Dowson’s History of India as Told by Its Own Historians (Bombay: [n.p.], 1939), p.  603. For the history of Ujjainiya Rajput chieftains in general, see also Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, pp. 123–​4. 17 Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, pp. 7–​9. 18 The population estimate is from Ashok V. Desai, “Population and Standard of Living in Akbar’s Time—​A Second Look,” Review (Fernand Braudel Centre) 3, no. 3 (1980), 429–​62, see esp. 451–​7. Other estimates range between 100 and 115 million in 1600. 19 Pearson, “Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal Empire,” quotation on p.  226, italics in original; M. N. Pearson, “Premodern Muslim Political System,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 102, no. 1 (1982), 47–​58. 20 For example, on how Asad Beg had become a mansabdār, see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “On the End of the Akbari Dispensation,” in Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 123–​64. For examples of some nomads and rebels being coopted as mansabdārs, see Sunita Zaidi, “The Mughal State and Tribes in Seventeenth Century Sind,” Indian Economic and Social History Review [hereafter, IESHR] 26, no. 3 (1989), 343–​62. For the layered relationship between the Mewatis and the imperial Mughals and Rajputs, see Shail Mayaram, “Mughal State Formation: The Mewati Counter-​Perspective,” IESHR 34, no. 2 (1997), 169–​97. For a cursory sketch of Jain-​Mughal relations, see Shalin Jain, “Piety, Laity and Royalty: Jains under the Mughals in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century,” Indian Historical Review [hereafter, IHR] 40, no. 1 (2013), 67–​92. For a theoretical discussion on this, see Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 21 Akbar, for example, used the title of dīwān or dīwān-​i ‘alā instead of vazīr. This he did in order to avoid the Central Asian connotation of the term “vazīr” as an all-​powerful official under whom various heads of administration functioned. 22 Abū’l-​Fazl Allāmī, ‘Āīn-​i-​Akbarī, trans. H. Blochmann (1927:  repr. New Delhi:  Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1977), vol. 1, pp. 4–​7. For the application of the Sharia laws to different communities and the role of qāḍī at local level in Gujarat, see Farhat Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in Western India, c. 1572–​1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 72–​6.

165

Murari Kumar Jha

23 Douglas E. Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 2–​39; Stephen P. Blake, “The Patrimonial-​Bureaucratic Empire of the Mughals,” JAS 39, no. 1 (1979), 77–​94; Raziuddin Aquil, “Salvaging a Fractured Past: Reflections on Norms of Governance and Afghan-​Rajput Relations in North India in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” Studies in History 20, no. 1 (2004), 1–​29; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Mughal State—​Structure or Process? Reflections on Recent Western Historiography,” IESHR 29, no. 3 (1992), 291–​321, see esp. pp. 296–​303. 24 Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Introduction,” in The Mughal State 1526–​1750, ed. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 19–​21; Subrahmanyam, “The Mughal State—​Structure or Process?”; Aquil, “Salvaging a Fractured Past.” 25 Allāmī, ‘Āīn-​i-​Akbarī, vol. 2, pp. 94–​5. 26 For the claim that about half of the total agricultural produce was taken as the land revenue by the Mughals, see Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire, pp. 106–​18; see also Irfan Habib, “Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India,” Journal of Economic History 29, no. 1 (1969), 32–​78, esp. p. 51; Tapan Raychaudhuri, “The State and the Economy: 1) The Mughal Empire,” in The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol.1: c. 1250–c. 1750, ed. Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 172–​213 (esp. p. 173). 27 Ratnalekha Ray, “The Bengal Zamindars: Local Magnates and the State before the Permanent Settlement,” IESHR 12, no. 3 (1975), 263–​92. For northwestern India, see Chetan Singh, Region and Empire: Punjab in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi:  Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 136–​53. 28 On the local markets and exchange networks sustained on the surplus generated in rural parts, see B. R. Grover, “An Integrated Pattern of Commercial Life in the Rural Society of North India during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Money and the Market in India 1100–​1700, ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 219–​55. 29 Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 16–​19; Aziza Hasan, “The Silver Currency Output of the Mughal Empire and Prices in India in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” IESHR 6, no. 1 (1969), 85–​ 116. For a criticism of the price rise thesis of Hasan, see Om Prakash and J. Krishnamurty, “Mughal Silver Currency: A Critique,” IESHR 7, no. 1 (1970), 139–​50; for a lack of any trend reflecting price rise in Bengal, see Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–​1720 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 252–​3. 30 R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 147. 31 Gyan Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 88–​9. For an excellent study on the Khatri merchant turned zamīndārs in Burdwan, see John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-​Century Bengal (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 148–​51. 32 De Haan, Huysman, Hasselaar, Blom, Durven, Gabry, enz. XI, January 31, 1728, in W. Ph. Coolhaas (ed.), Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-​Generaal in Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (’s-​Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), vol. 8, p. 163; Murari Kumar Jha, “The Political Economy of the Ganga River: Highway of State Formation in Mughal India,” PhD dissertation, Leiden University, 2013, pp. 254–​5. 33 Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986); André Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-​Century Maratha Svarājya (Cambridge:  Cambridge University

166

South Asia, 1400–1800

Press, 1986); see also, the collection of essays in Seema Alavi (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in India: Debates in Indian History and Society (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); and J. F. Richards, Kingship and Authority in South Asia (Delhi:  Oxford University Press, 1998). 34 F. W. Buckler, “The Political Theory of the Indian Mutiny,” in Legitimacy and Symbols: The South Asian Writings of F.W. Buckler, ed. M. N. Pearson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1985), pp. 43–​73; William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 (London:  Bloomsbury, 2006). See also, essays in Crispin Bates and Gavin Rand (eds), Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on Indian Uprising of 1857 (New Delhi:  Sage, 2013), and for a diverse set of opinions in Ainslie T. Embree, 1857 in India: Mutiny or War of Independence? (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1966). 35 J. C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition:  Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 166–​7; see also J. C. Heesterman, “India and the Inner Conflict of Tradition,” Daedalus 102, no. 1 (1973), 97–​113 (esp. 103–​ 104). For Akbar’s efforts at balancing different ethnic groups, see Chandra, Parties and Politics, pp. 13–​14. 36 The Mahābhārata, trans. Johannes A.  B.  van Buitenen (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1975), vol. 2/​3, p. 53. 37 Kauṭilīya, The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass), vol. 2, p. 407. 38 Radha Kumud Mookerji, Candragupta Maurya and His Times: Madras University Sir William Meyer Lectures, 1940–​41 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966), p. 73. 39 Romila Thapar, “The Mauryan Empire in Early India,” Historical Research 79, no. 205 (2006), 287–​305 (esp. 302). Buddhist literature would attribute universal rulership to Aśoka more openly. The Aśokāvadān, for example, believed to have been composed in the second century bce, describes a chance encounter between the Buddha and a boy named Jaya in the city of Rājagriha. The child placed a handful of dirt in the Buddha’s begging bowl with the wish that in a future life “I would become king and, after placing the earth under a single umbrella of sovereignty, I would pay homage to the blessed Buddha.” The Buddha predicted that the boy would indeed return as a righteous cakravartin named Aśoka in the city of Pataliputra. Nayanjot Lahiri, Ashoka in Ancient India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), chap. 1. 40 Gérard Fussman, “Central and Provincial Administration in Ancient India: The Problem of the Mauryan Empire,” IHR 14, nos 1/​2 (1987–​88), 43–​72; Thapar, “The Mauryan Empire”; see also, Monica L. Smith, “Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95, no. 4 (2005), 831–​49. 41 Sheldon Pollock, “Empire and Imitation,” in Lessons of Empire, ed. Craig Calhoun, Frederick Cooper, and Kevin Moore (New York: New Press, 2006), pp. 175–​88 (esp. p. 184). 42 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 572. 43 See Richard Eaton, “The Persian Cosmopolis (900–​1900) and the Sanskrit Cosmopolis (400–​ 1400),” in The Persianate World: Towards a Conceptual Framework, ed. Abbas Amanat (forthcoming). 44 Phillip Wagoner, “ ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings’:  Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara,” JAS 55, no. 4 (1996), 851–​80 (esp. 853). 45 A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 105. 46 Munis D. Faruqui, The Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504–​1719 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 136–​43; see also Munis D. Faruqui, “The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and the Formation of the Mughal Empire in India,” JESHO 48, no. 4 (2005), 487–​523.

167

Murari Kumar Jha

47 Bābur, The Baburnama: Memoir of Babur, Prince and Emperor, trans. and ed. Wheeler M. Thackston (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 276–​9. 48 Ghiyās al-​Dīn Muḥammad Khwāndmīr, Qānūn-​i-​Humāyūnī (also Known as Humāyūn Nāmā) of Khwāndmīr: A Work on the Rules and Ordinances Established by the Emperor Humāyūn and on some Buildings Erected by his Order, trans. Baini Prasad (1940; repr. Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1996), pp. 17–​18. 49 Ibid., pp. 22–​36. 50 Abul Fazl, The Akbarnāmā of Abu-​l-​Fazl, trans. H. Beveridge (1907; repr. Delhi: Rare Books, 1972), vol. 1, p. 15, note 3. 51 Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), pp. 17, 42. 52 Abul Fazl, The Akbarnāmā, vol. 1, p. 205. 53 This paragraph relies mostly on Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity, pp. 54–​5, and the quotation is from p. 48. For the symbolic dominance of the world by means of allegorical use of cartography and globe by the Mughal rulers especially Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān, see Ebba Koch, “The Symbolic Possession of the World: European Cartography in Mughal Allegory and History Painting,” JESHO 55, nos 2/​3 (2012), 547–​80. 54 See, for example, the portrait of Jahāngīr and Akbar by Abu’l Ḥasan Nādir al-​Zamān, ca. 1614. Musée Guimet, Paris. 55 Chandra, Medieval India, p. 168; Abraham Eraly, The Mughal World: Life in India’s Last Golden Age (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2007), p. 227. In 1562, Akbar had remitted the pilgrim tax on Hindu pilgrimages; two years later, he abolished jizya, only to reimpose it briefly in 1575–​76, and finally abolished it in 1579. Such wavering suggests that Akbar was cautiously weighing the political implications of such a measure in light of the Sunni orthodox opposition. 56 Ian Copland et al., A History of State and Religion in India (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), chaps 6 and 7 (esp. pp. 118, 134). 57 From Padmasāgara’s Jagadgurukāvya. Translation here is from: Audrey Trutschke, “Setting the Record Wrong:  A Sanskrit Vision of Mughal Conquests,” South Asian History and Culture 3, no. 3 (2012), 372–​96 (esp. 379). 58 Audrey Truschke, “Contested History: Brahmanical Memories of Relations with the Mughals,” JESHO 58, no. 4 (2015), 419–​52 (esp. 438, 441). 59 Audrey Truschke, “Defining the Other: An Intellectual History of Sanskrit Lexicons and Grammars of Persian,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 40 (2012), 635–​68 (esp. 649). 60 A. Azfar Moin, “Peering through the Cracks in the Baburnama: The Textured Lives of Mughal Sovereigns,” IESHR 49, no.  4 (2012), 493–​526; see also, Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, pp.  167–​8. 61 F. W. Buckler, “A New Interpretation of Akbar’s ‘Infallibility Decree’ of 1579,” in Legitimacy and Symbols: The South Asian Writings of F.W. Buckler, ed. M. N. Pearson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1985), pp. 131–​48; Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, pp.  219–​23; Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200–​1800 (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2008), pp. 138–​40. 62 This conception of universal concord or social equilibrium had its origins in the political treatises (akhlāq) of Persia and Central Asia. Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India before Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 130; Alam, The Languages of Political Islam, pp. 61–​9. 63 Makhanlal Roychoudhury, The Dīn-​i Ilāhī or the Religion of Akbar (Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1941), pp. 276–​309. 64 Shāh Jahān, The Shah Jahan Nama of Inayat Khan: An Abridged History of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, Compiled by His Royal Librarian, ed. W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 257, 268.

168

South Asia, 1400–1800

65 Jahāngīr, The Tuzūk-​i-​Jahāngīrī or Memoir of Jahāngīr, trans. Alexander Rogers, ed. Henry Beveridge (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), vol. 1, p. 195. 66 Muzaffar Alam, “Trade, State Policy and Regional Change:  Aspects of Mughal-​Uzbek Commercial Relations, c. 1550–​1750,” JESHO 37, no. 3 (1994), 203, 214–​15; see also, Paul E. Schellinger and Robert M. Salkin (eds), International Dictionary of Historical Places (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1996), vol. 5, pp. 439–​42. 67 Sumathi Ramaswamy, “Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 4 (2007), 751–​82 (esp. 754–​5); Koch, “The Symbolic Possession of the World,” 557–​9. 68 Richards, The Mughal Empire, p. 111. 69 For example, the Ottoman bureaucrat and historian Mustafa Ali (1541–​1600) tried to link the Ottomans with the Chinggisid-​Timurid line of world conquerors. See Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity, pp. 39–​40. 70 Quoted by N. R. Farooqi, “Six Ottoman Documents on Mughal-​Ottoman Relations during the Reign of Akbar,” Journal of Islamic Studies 7, no. 1 (1996), 32–​48 (esp.  32–​3). In a diplomatic correspondence between the Mughal and Ottoman viziers, the Mughal minister (after boasting of the territorial possessions of the Mughal emperor) complained to Mustafa Paşa that “the (Ottoman) secretaries were ignorant in what manner such a power should be addressed, and what regard should be paid to such as state.” Joseph von Hammer-​Purgstall, Memoir on the Diplomatic Relations between the Courts of Dehli and Constantinople in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London:  Printer to the Royal Asiatic Society, 1830), p. 21. 71 For the view that in using the title of caliph of the age, the emperor Akbar “not only maintained Mughal independence of the Ottoman Sultān, but also challenged his right to the title of Khalīfah,” see Buckler, “A New Interpretation,” pp. 146–​7. For a counter perspective that since the Timurids had never accepted the outside authority of any caliph, therefore Akbar’s act does not imply opposition to the Ottomans, see Satish Chandra, Medieval India: From Sultanate to the Mughals (New Delhi: Har-​Anand Publications, 2005), p. 172. 72 Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies in Culture and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 178–​9; Radhey Shyam, The Kingdom of Ahmadnagar (Delhi: Motilala Banarsidass, 1966), pp. 83–​4. 73 An interesting exception is the Adab al-​Salṭanat, a text from 1609 on “The Duties of Kingship,” which explicitly refers to the Habsburg monarch Philip II as “emperor of Spain” (bādshāh-​i ispāniyya)—​but then the author of this text was a Jesuit, Jerónimo Xavier. C. Lefèvre, “Europe-​Mughal India-​Muslim Asia,” in Structures on the Move: Technologies of Governance in Transcultural Encounter, ed. Antje Flüchter and Susan Richter (Berlin and London: Springer, 2012), p. 135. 74 Thomas Roe, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615–​1619, as Narrated in his Journal and Correspondence, ed. William Foster (London:  Hakluyt Society, 1899), p. xxviii. 75 Alam and Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World, pp. 309–​10. 76 Pollock, “Empire and Imitation,” p. 177. 77 Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History, pp. 1–​22. 78 For discussion of these terms, see the chapters in this volume by Bruce Lockhart and Sher Banu A. L. Khan. Also, Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, “The Galactic Polity in Southeast Asia,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3, no. 3 (2013), 503–​34 (esp. 513–​14). On applying the “galactic polity” model to the Mughal Empire, see: Stanley J. Tambiah, “What Did Bernier Actually Say? Profiling the Mughal Empire,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 32, no. 2 (1998), 361–​86.

169

Murari Kumar Jha

79 J. van Goor (ed.), Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-​Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, 1729–​1737 (’s-​Gravenhage:  Nijhoff, 1988), vol. 9, p.  380; Nationaal Archief (NA), Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), Inventaris Nummer (Inv. Nr.) 8777, From Hugli to Batavia 30.11.1734, “Instructie voor den vaandrig Jan van Ingen vertrekkende althans, met een Corps militaire voor aff na Pattena,…” signed by J. A. Sigterman [spelt differently] at Hulgi on 21.07.1734, pp. 679–​89 (esp. p. 687); NA, VOC, Inv. Nr. 8777, From Hugli to Batavia 30.11.1734, “Instructie voor den manhaften Capitain Luijtenant Jan Geldsak,….” signed by J. A. Sichterman etc. at Hugli on 10.09.1734, see, pp. 744–​6. 80 Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-​Century India: The British in Bengal (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press), pp. 7–​9; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Frank Submissions: The Company and the Mughals between Sir Thomas Roe and Sir William Norris,” in World of the East India Company, ed. H. V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press in association with the National Maritime Museum and the University of Leicester, 2002), pp. 69–​96.

170

Chapter 6

Northern Eurasia, 1300–​1800: Russian Imperial Practice from Tsardom to Empire Paul W. Werth Introduction Among the more striking developments of the early-​modern period was the emergence of Russia as an Asian power. By the mid-​seventeenth century Russians had reached the Pacific Ocean, and by the end of the century the Muscovite state had concluded a diplomatic agreement on its new borders with the principal power of East Asia—​the Qing Empire. To be sure, Russia’s control over northern Asia remained tenuous in many respects well into the nineteenth century, with the nomadic populations of Asia’s steppe regions representing particularly formidable rivals. But by 1800 Russia had clearly become a central player in shaping Asia’s future. This chapter accordingly rests on the premise that any account of Asia’s imperial history remains incomplete without consideration of this major protagonist in the continent’s north. Positing fundamental continuities across two dynasties—​ the Rurikids and the Romanovs—​and two political formations—​Muscovy and the Russian Empire—​I treat the entire period from 1300 to 1800 as a coherent whole and use the term “Russia” to denote the polity in question across that half-​millennium. Those centuries witnessed a substantial reversal in fortunes between the steppe-​based polities that long dominated northern Asia and their former subjects, the sedentary populations of the forest zone. Whereas in the 1200s the Mongols had subdued the East Slavic principalities of Rus (what is today Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus), by 1800 Russia had made substantial progress in extending its dominion deep into the steppe. By the 1420s, the Golden Horde, the westernmost segment of Chinggis Khan’s empire, was fragmenting into a collection of rival khanates, which had all come under Russian rule by 1783. Likewise, the nomadic confederations that each dominated the steppe for roughly a century in turn—​the Nogays, Kalmyks, and Kazakhs—​found themselves substantially deprived of their independence and largely subjected to Russia by 1800.1 As we shall see, Russia achieved this outcome not only by acquiring technology from the West, but also by adopting many practices from its eastern neighbors, such that its political culture remained partly rooted in steppe traditions. At the same time, by the eighteenth century tsarist elites had developed a consciousness of their country as an empire, which presumed dominion over diverse peoples and immense geographical space based on claims of civilizational superiority. In this sense the transition in this chapter’s title—​from

171

Paul W. Werth

tsardom to empire—​refers not only to the magnitude of Russia’s territorial growth, but also to shifts in its self-​perception and sense of purpose. In presenting the history of Russia’s Asian empire, the account below focuses on three principal issues: the ways in which Russian rulers imagined and legitimated their rule across five centuries; the motivations driving Russia’s fantastic territorial expansion across the Asian continent; and the major institutions and practices of Russian imperial rule. Before turning to those issues, however, I address the challenges of distinguishing Asia from Europe in the Russian case and provide a brief overview of Muscovy’s rise and evolution into the Russian Empire.

Russia, Asia, Europe Russia’s early-​modern empire in Asia consisted eventually of three regions, each with its own distinctive geography and history of integration. The first was Siberia, Russia’s “North Asian colony,”2 which came under Muscovite rule from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth (Figure 6.1). The second was the Pontic-​Caspian Steppe extending from the forest zone—​the main home of the East Slavs—​south toward the Black Sea and southeastward into the deserts of Transoxiana. The third was the northern foothills and mountain ranges of the Caucasus, where Russia came into contact—​and conflict—​with Persia and the Ottoman Empire. A comparison of these regions with the rest of Russia reveals the artificiality of a hard distinction between Europe and Asia. Siberia was not fundamentally distinct in geography or culture from the boreal regions of northern Russia that had formed the hinterland of Muscovy and other Rus principalities in the medieval period. Nor did the Urals extend far enough south to constitute a physical or cultural barrier between what is now Kazakhstan and the steppe running westward along the Black Sea to the Carpathians. Russia had a long history of engagement with nomadic peoples well before it moved eastward, and these relations unfolded along a north-​south axis as much as one extending from east to west. Patterns first established on the “European” side of the steppe had critical implications for Russia’s experience in Asia. Similarly, it confuses more than clarifies matters to treat the Caucasus as a neat border between Europe and Asia, given that two of the major peoples south of the Caucasus range—​Georgians and Armenians—​confessed Christianity and looked to Russia as an ally, whereas the closer peoples of the northern slopes were predominantly Muslim and more hostile to the Russian advance. The question of Russia’s own geographical and civilizational identity confounds the distinction between Europe and Asia further still. Although Europeans long regarded Muscovy specifically as a northern land, Westerners in the Renaissance era also emphasized its “Asiatic” character, given its location at the remote eastern edge of Europe, the exotic costumes of its emissaries, and the supposedly despotic power of its sovereign. Moscow itself was often described explicitly as an “Asiatic” city in the early-​modern 172

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

Figure 6.1  Tribes of Siberia, by Semen U. Remezov, early eighteenth century. From S. U. Remezov, Kratkaia sibirskaia letopis’ (Kungurskaia) so 154 risunkami, ed. A. I. Zost (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia F. G. Eleonskago, 1880). period—​ even as late as the nineteenth century.3 While Muscovy’s attachment to Christianity arguably marked it as “European,” Muscovite Orthodoxy was emphatically Eastern and probably as hostile to Western denominations as it was to Islam or indigenous faiths. By the late seventeenth century, however, Muscovy was actively adopting elements of Western culture and statecraft, and Peter the Great (1682–​1725) symbolically announced a rupture in his state’s identity by transferring its capital to the new, Western-​style city of St. Petersburg in 1712. Indeed, Russia arguably became a member of the European family in the eighteenth century more than in any other 173

Paul W. Werth

period of its history. Russian scholars at the time—​starting with Vasilii Tatishchev in the 1730s—​proposed the Ural Mountains as the boundary between Europe and Asia, thereby placing Russia’s core squarely within the former.4 The present-​day definition of Asia’s western boundary thus reflects the ideological efforts of Russia’s elites to construe their country as fundamentally European. A key thesis of this chapter is that in the period covered here, Russia went from being a polity rooted in Eurasian steppe politics—​a successor to the Golden Horde—​to a European empire built substantially on Western statecraft and Enlightenment thought. At the same time, patterns established in the early-​modern period continued to shape Russia’s dealings with the east well into the eighteenth century, creating a form of colonialism distinct from other European empires. In this sense, we may regard Muscovy/​Russia as a distinctly “Eurasian” polity that deployed practices, repertoires, and legitimizing strategies from both its Asian and European neighbors, while also developing many of its own.

The Rise and Growth of Muscovy: A Brief Sketch Scholars typically trace the history of Russia (and of Ukraine and Belarus) back to Kievan Rus, a loose medieval federation of princely states sharing a common language, religion, and dynasty. The object of much subsequent mythmaking, Kievan Rus can be considered a state only in the most conditional sense. The conversion of Grand Prince Vladimir to Orthodox Christianity in 988 certainly enhanced the degree of cultural unity across the polity’s amorphous and fluid territory, but in the words of one prominent historian, “The grand princes of Kiev appear to have had little or no conception of a state as a bounded territorial unit governed by a single sovereign entity, aspiring to administer, tax and control its people.”5 Thus when the Mongols began their conquest of Rus in 1237, they encountered a dozen or so poorly unified principalities, and the invaders probably imposed a degree of unity on the Rus lands that was otherwise absent. The Mongols did not displace the defeated Rurikid dynasty from its various appanages, but instead offered each surviving prince an opportunity to remain in place as vassals of the Golden Horde (also known as the Qipchaq Khanate and Ulus Jochi). As sub-​rulers, the Rus princes henceforward required a patent from the khan in order to exercise political power, and they also had to travel in person to the khan’s court at Sarai, on the lower Volga, to swear allegiance and receive their investiture. Besides appointing and removing the rulers of the Rus principalities, the khans also introduced a new source of contention by making one of their number the principal Mongol representative and tax collector over the Rus lands. The emergence of Moscow as the strongest contender for the associated title of “grand prince” depended in no small measure on the ability of its princes to position themselves as loyal servitors of the khans, who usually backed whichever candidate proved most effective at collecting tribute and taxes. While other principalities contested the Mongol yoke too soon, the rulers of Moscow submitted to the Horde so long as it remained 174

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

strong and mounted a challenge only after it became vulnerable. The effect of Mongol rule was thus to strengthen Moscow’s ascendancy over its rivals among the other Rus principalities. It is difficult to say precisely when Mongol rule ended. Moscow arguably issued its first substantive challenge to the Mongols in 1380, but the Golden Horde reasserted its authority a mere two years later, thoroughly sacking the city. In practice, the Muscovite grand princes were politically independent from the mid-​fifteenth century, but even after the final collapse of the Great Horde in 1502 they continued to make occasional payments to the Crimean Khan. As late as 1665, Moscow rendered gifts that the Crimeans considered tribute in exchange for a peace treaty.6 Already under the aegis of the Golden Horde, Muscovy embarked on an extended period of territorial aggrandizement, which we may divide into three partially overlapping phases. The first involved Moscow’s conquest of neighboring Slavic and Orthodox Christian principalities of northeastern Europe and its emergence as a significant rival to the other major powers of the region—​Sweden, Poland-​Lithuania, Crimea, the Ottoman Empire, and the Golden Horde itself. If in one sense this process entailed Moscow besting its immediate neighbors with occasional Mongol aid, it was also informed, eventually, by Moscow’s claim to the inheritance of Kievan Rus.7 Partly for this reason, the process has been designated in Russian historiography as “the gathering of the lands of Rus.” It was largely complete by the 1520s, with the exception of the western principalities (present-​day Belarus and Ukraine), which came under Lithuanian rule in the 1300s and remained part of Poland-​Lithuania until the eighteenth century. The second phase may be called “the gathering of the lands of the Golden Horde.”8 Extending from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this process saw the annexation of lands to the east and south of Moscow that had been part of the Mongol Empire and that were subsequently claimed by the successor Muslim khanates of Crimea, Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia. Muscovy also emerged in this period as an important factor in the internal politics of the Horde’s successor states, with the grand princes often intervening forcefully on behalf of their own protégés. The central event in this phase was the Muscovite conquest of Kazan in 1552, followed by those of Astrakhan and Siberia in 1556 and 1582. With Ottoman assistance, the Crimean Khanate resisted conquest until 1783 but eventually succumbed as well. The third phase of expansion extended Moscow’s rule well beyond both the Kievan and Mongol inheritances. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Russian Empire spread out across Siberia and the northern steppes in the east, while from the early eighteenth century to the early nineteenth it incorporated new territories in the west and south—​the Baltic region, Finland, Poland, Bessarabia, and portions of the Caucasus. While the first two phases solidified Russia’s place as a major regional force in northwestern Eurasia, the third signaled its emergence as one of the Great Powers with a geographic scope rivalled only by Spain and Britain. Across this entire process of expansion—​indeed, from the rise of Moscow all the way to 1917—​two different dynasties ruled Russia. The first was the Rurikid dynasty, 175

Paul W. Werth

whose members traced their origins back to Rurik, the semi-​mythical founder of Kievan Rus in the ninth century. The death of the last Rurikid ruler, Fedor, without an heir in 1598 precipitated a major crisis known as the Time of Troubles. In 1613, after upheaval, famine, and foreign invasion, an assembly of the realm offered the crown to Michael Romanov, thus establishing the new dynasty that would rule until 1917. The crisis of the Troubles notwithstanding, the transition from Rurikid to Romanov rule was relatively smooth and saw fundamental continuities in the historical processes of state-​ building, enserfment, and expansion. More significant than dynastic change was the formal creation of the Russian Empire in 1721, which reflected a significant reorientation of Russia toward European—​mostly Central European—​models of statecraft and the adoption of new assumptions about civilization divides. Russian rulers increasingly regarded their country as a European state, with important consequences for the practice of empire. Even so, one should not exaggerate this shift. Peter’s decision to declare himself “emperor” and the country “the Russian Empire” in many ways merely codified a reality that had already taken shape, and many long-​standing imperial practices, especially “on the ground,” continued more or less as they had before. Before considering those, however, let us examine how early-​modern Russians imagined and legitimated their emerging empire.

Legitimation and Imaginings Earlier we proposed that Russia was a distinctly Eurasian polity, and this character is discernable in the titulature adopted by Russian rulers over the centuries. We find the earliest rulers of Rus in the ninth century using the steppe title of kaǧan, presumably in order to render intelligible to steppe interlocutors the nature of their political claims.9 Some of the “princes” of Rus (kniazi) began to fashion themselves as “grand princes” by the late twelfth century, and by skill and luck the Muscovite rulers eventually monopolized that title. Of greater significance was the appropriation of the title of tsar, a Slavicized form of the Roman “caesar.” Ivan III (1462–​1505) began to try out this designation in dealings with certain foreign entities, and in the reign of his son Vasilii III (1505–​33) Muscovite bookmen used the title with greater frequency. Still, before the mid-​sixteenth century such usage remained episodic, and only in 1547 was the first Muscovite ruler, the young Ivan IV (1533–​84), actually crowned as tsar.10 Less clear is what the title tsar actually signified to its users, and the degree to which it reflected specifically imperial pretensions. The grand princes of Moscow had two readily available images of rulership upon which to draw, both having imperial connotations. The first model, inculcated by Orthodox Christianity and by Byzantine and Rus elite culture, was of an emperor (basileus) divinely appointed to rule over all Christians; the second model, absorbed through attendance at the court at Sarai, was that of the Mongol khans. There are good reasons to conclude that the grand princes drew on both models. Michael Cherniavsky has traced a process whereby for Muscovites under 176

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

Mongol rule, “the image of the khan overlapped with that of the basileus, vaguely fused with the latter.” For Russians of the sixteenth century, the title of tsar remained more firmly connected with the image of the khan, and as Muscovite rulers emerged from Mongol overlordship, they embraced the title of tsar less as a rejection of the khan’s sovereignty than as a mark of their own assumption of the same. The oldest Muscovite crown, for example, the “golden cap” eventually known as the “cap of Monomachus,” was almost certainly of Mongol origin—​possibly a gift from Khan Uzbek to Grand Prince Ivan I—​and thus “an expression of the sovereign position of the Tatar [Mongol] khan.” Following the Muscovite conquest of the successor states of the Golden Horde, the new possessions figured prominently in the full title of the tsar: “Great Sovereign [Gosudar], Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, of Vladimir, of Moscow, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Sovereign of Pskov . . . etc.”11 In short, Muscovite tsars seem to have regarded themselves as successors of the Golden Horde, if only in the sense that they had defeated khans in battle and thereby acquired their titles and patrimony. From this perspective, the conquest of Kazan in 1552 served as confirmation of the imperial status that Ivan IV had claimed in assuming the title of tsar.12 Still, the fact that the khans were not Christians placed limits on this appropriation. Mongol influences on the exercise of power in Russia had to remain concealed beneath representations emphasizing the Christian character of the monarch. Thus the Mongol “golden cap” acquired a Byzantine gloss through the legend that the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomachus had bestowed it upon the Kievan prince Vladimir Monomakh in the eleventh century as imperial regalia. This legend conveyed the message that sanction to rule came not directly from God, but indirectly through Byzantium. To further underline this message, church hierarchs conducted the coronation of Ivan IV in 1547 according to fourteenth-​century Byzantine rites.13 The Mongol origins of the cap were thus erased, leaving Byzantium as the primary referent. Muscovites dug even deeper into history in order to situate their monarchy within a trajectory of divinely established authorities extending back to the Old Testament. Indeed, if the title tsar implied elements of both khan and basileus, it also was a translation of the Old-​Testament melech, or “king,” and Muscovites actively imagined their country and its capital as the “New Israel” and the “New Jerusalem.”14 Increasingly, however, a new source of political imagining grew in significance for Russia’s rulers: empires further west in Europe. Already in the fifteenth century, Ivan III had adopted the double-​headed eagle in emulation of the seal of the Holy Roman Empire as a way of establishing parity with the Habsburgs. The same ruler brought architects from Italy to rebuild the Kremlin in a new style, endowing it, as Richard Wortman writes, with “an aspect of Renaissance magnificence.”15 Muscovite rulers followed their Western counterparts in concocting mythological genealogies linking themselves to Rome through fictitious ancestors. While maintaining the Byzantine connection, rulers in the seventeenth century incorporated more elements from Western ceremony, and the Russian court began to resemble those of European monarchs.16 A growing openness to the West—​based in no small measure on the need for its 177

Paul W. Werth

technology and expertise—​brought more foreigners and foreign ideas to Muscovy, while the annexation of right-​bank Ukraine along with Kiev in 1654 served as a conduit for the spread of Baroque culture and the sensibilities of the Counter-​Reformation from Poland-​Lithuania. The appearance of the “state” itself as a category of Russian political discourse and an abstraction distinct from the ruler and the liturgical imagery of rule altered the situation still further. By the end of the seventeenth century, concludes Wortman, the old, Byzantine-​derived forms of the Christian Empire and the Christian emperor “no longer fit the needs of an autonomous, dynamic, monarchical rule.”17 The stage was set for Peter the Great to effectuate a dramatic break with the Muscovite past at the level of ceremony and ideology. In what Wortman calls “the shift from a Byzantine to Roman imperial model,” Peter dramatically “gave notice that the Russian tsar owed his power to his exploits on the battlefield, not to divinely ordained traditions of succession.” In 1721 he adopted the Latin title of “emperor” (imperator), while his country became “the Russian Empire” (Rossiiskaia Imperiia). The new title, as Wortman observes, placed Peter “in the company of the pagan emperors of antiquity rather than the Christian emperors of the Byzantine Empire.”18 The principal consequence for our purposes was that Peter and his successors henceforward situated Russia within a European family of states, to the point where Catherine II (1762–​96) could confidently declare, “Russia is a European country.”19 The empire’s dealings with its eastern regions would now be viewed through a new prism. Russians began to regard themselves as members of a European community of civilized peoples, and they credited Peter, as Chancellor Count Golovkin wrote, with bringing them “from the darkness of ignorance to the theatre of glory of the whole world and thus from non-​ existence to existence.”20 Curiously, the core lexicon for this new consciousness came largely from Polish, so that Russia was described now as belonging to the politichnye narody, or “civilized peoples,” while liudskost’ (ludzkość, or “civility”) emerged as an antonym to barbarity. Meanwhile, the peoples outside this inner circle were labeled “wild” (diki), “thoughtless” (legkomysleny), “arbitrary” (svoevol’ny), and “unbridled” (neobuzdany). In short, as Ricarda Vulpius contends, the adoption of explicitly imperial titulature “changed the former tsarstvo [Muscovite tsardom] into an empire expressing its (desired) status of belonging to the group of ‘civilized peoples.’ ”21 Claims of civilizational superiority made it impossible for St. Petersburg—​now the capital—​to deal with the peoples of Asia as equals. Russia’s neighbors responded differently to these new imperial claims. Its Polish-​ Lithuanian rivals were reluctant to address the rulers of Moscow as either tsar or imperator, as was the Papacy, but most other Europeans saw no grounds for denying these titles. Crimean khans were more categorical in their refusal to recognize the Muscovite princes as tsars, for as Chinggisids they simply saw no convincing reason they should thus honor princes who had been their vassals historically. Initially, Moscow did not force the issue, but it increasingly demanded such recognition as its strength grew. The Crimean Khanate began to use the title (with obvious distaste) only for the first 178

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

Romanov, Michael (1613–​45).22 Russia’s eastern and southern neighbors were similarly slow to adopt its new title of imperator. The Ottomans, for example, accepted Russian claims to be a “tsardom” with little demur in the 1500s, but they refused to recognize Russian rulers as emperors until Russia compelled them to do so as part of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774.23 One other transformation in the imagining of the Russian Empire merits consideration here as well—​a new preoccupation with territory that emerged in the eighteenth century. Muscovite rulers were not indifferent to territory, but on the whole, writes Willard Sunderland, they “did not have a coherent state ideology that valued territory as an intrinsic good, and their sense of territorial sovereignty was at best incomplete.”24 They seem to have thought primarily in terms of control over peoples—​payers of tribute through whom the resources of Asia could be exploited. This outlook may itself have been a legacy of the steppe, since nomads also lacked a clear conception of territorial sovereignty.25 Rulers of the newly proclaimed empire, by contrast, quickly set about knowing and shaping its territory by surveying, cataloging, managing, and exploiting in the best traditions of the cameralist Polizeistaat. The result was a ruling establishment that acquired “a more essentially spatial view of government” and developed tools and practices “that allowed it to deepen its conceptual and physical grip on the territory of the state.”26 This shift in mentalities and practices corresponded chronologically with efforts to demarcate two important borders with Russia’s neighboring empires. First, by the late seventeenth century Russia was exhibiting a new concern for delineating the boundary between itself and the Ottoman Empire, as the two polities came into greater contact. Such cooperation, it was thought, would also help to end raids originating in the steppe. Though the Ottomans and Crimeans were less preoccupied with territorial concerns, an agreement was reached in 1704, and Russia erected a boundary pillar south of the Ei River, to the east of the Sea of Azov.27 Second, Russia’s expansion in Siberia brought it into contact with the Qing Empire and necessitated the treaties of Nerchinsk (1689) and Kiakhta (1727). By the time of the latter treaty, the shift in territorial consciousness was fully in train, and Russian cartography had been substantially modernized. Marina Tolmacheva concludes that during the border demarcation of 1727 the Qing had to depend on Russian maps for guidance, while the Russians assumed that Chinese maps were either inadequate or nonexistent.28 Peter Perdue adds that the most important effect of the two treaties “was to reduce the ambiguity of the frontier by eliminating unmapped zones.” Inhabitants in the region could no longer exploit the region’s fluidity to protect their identity through shifting alliances, but were instead to be fixed as subjects of either Russia or China.29 To summarize, then, we may posit three distinct but overlapping referents for Russia’s imperial consciousness in the early-​modern period, each with its own set of cultural and geopolitical implications. If in the Muscovite period Russian rulers drew on the image of both the Mongol khan and the Byzantine basileus, then in the eighteenth century they appealed also to the emperors of pagan antiquity. The first model revealed 179

Paul W. Werth

Russia’s intimate engagement with the world of the steppe and expressed an understanding of empire based on the Mongol experience. The second linked Muscovy with Byzantium and claimed empire in the sense of universal authority over all Christians—​ at least Eastern ones. And the third connected Russia with imperial Rome, asserted the country’s affinity with a European family of states, and carried with it a novel territorial consciousness. Yet rather than construing these models as a succession, with each obliterating the previous one, we would do better to posit an accretion, whereby layers of imperial signification accumulated and retained their relevance in particular contexts as the empire evolved.

Motivations In The Prince Machiavelli remarks, “It is perfectly natural and normal to want to acquire new territory.”30 Beyond this “natural” inclination—​if natural it is—​we may identify two broad motivations for Russian expansion: geopolitical and economic. The former best explains Muscovy’s first major act of imperial growth, the conquest of Kazan in 1552. As it vanquished its immediate competitors among the East Slavic principalities, Moscow came up against a series of much larger and more powerful states such as Sweden, Lithuania, and the Ottoman Empire. The Khanate of Kazan, by contrast, was internally divided and therefore became a pawn in the strategic competition between Moscow and Crimea.31 When its attempts to ensure Kazan’s status as a client failed, Moscow simply conquered the khanate and annexed its territory. The smaller and weaker Khanate of Astrakhan on the lower Volga suffered the same fate four years later. Moscow thus prevented the Muslims of the Volga and the Caspian steppe from falling under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, eliminated the possibility of a substantial attack, and improved its position vis-​à-​vis the steppe peoples.32 Strategic considerations were likewise central in Moscow’s efforts to deal with the remaining nomadic confederations. At various times the Ottomans and Crimeans sought to unite Muslim nomads—​Nogays, Bashkirs, Karakalpaks, and Kazakhs—​in a broad anti-​Russian coalition. Russian imperial policy sought to preempt this possibility, not only in order to deprive Russia’s southern opponents of an important source of leverage, but also to hinder repetition of the Mongol invasion, the memory of which remained robust in the collective Russian consciousness.33 Even as Russia’s power grew, an organized alliance of nomadic tribes could still seriously disrupt frontier areas. By one estimate, raiders carried off into captivity as many as 200,000 Russians in the first half of the seventeenth century.34 Russian security needs thus drove expansion into the steppe. Michael Khodarkovsky has indeed insisted on the fundamental incompatibility of the Russian, Christian, sedentary world with the pastoral, non-​Christian, politically decentralized world of nomads. Nomadic tribal confederations were organized for war and raiding, with successful attacks representing the main means of exhibiting valor and achieving renown. “Lasting 180

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

peace was antithetical to the very existence of the peoples that Russia confronted along its southern frontier.”35 In order to guarantee its own defenses, Russia was drawn deeper into the steppe and its politics, and each move in this direction effectively necessitated the next. To be sure, in the earliest stages of Russian history, there was a basic equilibrium between nomad and sedentary, by which neither side could impose itself on the other for more than a short period of time. The Mongol invasion witnessed the decisive victory of the nomad over the sedentary, with the imposition of tribute and the demonstrable submission of East Slavic princes to the khan. As the Golden Horde experienced internal crises beginning in the 1360s, and while Moscow focused principally on its fellow East Slavic principalities, a rough equilibrium was restored. The fall of Kazan and Astrakhan to Muscovite armies opened Russia’s way into the steppe, while its treaties with China in 1689 and 1727 imposed substantial constraints on the peoples in between. Even so, Russia’s predominance over these vast spaces emerged only gradually and was still far from complete in 1800. Mastery of the Pontic-​Caspian steppe was secured only over the course of centuries, and penetration into the steppe regions beyond the Yaik (Ural) River really only began after 1700. Is there a way to generalize about these strategic motivations, beyond remarking that security against nomads often necessitated expansion? On some level, it seems possible to discern a “grand strategy” in Russian actions, one dictated partly by Eurasian geography. Thus John P. LeDonne points to a remarkable period in Russian history, beginning with the Thirteen Years War against Poland (1654–​67) and ending with the treaties of Turkmenchai (1828) and Adrianople (1829) after wars with Qājār Persia and the Ottoman Empire, that featured “the rise of a self-​confident Russia that developed a long-​ range offensive strategy—​not in response to an immediate threat . . . but rather guided by its own expansionist urge in the basins of the Baltic, the Black Sea and Caspian.”36 As with much else in Russian history, it was really Peter the Great who laid the foundations for translating this geopolitical vision into action.37 The effective goal, once Russia faced no real competition in the East aside from a distant China, was to challenge Swedish, Polish, and Ottoman hegemony and replace it with Russia’s own domination of Eurasia. Of these rivals, the Ottomans proved to be Russia’s most important and lasting opponent, with wars between the two occurring roughly once each generation from the late seventeenth century onward. Although not all historians accept the existence of such a “grand strategy”—​no direct documentation proves its existence—​LeDonne is presumably correct in asserting that something other than “absentmindedness” must account for Russia’s dramatic efforts at expansion.38 This is not to deny that economic considerations—​above all aspirations for trade—​ were significant in many cases as well. The goal of securing the trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” (from Scandinavia to Constantinople) had been the primary reason for the establishment of political authority at Kiev in the ninth century.39 The Volga, connecting the Baltic Sea and European markets to the Caspian and the sources of trade beyond, had been an important artery in the medieval period and became an object of Moscow’s pretensions once it had vanquished neighboring Slavic polities. 181

Paul W. Werth

The khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan were the principal obstacles, and their conquest gave Moscow dominion over the entire length of the Volga, opening up direct trade with Persia and the Middle East. Peter’s Persian campaign of 1722 was motivated partly by the goal of securing trade concessions—​the caviar and silk trade attracted particular attention—​from a weakened shah.40 Moreover, certainly one of the factors drawing Russia further into the steppe was the prospect of establishing better trade connections with Central Asia and China. Peter the Great, for example, became convinced that Dutch and British power rested on their trade with the Orient, so he set his sights on turning Russia into an intermediary in this lucrative trade between Asia and Europe.41 Indeed, if the sheer power of the Qing Empire was one reason why Russia came to terms with the Chinese at Nerchinsk, then the prospects for trade with that country was another: Russia abandoned territorial claims to the north of the Amur for well over a century in order to secure that concession.42 Economic goals were especially important in the case of the northern parts of Eurasia, where fur was the principal commodity. The principality of Novgorod had pioneered the exploitation of fur during the Middle Ages by imposing a tribute in pelts on the Finnic and Slavic tribes that inhabited the boreal forests of northeastern Russia; Muscovy acquired and expanded this tribute system after conquering Novgorod in 1478.43 Furs played a critical role in the finances of the early Muscovite state, and their value increased over time with the spread of fur fashions to various parts of the world and Moscow’s increasing access to trade routes and markets. By the seventeenth century, Siberian furs generated approximately 10 percent of the total income of the Muscovite state, giving it a role analogous to the gold and silver of the New World for the Iberian empires. Demand for luxury furs always outstripped their supply, however, and chronic overhunting quickly exhausted local animal populations. The resulting extermination of fur-​bearing animals accounted, more than anything else, for the rapidity of Russian advances across Siberia, as the tsar’s servitors sought new hunting grounds and ever more subjects upon whom a fur tribute might be imposed. The main routes of Russia’s eastward advance accordingly followed the trapping lines for the best sable, ermine, and fox. Native populations in Siberia sometimes offered substantial resistance to the new Russian immigrants and their frequently violent efforts to impose tribute. But the fantastic prospects for wealth, coupled with the Cossacks’ superior weaponry, fueled an almost inexorable Russian advance. With the fall of the Khanate of Siberia in 1582, comparatively few obstacles stood in the way of an advance across the Asian continent, and indeed by 1639 Russian explorers had already reached the Pacific. If fur served as the principal motive driving Russian advances into Siberia, then traders and Cossacks acting on their own initiative played a role roughly comparable to the freelance empire-​building of Spanish conquistadores in the New World and British factors in the Indies. The conquest of the Khanate of Siberia in 1582, for example, was carried out not by the Muscovite state per se, but by a private army composed of prisoners of war and Cossack marauders led by a former river-​pirate, Ermak 182

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

Timofeevich. The costs of the expedition were borne by the powerful Stroganov family, which hoped thereby to gain access to new sources of fur while providing useful distraction to dangerous elements in their northeastern fiefdom. Despite the importance of fur-​ trading concerns like the Stroganovs, chartered trading companies of the sort deployed by maritime empires (see Peter Borschberg in this volume) appeared relatively late in Russia, with the Russian-​American Company, founded in 1799, being the most notable example.44 As sources of fur were depleted, other forms of trade with the east began to occupy an even larger place in Muscovite economic calculations. Indeed, the Muscovite state exhibited activist commercial policies broadly consistent with standard early-​modern statecraft, and a significant portion of the state’s budget came from customs revenue. Russia sought to attract foreign merchants—​for example, Bukharans—​to the country with various privileges and tax breaks, created infrastructure for their movement across vast distances, and subsidized their travel. Nomads also looked less problematic from a commercial standpoint, since they participated in steppe trade and supplied Russia with horses and livestock.45 The autocracy continued in its quest to stimulate trade in the eighteenth century, for example, by granting special inducements to Muslim traders in the 1740s to settle and develop a commercial suburb of Orenburg, its outpost on the edge of the steppe.46

Institutions and Practices If geopolitical and economic considerations proved central for motivating Russian imperial expansion, rulers deployed a wide range of institutions and practices to govern and solidify their control over Russia’s extensive Eurasian empire. Of critical significance for Russian expansion were the defensive lines that Moscow constructed along its southeastern frontiers. Designed to protect sedentary dwellers from nomadic incursions, these fortifications usually started as palisades and earthworks placed between stands of forest to block nomadic migration corridors and gradually became more elaborate. The first of these, extending from Arzamas (400 kilometers east of Moscow) to Tetiushi (south of Kazan on the Volga River) was completed in 1578, thus establishing a border between Muscovy and the untamed steppe to the south.47 Other lines followed, eventually giving more tangible expression to territorial sovereignty and also permitting better control over the movement of Moscow’s own subjects. Though expensive to construct and maintain, these lines provided a reasonable defense for the center of Muscovy. The last deep nomadic raid on Muscovy occurred in 1633, when Crimeans and Nogays came close to Moscow, and the 800-​kilometer Belgorod line was initiated in response to that attack in 1635. Moscow also extended its defenses beyond the Volga by creating a new line to the southeast of the Kama River. As a result, even as seminomadic Bashkirs periodically revolted against Muscovite rule, they were rarely able to raid beyond this trans-​ Kama line. Still more lines appeared in the 1730s, which not only hindered nomadic 183

Paul W. Werth

raids but “divided the nomadic world by corralling individual tribes within a definite space.”48 For advancement into Siberia and the steppe, forts (ostrogi) were no less important. In Siberia these served as garrisons for Cossacks and servicemen, eventually becoming major administrative centers. In the steppe regions, forts proved critical to asserting control over nomadic movement. Usually placed at key points on rivers that represented main crossing points for nomads, forts could prove a significant impediment to nomadic movement.49 In Bashkiria, forts were deployed to encircle Bashkirs, thus ensuring their subordination to Russian authority. The city of Orenburg proved especially important in this regard, as it not only completed this encirclement, but also served as the springboard for Russia’s advance into the Kazakh steppe. Bashkirs intuitively sensed the importance of Orenburg: when they became aware of plans for its construction, they revolted in a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to forestall this development. The fort at Omsk played a similar role, becoming the military capital of western Siberia and another point of advance into the Kazakh steppe, in this case from the north.50 Closely following behind defensive lines and forts—​and in some cases advancing out in front of them—​came Russian colonization. In fact, some migrants from the more central regions were not actually ethnic Russians—​for example, many non-​Russians fled growing taxation and conversion campaigns (see below) by moving across the Kama River into Bashkiria. In addition, some fugitive Slavs melded with local non-​ Russian cultures to create a new synthesis—​Cossacks are a good example.51 But many of the new settlers were indeed Russian, and they transformed the lands to which they migrated. Initially a spontaneous and even chaotic phenomenon, colonization gradually became the object of more deliberate government efforts at control and organization.52 Russian peasants settled primarily in western Siberia, where agriculture was possible, while moving further east in smaller numbers. By around 1700 there were at least as many Russians as there were native Siberians—​roughly 150,000–​200,000 of each—​and by the end of the eighteenth century Russians may have numbered as many as 900,000 (Figure 6.2).53 Russian penetration into the steppe—​where water was scarce but the soil good—​ necessarily entailed incursion into nomadic grazing lands, and conflict with locals was often the result. The consequences were most tragic in the case of the Kalmyks. Having become the dominant power in the Caspian steppe by the mid-​1600s, they faced growing Russian encroachment on their lands by the mid-​eighteenth century. With the completion of new defensive lines, Kalmyk herdsmen became dependent on the imperial government for permission to use their former pastures across the Volga, while the state increased its demands that Kalmyks provide cavalry for Russia’s wars. These factors, along with fear of forced settlement and conversion to Christianity, drove Kalmyks to the fateful decision in 1771 to return to Jungaria (eastern Xinjiang), whence they had come. Perhaps three-​quarters of the Kalmyk population—​more than 150,000 people—​ set out eastward in “the last known exodus of a nomadic people in the history of Asia.” Perhaps 100,000 of these migrants perished during the trip, the victims of inhospitable 184

newgenrtpdf

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

185

Figure 6.2  The Russian Empire in 1700. From Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev (eds), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–​1930 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2007).

Paul W. Werth

terrain and Kazakhs eager to settle scores with old enemies.54 This was only the most extreme example of the unfortunate experiences of many nomads with Russian expansion in the approach to the nineteenth century. None of the efforts described so far should be interpreted to mean that the Russian state sought to disengage from the steppe. On the contrary, recent research has emphasized the extent to which Muscovy remained deeply involved in steppe diplomacy. The Turkic origins of many key Muscovite political terms and practices reveal the extent of Russians’ debt to their eastern neighbors. For example, various dependent populations of the khanate of Kazan had paid a form of tribute known as iasak, and for the most part Muscovite rulers retained this institution after the conquest. The individuals and groups subject to this tribute were accordingly known as “iasak people” (iasachnye liudi), and this status distinguished them from “Russians.” Another inherited practice was the taking of hostages from subordinate groups in order to ensure their fulfilment of obligations. A  hostage—​or amanat, a Turkic term of Arabic origin—​was usually a clan chief or members of his family, and in most parts of northern Eurasia kinship ties were strong enough to serve as effective leverage over the prisoner’s clansmen. The Russian state took such hostages in both the steppe and Siberia alike.55 A third inherited steppe practice involved Muscovite efforts to strengthen the authority of khans and other local rulers in the steppe. The weakness of central political authorities that was such a prominent feature of steppe societies significantly complicated Russia’s efforts to pacify its frontiers. Russia thus found itself turning to the same policies that the Mongols had once applied to the Rus principalities by “buttressing the authority of a single ruler capable of curbing his people’s raids and acting as a reliable military ally.”56 This practice, in turn, drew Moscow and Petersburg deeper into the internal political affairs of its nomadic neighbors. A final example was the Muscovite adoption of shert’, a written document stipulating conditions of peace and military alliance. Moscow first used these documents in the fifteenth century in its dealings with Crimea and gradually extended their use to its relations with other steppe peoples, trying hard to ensure that these pledges were made according to the native customs of non-​Russian subjects.57 In all the cases just described, Russia extended its imperial power by drawing heavily on the traditions and practices of the societies it conquered. Indeed, Moscow was in some ways just another player in a broader struggle for ascendancy among the successors of the former Mongol Empire. As Russian power grew, however, Moscow and then Petersburg increasingly invested older practices with new meanings, often creating the basis for misunderstandings between the central state and its subject peoples. Many native populations, for example, regarded iasak as a form of reciprocal exchange rather than a one-​way obligation. They would not, in other words, deliver their goods “without the sovereign’s reward”—​that is, something in exchange.58 Likewise, Moscow came gradually to construe shert’ as an oath of unconditional and perpetual submission to the tsar, whereas steppe peoples continued to view it as a conditional alliance of equals. It appears that in some cases tsarist translators deliberately perpetuated such 186

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

divergences in interpretation by allowing documents in different languages to reflect the perspectives of those who spoke them.59 In general, Russians proved adept players in the game of steppe alliances, a skill observable from practically the earliest days of Rus history. Even as medieval chronicles express strong hostility toward the nomads of the steppe, the princes of Kievan Rus entered into alliances with them, sometimes to gain advantages over one another. Likewise, Muscovite grand princes skillfully directed the power of the Horde against rival Slavic principalities.60 As Muscovy and the early Russian Empire expanded into the steppe, they attended carefully to nomadic rivalries and quarrels and used these to their advantage. For example, Russian rulers skillfully exploited the fierce competition between Kazakhs and Jungars over pastureland and thereby laid the foundations for a Russo-​Kazakh alliance that in turn paved the way for the Russian advance into Central Asia during the 1800s.61 Russia exploited similar conflicts in Siberia, for example, by enlisting Kets as auxiliary forces in subduing the Tungus.62 It proved similarly adept at creating client states and societies beyond its formal boundaries. These clients—​including Cossack hosts, nomadic groups like the Kalmyks and Kazakhs, and later established (but threatened) states, like the Georgian kingdoms—​were formally independent, but small and weak enough that Russia could either convince or compel them to cooperate.63 Muscovy similarly enlisted non-​Russian subjects as agents in its expansion to the southeast. Tatars—​a sedentary Turkic population centered in the territory of the old Khanate of Kazan—​proved especially important in this regard. Noteworthy for their literacy, high Islamic culture, and entrepreneurship, Tatars served as merchants and scholars for the entire region extending from Nizhnii Novgorod on the Volga into the Kazakh steppe and Central Asia. Moscow and then St. Petersburg skillfully deployed their services as administrators, translators, traders, and sources of intelligence in the steppe. Tatars also helped to promote a spirit of loyalty to the tsar among Kazakhs, and it was largely they who staffed the state-​sponsored institutions of Islam (see below).64 Bashkirs themselves constituted one of the largest components of tsarist forces in Bashkiria, and both they and other non-​Russians played a critical role in suppressing revolts.65 This dynamic underscores a crucial point of broader significance for understanding Russia’s imperial history: the agents of Russia’s empire were by no means exclusively Russian. On the contrary, other peoples played a critical part in that country’s imperial history. To extend this point, it is worth emphasizing that a central strategy of the Russian empire was the co-​optation of non-​Russian elites. Rather than disrupt existing social hierarchies—​something that was usually beyond the capacity of early-​modern states—​ Moscow and St. Petersburg generally chose to recognize existing elites and to incorporate them into the imperial social hierarchy as nobles. This strategy was easier to effectuate in the empire’s west, where the existence of feudal aristocracies similar to those in Muscovy made the transfer comparatively seamless. Further east, where clan or tribal solidarity more often prevailed, the state cooperated with indigenous elites, but made no real effort to incorporate them into the empire’s nobility.66 The Muslim nobility of sedentary Turkic societies such as those of Kazan and the Crimea had a more 187

Paul W. Werth

complex experience. Initially, they were partially integrated into the empire’s social hierarchy as nobles, but in 1713 Peter the Great abruptly required all Muslim aristocrats to convert to Orthodoxy or lose their noble status.67 Catherine II allowed for the reemergence of a Muslim nobility in 1784, though some were unable to document their prior status, and converted families were still barred from returning to Islam. These broad efforts at co-​opting elites reveal a general truth that does much to explain Russia’s imperial success: its multiethnic elite was bound together less by shared language or culture than by social privilege, dynastic loyalty, and commitments to Russia’s imperial project. Indeed, as Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper have argued, “a first principle of Russian governance was pragmatic recognition of difference,”68 something that emerges clearly in the realm of religion. Muscovites inherited from the Golden Horde a tradition of religious toleration—​although the practice was not referred to as such. Mongol invaders had done little by way of forcing religious change on the East Slavs of the forest zone, and in fact the Orthodox Church emerged as a major beneficiary of Mongol rule. As long as hierarchs showed submission to their Mongol overlords and prayed for the health of the khan, they could expect protection and succor.69 To a substantial degree, the Muscovite state upheld this inheritance after the balance of power had shifted to its advantage. Although Muscovy encouraged its pagan and Muslim subjects to become Orthodox Christians—​and occasionally used coercion to achieve this, such as immediately after the conquest of Kazan—​ conversion did not occupy a prominent place in Russian strategy before the eighteenth century. In Siberia, for example, the Muscovite tribute regime positively discouraged proselytism among indigenous peoples, since conversion to Christianity changed their status from “those of another faith” (inovertsy) to “Russians,” which exempted them from the tribute that the state was so intent on extracting.70 More generally, there seems to have been a broad acceptance in Moscow and Petersburg that different peoples had different faiths—​Russians were Orthodox, Poles were Catholic, Tatars were Muslim, Kalmyks were Buddhists, and so on—​and that there was no compelling reason to disturb this arrangement with aggressive missionary campaigns.71 Religious variety was accepted in Muscovy as an intrinsic attribute of human diversity and in some contexts provided compelling testimony to the might of the tsar and the Christian significance of Muscovite expansion. As Valerie Kivelson writes, “Muscovite ideological formulations were capacious enough to absorb unreconstructed pagan subjects into an imperial narrative that meshed perfectly with a Christian manifest destiny.”72 In short, though Orthodoxy proved central to the consolidation of the core European lands of Muscovy, it was far less important to the empire’s expansion into Asia and the southern steppes. This is not to deny that conversion occurred on a mass scale at certain points. But it is telling that the missionary impulse that produced the most dramatic religious change in the eighteenth century seems to have been a European import. Ukrainian hierarchs from Kiev, after that city’s annexation to Muscovy in 1654, brought with them to Russia a new concern for proselytism influenced by their encounters with the Catholic Counter-​ Reformation in Poland-​Lithuania. Ukrainian clergymen accordingly became among the 188

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

most aggressive missionaries in the Volga region and Siberia. European visitors also reproached Muscovite rulers for having done so little to promote Christianity among their pagan and Muslim subjects.73 In response to these pressures, rulers introduced new material incentives for Finnic peoples to accept Orthodoxy in the 1680s, and these were expanded significantly under Peter the Great. More dramatic still was the missionary campaign in the Volga region in the 1740s. In this instance, virtually entire peoples (mostly Finnic groups) as well as many Tatars—​well over 400,000 people in all—​were baptized from paganism or Islam into Orthodoxy through a potent combination of material incentives and coercion. The campaign included a highly destructive assault on mosques designed to quarantine new converts from heterodox influences.74 Yet this missionary assault soon ended and was replaced by a more systematic policy of religious toleration. Nor did the campaign extend significantly beyond the sedentary populations near the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers; Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and Kalmyks faced only limited missionary pressure. Conversion was thus only a comparatively small arrow in the imperial quiver. This situation was reinforced later in the eighteenth century as toleration went from being an unarticulated practice to a coherent policy with an institutional foundation and an ideological basis in cameralist and Enlightenment thought. To be sure, practical considerations remained paramount. Tsarist authorities in eastern Siberia, for example, helped to institutionalize and even promote Buddhism from the 1740s primarily as a way of insulating Buryats and Mongols within Russia from the influence of the great Buddhist monasteries of Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Such efforts to create a Buddhist religious hierarchy in Russia independent of foreign authorities were replicated in the case of Islam. Between 1783 and 1794, the imperial government recognized or established a mufti and a spiritual directorate in each of the two regions with a substantial Muslim population—​Crimea and the Volga-​Ural region. In general, Russia’s eighteenth-​century government, guided by Polizeistaat models of statecraft and moderate Enlightenment conceptions of toleration, came to recognize the utility of non-​Orthodox religions as sources of order and stability. By the early nineteenth century the concept of “religious toleration” had become a key attribute of the regime’s identity.75 For all these mediating practices, however, it would be remiss to ignore the role of raw violence in the making of Russia’s Asian empire. Expansion was after all a matter of conquest in the first instance, and campaigns of “pacification” were often striking for their brutality. In Siberia, writes James Forsyth, “natives were subjected to much exploitation and cruelty,” and in the collection of fur barter was soon replaced by “demands backed up by force.” In northeastern Siberia, Cossack gangs competed in exploiting Yukagirs by locking them up and administering beatings as a way of forcing them to buy ironware at extortionate prices.76 Eighteenth-​century Russian dealings with Bashkirs amounted in many cases to a brutal colonial war. Thus in 1735 Ivan Kirillov, founder of Orenburg and head of the so-​called Orenburg Expedition, advocated the construction of a set of forts, “and thus, surrounding the brigands from all sides, seize their wives and children and property and horses and livestock and completely destroy their homes and 189

Paul W. Werth

punish the main instigators as an example to others.” In one such instance of “pacification,” imperial forces put to the sword some 1,000 unarmed villagers, including women and children. A report at the end of the “Bashkir War” of 1735–​40 indicated that of a total population of some 100,000 Bashkirs, close to 30,000 had been killed or exiled.77

Conclusion By 1800, then, an enormous portion of Asian territory had been brought under tsarist rule. Many native Siberians had lost their economic self-​sufficiency and become dependent on a single commodity. The fauna of Siberia had been altered by the exhaustion of fur-​bearing animals. The steppe was rapidly succumbing to the plough, with significant environmental consequences. A majority of Kalmyks had departed for Xinjiang, and other Mongols had been hemmed in by Russia and China. The religious landscape of the Volga region had been dramatically transformed through mass conversion to Christianity, even as Buddhism and Islam had been recognized and institutionalized by the state. Russian rulers had developed an imperial consciousness rooted in the Mongol experience, the Byzantine inheritance, and an enthusiasm for pagan Rome. Russia now identified fundamentally with European civilization and increasingly adopted outlooks characteristic of European empires. To be sure, Russia remained in many ways a distinctly Eurasian polity, with legacies drawn from the Golden Horde and a comparatively thin veneer of European civilization. But as it expanded further eastward, Russia identified to a growing degree with the West—​and behaved accordingly. Thinking more broadly and comparatively, we may highlight a series of convergences that characterized Russia’s early-​modern empire-​building in Asia. For one, that process converged with a series of other states at different ends of Eurasia—​France, Japan, Burma, Siam, and Vietnam—​in an early-​modern pattern whereby, as Victor Lieberman has written, “localized societies in widely separated regions coalesced into larger unities—​politically, culturally, commercially.” This “synchronized integration” included processes of territorial consolidation, administrative centralization, cultural integration, and the appearance of more efficient systems of extraction and control.78 Convergence is likewise evident in Russia’s adoption of European conceptions of difference, civilization, and rule—​even as this of course also signified a certain repudiation of Russia’s Eurasian steppe traditions. This convergence created the foundation for Russia to be a full participant (and perpetrator) in the European imperialism of the nineteenth century. Finally, imperial expansion eastward brought Russia into physical contact with several of the largest and most enduring polities of early-​modern Eurasia: the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and China. This convergence reduced the ambiguity of the frontier and eroded the freedom of nomadic societies in particular. More generally, it represented a critical step in the coalescence of the world of empires that fundamentally shaped human experience over much of the globe in the nineteenth century. Russia would also play a central role in that dramatic chapter of history. 190

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

Notes For useful critical remarks on earlier versions of this chapter, I thank John Curry, Jack Fairey, Carolyn Pouncy, and Willard Sunderland. 1 Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–​ 1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 9. 2 I take this expression from James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony, 1581–​1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 3 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 1994), esp. pp. 4–​5, 13–​14; Marshall Poe, A People Born to Slavery: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–​1748 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 110, 165–​6, 180; David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 2; Alexander Martin, Enlightened Metropolis: Constructing Imperial Moscow, 1762–​1855 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), pp. 5, 37, 110, 137, 289. 4 Mark Bassin, “Russian between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space,” Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (1990), 3–​8. 5 Valerie Kivelson, “Merciful Father, Impersonal State: Russian Autocracy in Comparative Perspective,” in Beyond Binary Histories: Re-​imagining Eurasia to c. 1830, ed. Victor Lieberman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 193–​4. 6 The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 finally stipulated that Moscow was no longer required to pay tribute, which the Russians had increasingly interpreted as a “gift”—​albeit an obligatory one. See Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, p.  65; and Brian Boeck, Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-​Building in the Age of Peter the Great (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 140–​1. Halil İnalcık identifies the Treaty of Istanbul in 1700 as having ended the obligations. See his “Power Relationships between Russia, the Crimea and the Ottoman Empire as Reflected in Titulature,” in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire: Essays in Economy and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 369–​411. 7 Jaroslaw Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus’ (Boulder:  East European Monographs, 1998), esp. pp. 77–​102. 8 See Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History, trans. Alfred Clayton (Harlow: Longman, 2001), pp. 21–​59. 9 Simon Franklin and Jonathan Sheperd, The Emergence of Rus, 750–​1200 (London: Pearson, 1996), pp. 31–​41; A. I. Filiushkin, Tituly russkikh gosudarei (Moscow: Al’ians-​Arkheo, 2006), pp.  19–​24. 10 Filiushkin, Tituly russkikh gosudarei, pp. 76–​81 (citation at p. 76). 11 Michael Cherniavsky, “Khan or Basileus: An Aspect of Russian Mediaeval Political Theory,” in The Structure of Russian History, ed. M. Cherniavsky (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 65–​79 (citations on pp. 69, 71, and 73). 12 Filiushkin, Tituly russkikh gosudarei, p. 75; idem, “Problema genezisa Rossiiskoi Imperii,” in Novaia imperskaia istoriia postsovetskogo prostranstva, ed. Il’ia Gerasimov et  al. (Kazan: Tsentr Issledovaniia Natsionalizma i Imperii, 2004), pp. 393–​4; Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols:  Cross-​Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304–​1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 97. 13 Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), vol. 1, pp. 22–​30 (citations on pp. 24 and 29). 14 Filiushkin, “Problema genezisa,” p. 393; Daniel B. Rowland, “Moscow—​The Third Rome or the New Israel?” Russian Review 55, no. 4 (1996), 591–​614.

191

Paul W. Werth

1 5 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 1, p. 25. 16 Donald Ostrowski notes three periods of Muscovite history, in which the last (1589–​1722) was characterized substantially by the replacement of Mongol and Byzantine influence by European. See Muscovy and the Mongols, pp. 16–​18. 17 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 1, pp. 25–​6, 30–​41 (citation on p. 41). 18 Ibid., pp. 42–​83 (citations on pp. 43, 44, and 63). 19 Bassin, “Russian between Europe and Asia,” p. 9. 20 Golovkin as cited in Ricarda Vulpius, “The Russian Empire’s Civilizing Mission in the Eighteenth Century: A Comparative Perspective,” in Asiatic Russia: Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. Tomohiko Uyama (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 17. 21 Vulpius, “Russian Empire’s Civilizing Mission,” pp. 13–​31 (citation on p. 18). 22 Filiushkin, Tituly russkikh gosudarei, pp. 78–​80, 124–​5, 135–​8. 23 Ibid., p.  78; Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, p. 51. For more on Ottoman and Crimean attitudes toward Muscovite titulature, see İnalcık, “Power Relationships.” 24 Willard Sunderland, “Imperial Space: Territorial Thought and Practice in the Eighteenth Century,” in Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–​1930, ed. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 35. 25 Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, p. 47. 26 Sunderland, “Imperial Space,” p. 53. See also J. L. Black, G.-​F. Müller and the Imperial Russian Academy (Kingston: McGill-​Queens’ University Press 1986), pp. 47–​77. 27 On this and later developments along the same lines, see Boeck, Imperial Boundaries, pp.  134–​58, 231–​4,  242–​4. 28 Marina Tolmacheva, “The Early Russian Exploration and Mapping of the Chinese Frontier,” Cahiers du Monde russe 41, no. 1 (2000), 52. On Nerchinsk and Kiakhta, see also Forsyth, History of the Peoples, pp. 97–​108; and John P. LeDonne, The Russian Empire and the World, 1700–​1917: The Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 155–​62. 29 Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 161–​73 (citation on p. 161). 30 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. David Wootton (Indianapolis:  Hackett Publishing, 1995), p. 13. 31 Matthew P. Romaniello, The Elusive Empire: Kazan and Creation of Russia, 1552–​1671 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), p. 28. 32 Alton Donnelly, The Russian Conquest of Bashkiria: A Case Study in Imperialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 13. 33 Ibid., pp. 50–​3. 34 Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, pp. 21–​6. 35 Ibid., pp. 7–​45 (citation on p. 17). 36 LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, p. 4. 37 On Peter’s importance for the southeastern steppe, see Donnelly, Russian Conquest, pp.  38–​53. 38 LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, p. 8. 39 Franklin and Sheperd, Emergence of Rus, pp. 3–​138. 40 LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, p. 41. 41 Donnelly, Russian Conquest, pp. 3, 39. 42 Perdue, China Marches West, pp. 161–​73; Erika Monahan, The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). 43 Janet Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness:  The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

192

Northern Eurasia, 1300–1800

44 Forsyth, History of the Peoples, esp. pp. 38–​42, 100; Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 11–​32; Ilya Vinkovetsky, Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1802–​1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 27–​51. 45 Monahan, Merchants of Siberia, chap. 2. 46 Mami Hamamoto, “Tatarskaia Kargala in Russia’s Eastern Policies,” in Asiatic Russia, ed. Uyama, pp. 32–​51. 47 Romaniello, Elusive Empire, pp. 28–​42. 48 LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, pp. 48–​9 (citation on p. 49); Donnelly, Russian Conquest, pp.  16–​17; Boeck, Imperial Boundaries, pp.  54–​67; Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 24–​6. 49 LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, p. 32. 50 Donnelly, Russian Conquest, pp. 54–​75; LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, p. 41. 51 On Don Cossacks, see Boeck, Imperial Boundaries; on Terek Cosacks, see Thomas M. Barrett, At the Edge of Empire: The Terek Cossacks and the North Caucasus Frontier, 1700–​ 1860 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999). 52 On the dialectic between spontaneous and ordered colonization, see Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, pp. 11–​95. On environmental consequences, see David Moon, The Plough That Broke the Steppe: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–​1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 53 Forsyth, History of the Peoples, pp. 100, 115. These estimates are very provisional, and over time intermarriage makes it difficult to distinguish Russians from native peoples. 54 Khodarkovsky describes these remarkable events in Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600–​1771 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 224–​ 235 (citation at p. 232). 55 Forsyth, History of the Peoples, p. 41; Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors, pp. 20–​1. 56 Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, p. 31. 57 Ibid., p. 53. 58 Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors, p. 20. 59 Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, pp. 51–​6, 72–​3. 60 These themes are addressed by Charles J. Halperin in Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). 61 LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, p. 36; Donnelly, Russian Conquest, pp. 34–​7, 41–​5. See also Khodarkovsky’s two books: Where Two Worlds Met and Russia’s Steppe Frontier. 62 Forsyth, History of the Peoples, p. 58. 63 LeDonne, Russia’s Grand Strategy, pp. 75–​7. Boeck also addresses several such cases in Imperial Boundaries. 64 Gul’mira Sultangalieva, “The Russian Empire and the Intermediary Role of Tatars in Kazakhstan:  The Politics of Cooperation and Rejection,” in Asiatic Russia, ed. Uyama, pp.  52–​79. 65 Donnelley, Russian Conquest, pp. 33, 80 (citation on p. 170). 66 Kappeler, Russian Empire, p. 30. See also Charles King, The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 37. 67 Kappeler, Russian Empire, p. 31. 68 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 271. 69 Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde, pp. 113–​16. 70 Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors, pp. 42–​5.

193

Paul W. Werth

71 Filiushkin, “Problema genezisa,” p. 391; and Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors, p. 41. For a broader consideration, see Hans-​ Heinrich Nolte, Religiöse Toleranz in Rußland, 1600–​1725 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1969). 72 Valerie Kivelson, Cartographies of Tsardom:  The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-​ Century Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), esp. pp. 168–​9, 190–​1 (citation on p. 167). 73 Vulpius, “Russian Empire’s Civilizing Mission,” pp. 19–​20. 74 My own analysis of this campaign is in “Coercion and Conversion: Violence and the Mass Baptism of the Volga Peoples,” Kritika 4, no. 3 (2003), 543–​69. 75 On these developments, see Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2006); and Paul W. Werth, The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 76 Forysth, History of the Peoples, pp. 77, 109–​11 (citations on pp. 41 and 42). 77 Donnelly, Russian Conquest, pp. 72–​95, 123–​38 (citation on p. 76). 78 Victor Lieberman, “Transcending East-​West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas,” in Beyond Binary Histories, ed. Lieberman, pp. 19–​102 (citations on pp. 24 and 26).

194

Chapter 7

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia Bruce M. Lockhart Introduction The term “empire” has a well-​ established pedigree within the historiography of Southeast Asia, both mainland and maritime/​island (the two areas into which the region is normally subdivided). Angkorean Cambodia is most frequently characterized as an “empire,”1 as is Vietnam, since from the late tenth century onward its rulers generally assumed the Sinic imperial title of hoàng đế (Chinese huangdi). In the island world, Srivijaya (the early maritime polity based on Sumatra)2 is sometimes, though not consistently, honored with this title, as is the last great pre-​Islamic Javanese kingdom, Majapahit. The earliest entity to win the status of “empire” was Funan (in the Mekong Delta during the pre-​Angkorean period), usually seen as the region’s first state. At the same time, however, historians of Southeast Asia have grown increasingly wary of traditional interpretations of the region’s premodern polities, particularly those emphasizing all-​powerful “god-​kings” ruling over large expanses of territory with relatively fixed borders. Rulers and their domains have been trimmed down to size by the popularization of various models which emphasize the often fragile nature of royal authority, and the fissiparous tendencies of most polities. Where, then, does this leave mainland Southeast Asia in a discussion of empires and imperialism? This chapter represents an attempt to formulate a model of “empire” which fits mainland Southeast Asia, specifically the area stretching from Myanmar to Vietnam, before the nineteenth century. The first part of the discussion will provide a brief overview of the various models of Southeast Asian states proposed over the past few decades. The next will synthesize the salient features of these models into a single integrated framework that will hopefully provide a meaningful distinction between what could legitimately be considered Southeast Asian “empires” and their less powerful neighbors. The chapter will conclude with a comparative discussion of kingship and ideology between the Sinic and Indic cultures within the region.

Historiographical Overview For much of the twentieth century “empire” was used by leading scholars of Southeast Asian history to describe several precolonial polities, notably Funan, Srivijaya, 195

Bruce M. Lockhart

and Angkorean Cambodia. This practice began with colonial-​era historians—​both European and Asian—​who were themselves operating within the intellectual and geopolitical frameworks of empire, so that it did not appear problematic to apply the term to those earlier polities which seemed to have been most powerful, durable, and expansionist in nature. Nor could they be accused of facile Eurocentrism, given that China, Japan, and Mughal India, among others, were widely recognized as “imperial” entities.3 In recent decades, the term “empire,” though not abandoned completely, has become much more restricted in its use for precolonial Southeast Asia. This change, however, is a reaction much less against any perceived Eurocentrism than against a more Sinocentric bias.4 O. W. Wolters was the first scholar to raise the issue of the distorting lens of Chinese sources, which tended to assume that China’s Southeast Asian “vassals” were, like Japan or Korea, smaller copies of itself, “kingdoms” ruled by “kings.” (There could, of course, be no other “emperor” beside the Son of Heaven himself.) Wolters suggested that historians’ heavy reliance on data culled from Chinese texts caused them to exaggerate both the size and the structural strength of early Southeast Asian polities, so that several powerful “kingdoms” found in Chinese sources became “empires” in Western scholarship.5 One of the first targets of this rethinking of early Southeast Asia was Funan, the pre-​ Angkorean polity centered in the Mekong Delta between roughly the third and sixth centuries ce, which was believed to have been supplanted (forcefully) by the equally large and powerful kingdom of Zhenla, which in turn gave way to Angkor at the beginning of the ninth century. Most historians writing prior to the 1980s described Funan as an “empire,” and published maps showed it as a large, sprawling entity of varying proportions, depending on a particular author’s interpretation.6 Wolters and Claude Jacques, however, whittled “Funan” and “Zhenla” down to a more manageable size—​a task subsequently continued and refined by Michael Vickery.7 There is now a general consensus that “Funan,” whatever it may have been, was neither large nor imperial, and even a recent book devoted to it reflects the more modest perspective.8 Funan is not the only “empire” to have been thus downsized; generally speaking the term has considerably less currency than it once did. George Coedès, D.  G. E.  Hall, and John Cady used it fairly widely, both for specific polities and for collectively categorizing whole groups of states.9 At present, it is less common to find a Southeast Asian history text referring to “empires,” with one significant exception: Angkorean Cambodia. Whether because of its size, its long life, or its famous architectural legacy, Angkor managed to hold on to its “imperial” status while many of its neighbors lost theirs; more on that below.10 Concern with specific terms such as “empire” has generally been outweighed by a broader interest in the nature and structure of the precolonial Southeast Asian state. In the late 1970s, two workshops were held to discuss this subject, which produced a collection of chapters looking at very specific aspects of several precolonial polities. Editor Lorraine Gesick in her introduction noted the “problematic” nature of the 196

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia

classical Southeast Asian “state”: “The closer one looks at any given state in traditional Southeast Asia, the more it seems to dissolve before one’s eyes. Upon examination, it appears not to be ‘governed’ nor even ‘administered’ in any very systematic way at all, and one is forced to ask just what it is that holds such a ‘state’ together.”11 Although this statement would probably be considered somewhat pessimistic three decades on, its implicit but fundamental problematization of the applicability of Western models of the “state” still rings true. Before the 1977–​78 workshops were held, at least two scholars, both of them anthropologists with a historical bent, had already attempted to formulate alternate models for Southeast Asian polities. Stanley Tambiah coined the term “galactic polity” to show the relationship between a core/​center and its outlying territories, which he compared to a sun surrounded by different planets, each revolving in its own orbit—​in his words “a hierarchy of central points continually subject to the dynamics of pulsation and changing spheres of influence.” These “planets” enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy depending on their geographical distance from the capital and the nature of their relationship with the center (province, tributary, etc.).12 Although Tambiah’s model was meant to apply mainly to Thai history and more specifically to Ayudhya (the polity which became known to foreigners as “Siam”), he did suggest it could be applied elsewhere in Southeast Asia.13 Similarly, Clifford Geertz used a study of precolonial Bali to suggest a “theatre state” model. Geertz’s essential argument was that in the fragmented Balinese geopolitical environment rulers used ritual and displays of culture to proclaim their supremacy as much as they did displays of force. Like Tambiah, Geertz was interested in one particular part of Southeast Asia but believed that his model was potentially applicable to much or all of the region.14 It is significant that the first models specifically intended for Southeast Asian states came from anthropologists, as historians generally tended to chronicle the rise and fall of individual states and the conflicts among them without particular attention to the structure of those states, or the nature of the power which held them together. The first historian who began to do so in the Southeast Asian context in any significant way was Wolters, who in his landmark 1982 study History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives sought to formulate a model of Southeast Asian polities that would explain the dynamics of their internal structure and external relations in distinctively—​ though not uniquely—​Southeast Asian terms. Wolters chose the mandala, a term of Indic origin which can be found in Sanskrit-​language inscriptions in the region. Like the mandala, he argued, many Southeast Asian kingdoms could be represented as a series of concentric circles expanding outward from a core. The ruler’s power radiated outward from this core, growing weaker as it extended from the center to the periphery. Wolters particularly emphasized the structural instability and fluctuating size of these mandalas, dependent as they were on the ruler’s personal charisma and “prowess”; he saw them as expanding and contracting like concertinas, without fixed borders.15 The mandala model, though not without its critics, has met with wide acceptance among scholars of Southeast Asian history.16 There is a general consensus that Wolters’s 197

Bruce M. Lockhart

characterization of the inconstant nature of a ruler’s “personal hegemony” is a useful correction to earlier historians who enumerated strong and weak kings and dynasties without looking carefully at the nature of their power. Similarly, the concertina metaphor is a much more accurate representation of most polities than the fixed borders implied by standard historical maps of the region. Indeed, a case can be made that a good map of early Southeast Asia will be organized around centers rather than boundaries.17 The main difficulty in utilizing Wolters’s mandala framework is that it is to some extent a “one-​size-​fits-​all” structure which is applicable to some polities in certain periods of time but without a clear indication of the criteria for its use. Wolters includes Ayudhya, Angkor, Srivijaya, Majapahit, and the pre-​Hispanic Philippine polities of Mindoro and Sulu in his list of mandalas. He explicitly excludes Lanna (the Chiang Mai–​based kingdom in Northern Thailand), Lane Xang (Laos), and Burma on the grounds that they were probably “impermanent sub regional associations which depended on the waxing and waning of particular mandala centres and which never led to new and more enduring political systems.” Vietnam is also largely disqualified because its borders were “preordained by Heaven and permanent in a manner that the porous borders of the mandalas . . . never assumed.”18 Other scholars, by contrast, have argued that Vietnam/​Đại Việt—​under earlier dynasties, at least—​can in fact be considered as a mandala, on the grounds that it shared the structural fragility and multicentric nature of neighboring polities.19 There is of course no compelling reason why all of mainland Southeast Asia, let alone the entire region, should have to be fitted into a single model such as the mandala. Yet finding common characteristics to define the region has become a kind of Holy Grail for Southeast Asianists, and historians are eager to join the quest. That includes two other frameworks which are more ambitious than Wolters’s mandala model in their attempt to cover more of the region. In the early 1980s, Indologist Hermann Kulke articulated a three-​stage model of state formation, first specifically for Java and then more broadly for the region. The broader model was presented at a conference organized in response to Wolters’s 1982 book, where Kulke praised the mandala approach while somehow implying that it was not fully adequate. His critique of Wolters was extremely discreet, but he seemed to suggest that the mandala tells us much more about how a polity functions than about how it was formed in the first place. Moreover—​and again this point has to be inferred from Kulke’s discussion—​Wolters’s model does not distinguish between different types and stages of mandalas but simply discusses them as a single type of polity.20 Both points are well-​taken. Kulke’s model is structured around three successive stages of state formation: the Chieftaincy, the Early Kingdom, and the Imperial Kingdom. The first of these characterizes polities of limited territory and with little or no institutionalized bureaucracy whose ruler exercises power on a very localized scale. A Chieftaincy which is able to expand and consolidate its power and territory will evolve into an Early Kingdom, whose leader uses a new Indianized title such as “rāja” but is still largely primus inter 198

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia

pares among the other rulers in his region. Early Kingdoms possess the fundamentally fissiparous and centrifugal nature of Wolters’s mandalas. Finally, a select few of these polities are able to grow into supra-​regional Imperial Kingdoms, consolidating their own territory and conquering that of neighboring Early Kingdoms, whose autonomy is then “extinguished” through a process of “provincialization” within the imperial entity. Imperial Kingdoms benefit from a considerable and permanent expansion of their core area, are governed through a bureaucracy, and are relatively centripetal in nature, leaving behind the unstable structure of their predecessors.21 The criteria for inclusion within Kulke’s framework are not completely clear. He identifies four Imperial Kingdoms—​Pagan, Angkor, Majapahit, and Vietnam—​largely on the basis of their structure and durability. Srivijaya and Champa are relegated to the status of Early Kingdoms because they did not survive long enough to morph into imperial entities. Curiously absent from Kulke’s discussion is the Tai world, for reasons which are not explained. The other omission is the Philippines, which is perhaps more understandable given the general lack of specific knowledge about pre-​Hispanic polities as well as the general assumption that they were generally smaller than most of their Indianized counterparts.22 Overall, however, his distinction between Early and Imperial Kingdoms is a useful and persuasive one which permits a greater degree of differentiation among Southeast Asian polities than does the more “one-​size-​fits-​all” mandala model. More recently, Victor Lieberman has authored a massive and highly informative study of mainland Southeast Asian history. He places the region in an even broader comparative perspective with East Asia and Europe, a scale engaged more broadly by this volume and series. Lieberman distinguishes between what he calls the “charter states” of early Southeast Asia—​Pagan, Angkor, Champa, and Đại Việt (Vietnam)—​and their successors. The charter states are those which essentially laid the foundations for later polities in the early-​modern period. Lieberman draws on several of the models discussed above—​notably those of Wolters and Tambiah—​though he prefers “solar polity” to the latter’s “galactic polity” on the grounds that “most galaxies lack a distinct central body and their components defy enumeration.” The “successor states” are subdivided into “decentralized Indic,” “centralized Indic,” and “Chinese-​style” based on criteria of structure, strength, and degree of administrative control (taxation, ability to mobilize manpower, etc.).23 The “charter”-​“successor” dichotomy forms the essential taxonomy for Lieberman’s discussion; “polity,” “state,” “kingdom,” and “empire” are more or less interchangeable throughout the book.

Toward a Synthesis Among these various models, Kulke’s Imperial Kingdom is arguably the most useful in allowing us to identify “empires” as distinct entities in mainland Southeast Asia. Yet because of his exclusion of the Tai world and, for all practical purposes, Burma, 199

Bruce M. Lockhart

it is inadequate for the “early-​modern period,” when Angkor’s decline facilitated the expansion of Siamese, Burmese, and Vietnamese polities.24 Indeed, Kulke’s classification would probably be more precise if he had limited it to the kingdoms which were more directly “Indianized” and left out Burma and Vietnam completely. One of the reasons that the latter two polities remain peripheral to his argument is that he is looking at Southeast Asia primarily through a “Sanskrit lens,” whereas Vietnam was of course culturally Sinified and Pagan belonged to the Pali-​oriented Theravada world. Lieberman’s thorough and lucid taxonomy, however, allows us to neatly classify every significant polity in the region, but the goal of defining a mainland imperial model remains elusive. This chapter suggests a model which is to some extent a synthesis of the others but which would enable us to distinguish clearly between “imperial” and “non-​imperial” polities across the region. Five key characteristics of a mainland “empire” can be identified. First, while like almost all polities in precolonial Southeast Asia, the “empire” possessed some of the characteristics of a mandala (notably a certain degree of structural fragility and the personalized nature of royal power), it was more stable and durable than the polities that Kulke classifies as Early Kingdoms. Second, as a result of this it maintained a relatively high degree of territorial continuity over the long term (allowing for changes in ruling dynasty and/​or capital), and much or all of its precolonial “geo-​body” is preserved in a present-​day nation-​state.25 Third, the “empire’s” historical trajectory incorporated a high degree of territorial expansion through the absorption of other polities. Fourth, it had an ethnically diverse population, but its multiethnic character was due primarily to expansion rather than to immigration (e.g., of Chinese or Indians). Finally, in the geopolitics of the mainland region, the “empire” was generally the aggressor rather than the victim, the attacker rather than the target. Based on these criteria the history of mainland Southeast Asia can be structured around five main empires: Pagan (the Burmese polity from the mid-​ninth through the late thirteenth centuries), Burma (under the Toungoo/​Restored Toungoo and Konbaung dynasties from the late fifteenth through the late nineteenth centuries), Siam (including Ayudhya and its successors the Thonburi and Bangkok kingdoms), Vietnam (spanning both its period of unity and its extended division into two separate polities), and Angkor. Although it would be more convenient to treat “Burma” as a single entity, the fragmentation and shrinking of the kingdom which took place during the “Ava period” between the end of Pagan and the rise of the Toungoo Dynasty would seem to justify the distinction made here. (By contrast, Ayudhya and Đại Việt both maintained the same political center and territorial core over a period of several centuries.) Each of these fits the framework just described, and collectively they constitute what might be called the “regional superpowers” of mainland Southeast Asia. Of the five, Burma experienced the most violent cycles of waxing and waning of dynasties linked to specific capitals. While the political center changed from period to period, and there were frequent civil wars and conflicts between rival polities, there was a consistent “imperial core” which gave continuity to these successive polities, 200

Figure 7.1  Mainland Southeast Asia, 1220. From David K. Wyatt, “Relics, Oaths and Politics in Thirteenth-​Century Siam,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32 (2001), 3–​66. 201

Figure 7.2  Mainland Southeast Asia, 1340. From Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–​1830, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 202

Figure 7.3  Mainland Southeast Asia, 1540. From Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–​1830, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 203

Bruce M. Lockhart

particularly those following Ava. What might be called the “ethnic core” of the polity diversified from its Burman (ethnic Burmese) origins to include Mon and Karen populations under its direct control, as well as the Arakanese with the annexation of that kingdom in the late eighteenth century. The upland Shan, although not under direct Burmese rule, had a long history of political involvement with their suzerain’s affairs, and Burma was still exercising a certain degree of overlordship at the point of British colonization. In addition to the military campaigns against the neighboring groups just mentioned, the Burmese under the Restored Toungoo and Konbaung dynasties constituted the major external threat in the Tai world, effectively controlling Lanna from the mid-​sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries, and fighting wars with Lane Xang and Ayudhya as well. The two most serious defeats suffered by the latter kingdom, in 1569 and 1767, were both at the hands of the Burmese.26 These defeats, however, were relatively small though tragic blots on a broader historical record of Siamese victories and expansion. Although the kingdom of Ayudhya started as a primus inter pares among several different Tai polities in the region, it enjoyed a comparatively high degree of stability and structural integrity over the long run which enabled it to absorb smaller and weaker neighbors such as Sukhothai and Nakhon Si Thammarat (to its north and south, respectively). By the time of its collapse in 1767, it had established suzerainty over Cambodia and several Malay states. The short-​lived Thonburi polity of King Taksin (1767–​82), established almost immediately after Ayudhya’s fall, and the Bangkok dynasty which replaced it and is still in power today, replaced Burmese overlordship in Lanna with their own, and expanded their influence in the Lao kingdoms across the Mekong. It was only the advent of British and French imperialism which shrunk Siam’s sphere of influence, and even after signing away all claims to most of its non-​Siamese vassal territories, it was still able to incorporate the Lanna territories and the Lao territories on the west bank of the Mekong within its own borders.27 Vietnam, like Burma, went through cycles of division and unity for much of its history, but they were arguably less violent. The first durable dynasties—​the Lý (early eleventh to early thirteenth centuries) and the Trần (early thirteenth to late fourteenth centuries)—​established a polity with a relatively fixed territorial core and began the centuries-​long process of southward expansion. (Although Vietnam—​known as Đại Việt for most of this period—​was smaller and ethnically more homogeneous under these two dynasties, the foundations and precedents for later institutional growth and territorial expansion were established before 1400.) A twenty-​year interlude of Chinese occupation in the early 1400s was followed by the foundation of the Lê dynasty, which ruled a unified Đại Việt for a hundred years before being replaced by the usurping Mạc dynasty for much of the sixteenth century. A civil war reestablished the Lê at the very end of that century, but for most of the next 200 years there were effectively two Vietnams: Đại Việt in the north (known to Europeans as Tonkin and to Vietnamese as Đàng Ngoài) and a southern kingdom known to Westerners as Cochin China and to Vietnamese as Đàng Trong. Following three decades of divisive warfare in the late 204

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia

1700s, the Nguyễn dynasty—​Vietnam’s last—​unified the country at the turn of the century and ruled it through the period of French colonialism, France having chosen to maintain this monarchy under its “protection.”28 As just noted, most of Vietnam’s territorial expansion was southward, with the gradual conquest and colonization of the lands belonging to the Cham (known collectively as Champa) and then the Mekong Delta, inhabited by Cambodians. This expansion, usually referred to as the Nam Tiến (southward advance), constituted the main thrust of Vietnamese imperialism—​a phenomenon which remains embarrassing and sensitive even today for historians who wish to portray their country as the constant historical victim of aggression rather than as an aggressor itself.29 From the seventeenth century onward, the Vietnamese were in direct competition with the Siamese for influence in Cambodia and—​subsequently and to a lesser extent—​in the Lao kingdoms. As for the upland areas of what is now northern, northwestern, and central Vietnam, some parts of them came under Vietnamese overlordship (though not direct control) whereas others remained completely independent until they were pacified by the French. Finally, we come to Angkor (more properly Angkorean Cambodia), which has for most foreign scholars remained the most “imperial” of the early Southeast Asian polities and the only one which is consistently designated as an “empire.” This status is partly due to its size, which although sometimes exaggerated by present-​day maps (especially in terms of its control over present-​day Thai and Lao territory) was undeniably considerable. At its height under the great King Jayavarman VII (ca. 1181–​ca. 1220) it was almost certainly the largest polity in the region, and the scope of its territory was only surpassed by Burma and Ayudhya after its disappearance from the geopolitical scene. Although the available inscriptions tell us much less than we would like to know about its structure and governance, over the long term it seems to have enjoyed a reasonable degree of political stability and continuity even while remaining in some respects a typical Southeast Asian mandala. During its early centuries it expanded from its ethnic Khmer core to govern a large swathe of territory which was probably Mon, and at its zenith its realm included a certain number of Tai-​speaking migrants along the periphery, although admittedly extant historical sources do not permit us to reconstruct the displacement of Angkorean rule by Tai polities with any degree of precision.30 The gradual contraction of its sphere of influence starting at the earliest in the mid-​thirteenth century, concomitant with the expansion of the Tai world, culminated in the reduction of the Cambodian polity to roughly its present size (though still including the Mekong Delta) by the fifteenth century, along with a shift in its power center from Angkor to the area around Phnom Penh where it has remained since that time.31 It is precisely because of the fairly clear chronological and geopolitical boundary between the Angkorean and post-​Angkorean polities that only the former is classified as an “empire” under our present model. The Cambodia which survived from 1500 onward comprised largely though not exclusively an ethnic Khmer population and, more important for our purposes, continued to shrink rather than to expand. Although it was able to 205

Bruce M. Lockhart

hold its own politically and military through the sixteenth century, from the early 1600s onward it was permanently caught between its powerful neighbors to the West and East and was never again to enjoy true political independence until after the end of French colonial rule. Swatches of territory in its western provinces came under Siamese rule, while the Mekong Delta gradually shifted over to Vietnamese control. Almost nowhere else in Southeast Asia is there such a clear shift from being a geopolitical aggressor to being a victim.32 Three other polities which played a significant role in the region’s history should be mentioned here although they do not meet the criteria for being “empires.” Champa, while once considered as a single kingdom and by some scholars even as an empire, is now seen by most historians as at most a kind of federation or grouping of smaller mandala-​style kingdoms. The earliest Cham polity may have been in existence as early as the third century, and the last one was not completely swallowed up by Vietnam until the early 1800s, but it is virtually impossible to squeeze it into an “imperial” framework.33 Lanna, the Northern Thai kingdom founded in the late thirteenth century, existed as a separate polity for more than 500 years, but it never achieved a high degree of internal stability, and for much of its existence it was subordinate to either Burmese or Siamese overlordship.34 Finally, the Lao kingdom of Lane Xang (established as a single entity in the mid-​fourteenth century) only existed as a relatively unified polity until 1700, when it broke into several smaller and more vulnerable components.35

Kingship and Ideology These empires can be roughly classified as “Indic” or “Sinic” based on the civilizations which most heavily influenced their respective cultures. The first category can be further subdivided into “Hindu-​Buddhist”36 and “Theravada” polities, the former referring to Angkor and the latter to Pagan/​Burma and the Tai kingdoms. (Although Angkor by its final century had shifted to Theravada Buddhism, for most of its history its ruling class included devotees of Śiva, Viṣṇu, and/​or Buddha, the latter through the teachings of Indian schools, mainly Mahayana.) We will consider kingship and ideology first in the Indic world, then in Sinic Vietnam, and finally in a brief comparative context. The distinction between “king” and “emperor,” though very clear in some cultures, is neither clear nor consistent in the world of Indic kingship. Most rulers were “kings,” “great kings,” or “kings of kings,” with various titles and honors appended to those basic appellations. Within a specifically Theravada Buddhist context, the ideal ruler was a dhammarāja, the Pali-​language term for a king who exemplified the ideals of the dhamma (Sanskrit dharma) or Buddhist teachings. A particularly ambitious Theravada ruler might claim to be a chakkavatti (Sans. chakravartin)—​usually translated as “wheel-​rolling ruler,” the wheel symbolizing the dhamma. A  chakkavatti was a sort of “dhammarāja on steroids” ready and willing to expand his territory through a combination of superior virtue and military strength. Only a few rulers in Burmese and 206

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia

Thai history laid claim to this title, and chakkavatti status was largely a self-​proclaimed attribute rather than a separate category of ruler.37 Legitimacy in Indic kingship was based to a large extent on individual attributes, although family/​dynastic connections were not irrelevant. Angkorean rulers in particular were very much concerned with demonstrating their blood ties to earlier kings, and their inscriptions often contained genealogical information. (In some cases scholars believe that these family details were partly or completely falsified in order to buttress a questionable claim to the throne.) That said, a king was of course obliged to demonstrate his virtue as a follower of the particular deity he worshipped, and his spiritual merits would be enumerated with considerable rhetorical flourish in any inscription linked to his authority.38 Theravada polities, while existing within the framework of dynastic lines, generally articulated their ideas of legitimacy more in terms of the individual’s merits than of his lineage. In the context of Pagan, Michael Aung-​Thwin has aptly coined the term “kammarāja” to emphasize the importance of a ruler’s kamma (the Pali equivalent of the better-​known Sanskrit term karma), the balance of his good and bad deeds from his previous existences which had enabled him to take the throne.39 As in Angkor, the ruler had to demonstrate his spiritual merits and religious devotion, which, along with the general prosperity of his realm, were indications that his kamma had “bequeathed” him the right to rule. A  glaring deficiency in any of the areas just mentioned would raise serious questions about this right and leave him vulnerable to the claims of a rival. Rivalry could and did frequently take place within a ruling lineage, but it could just as easily come from outside that lineage, and if it did, royal blood would offer little protection to a ruler otherwise deemed unfit to sit on the throne. The Sinic worldview inherited by the Vietnamese—​particularly, though not exclusively, the ruling class—​makes a clear distinction between an “emperor” (hoàng đế/​ huangdi) and a “king” (vương/​wang), although traditionally it does not distinguish between “empire” and “kingdom,” both of which are simply “countries” (quốc/​guo). By contrast, the indigenous and colloquial Vietnamese term for a ruler, “vua,” can refer to either an “emperor” or a “king” depending on the context, and outside the ruling class the difference between the two may not have been very relevant, since most Vietnamese would have had no contact with, or knowledge of, any ruler other than their own.40 For the ruling elite, however, the difference was highly significant. If the chronicles are correct, every Vietnamese monarch from the mid-​tenth century onward used the Sino-​ Vietnamese title (hoàng) đế in the context of his own realm, but in dealings with China, the “emperor” had to be downgraded to a “king” because only one full-​fledged “Son of Heaven” could exist, and he could not be in Hanoi or Hue. Conversely, all other rulers of whom the Vietnamese had knowledge (Cham, Cambodian, Thai, etc.) were routinely referred to as “kings.”41 The process of Sinicization of Vietnam’s political culture was a long and gradual one, and textual evidence suggests that Confucianism was not firmly in place as an ideology until after the fifteenth-​century Ming Occupation. The first decades of independence in the tenth century saw a somewhat disconnected series of rulers who, despite 207

Bruce M. Lockhart

later historians’ valiant efforts to reshape their reigns into successive though short-​lived dynasties, seem to have been more or less independent strong men, the kind of leader whom Wolters dubs “men of prowess.”42 The Lý and Trần rulers were almost certainly more devoutly Buddhist than they were Confucianist, and they did things which shocked later generations of scholars, such as honoring Buddha more prominently than the ancestral spirits or holding a birthday party during a time of mourning for a parent. It is probable that their legitimacy in their subjects’ eyes was framed mainly in Buddhist terms, though it also seems clear that Confucian ideas of royal succession based on primogeniture and the importance of dynastic ties were beginning to take hold during this time.43 From the fifteenth century onward, however, Confucian ideals gradually became more firmly implanted in Vietnamese society, and not just within the ruling class—​ most probably because one of the most significant aspects of the Ming Occupation was the expansion of the educational system. The belief in legitimacy derived from the Heavenly Mandate (Thiên Mệnh/​Tianming) became thoroughly entrenched, and while an individual ruler’s virtue (đức/​de) was certainly important, his attachment to a dynastic lineage was even more so. Dynastic change was no small occurrence, and clear evidence of one family’s decline (and thus the loss of the Heavenly Mandate) was necessary before another family could legitimately take its place. (It is worth noting, for example, that for almost the entire period between 1428 and 1789 there was a Lê ruler governing at least some part of Vietnam, despite the extended Mạc usurpation/​ interregnum of the sixteenth century and the existence of the separate Nguyễn kingdom from roughly 1600 onward.)44

Comparative Observations One of the challenges to formulating a single model for mainland Southeast Asia—​ whether it be state structure, kingship, or in this case empire—​is the need to incorporate both the Indic and Sinic worldviews. In this comparative discussion there are three main points of comparison between Vietnam and its Indic neighbors to consider: legitimacy and dynastic stability, structural or state stability, and the ideology of territorial expansion. I will suggest that broadly speaking, the Sinic model provided more strength and stability in the first two areas while in the third, the two models were equally effective, even though they articulated their respective ideologies in different terms.45 As was noted above, legitimacy in the Indic polities was linked to individual rulers’ merits more than to their lineage, although genealogical claims were not irrelevant. It seems that family ties were more significant in Angkor than in the Theravada polities, whose rulers were generally more concerned with proving their own merit than with demonstrating their legitimacy as a member of the ruling family. It is tempting to hypothesize that this can be explained by the difference between Angkor’s Hindu-​ Buddhist framework of kingship and the Sinhalese model that was imported into 208

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia

Theravada kingdoms, but such a hypothesis would need to be evaluated by scholars with greater expertise than mine in the original theories of kingship in India and Sri Lanka. Certainly Theravada at the level of praxis is structured around a preoccupation with individual merit-​making and karma, and this could well be reflected in a greater emphasis on personal qualities when it came to royal legitimacy. The Confucian worldview which gradually penetrated Vietnamese society and came to characterize its kingship by the early fifteenth century (and almost certainly before that, though to what extent is unclear) attributed great weight to an individual’s “virtue,” but the counterweight to this was the legitimacy of the Mandate of Heaven, which was bestowed on a dynasty rather than an individual. The consequence of this was that a dynasty could produce one or two incompetent or immoral rulers without its legitimacy being seriously questioned; in other words, a rotten apple or two did not spoil the whole bunch. It usually took a sequence of bad rulers, along with the ominous portents of natural disasters (reinforced by the human suffering that these produced if the state’s response to them was inadequate) to bring about a consensus that the ruling dynasty had lost the Heavenly Mandate and could be legitimately challenged or replaced. The fact that for almost the entire period between 1000 and 1900 Vietnamese were under the rule of one of only four dynasties (Lý, Trần, Lê, and Nguyễn) testifies to the relative long-​ term stability of the Sinic dynastic model. Confucian ideology also provided a stabilizing element through the practice of royal succession based on primogeniture. This practice was largely institutionalized from the beginning of the Lý, and although Vietnamese history has no shortage of episodes of succession crises (usually due to rivalries between siblings, especially those of different mothers), on the whole there were fewer of them than in the Indic kingdoms. For Angkor we do not have chronicles to narrate the events surrounding the accession of each ruler, but the scholars who have gone through the inscriptions to map out the polity’s history have found ample evidence of political instability, usurpation, and the occasional civil war. For the Theravada polities there were extended periods when every single royal succession caused bloodshed; in Burma there was a violent succession crisis as late as the mid-​nineteenth century, when half the country was already under British rule. Overall the pattern of succession was a key factor behind the stability (or lack thereof) in Southeast Asian empires. A second important difference between the two models was the nature of the state. Although the early Vietnamese dynasties relied on a mixture of princes, officials, and (in the eleventh century, at least) monks to govern their polity, the basic structures of a Chinese-​style administration were gradually put in place. The establishment of the Lê saw the consolidation of a full-​fledged Confucian state which modeled itself after China as closely as possible, and from that point onward government by mandarins trained in the examination system became the norm. (The examination system was abolished only under colonial rule, and in much of Vietnam the French preserved it until just before the First World War). This contrasted significantly with the Theravada states, which were based on hierarchies and networks of personal ties. This is not to say that there 209

Bruce M. Lockhart

were no official positions or titles in these hierarchies or that personal ties did not count in the Vietnamese bureaucracy, but the core nature of the state differed significantly between the two models. Angkor seems to have been to some extent a blend of the two: there is evidence of a fairly well-​structured bureaucracy, but analysis of the corpus of inscriptions shows the influence of powerful families linked to specific regions of the polity.46 What are the possible implications for the stability of these polities? If we consider this point together with the previous one, it is worth noting that in the Vietnamese system it was extremely difficult for someone from outside the royal family to overthrow the ruling dynasty and replace it with another, since a commoner would have a very difficult time proving that he was more deserving of the Heavenly Mandate. In the two cases where a Vietnamese dynasty was permanently displaced by usurpation—​the Lý in the early thirteenth and the Trần in the late fourteenth century—​the usurping family had previously married into the royal clan and thus took power “from within.” By contrast, when the Lê were pushed out by the Mạc in the 1520s, they reestablished themselves in another part of the kingdom almost immediately and eventually regained the throne. Conversely, in Theravada polities where individual merit contributed to legitimacy more than family affiliation and where many officials had regional power bases with their own supplies of manpower, it was not difficult for an ambitious noble from a province outside the capital to seize power and proclaim a new dynasty. A noble family could become a royal family literally overnight, and as long as its hold on power was firm, its newfound royal credentials would generally go unchallenged. This was particularly the case in Ayudhya, where it happened twice in the course of the seventeenth century. Although the various empires may have differed in terms of their concepts of legitimacy and kingship and the stability of their state, they all shared the ambition for territorial expansion and the ability to justify it in terms of their particular ideology. The rulers of Đại Việt expected their neighbors, all of whom were represented (at least on paper, though probably not always in reality) as vassals or tributaries, to show proper respect and deference to their “virtue” and “authority” (uy, Ch. wei). Any lesser ruler who failed to do so was fair game for an attack in order to bring him back into line. The invasion might be a one-​off campaign (as with attacks on Champa in 1044 and Lane Xang in 1479) or a more protracted affair leading to territorial conquest, such as the major onslaught on Champa in 1471.47 Angkorean epigraphy does not tell us a lot about military campaigns in particular or territorial expansion in general, and the scope of the empire’s territory under a particular ruler can only be mapped out very roughly by the location of his inscriptions. The rhetoric of conquest is certainly there, however.48 In Theravada polities, above and beyond the cakkavatti ideal discussed above, which was directly linked to expansion and war, a ruler could invoke his own superior merit to attack a neighbor on the grounds that its ruler was not sufficiently patronizing or protecting Buddhism in his realm.49 As with Vietnam, such campaigns could involve a short-​term invasion (probably with

210

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia

some capture of manpower) or long-​term annexation, depending on the situation. The language of aggression varied, but the results were the same. We can suggest, then, that a particular model of “empire” based on the five characteristics enumerated above characterized the strongest and most durable polities of precolonial mainland Southeast Asia. This model is certainly not unique to the region, but it does transcend ethnic and cultural differences while recognizing the possibility of ideological and structural variation within the imperial framework. While these polities were not the only players on the geopolitical scene, over the long term they were the main ones, and without exception their smaller, weaker neighbors ended up as their vassals and tributaries, when not partially or completely absorbed as directly ruled provinces. These empires dominated the region well into the nineteenth century, even after the arrival of the British and French (beginning with the First Anglo-​Burmese War of 1824–​26). Their confrontation with the Western imperial Great Powers belongs to the next chapter of the historical narrative.

Notes 1 See, for example, three books spanning a century of scholarship on Angkor: Georges Maspéro, L’empire khmèr (Phnom Penh: Imprimerie du Protectorat, 1904); Lawrence Palmer Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1951); and Claude Jacques and Philippe Lafond, The Khmer Empire, trans. Tom White (Bangkok: River Books, 2007). 2 On Srivijaya and other Malay polities, see the chapter by Sher Banu Khan in this volume. 3 See the chapters by Wang Jinping, Frederick Vermote, and Murari Jha in this volume. 4 One of the few concerted attacks on perceived Eurocentrism in Western historiography on precolonial Southeast Asian history is by Michael Aung-​Thwin, who is particularly bothered by what he perceives as the distorting implications of the term “classical”; see his “The Classical in Southeast Asia: The Present in the Past,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 26, no. 1 (1995), 75–​91. 5 O. W. Wolters, “Northwestern Cambodia in the Seventh Century,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 37, no. 2 (1974), 355–​84. 6 See, for example, the important textbooks by George Coedès, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, ed. Walter F. Vella and trans. Susan Brown Cowing (Honolulu: East-​West Center Press, 1968); D. G.  E. Hall, A History of South-​East Asia, 4th edn (New York:  St Martin’s Press, 1981); and John F. Cady, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development (New York:  McGraw-​Hill, 1964). Such maps can be found today on numerous websites, including Wikipedia (http://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Kingdom_​of_​Funan). 7 Claude Jacques, “ ‘Funan,’ ‘Zhenla.’ The Reality Concealed by These Chinese Views of Indochina,” in Early South-​ East Asia: Essays in Archaeology, History and Historical Geography, ed. R. B. Smith and W. Watson (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 371–​9; Michael Vickery, “Where and What Was Chenla,” in Recherches nouvelles sur le Cambodge, ed. François Bizot (Paris: École Française d’Extême-​Orient, 1994), pp. 197–​ 212; Michael Vickery, “Funan Reviewed: Deconstructing the Ancients,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-​Orient 90 (2003), 101–​43.

211

Bruce M. Lockhart

8 James C. M. Khoo (ed.), Art and Archaeology of Fu Nan: Pre-​Khmer Kingdom of the Lower Mekong Valley (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2003). 9 See Coedès, Indianized States; Hall, History; and Cady, Southeast Asia. 10 A recent and more systematic discussion of Angkor as an “empire” is found in Eileen Lustig, “Power and Pragmatism in the Political Economy of Angkor,” PhD dissertation, Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney, 2009. 11 “Introduction,” in Centers, Symbols, and Hierarchies: Essays on the Classical States of Southeast Asia, ed. Lorraine Gesick (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1983), p. 1. 12 Stanley J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 113. 13 Stanley J. Tambiah, “The Galactic Polity in Southeast Asia,” in Tambiah, Culture, Thought, and Social Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 3–​31. 14 Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-​Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). 15 See O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives, rev. edn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1999). 16 It is used, for example, by Charles Higham, Early Mainland Southeast Asia: From First Humans to Angkor (Bangkok: River Books, 2014); and Paul Michel Munoz, Early Kingdoms of the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula (Singapore: Éditions Didier Millet, 2006). One attempt to criticize the mandala model is Deborah Tooker, “Putting the Mandala in Its Place,” Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 2 (1996), 323–​58; however, a case can be made that Tooker is to some extent setting up a straw man because she is critiquing Wolters’s model in the context of the uplands, where he did not try to apply it. 17 See, for example, the maps in Higham, Early Mainland Southeast Asia. 18 Wolters, History, Culture, and Region, pp. 35–​6. 19 See, for example, John Whitmore, “ ‘Elephants Can Actually Swim’: Contemporary Chinese Views of Late Ly Dai Viet,” in Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries, ed. David G. Marr and A. C. Milner (Canberra and Singapore: ANU RSPS and ISEAS), pp. 117–​37. 20 Hermann Kulke, “The Early and the Imperial Kingdom in Southeast Asian History,” in Marr and Milner, eds, Southeast Asia, pp. 1–​22. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. The term “Tai” refers to speakers of various different languages, the most important in Southeast Asia being Thai, Lao, and Shan. The “Tai world” in this context would include the kingdoms of Sukhothai, Ayudhya, Lane Xang, and Lanna. 23 Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–​1830, vol. 1 (Cambridge and New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 31–​7; quotation from p. 33. 24 In the case of the Siamese, it is probably more accurate to say that the expansion of the Tai kingdoms and the contraction of the Angkorean polity occurred in tandem with each other. A more precise cause-​and-​effect relationship is difficult to determine. 25 On the geo-​body, see Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-​Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994). Thongchai’s concept incorporates spatial/​geographical/​territorial and emotional/​psychological elements of nationhood. 26 See Lieberman, Strange Parallels, chap. 2; Victor Lieberman, Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580–​1760 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); and William J. Koenig, The Burmese Polity, 1752–​1819: Politics, Administration and Social

212

In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia

27 28 29 30

3 1 32

33 34 35 36 37

3 8 39

40 41

Organization in the Early Kon-​baung Period (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1990). See Lieberman, Strange Parallels, chap. 3; David Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); and B. J. Terwiel, Thailand’s Political History: From the Fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 to Recent Times (Bangkok: River Books, 2005). See Lieberman, Strange Parallels, chap. 1; K. W. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Lê Thành Khôi, Histoire du Viêt-​Nam; des origines à 1858 (Paris: Sudestasie, 1981). This issue is discussed in more detail in Bruce M. Lockhart, “Colonial and Post-​Colonial Constructions of ‘Champa,’” in The Cham of Vietnam: History, Society, and Art, ed. Trần Kỳ Phương and Bruce M. Lockhart (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011), pp. 16–​22. Migration of Tai-​speakers from their home region in the present Sino-​Vietnamese border region probably began in the early second millennium ce. The first polities under Tai rulers in the northern regions of what is now Thailand appeared after 1200 along the peripheries of the Angkorean empire, and it was precisely during the thirteenth century that Angkorean influence in that area began to contract. See David Chandler, History of Cambodia, 4th edn (Boulder: Westview Press, 2008). This process is summarized in ibid. and covered in detail in Mak Phoeun, Histoire du Cambodge de la fin du XVIe siècle au début du XVIIIe (Paris: École Française d’Extrême-​ Orient, 1995); and Khin Sok, Le Cambodge entre le Siam et le Viêtnam (de 1775 à 1860) (Paris: École Française d’Extrême-​Orient, 1991). The recent rethinking of Champa is discussed in various chapters of Phương and Lockhart, eds, Cham of Vietnam. General histories of Lanna can be found in Saratsawadi Ongsakun, History of Lan Na (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005); and Hans Penth, A Brief History of Lan Na: Civilisations of North Thailand (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2000). See Martin Stuart-​Fox, The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang: Rise and Decline (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1998). My use of this term does not ignore the issues raised by some scholars as to whether present-​ day “Hinduism” is a construct put together in colonial India; “Hindu” in this context is a shorthand for Saivite, Vishnuite, and Brahmanic beliefs. This concept of kingship is discussed in detail in Tambiah, World Conqueror, pp.  39–​53; and Sunait Chutintaranond, “ ‘Cakravartin’: The Ideology of Traditional Warfare in Siam and Burma, 1548–​1605,” PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1990, pp. 71–​135. Sunait mentions several examples of Burmese and Siamese kings who claimed the attributes of a cakkavatti (pp. 93–​6). Modern Thai uses “chakkaphat” and “chakkawat,” derivatives of the Pali term, to translate “emperor” and “empire,” respectively, but not in reference to Southeast Asian rulers. Ian Mabbett, “Kingship in Angkor,” Journal of the Siam Society 66, no. 2 (1978), 1–​58. Michael Aung-​Thwin, “Divinity, Spirit, and Human: Conceptions of Classical Burmese Kingship,” in Gesick, ed., Centers, Symbols, and Hierarchies, pp. 69–​72; and Aung-​Thwin, “Kingship, the Sangha, and Society in Pagan,” in Explorations in Early Southeast Asian History, ed. Kenneth R. Hall and John K. Whitmore (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1976), pp. 205–​55. See Alexander Barton Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 9–​11, for a discussion of the semantic and cultural differences between the terms “vua” and “hoàng đế.” Any attempt to sort out terminological issues for Vietnam’s precolonial history is always made more complicated by the fact that most Vietnamese texts, especially chronicles and

213

Bruce M. Lockhart

diplomatic correspondence, were written in classical Chinese by Confucian scholars for whom maintaining these hierarchical and semantic distinctions was crucial. It is quite possible that outside the Court all rulers—​Chinese, Vietnamese, Siamese, and so on—​were simply referred to informally as “vua,” but this cannot be determined from the sources. 42 On “prowess” in Southeast Asian rulers, see Wolters, History, Culture and Region, pp. 18–​21, 93–​5, 112–​13. 43 Keith Taylor has also stressed the significance of animistic beliefs for at least the early Lý rulers, though this seems to have gradually faded away; see Taylor, “Authority and Legitimacy in 11th Century Vietnam,” in Marr and Milner, eds, Southeast Asia, pp. 139–​75. The non-​ Confucianist nature of Trần-​dynasty Đại Việt is ably discussed in Shawn McHale, “ ‘Texts and Bodies’: Refashioning the Disturbing Past of Tran Vietnam,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42, no. 4 (1999), 494–​518. 44 An excellent overview of Vietnamese kingship is Nguyễn Thế Anh, “La conception de la monarchie divine dans le Việt-​Nam traditionnel,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-​ Orient 84 (1997), 147–​57. 45 Lieberman, Strange Parallels, covers some of the same comparative ground as this part of the chapter. Although I have read and generally agree with his arguments, the ideas here are derived from my own scholarly trajectory as a comparativist of Vietnam and the Tai world. 46 See the discussion in Lustig, “Power and Pragmatism.” 47 Prior to invading Champa in 1044, the Lý ruler mused out loud as to whether the Cham had failed to send tribute because his “authority and virtue” (uy đức) had failed to reach their distant country; see Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư [Complete annals of Đại Việt] (Hànội: Khoa Học Xã Hội, 1993), vol. 1, p. 264 (entry for 1043). An excellent study of the much harsher official Confucianist rhetoric linked to the campaigns of the 1470s is John Whitmore, “The Two Great Campaigns of the Hong-​Duc era (1470–​1497) in Dai Viet,” South East Asia Research 12, no. 1 (2004), 119–​36. 48 To cite just one example, the tenth-​century ruler Rajendravarman was said to have fought “like Rama” in his campaigns against the “powerful and evil” Mon and Cham rulers, shooting arrows in every direction; Inscription K872 from Prasat Ben Vien, in George Coedès (ed.), Inscriptions du Cambodge, vol. 5 (Paris: Éditions de Boccard, 1950), p. 101. 49 See, for example, the discussion of the Burmese Konbaung ruler’s stated justification for invading Arakan in 1784–​85 in Jacques Leider, “Politics of Integration and Cultures of Resistance:  A Study of Burma’s Conquest and Administration of Arakan (1785–​1825),” paper presented at the Workshop on Asian Expansions: The Historical Processes of Polity Expansion in Asia, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 2006.

214

Chapter 8

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World Sher Banu Khan The existence of “empires” in island Southeast Asia1 has been alluded to by some scholars, especially in describing the polities of Srivijaya, Majapahit, and Melaka.2 Southeast Asian imperialism, however, has not been examined anywhere near as intensely as the process of state-​formation in general during the premodern period. Southeast Asianists have identified various “state” structures as typical of the region, ranging from “port-​polities” to “city-​states,” “charter states,” “theatre states,” “hydraulic states,” “galactic polities,” “absolutist states,” and “gendered states and transvestite alternatives.” Scholars have also arrived at divergent views on the nature of these structures, ranging from “anarchy” and “incongruous”3 on the one hand to “imperial constructs”4 on the other.5 Despite this lack of focused study hitherto, the concept of empire can be a useful lens for making sense of the historical experience of this time and place—​and for reconsidering how we should situate both within the wider contexts of Asia and the world, as well as in the literature. Where should one search for “empire” in the Malay world of insular Southeast Asia? When (if at all) did such “empire-​formation” take place? And how was it related to the broader processes of state-​formation? Could empire-​building be seen as integral to the evolution of the layered forms of power or “layered sovereignty” that characterized this complex region? Space and the manner in which it was understood, controlled, and used seem to be so frequent an issue in trying to understand empire in history that it can form a useful starting point here. Empires have often been conceptualized as polities that revolved around a core or center of territory and people, that possessed a consciousness of dominion over space and peoples beyond this core, and that were able, by varying means and with varying degrees of control, to exercise authority over these peripheries. An empire might extend its control or influence over a well-​defined territory or it could have rather porous borders; it might be fairly homogenous with some minority components, or it might constitute several distinct ethnicities with their own local or provincial governments and political structures. The center-​periphery relationship was usually asymmetrical, with the center extracting resources from the subject-​ periphery; but the more successful cases would often be marked by a more symbiotic patron-​client relationship. Whatever the forms of economic relationship, they were often further sealed by political-​religious ideology that forged ties of loyalty, or acted

215

Sher Banu Khan

as the glue that bound disparate entities together. In the case of the Malay world, however, how did imperial centers exercise and consolidate control over peripheries prior to the arrival of European colonialism? What were the instruments of control, bases of legitimacy, and sources of unity that bound multiple ethnicities and diverse structures together? This chapter will begin by glancing at the historical evolution of political structures of polities in insular Southeast Asia starting from Srivijaya in the eighth century and proceeding through the development of Malay/​Muslim political structures in Melaka, Aceh, and Johor down to the eighteenth century, during which time such polities increasingly came into sustained and systematic geopolitical contact with both each other and the wider world. Although Srivijaya was a Buddhist state and therefore differed from the Muslim polities that became the norm in the Malay world, it has been included as the prototype of the insular harbor polity whose major characteristics were inherited and recast by Melaka, then in turn by Aceh and Johor. Given the numerous archipelagic

Figure 8.1  Island Southeast Asia: Sumatra, West Java, and Malay Peninsula, ca. 1700. Map provided by Sher Banu Khan. 216

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

polities that stretched from Aceh in the west to the Moluccan islands in the east, it is beyond this chapter to include all major Malay polities, and so readers may question why significant entities such as Makassar, Banten, and Mataram have been omitted. While these other polities were unquestionably important, Srivijaya, Melaka, Aceh, and Johor deserve special attention as they provided the exemplars of the principal Malay/​ Muslim political structures that would come to characterize the entire region by the eighteenth century. This chapter does not seek to convince the reader that there were indeed empires in early-​modern Malay Southeast Asia, whether unique to the region or comparable to those found elsewhere. It tests the use of empire as a conceptual framework to help make sense of the historical experience and political structures of the region, internally and in the larger Asian context. It will examine key features of the state-​structures of Srivijaya, Melaka, Aceh, and Johor—​their forms of power and legitimacy, ideology, forms of control (people, economic resources, military), and the nature of center-​periphery, overlord-​vassal relations, as well as relations with larger Asian empires in China, India, and the Turco-​Persianate world. Pursuing these questions, this chapter will invite the reader to consider whether in the Malay world, the characteristics that could indeed define empire as that term is more broadly defined and historicized were indeed present or not. It will then evaluate the received view of most scholars that while mainland Southeast Asia embarked on centralization and was successful in the “empire-​building” project by the eighteenth century, insular Southeast Asia failed and became fragmented. Using a broader understanding of empire, this chapter argues that the insular Malay/Muslim world forged its own imperial constructs, reflecting local contexts—geography, political, cultural, and religious norms. Though localized, the Malay world was not isolated but connected to other, especially Muslim, empires, and a certain degree of inter-​imperial political and cultural borrowing did take place.

Srivijaya, 700–​1400:  Seventh-​Century “Harbor City” or “Imperial Construct”? It is now appreciated that in the Malay archipelago some areas supported advanced chiefdoms, stratified societies, and complex systems of symbolic legitimation predating Indianization, and that Southeast Asians had pioneered trade circuits across the Bay of Bengal.6 The concentricity of entrepôt and polity, harbor cities, or coastal confederacies was an almost universal phenomenon in maritime Southeast Asia.7 One such example was Srivijaya—​a polity which reflects what some scholars called the “mandala model.” According to Herman Kulke, the main center of such mandala polities was the kedatuan (a Malay term used in Srivijayan Sebokingking inscriptions)—​the politically weighty but spatially limited residence of the datu or ruler, a fenced compound similar to the Javanese kraton (royal palace).8 The center of the concentric “field 217

Sher Banu Khan

of force” of Srivijaya was thus the datu of Srivijaya.9 The urban concentration around his residence would include religious buildings, parks, markets, and semirural riparian villages.10 Together, these formed the first circle or core area of the mandala, surrounded by another circle composed of localities or communities, known variously as desa, wanua, or samaryyada (from Sanskrit), that were ruled by local leaders who had been entrusted with the charge by the more powerful datu at the center (although these local leaders sometimes only uneasily recognized the authority of the primus inter pares, the ruler himself). Beyond these desa lay outlying concentric circles, referred to as bhumi in the inscriptions, that constituted the outer reaches of the polity.11 Besides this mandala model, another model offered by archeologists is the hierarchical upstream-​downstream organization involving a primary focal urban center downstream from one major river and a series of upstream secondary/​tertiary centers along the same major river basin.12 The relationship between the inner core of the mandala and its outlying circles, as well as between the focal downstream and peripheral upstream communities, was grounded in formal alliances or bonds cemented by oath-​taking rituals. This geographical representation epitomizes the spatial integration of the polity in a riparian landscape. It in no way conveys the notion of a topographically well-​defined territory. What is essential here is the center-​periphery relationship with the ruler at the center as the pivot of the polity, the focus of centripetal forces that keeps the system together. The main feature is the maintenance of a network of relations. In this sense, Srivijaya sought not a territorial empire but control over strategic points on the main trade routes of the Melaka Straits. From the fourth to fifth centuries, Srivijaya profited from international trade by dominating the Melaka Straits, the most practicable route for east-​west bulk trade and supplying China with local products and drugs and fumigants from Persia and the Arab world. Old Malay inscriptions from the 680s refer to bloody conquests of rival ports such as Kedah and other harbors in North Sumatra. By the eleventh century, a Chinese account described Srivijaya as the “uncontested master of the Straits receiving tributes from fourteen cities.”13 Dependencies were obliged to supply specified goods for export and to divert vessels to Srivijaya’s harbor. Its control of maritime trade in the Melaka Straits was achieved by the support of local sea and riverine peoples called the orang laut (sea people) who had a more or less tributary relationship with the ruler. In return for assured markets for their goods and marks of royal favor, these orang laut supplied Srivijaya with pearls, turtle shells, and piloted ships, guarded the Straits, and enforced royal restrictions on trade.14 Besides the Straits, on land, the Musi and Batang Hari rivers provided access to the interior of Sumatra, where Srivijaya obtained jungle produce and gold. The acquisition by the ruler of prestige and luxury goods from trade and the redistribution among clients provided the basis for the exercise of economic influence and political authority in Southeast Asia.15 One distinctly regional feature which has been identified by scholars is the importance of the distribution of material largesse by a chief to sustain his spiritual aura.16 Among the tributaries, Srivijaya’s rulers sought to 218

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

inculcate loyalty and stigmatize treason (derhaka) by emphasizing their magical potency (sakti), presenting themselves as Bodhisattvas.17 Effective administration was not via a centrally managed bureaucratic structure, but through the ruler’s exercise of patronage and reciprocal relations with the elite. Relations between the center and component parts of the state, which were inherently fragile and fluctuating, were held in balance by the ruler’s individual strength and charisma, making them what Wolters called “men of prowess.”18 Due to Srivijaya’s strategic location, the port-​polity functioned as a “gateway city,” not only controlling economic and political relations with the interior and surrounding regions, but assuming the undisputed role of cultural brokers.19 Srivijaya’s reputation for cultural refinement attracted both regional and foreign elites. In the 600s, Srivijaya reportedly had a thousand monks and it became a center for Mahayana Buddhist scholarship, while the ruler generously patronized Buddhist endowments in India.20 Old Malay became the lingua franca of inscriptions and the speech and culture of people in the Musi and Batang Hari Basins came to be referred to as Melayu. Commercial ties and Srivijaya’s prestige produced imitation of the Srivijayan court’s linguistic and ritual practices as far afield as Java and the Philippines. Srivijaya nurtured relations with China and maintained its tributary allegiance to China from the 600s to 1300s.21 This gave it privileged entrée to the imperial court, increased Chinese interest in Srivijayan goods, and strengthened Srivijayan rulers’ commercial position at the Straits by the prospect of Chinese diplomatic support against local challengers. Herman Kulke concluded that Early Srivijaya was neither an empire nor a chieftaincy but a typical Early Kingdom, characterized by a strong center and surrounded by a number of subdued but not yet annexed or “provincialized” smaller polities. Indeed, he argued that “the longevity . . . of Srivijaya was based on the very non-​ existence of those structural features that historians regard as pre-​requisites of a genuine empire.”22 What, though, was a “genuine empire”? Moving away from the dominant understanding of empire, one may ask—​are state consolidation and political, if not territorial, integration necessary conditions for empire-​formation? If one uses the lens of a more universal view and understanding of the term “empire” as an entity that revolved around a core or center, where the center possesses a consciousness of some form of hierarchical control over space and peoples beyond this core, and was able, by varying means, with varying degrees of control, to exercise some sway over these peripheries and to seal this relationship with political and religiously based ties of loyalty, then Srivijaya reflects most of these features. Moreover, unlike the politico-​military structures which constitute the dominant conception of empire, as Herman Kulke has pointed out, the very nonexistence of these structural features ensured the resilience of Srivijaya. Srivijaya survived as an “imperial center” for almost six centuries because of its localized or indigenous forms of control, based on pledges of allegiance to the center (rather than territorial annexation) and decentralized, elastic, and minimalist administrative state structures. 219

Sher Banu Khan

Melaka, 1400–​1600: Islamic City-​State or a Global Malay/​Islamic Center? According to Anthony Reid,23 the Mongol invasion of the 1290s, the southward immigration of Thai-​speakers, climatic changes, and a rise of seaborne east-​west trade were factors that had a role in the emergence of “maritime city-​states” in Southeast Asia from 1400 to 1600.24 Muslim Arab and Indian traders came to form the majority in Southeast Asian ports and they were primarily responsible for establishing the earliest “Islamic city-​states” such as Melaka, Pasai, Aru, Kampar, Inderagiri, Brunei, and the Moluccan islands of Tidore and Ternate (with the exception of the Banda Islands, which were ruled by an oligarchy of orang kaya or merchant aristocrats instead of a raja or sultan).25 Reid saw these city-​states as forming a “system” since almost all were monarchies, with a cosmopolitan ruling class highly dependent on foreign trade, all sharing similar political and geographical features and, most critically, a common language (Malay) and religion (Islam).26 Although there were some radical political transformations that took place in insular Southeast when coastal confederacies such as Buddhist Srivijaya declined and were succeeded by Islamic “city-​states,” Melaka inherited five key features of Srivijaya’s political, economic, and cultural structures. These features were: location near the Straits, orang laut support, Malay culture, Chinese imperial patronage, and fluid, amorphous center-​periphery relations. Just like Srivijaya, Melaka had a political center (negeri) similar to the kedatuan and its relationship with the periphery was described in terms of the confluents, bends, and reaches of a river system (anak sungei dan teluk rantau).27 However, Melaka’s hinterland need not directly surround the entrepôt nor be directly upstream of the negeri. It could rather be seen as a regional trade sphere extending a few hundred miles from the center and could be described as an “umland” lying beyond the entrepôt but linked by Melaka’s network of waterways, both riverine and maritime.28 The various river basins that constituted this umland included other polities that had entered into various degrees of reciprocal alliances with the rulers of Melaka such as Pasai, Pedir, Siak, Inderagiri—​sometimes competing with each other or even forming central places of their own. However, at the height of Melaka’s power, these polities were said to be “in dependence” or “tributaries” (jajahan/​takluk) of Melaka.29 Similarly, Srivijaya had kept under its “submission” (bhakti) a variety of polities from its own Musi River basin, such as Jambi/​Melayu, which ended up becoming the political center superseding Srivijaya after the eleventh century.30 The negeri of Melaka referred to the city where a part of the population was urban in nature and largely dependent on imported grain as opposed to its dependent rural hinterland.31 Like Srivijaya, Melaka was not a clearly defined and territorially bounded state, with the city as its capital. Instead, sovereignty resided in the monarch himself, the raja or sultan, ruling over his subjects/​followers (rakyat). The principal asset of the ruler was his subjects, not land or territory. When a Portuguese force led by Afonso de Albuquerque attacked Melaka in 1511, for example, Albuquerque noted that “the Sultan drew himself from the city taking with him some Malay merchants, captains and 220

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

governors of the land.”32 The defeated sultan, Mahmud Shah, went south of the peninsula and literally “opened a state” (buka negeri) there. What mattered, in other words, was not a state structure, but the survival of his person and dynastic lineage. Due to the China connection, Melaka became the entrepôt, the chief collection center for pepper, marine and forest goods for the China trade, and for official tribute. In turn, Melaka became the chief distribution center for Chinese porcelain, textiles, and handicrafts.33 Besides China, another sector of the Melakan trade was the Indian Ocean connection, managed by Arab, Persian, and Indian traders, while the third sector comprised the archipelago itself, which supplied Melaka with the pepper, spices, foodstuffs, marine products, and slaves it needed.34 Melaka extended its influence throughout its umland through a mixture of force, political alliances through strategic marriages, and chiefly through its attraction as a global commercial entrepôt, a major node in a Muslim dominated network that stretched from Maluku to Java to Gujarat and Hormuz, Alexandria, and Venice. Unlike Srivijaya, which relied on coercion and control of some key items of trade, Melakan rulers sought less to coerce but rather to attract traders in a rather free market. A minimalist administration accommodated diverse interests not only in the city but also with its tributaries where the local heads of these Malay networks treated the Melaka Sultan as the primus inter pares. In his study of what is often referred to as the kerajaan (kingdom) system of Malay polities such as Melaka, Milner identified the raja as the central institution that gave the subjects identity.35 Ruler-​ subject, patron-​ client relationships were the basis of the kerajaan. The system was characterized by fluidity and mobility, movement of rulers and subjects with no fixed territorial boundaries. There was no absolute ownership of land. Royal-​elite relations were fragile and sometimes contested. To compensate for the rather fragile relations of kin and patron networks, subjects were exhorted to obedience and the Malay chronicles such as the Sejarah Melayu emphasized the  daulat (sovereignty) of the raja and the paramountcy of loyalty to him. Treason (derhaka) was a major sin while the ruler in return was encouraged to consult the ministers and not to humiliate his subjects. The ruler’s position was however central where politics was a contest for the nama (rank/​status) that individuals acquired from their raja. Raja-​subject relations were manifested in elaborate court rituals where pomp and ceremony enhanced the aura, prowess, and charisma of the rulers.36 Thus on the one hand, while the basis of the ruler’s power was personal and fragile, the survival of the negeri was ensured as long as the ruler and his heirs lived since they could leave one locale and open a new state (buka negeri) with their followers, as the Melakan dynasty did after the Portuguese conquest of 1511. The spread of Islam in the thirteenth century throughout the Malay world was important in shaping concepts of monarchical government in these insular polities. It gave to those rulers who converted to Islam a means of legitimizing their position and enhancing their claim to hereditary rule and international status. Islam was used to buttress royal power by introducing new formulae and theories on kingship. It introduced new codes of law and literacy and opened the way for elites and local traders to enter into new profitable Muslim commercial links/​networks. 221

Sher Banu Khan

Islam was also important because it became part of Malay cultural identity, which defined Melakan prestige and created a shared culture. This plus the use of the Malay language, which became the lingua franca for most Malay/​Muslim courts, created a network of relations and loyalties based on a shared language, culture, and Islam.37 The spread of Malay culture moved along archipelagic lanes from Melaka to well-​beyond its immediate domains and this extended Malay culture to areas never before under substantial Srivijayan influence. Stories of those who spread Islam to Aceh and the Moluccas indicate that by the late fifteenth century links between Melaka and Java and the Moluccas had developed beyond mere trading connections to ties maintained by formal alliances and dynastic marriages. Lieberman asserts, “Melaka, no less than Ava, Pegu, Ayudhya, and Thang Long, became exemplar and patron of cultic and linguistic norms whose acceptance implied support for a central dynasty.”38 Reid argues that, when the “city-state” was dominant in the “the empty center” of Southeast Asia, a distinctive urban culture developed in the Malay idiom that was innovative, dynamic, and reminiscent of similar developments in the Mediterranean. These city-states were held together by a “tense kind of ‘peer-polity interaction,’ ”39 in which negeris needed each other as trading partners but also competed fiercely for trade and status.40 Reid argues that by the end of the period in which these city-states were either conquered or affected by European encroachments, they represented a crucial stage in Southeast Asian history because of their legacy in the area of religion and culture rather than for their political, military, and commercial structures.41 Melaka, like Srivijaya, lacked the central political and military structures needed to dominate or subjugate its far-​flung vassals. The “empty center” of these states, in other words, could not be more dissimilar from most agrarian, land-​based, densely populated empires, nor did they resemble other renowned Muslim empires such as the Ottomans or Mughals, whose governors and administrators exercised centralized control over their provinces.42 Even so, at the zenith of its power, Melaka, like Srivijaya, could be seen as an “imperial center” exerting political and commercial influence over its vassals and tributaries. Unlike Srivijaya, Melaka reached much farther afield as a global commercial entrepôt with links from Java to Venice. Melaka, as a Malay/​Muslim center, managed to bind and integrate “an empty center” not with military or centralized political control but with a shared culture based on Malay language, culture, and Islam.

State-​Formation and the Creation of “Absolutist States” in Insular Southeast Asia, ca. 1500–​1700: Toward “Genuine Empire Formation”? Increased demand from China after 1567 when Ming maritime bans were formally abolished, together with increased demand from Europe and from Muslim trading quarters, brought about an increase in exports of nutmeg and mace from Maluku by 222

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

500 percent. The volume of Southeast Asian pepper rose an estimated 550 percent, as did exports of tin, other spices, and forest and sea products.43 This period, which A. Reid termed the “Age of Commerce,” saw increased vitality and population growth in most cities in the archipelago. The economic stimuli caused by the expansion of cash-​crop production and exports, urbanism, and increasing interventions by Portuguese, Dutch, and English companies in local polities encouraged rulers of insular Islamic monarchies to centralize and consolidate their rule, so that they might better control cash-​crop production and partake in wealth creation in the face of increased European competition. This combination of external stimuli and local initiative would radically transform the city-​states into more “absolutist” ones, paralleling European-​style trajectories of political integration, militarization, centralization, and the tightening of center-​periphery relations.44 These developments were exemplified by the sultanates of Aceh, Johor, Banten, Makassar, and Mataram. Could these more powerful Islamic monarchies be seen as having finally developed a “genuine empire-​building” process comparable to those of their counterparts elsewhere in the Muslim world such as the Mughal and Ottoman empires? Following the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese in 1511, the Melakan royal family retreated to the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula, where they sought to continue the Melakan line. When Sultan Mahmud Syah, the last ruler of Melaka, died in Kampar on the east coast of Sumatra between November 1527 and July 1528, he was succeeded by his son, Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah. In the early 1530s Sultan Alauddin moved his residence to the valley of Johor River and became the first ruler of the Melakan dynasty to establish a permanent settlement in Johor. The “foundation” of the Kingdom of Johor was more a continuation than a fresh start in the history of the Malays of Melaka, so many features of the structures of power in the “new” Johor kingdom had their origins in the Melakan kingdom.45 The other polity that grew in power and emerged alongside Portuguese Melaka was Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a peculiar balance among the three powers of Aceh, Johor, and Melaka became an important feature of the political and economic life in the Straits of Melaka.

The Beginnings of “Empire-​Building” in Insular Southeast Asia? The Case of Aceh The creation of the kingdom of “Aceh Dar al-​Salam” began as a response to Portuguese incursions into the Straits from 1519 to 1524. Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah (r. 1516–​30) drove the Portuguese from Pasai and united this port-​city together with others such as Pidie and Lamri on the north coast of Sumatra. In 1520, the capital or royal center of the kingdom was located in the valley of the Aceh River itself, known as Aceh Besar, an area known for its deep harbor although it was not an important source of export production. Pepper, and later betel nut, was grown on the northern coast of Sumatra; pepper, 223

Sher Banu Khan

camphor, gold, and other exports came from the ports of the west coast of the island; tin was exported from Perak on the Malay Peninsula. Aceh’s consistent policy was to dominate these regions politically, deny their produce to the rival Portuguese, and as far as possible direct all foreign trade through its capital. In his study of trade and power in Aceh, Reid identified three stages in the political development of the sultanate: (1) a great mercantile oligarchy up to 1589; (2) the period of royal absolutism (1589–​1636); and (3) the decline of the crown and rise of the three sagi (supra-​districts) up to 1700.46 This threefold division serves as a useful framework for examining whether the process of the establishment of the kingdom of Aceh (stage 1), its consolidation (stage 2), and its decline (stage 3) during the period between 1500 and 1700 reflect characteristics of empire-​building in the Straits of Melaka. The desire of many Malay Muslims to repel the Portuguese from the region provided an important impetus to Aceh’s effort to consolidate its position and to be recognized as the leading Malay power in the region. Ala’ad-​din Ri’ayat Syah al-​Kahar (r. 1539–​71) also sought to defeat the Portuguese commercially, in addition to trying to drive them physically from the Straits of Melaka. Continuing his predecessor’s policies, he conquered Aru on the east coast of Sumatra and Pariaman on the west, establishing his sons as vassal rulers of these regions. He presided over the revival of the Muslim spice trade between his port and the Red Sea, which by the end of his reign was carrying as much as the Portuguese route. Following the death of al-​Kahar, his son Ali Ri’ayat Syah (r. 1571–​9) largely continued his policies, but Ali Ri’ayat’s death was followed by a decade of respite for the Portuguese as the kingdom passed to a succession of five weak rulers. As the powers of the throne declined, an elite mercantile class of orang kaya (“men of means”) came to hold sway over the kingdom. In 1589, Ala’ad-​din Ri’ayat Syah Sayyid al-​Mukammil, a descendant of the Dar al-​Kamal dynasty that had ruled in the Aceh valley before its unification, regained the throne and ruled with a firm hand until 1604. He massacred a large number of leading orang kaya by poisoning them at a feast and centralized political and commercial power in his own hands such that no major Acehnese merchants remained except the Sultan himself. Al-​Mukammil’s centralizing policy was carried to new heights by his grandson, Sultan Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–​36), who ushered in a period of “absolutism” in Aceh and who also launched the largest military expedition against the Portuguese. From Sultan Ala’ad-​din al-​Kahar to the reign of Iskandar Muda with the exception of the decade of five weak rulers (1579–​89), Aceh initiated a series of about ten holy wars against Portuguese Melaka that finally culminated in 1629 with Aceh’s defeat and the loss of about 19,000 men.47 Just as Melaka sought to bolster its position against the Portuguese by establishing diplomatic, tributary, and commercial relations with China, Aceh also negotiated a series of diplomatic, commercial, and military alliances with other Muslim empires outside the region. Through the mediation of the governor of Egypt, for example, the Ottoman Empire agreed to send Ottoman and Abyssinian troops to help Al-​Kahar. As a result, Mendes Pinto reported that the Portuguese faced an Acehnese army that included many soldiers from the Ottoman Empire, Cambay, 224

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

Malabar, and Abyssinia.48 Al-​Kahar sent a further mission to the Ottomans to ask for weapons for the struggle against the Portuguese, and sent other Acehnese ambassadors to the rulers of Bijapur, Calicut, and the Coromandel coast seeking assistance. From 1539 to 1569, the Ottomans supplied Aceh with artillery, gunners, military engineers, shipwrights, and elite troops who provided the Acehnese with military training. In 1570–​ 71, Bijapur, Ahmadnegar (Gujarat), Calicut, and Aceh launched a concerted offensive against Portuguese possessions throughout the Indian Ocean.49 This was intended to escalate into a pan-​Islamic alliance of the Ottoman Empire, Aceh and the Muslim states of South Asia against the Portuguese, but the planned joint campaign did not materialize and the Ottomans became distracted by events in the Red Sea theatre of war. Aside from the period of the 1560s when Aceh received some support from Johor, its initiatives against the Portuguese were generally not supported by the other Malay/​Muslim polities as the latter viewed any campaign that might lead to Aceh’s territorial aggrandizement with suspicion. When Aceh sent envoys to Demak to ask for help against the Portuguese, for example, Demak was apparently so afraid of the insatiable ambition of the Sultan of Aceh that it put the Acehnese ambassadors to death.50 It was not lost on other states that Aceh’s military expeditions against the Portuguese were occurring against the backdrop of various measures intended to bring about the political, military, and economic consolidation of the Straits of Melaka under Acehnese auspices. From 1539 to 1621, for example, Aceh undertook a series of diplomatic and military offensives to subdue the Minangkabaus, Bataks, and other rival Malay polities in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.51 During the reign of Iskandar Muda, Aceh extended her influence over the east and west coast of Sumatra to dominate pepper and gold exporting ports such as Pidir, Deli, Aru, Daya, Labu, Singkel, Barus, Batahan, Pasaman, Pariaman, Tiku, and Padang. Across the Straits on the Malay Peninsula, Iskandar Muda also conquered his main local rival, the Sultanate of Johor, in 1613, and seized control of the tin zones of Pahang (1617), Kedah (1619), and Perak (1620).52 Control over these areas enabled Iskandar Muda to raise an army of 40,000 men.53 In an Acehnese seventeenth-​century chronicle, the Hikayat Aceh, the chronicler described Iskandar Muda as “subjecting” (mengempukan) and “enslaving” (hambakan) these other Malay polities. Clearly then, Sultan Iskandar Muda and his successor son-​ in-​law, Sultan Iskandar Thani (r. 1637–​41), saw themselves as the imperial center in relation to these conquered Malay states.54 Islam had been used by Melaka to develop concepts of monarchical government and to embark on a process of institutionalization of law codes and governance; Aceh’s rulers strengthened monarchy even further by adopting local, Islamic, Ottoman, and Persian notions of universal kingship and grandiose titles. Iskandar Muda was known as Mahkota Alam (“Crown of the Universe”), Johan Berdaulat (“Champion Sovereign”), Perkasa Alam (“Might of the Universe”), Khalifah Allah (“Caliph of Allah”), and Sayyidina al-​Sultan (“Our Master, the Sultan”).55 In a letter to Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange, and Antonio van Diemen, Governor in Batavia, Sultan Iskandar Thani described himself as “Champion Sovereign, shadow of God on earth . . . glittering like the sun, whose attributes are like the full moon . . . 225

Sher Banu Khan

who is king of kings, descendants of Iskandar Zulkarnain . . . who owns many types of elephants, horses, gold,” and so on.56 It is interesting to note how in the Hikayat Aceh the concept of universal kingship was reconciled with the practical need to defer to the military power of Ottoman Turkey. In that text the (Ottoman) Sultan of Rum himself was credited with having declared that “at the present time” and by divine decree there were two great kings who shared the world: the king of Rum in the West and the king of Aceh in the East. These were then compared to the two great kings of yore: Solomon and Alexander the Great.57 The Sultans of Aceh certainly did not see themselves as mere kings of insular Southeast Asia. According to Charles Boxer, the 1560s saw Aceh reemerging as the formidable eastern bastion of the Muslim counter-​crusade against the Portuguese. Pepper propelled Aceh’s ascendancy in the sixteenth century as the sultanate succeeded Melaka to become the main Muslim commercial center supplying pepper to the Mediterranean market via the Red Sea.58 In order for Aceh to meet the economic challenges posed by its Portuguese and later Dutch and English rivals, it was crucial that the areas providing the sultanate with pepper and other commodities be reliably subservient or at least compliant with Acehnese plans. Any possible internal threats from the orang kaya also had to be prevented. Iskandar Muda and his successor Iskandar Thani therefore embarked on a series of measures to consolidate power and strengthen royal authority in Aceh. The privileges of the Acehnese orang kaya were substantially curtailed. They were not permitted to build fortified houses, or to keep cannons of their own. Any orang kaya who was late in answering the call to supply men for war was severely punished.59 A register was kept of firearms, and these had to be returned to the state once military campaigns were completed. Internal opponents were punished with immediate execution. Indeed, according to European accounts the orang kaya needed only to be wealthier and more popular than the sultan to incur their rulers’ wrath and risk death. Iskandar Muda is also credited with dividing the central territories of Aceh into mukim (subdistricts), which were later consolidated into larger administrative units. Besides strengthening the position of the sultanate at its center, Iskandar Muda also tightened his control over Aceh’s vassals and sought to curtail local loyalties and identities. Royal princes, previously stationed in outlying areas as governors, for example, were replaced by officials directly responsible to the ruler. The sultan appointed these officials, enjoying the title of panglima (“commander”), every three years. They were required to report annually and were periodically inspected by the ruler’s representatives. Punishment for dereliction of duty was severe.60 To limit the local elite’s commercial power and to forestall Dutch monopolies, Iskandar Muda sought to monopolize trade by introducing the sultan’s right of preemption to purchase Indian textiles and to sell pepper. Europeans could not purchase gold and pepper in west-​coast Sumatra without a license from him, while vassals of Aceh had to surrender 15 percent of their pepper, tin, and gold to the ruler and sell the rest to him at a price fixed by the sultan.61 Culturally, Aceh also succeeded Melaka to become the center of the “Malay world” (Alam Malayu). Aceh was well aware of this, and presented and saw itself as the leader 226

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

of the Malay world. Malay continued to be the main lingua franca of the state, and the language of its court and literature. Aceh produced the largest corpus of Malay theological, historical, and literary works such as the Taj us-​Salatin, Bustan us-​Salatin, which were well known in other parts of the Malay world to the east. As L. Andaya has shown in his study, Aceh was more connected to the other Muslim powers “above the wind,” as could be seen in its Persian-​Arab inflected Malay dialect and Ottoman-​ Mughal style palace organization.62 As the “veranda of Mecca” Aceh was influenced by teachings from Cairo, Mecca, and Yemen and it became the center for Sufi scholarship and Muslim networks that stretched to the eastern part of the Malay world.63 Compared to Srivijaya and Melaka, Aceh came closest to meeting European criteria of “empire” and its contacts with the Ottoman and Mughal empires provided Aceh with the bases of legitimacy, court rituals, political and military structures that made Aceh similar to these empires above the wind compared to its indigenous neighbors in the south. Iskandar Muda’s and Thani’s centralizing, militarizing, and expansionist policies were not continued by their female successors who reigned from 1641 to 1699. The four sultanahs adopted a more decentralized policy and when Johor and Pahang began to act independently Sultanah Safiatuddin Shah (r. 1641–​75) did not attempt to reassert Aceh’s overlordship over these states. In contrast to their male predecessors, the sultanahs also adopted a more consensual approach to the orang kaya based on power-​ and wealth-​sharing with these male elites and an institutionalization of state apparatus. In the provinces, the sultanahs nurtured overlord-​vassal relations through kinship loyalties, devolution of authority, and a sharing of resources. In Perak, for example, the sultanahs shared the profits of the tin trade with their orang kaya and with the local elites of Perak.64 Instead of waging holy wars against their European rivals, the sultanahs also sought an accommodation with the VOC and EIC by signing treaties with them and granting limited trade concessions. Did these changes mean that Aceh’s development toward state consolidation and even empire-​building had come to a halt? In contrast to the leadership style of Iskandar Muda, whose rule is deemed the “golden age” of Aceh by most scholars, the sultanahs have been seen as weak and Aceh was said to have declined by the end of female rule in 1699. I would argue otherwise, however. “Absolutism” in insular Southeast Asia was, by the very nature of conditions there, a fragile and contingent phenomenon, based more on the force of personality, wealth, and coercion of individual rulers, rather than on lasting institutions or rule of law that supported them. Iskandar Muda’s “absolutism,” for example, was in itself a function of his personality and also a reaction to the powers wielded by the orang kaya earlier.65 In insular Southeast Asia, however, where direct control was elusive and allegiances fluid, provincial leaders could still temper a strong ruler such as Iskandar Muda thanks to their control over much of the resources and armed forces of outlying territories.66 For example, when local elites on the west coast of Sumatra became unhappy with the trade conditions imposed on them by Iskandar Muda, they simply opted to change their allegiance from Aceh to the Dutch East India Company in Batavia. 227

Sher Banu Khan

While the sultanahs’ apparent retreat from the centralizing, militarizing, and expansionist style of their predecessors certainly limited royal power, their decentralized, more elastic, and fluid management of the elite and vassal states based on cultural and religious loyalties rather than military coercion was adaptive and more akin to the tried-​and-​true indigenous style of managing center-​periphery relations that had been so successful for Srivijaya and Melaka. Far from leading to the decline of Aceh, such a change in strategy was critical in helping Aceh maintain its independence.

The Beginnings of “Empire-​Building” in Insular Southeast Asia? The Case of Johor The expansion of Aceh in the sixteenth century after the fall of Melaka in 1511 relegated Johor to a secondary role within the regional panorama. Especially after the crisis of 1613–​15 when Johor was attacked and its population forcibly brought to Aceh, Johor was seen by Aceh as its vassal.67 It was only after the end of the expansionist rule of Iskandar Muda and the destruction of Portuguese power in Melaka that Johor began to pose as Aceh’s rival and an alternative center as the successor of Melaka. By 1641, Johor had lost some of the areas which had originally been dependencies of Melaka, though it still held sway over other dependencies such as Selangor, areas on the Kelang, Linggi, Siak, Kampar, Muar, and Batu Pahat Rivers, the islands of Karimun, the Riau-​ Lingga Archipelagos, and Singapore. Over the course of the seventeenth century, Johor reasserted its authority on the east coast of Sumatra as far north as Deli, and over the kingdoms of Pahang and Terengganu on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula.68 Like Melaka, Johor was in no danger of dissolution so long as its ruler and dynasty survived. In the Malay Anals (Sejarah Melayu), the recurrent phrase “where there is sovereignty, there is gold” reflected the common belief that faithful subjects shared not merely in the material wealth of their sultan, but also in the glory and prestige of a ruler descended from an ancient and illustrious line. The possession of sakti, “the supernatural power associated with the gods,” placed the ruler in a sacred realm far above the common people and thus worthy of their veneration. The sakti or daulat (to use an alternative, Arabic-​derived term) of a prince from Palembang, for example, would have been perpetuated among his descendants, the rulers of Muslim Melaka. As in Melaka and Aceh, the dual concepts of the ruler’s daulat (and the obedience that it demands from the subjects) and of derhaka, treason to one’s ruler as the greatest sin, underlined the central role of the ruler in Johor and in all Malay polities. In practice, however, the ruler of Johor was supported and at the same time limited by his chief ministers, namely, the laksamana (“admiral of all naval forces”) and the bendahara (variously translated as “prime minister,” “first minister,” or “vizier”). Despite the rivalries between royalty and nobility, and the apparent independence and authority exercised by some of the chief ministers, Leonard Andaya has argued that the rivalry between the factions led by the bendahara and the laksamana in the seventeenth 228

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

century vividly illustrated that their position and power depended ultimately on the sanction of the ruler.69 Only with the murder of Sultan Mahmud Syah by his laksamana in 1699 was this power of the ruler undermined, since the Melakan lineage was broken and the throne was usurped by the family of the bendahara. The new Bendahara dynasty which came to power in 1699 was not able to maintain the authority and prestige of the Johor Sultanate, however, and it was finally forced to submit to the realities of the power structure in the kingdom by the Minangkabau invasion of 1718 (see Figure 8.1). In addition to the ruler and the chief ministers, the Council of Nobles (orang kaya) was a third important component in the power structure of Johor. The principal orang kaya formed their own individual centers of power within the kingdom. In times of war they would assemble their men and lead them as a group in battle. The orang kaya were also essential figures in the international trade conducted in the ports of Johor under the system of patronage. In this system business transactions were left entirely in the hands of the traders, but the latter could not buy or sell anything without money provided by their patrons. For this vital service the patrons retained a substantial commission, sometimes amounting to 25 percent of the total money required by traders.70 Through this profitable system of trade, the orang kaya obtained the revenues necessary to acquire followers and slaves to serve them. These orang kaya proved to be a force capable of righting any imbalance in the exercise of power, as when they were ignored or abused by one ruler, they lent their assistance to a rival contender in order to improve their position within the kingdom. When they were courted, they responded favorably and contributed toward a successful working relationship with the ruler and the chief minister. As in Srivijaya and Melaka, a principal component in the power structure of Johor was the orang laut. Because of their intense loyalty to the rulers of the Melaka dynasty, a relationship approximating that of a lord and his personal retainers, they were an effective counterforce to the strength of the orang kaya. The orang laut constituted about one-​fourth of the military manpower of the kingdom. Since the size of a population was an important index of power in the Malay world, the orang laut played a decisive role in the politics of Johor.71 Their complete trust and loyalty to the Melaka-​ Johor ruler was not based merely on wealth but on blood line. As long as the rulers of the Melaka-​Johor kingdoms could claim descent from the prince from Palembang, they could continue to enjoy the privileges and powers of kingship. However, their devotion to the Melaka-​Johor ruling house suffered a shock with the regicide of 1699, which resulted in confusion within the ranks of the orang laut and culminated in the betrayal of the new dynasty in 1718 in favor of a pretender, the supposed son of the last Melaka dynastic line, Raja Kecil of Siak. Refusing to offer their total devotion to a new ruling family, but also unwilling to transfer their loyalty wholly to Raja Kecil, the orang laut vacillated between Riau-​Johor and Siak, thereby weakening their impact in the affairs of these kingdoms. While Iskandar Muda of Aceh centralized control by military and political coercion (a strategy that was reversed by his female successors), the center-​periphery relations between Johor and its vassals were more varied in nature. On the east coast of Sumatra 229

Sher Banu Khan

there were various systems of governance both patrimonial and feudal, which reflected the degree of control exercised from the center in the seventeenth century. The region of Indragiri on the western coast of Sumatra, for example, was governed through its own ruler who was, however, handpicked by the sultanate of Johor. This arrangement did not prove entirely satisfactory and led to some difficulties when Johor had to send expeditions to Indragiri to prop up an unpopular figure against someone more favored by the local population. Kampar, Siak, and Rokan (all in western Sumatra) were each governed by a syahbandar (“harbor master”), who was responsible to the chief minister of Johor. Since most of the gold and pepper produced in the interior of Sumatra came through these regions, they were much sought-​after fiefs and were usually administered by the most powerful minister of Johor. Batu Bahara and Deli in eastern Sumatra acknowledged the overlordship of Johor but retained their own sultans. They exercised an independence of policy and were less responsive to the wishes of the center than most of the other territories. Once a year a Johor mission headed by a chief minister was sent to the outlying dependencies to collect tribute and receive the homage from the heads of governments.72 Johor’s authority over these vassal states was grounded more in its network of relations than in military coercion. The power of Johor was based on two essential pillars: the surviving network of vassals loyal to the sultanate’s heirs across the territories of the former dominions of Melaka and its direct domination over the coastal inhabitants of the Riau-​Lingga archipelago, the orang laut, who constituted the heart of Johor’s maritime power.73 Hence, the fall of Melaka and the foundation of Johor did not constitute a major break with the past; the orang laut remained loyal to the lineage.74 The orang laut kept watch over the Straits of Melaka and Singapore and their labyrinth of canals, controlling maritime trade and human traffic in the Straits and protecting commerce at the service of the sultans of Johor.75 Another pillar of Johor’s power was the prestige that the sultanate enjoyed throughout the Malay World as the successor to Srivijaya and Melaka.76 The Portuguese recognized this preeminence, attributing to this sultanate a supremacy over other Muslim powers. The chronicles of Aceh, the Hikayat Aceh, on the other hand, denigrated the sultan of Johor as a mere Raja Selat (“Ruler of the Straits”). Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Johor regained authority over various regions of the Malay Peninsula (Pahang, Muar) and Sumatra (Siak, Kampar, Indragiri, Aru) apart from the Riau-​Lingga archipelagos and diverse islands in the Straits, vassals lost to Aceh during the sixteenth century and the early decades of the seventeenth century. Both Aceh and Johor realized that in order to meet the challenges posed first by the Portuguese and then by the Dutch and English, they needed to strengthen and increase their control of the region, both politically and commercially. The results were levels of centralization and militarization without precedent in the Malay world. Political consolidation was matched by a high degree of cultural coherence, anchored in the Malay language and Islam. However, Malay sultanates adopted different strategies to attain these goals. Aceh, under sultans al-​Kahar to Iskandar Muda, was notable for its use of “holy wars” and military conquest to impose Acehnese authority on vassals. 230

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

The more characteristic mechanism of control in Malay/​Muslim polities, however, was to use “soft power” through the forging of a network of relations and loyalties. It is important to understand the reasons why the ruled were motivated to enter into such alliances and give their allegiance to aspiring imperial centers. The relationship between center and periphery could be protective rather than always exploitative, and the center could inspire confidence and loyalty rather than just fear. This type of relationship was nurtured by the female rulers in Aceh and to a certain extent by the sultans of Johor. In this regard, too much military and political centralization could actually limit the ability of states to maintain their hegemony over neighbors. The co-​ optation of local elites by offering them privileges and respecting local particularities (in other words a certain degree of decentralization and devolution of power to the periphery) would make the system more stable than maintaining an expensive, coercive, and absolute center.

Mainland/Island Southeast Asia Dichotomy: A Case Study of Success and Failure in the Empire Project? Unlike other Muslim empires such as the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, the history of the smaller archipelagic Malay/​Muslim polities has never been seriously considered from the lens of empire-​formation (with the exception perhaps of the more renowned Sultanate of Melaka). In his study of Malay kingdoms, for example, Milner conceded that Melaka was an empire and Aceh aspired to be one, but he also concluded that no other Malay state rose to that level. Important centers of power such as Pasai, Aru, Patani, and Johor were able to remain independent from European control, but did not manage to create large states or zones of power of their own. Malays did not even formally acknowledge a single, preeminent sovereign, since most Malay rajas had genealogies of comparable prestige and status.77 Malay polities were instead characterized by multiple centers, each chronically vying for a leadership role. Victor Lieberman asserts that within Southeast Asia, mainland states such as Burma, Vietnam, and Thailand demonstrated a higher degree of state consolidation by the eighteenth century, moving toward empire-​integration since the economic centres within each empire had become too closely integrated to go their separate ways, because the memory of imperial success (however imperfect) inspired constant imitation; because local headmen, monks, literati and merchants all required an effective coordinating authority to regularize their own status and to validate their privileges; and because popular self-​images and notions of moral regulation depended too heavily on the imperial project to permit its abandonment.78 231

Sher Banu Khan

However, movement toward centralization and integration in the form of the creation of “exemplary centres,”79 “absolutist” and “gunpowder states”80 in Aceh, Johor, Banten, and Makassar gave way instead, after the seventeenth century, to political and cultural fragmentation.81 Indeed, Barbara Andaya argues that the differences between island and mainland are reflected in the contemporary historiography of Southeast Asia. It is rare for chronicles in the island world to look beyond a dynasty or a specific cultural group.82 Between circa 1750 and 1850, commercial wealth contributed to another cycle of movement toward political consolidation and territorial expansion in Terrengganu, Kedah, Siak, Palembang, Bali, Lombok, especially in Riau-​Johor, south-​central Java, Sulu, and Aceh.83 However, Lieberman argues that by mainland standards all such revivals of archipelagic power were ephemeral.84 Both Victor Lieberman and Barbara Andaya assert that the move toward political and economic integration in the archipelago was halted by 1800. None of the “exemplary centers” such as Aceh and Johor survived into modern times and much of the island world in the mid-​eighteenth century was in disarray.85 Lieberman therefore concluded that the nearest analogies within the Malay Archipelago to the emergent mainland empires of Southeast Asia were not the indigenous Malay-​ruled states, but rather the Spanish and Dutch regimes in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. Between 1750 and 1850, the latter regimes promoted supra-​local integration and defined the political and economic options, and in some cases, the religious identity, of commoners and elites alike.86 In explaining the differences between the archipelagic and continental states of Southeast Asia, both Lieberman and Andaya identified geography, cultural variation, and European intervention as critical factors. Certainly, the fragmented nature of island geography was less favorable to political centralization. Regional seas did not provide a sheltered avenue of communication between any aspiring political center and its scattered peripheries, nor any clear axis of internal integration The nodes of the archipelagic economy were both more numerous and more dispersed than the urban centers of the mainland, meaning that economic development could just as easily promote political devolution as integration. Most critically, poor soils throughout much of the archipelago and especially where Malays lived precluded the demographic densities that provided mainland states with a secure center of gravity. Culturally, the idea of a charismatic-​religious center based on the person of the primus inter pares contained within itself the seeds of fragmentation. Only a powerful center could maintain its position in the face of cumulative tensions induced by continuing efforts to tighten supervision of people and resources. Whenever the dominance of the primus inter pares was questioned, given the existence of multiple centers competing with each other, it was followed by a steady seepage of manpower away from the center to other royal competitors. In such a society, where rulers were heavily reliant on their people/​followers to maintain their standing against potential opposition, any loss of manpower was serious, especially if the defection coincided with conflicts over succession or the sharing of power. 232

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

Increased European interventions in archipelagic political affairs between 1750 and 1850 highlighted precisely these weaknesses, as the Portuguese, Dutch, and English supported royal pretenders, wooed the allegiance of subject populations, and sought to play local rulers off against each other. Such interventions made political consolidation and regional trade integration even more difficult, and even when archipelagic states surmounted these difficulties they still struggled to recapture the momentum that had buoyed them during the earlier, golden era of Reid’s “Age of Commerce.” In comparison with the empires of the mainland and the more standard definitions of “empire,” the states of insular Southeast Asia seem to fall considerably short of the mark. The Sultanate of Aceh under al-​Kahar to Iskandar Thani would come the closest, and then only for a relatively brief period. If one were to shift from a narrow understanding of “empire”—one that presumes a dominant political and military center controlling an agrarian-based, densely populated land mass, with established (albeit contested) territorial borders—to a broader vision, then different understandings of “imperial centers,” forms of control, bases of legitimacy, geopolitical contexts, and historical trajectories become possible. In insular Southeast Asia, the mandala, umland model of administration focused on the control of people/​manpower rather than territories, and the sea presented no obstacle to such claims of a sovereignty of primus inter pares. The Straits of Melaka connected the Acehnese and Johorese maritime, coastal dominions and the orang laut were more than sea-​people but sea-​soldiers acting in the service of their lords. Successful rajas attracted manpower and followers not by coercion but by their distribution of material largesse and by the glory of their daulat and lineage. In this model, reciprocal patron-​client relations, respect for local authorities, and the devolution of political and commercial power provided surer bases for stability at the center than centralization, which too often provoked resistance. The dependence of these states on fluid, flexible relationships, soft-​power, and the accommodation of local loyalties and identities thus did not mean that they were weak, fragmented, and in disarray. On the contrary, accommodation and the forging of diplomatic and political alliances with European powers helped both Johor and Aceh (under the sultanahs) to stave off political and economic decline in the seventeenth century and even to stage a modest revival. Could empire-​building take place only after state consolidation, and was political integration a necessary condition for empire-​formation? Even entities that are widely accepted as empires expanded, contracted, and changed over time, demonstrating different strategies across time and space. Could not the fluid, looser, more elastic configurations that characterized center-​periphery relations in insular maritime Southeast Asia still demonstrate features that were quintessentially imperial—albeit shaped by local variations, and on a local scale? Even if polities like Aceh and Johor did not possess the integrated military and political structures of the Ming, Ottoman, and Mughal empires, there still existed a clear, underlying political system within the archipelago, as Reid has argued in his study on city-​states, based on the shared structures of the kerajaan system, the Malay language and literary culture, and Islam (with the notable exception of Buddhist Srivijaya).87 233

Sher Banu Khan

Of course, there were limits to this unity just as there were political tensions between monarchies within the kerajaan system. Islam, for example, could be both a source of unity and of division. On the one hand, the Muslim principalities of the archipelago signally failed to unite and present a common front against the infidel, despite much talk of a pan-​Islamic jihad to eject the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, and English. There is considerable evidence, on the other hand, to suggest that the ideal of uniting all Muslims under the leadership of a caliph exercised a strong appeal for the otherwise disunited Muslims of Southeast Asia, from at least the 1500s and continuing well into the nineteenth century.88 In the sixteenth century, the sultans of Aceh, Japara, Ternate, Grisek, and Johor all seemed ready to submit themselves to the Ottoman sultan/​ caliph—​at least in the more limited, mandala sense of recognizing him as primus inter pares.89 From the seventeenth century to the colonial period, Islam would remain a source of inspiration and legitimation for ulama and Islamic reformers seeking to resist European colonialism. The indigenous monarchies and Malay language were used by Malay nationalists to resist the British and Dutch empires and to create new nation-​states based on cultural nationalism. A  modified and modernized version of the kerajaan system, embodying the close identification of Malayness, Islam, and the traditional hereditary monarchies, has survived down to the present in the form of Malaysia’s “Council of Rulers” (Majlis Raja-​Raja), made up of the nine hereditary sultans of Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, Pahan, Perak, Perlis, Selangor, and Terengganu. The Malay/​Muslim maritime polities discussed above thus deserve to be seriously studied in the effort to broaden and establish a more universal vocabulary of empire, placed within a global frame of reference. Scholars of Southeast Asia have provided enough evidence to show that “urbanization” and “city” and “state” formations in this region are comparable to Europe and other areas, albeit with local variation. If Srivijaya, Melaka, Aceh, and even Johor can be seen as “imperial centers” in their own right—​ influencing and even controlling, at the zenith of their power, ethnically diverse peripheral subject regions—then the search for “empire” here is not too far-​fetched.

Notes 1 Also known as the “Malay world,” a space dominated by peoples loosely identified by a combination of ethnicity, language, culture, and customs as Malay. 2 Victor Lieberman states that the crisis of the thirteenth century brought disruption to loose “imperial constructs” which had presided in some sense over multiple ethno-​linguistic groups, such as ​the decline of the Angkor Empire and of Srivijaya. Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Contexts, c.800–​1830. Vol. 1: Integration on the Mainland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 25. 3 Tony Day, Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), pp. 283, 293. 4 Lieberman, Strange Parallels, p. 25.

234

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

5 A full literature review on state-​formation in Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Period is beyond the scope of this chapter. See studies mentioned in fn. 2–​3; other studies are by scholars such as A.  Reid, Barbara Andaya, Leonard Andaya, Clifford Geertz, Stanley J. Tambiah, O. W. Wolters, Lance Castles, Jane Drakard, Anthony Milner, Herman Kulke, Henk Schulte Nordholt, Pierre-​Manguin, John Miksic, and Derek Heng. 6 Jan Wisseman-​Christie, “State Formation in Early Maritime Southeast Asia,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-​Land-​en Volkenkunde 151, no. 2 (1995), 235–​88. 7 J. Kathirithamby-​Wells, “Introduction,” in The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise, ed. J. Kathirithamby-​Wells and John Villiers (Singapore:  Singapore University Press, 1990), p. 2. 8 Hermann Kulke, “ ‘Kadātuan Śrīvijaya’—​Empire or Kraton of Śrīvijaya? A  Reassessment of the Epigraphical Evidence,” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-​Orient 80 (1993), 159–​81,  164. 9 Ibid., p. 170. 10 Ibid., p. 171. 11 Ibid., p. 172. 12 Bennet Bronson, “Exchange at the Upstream and Downstream Ends,” in Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia, ed. Karl Hutterer (Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan, 1977), pp. 39–​52. 13 O. W. Wolters, Fall of Srivijaya (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1970), pp. 9–​10. 14 O. W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University, 1967), pp. 227, 242. 15 Kathirithamby-​Wells, The Southeast Asian Port and Polity, p. 2. 16 Ibid., pp. 2–​3. 17 L. Y. Andaya, “The Structure of Power in Seventeenth Century Johor,” in Pre-​colonial State Systems in Southeast Asia: The Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Bali-​Lombok, South Celebes, ed. A. Reid and L. Castles (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, 1975), p. 8. 18 O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1999), pp. 18–​19, 93–​5. 19 Kathirithamby-​Wells, The Southeast Asian Port and Polity, p. 3. 20 Michel Jacq-​Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 238–​40, 246, 254, 346. 21 Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Vol. 2, p. 777. 22 H. Kulke, “ ‘Kadātuan Śrīvijaya,’ ” p. 176. 23 Anthony Reid, “Negeri: The Culture of Malay-​Speaking City-​States of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-​State Cultures, ed. M. H. Hansen (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 2000), pp. 417–​29. 24 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–​1680, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 203–​14. 25 Anthony Reid, “Trade and the Problem of Royal Power in Aceh. Three Stages: c. 1550–​ 1700,” in Reid and Castles, eds, Pre-​colonial State Systems in Southeast Asia, pp. 46–​7. 26 Anthony Reid, “Negeri,” pp. 418–​19. 27 Pierre-​Yves Manguin, “The Amorphous Nature of Coastal Polities in Insular Southeast Asia: Restricted Centres, Extended Peripheries,” Moussons 5 (2002), 77. 28 Ibid., 76. 29 Ibid., 77. 30 Ibid. 31 Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Vol. 2, p. 802. 32 Braz de Albuquerque, The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, vol. 3, ed. W. de Gray Birch (London, 1880), p.  129, quoted in A.  Reid, “The Structure of Cities in

235

Sher Banu Khan

Southeast Asia, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries,” in Reid and Castles, eds, Pre-​colonial State Systems in Southeast Asia, p. 244. 33 M. A.  P. Meilink-​Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 74–​80. 34 On Melaka’s trade, see ibid., chaps 3 and 4. 35 A. C. Milner, Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1982), p. 2. 36 Ibid., p. 97. 37 Ibid., p. 9. 38 Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Vol. 2, p. 817. 39 Concept by Renfrew and Cherry, Peer-​ Polity Interaction and Socio-​ political Change (New York: 1986). Quoted in Anthony Reid, “Negeri,” p. 427. 40 Reid, “Negeri,” p. 427. 41 Ibid. 42 Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp.  76–​7. 43 Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Vol. 2, p. 819. 44 Reid, “Negeri,” p. 427. 45 Andaya, “The Structure of Power in Seventeenth Century Johor,” pp. 1–​11. 46 A. Reid, “Trade and the Problem of Royal Power in Aceh,” pp. 46–​53. 47 Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, vol. I, ed. Armando Cortesão (London: Hakluyt Society, 1944), pp. 138–​9. 48 A. K. Dasgupta, “Aceh in Indonesian Trade and Politics, 1600–​1641,” PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1962, pp. 45–​6. 49 A. Reid, “Sixteenth Century Turkish Influence in Western Indonesia,” Journal of South East Asian History 10, no. 3 (1969), 406. 50 Ibid., 405. 51 Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto, The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka 1575–​1619: Power, Trade and Diplomacy (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2012), p. 82. 52 Denys Lombard, Kerajaan Aceh: jaman Sultan Iskandar Muda (1607–​1636), trans. Winarsih Arifin (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1986), p. 132. 53 Dasgupta, “Aceh in Indonesian Trade and Politics, 1600–​1641,” p. 81. 54 T. Iskandar (ed.), Hikayat Atjeh (s’.Gravenhage: Martnus Nijhoff, 1958), pp. 153, 171–​5, 182. 55 Sher Banu A. L. Khan, “Men of Prowess and Women of Piety: A Case Study of Aceh Dar al-​Salam in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 44, no. 2 (2013), 204–​25. 56 Iskandar Thani’s letter to Antonio van Diemen, in J. A. van der Chijs et  al. (ed.), Dagh-​ Register van Batavia, 1640–​1682 (The Hague:  M. Nijhoff, Batavia:  G. Kolff & Co. 1887–​1928), pp. 6–​7. For a fuller account, see Sher Banu A.  L. Khan, “Rule behind the Silk Curtain: The Sultanahs of Aceh, 1641–​1699,” PhD dissertation, University of London, Queen Mary College, 2009. 57 Iskandar, Hikayat Atjeh, pp. 161–​7. 58 Anthony Reid, An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese and other Histories of Sumatra (Singapore:  Singapore University Press, 2005), p.  6. See also:  Charles Boxer, “A Note of Portuguese Reactions to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice Trade and the Rise of Aceh, 1540–​ 1600,” Journal of Southeast Asian History 10, no. 3 (1969), 415–​28. 59 Barbara Andaya, “Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol 1 from Early Times to c. 1800, ed. Nicholas Tarling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 439.

236

In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World

6 0 Ibid., p. 438. 61 Dasgupta, “Aceh in Indonesian Trade and Politics, 1600–​1641,” p. 115. 62 L. Y. Andaya, Leaves of the Same Tree: Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka (Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), chap. 4. Note that “above the wind” was an expression used to describe people or places located west of the Straits of Malacca. 63 Ibid., p. 847. 64 Khan, “Men of Prowess and Women of Piety,” pp. 212–​13. 65 Reid, “Trade and the Problem of Royal Power in Aceh,” pp. 45–​55. Also, J. Kathirithamby-​ Wells, “Restraints on the Development of Merchant Capitalism in Southeast Asia before c.1800,” in Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era: Trade, Power and Belief, ed. Anthony Reid (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 125. 66 Takeshi Ito, “The World of the Adat Aceh: A Historical study of the Sultanate of Aceh,” PhD dissertation, Australian National University, 1984, p. 62. 67 De Sousa Pinto, The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka 1575–​1619, pp. 144–​5. 68 Andaya, “The Structure of Power in Seventeenth Century Johor,” p. 2. 69 Ibid., p. 5. 70 Ibid., p. 6. 71 Ibid., p. 8. 72 Ibid., p. 5. 73 De Sousa Pinto, The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka 1575–​1619, p. 145. 74 Ibid., p. 146. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., p. 147. 77 Milner, Kerajaan, pp. 1–​2. 78 V. Lieberman, “Mainland-​Archipelagic Parallels and Contrasts, c.1750–​1850,” in The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–​1900, ed. A. Reid (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), p. 30. 79 Andaya, “Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” p. 443. 80 Anthony Reid, “Multi-​state and Non-​state Civilizations in Maritime Asia,” paper presented to the symposium “The Formation of the Great Civilizations: Contrasts and Parallels” of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and Centre for Medieval Studies in Bergen, held in Upsalla, Sweden, 2008, p. 9. 81 Lieberman, “Mainland-​Archipelagic Parallels and Contrasts,” p. 27. 82 Andaya, “Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” pp. 454–​5. 83 According to A. Reid, Southeast Asia reestablished itself as the overwhelmingly dominant source of the world’s pepper. From little more than 6,000 tons a year in the 1780s, Southeast Asian exports were estimated to rise significantly. This increase took place almost entirely in independent states—​Aceh, Siam, Riau-​Johor, Brunei, Deli, and Langkat. The cash income it generated served to commercialize their societies, and in some cases to strengthen their states. A. Reid, “A New Phase of Commercial Expansion in Southeast Asia, 1760–​1840,” in The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–​1900, ed. A. Reid (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), p. 73. 84 Lieberman, “Mainland-​Archipelagic Parallels and Contrasts,” p. 42. 85 By the early 1800s, new dynasties ruled in Burma, Siam, and Vietnam; in the island world Banten and Makassar had both lost their status as independent entrepôts, Mataram was divided into two, and Aceh had been torn by two generations of civil strife. See B.  Andaya, “Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” p. 445. 86 Lieberman, “Mainland-​Archipelagic Parallels and Contrasts,” p. 48.

237

Sher Banu Khan

8 7 Reid, “Negeri,” p. 419. 88 Reid, “Sixteenth Century Turkish Influence in Western Indonesia,” p. 408. 89 The Muslim states in Southeast Asia that appeared most susceptible to the pan-​Islamic ideal were those that participated in the Muslim spice trade from Ternate through Java and Aceh to the West. Consequently, they shared the international currents of the Muslim world. M. A. P. Meilink-​Roelofsz, in A. Reid, “Sixteenth Century Turkish Influence in Western Indonesia,” Journal of Southeast Asian History 10, no. 3 (1969), 408–​409.

238

Chapter 9

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–​1700s: The Portuguese and Spanish Empires in Asia Anthony Rendell Disney Introduction The first European empire to be created in early-​modern Asia was that of the Portuguese.1 The Portuguese laid the foundations of their empire, which they usually referred to in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the Estado da Índia, during the decade and a half immediately following the celebrated voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1497–​99 that established seaborne communications between Europe and India via the Cape of Good Hope.2 By 1515, Portuguese forces had taken possession of Goa and made it the administrative capital of the Estado da Índia. They had also occupied Melaka—​at the time the principal gateway to Southeast Asia and its lucrative entrepôt trade. Then they had seized control of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf—​a strategic port city that became Portugal’s main point of contact with the Arab and Iranian worlds. More acquisitions followed, while at the same time Portugal sought to exclude potential European competitors by declaring the new, all-​sea route to Asia a Portuguese monopoly. About half a century later the Kingdom of Castile—​Portugal’s much larger neighbor in the Iberian Peninsula—​founded a second European empire in Asia. More accurately, this second empire was Castilian rather than “Spanish,” inasmuch as it was annexed specifically to the crown of Castile and not to the Spanish Monarchy as a whole. Nevertheless, as all parts of Spain participated in the construction of this overseas empire it is commonly labeled “Spanish.” Miguel López de Legazpi, acting on instructions from Philip II, founded this “Spanish” empire in Asia in 1565 as an offshoot of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (modern-​day Mexico).3 Legazpi chose Manila on the island of Luzon as his capital—​and the Spanish empire in Asia remained thereafter, with a few minor exceptions, confined to the Philippine archipelago. The annual voyages of the famed “Manila galleon” were crucial in linking the Philippine islands via the Pacific to New Spain, and just as the Portuguese crown claimed the all-​ocean route round the southern tip of Africa as its exclusive monopoly, so the rulers of Castile declared the immense Pacific crossing to be their monopoly. For approximately a century after Gama’s voyage of discovery in 1497–​99 other European nations did not seriously challenge the monopoly claims of Portugal and Castile regarding communications with Asia. It was only from about the start of the seventeenth century—​and particularly after the founding of the English and Dutch East India Companies in 1600 and 1602, respectively—​that the two Iberian empires in Asia 239

Anthony Rendell Disney

found themselves under growing pressure from northern European rivals, for whom they were eventually obliged to make room. By the mid-​seventeenth century the Iberian powers had come to accept, however reluctantly, the existence of English, Dutch, and French empires in what had previously been an exclusive Luso-​Castilian preserve. In the next few pages we shall discuss further the nature of the Portuguese and Castilian empires in Asia and attempt to explain how, over such enormous distances, they maintained their links to their respective mother countries. We then go on to evaluate both empires as networks of trade and promoters of Catholic missions, and briefly review their formal claims to imperium on the one hand and involvement in “informal” expansion on the other. Next, we consider social interaction and cultural exchange between colonizers and the colonized before concluding with some comments on their relationships with the great Asian powers and the remaining European empires. Finally, we note the failure to achieve imperial union and the entrenchment instead of a long-​ lasting Anglo-​Portuguese alliance.

The Hybrid Character of the Iberian Empires: Seaborne, Maritime, and Territorial The Portuguese and Castilian empires in Asia were both, broadly speaking, imperial hybrids that were each in part seaborne, in part maritime, and in part territorial entities. They were “seaborne” in the sense that they were created by intruders who arrived from the outside by sea and whose ability to function rested on their ability to use the sea as a communications link or “umbilical cord” to the mother country back in distant Europe. Up to a point both the Iberian empires in Asia were also “maritime” empires, inasmuch as they exercised political control primarily over port towns and coastal settlements and were much involved in maritime commerce generally, but rarely extended their dominance very far inland. This pattern is clearest in the case of the Estado da Índia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but also in the earliest phase of Spanish control over the Philippines. Early on, however, the Spanish attempted to move toward a third type of empire—​the territorial—​in which an imperial power annexes significant territory beyond its borders, treats the local inhabitants as its subjects and often encourages settlers to move in either from the mother country or elsewhere. Maritime empires that survive long enough generally tend to metamorphize into territorial empires and the Portuguese Estado da Índia was no exception, taking on more and more of the features of a territorial empire especially from the eighteenth century onward.

Transportation Networks The creation and maintenance of the Portuguese and Spanish empires in Asia were only possible thanks to the discovery and exclusive exploitation in each case of a previously 240

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

unknown intercontinental maritime route that linked the mother country to its far-​off possessions. In the case of Portugal, this vital link was the annual return voyage between Lisbon and Goa (or sometimes Lisbon and Cochin) via the Cape of Good Hope, which was usually referred to as the Carreira da Índia. The establishment of the Carreira da Índia from the start of the sixteenth century was the culmination of a long process of Portuguese Atlantic voyaging that had begun in the early fifteenth century. The story of this voyaging is well known, and has been repeatedly related and analyzed.4 The key points to stress here are that it required mastering the Atlantic wind system, then adjusting to the very different monsoonal sailing conditions of the Indian Ocean. Once this mastery had been achieved, Portuguese oceangoing carracks sailed the Carreira da Índia annually, as a matter of routine. There were three stages involved: the outward-​bound voyage from Lisbon to Goa, which normally took five or six months; a stopover of about six months in India, during which return cargoes of pepper, spices, textiles, and so on were loaded, and the ships themselves were refitted; then the voyage back to Lisbon, which took approximately another six months. In the Castilian case the situation was somewhat different, though just as daunting. Anyone traveling from Spain to the Spanish Philippines had to negotiate not one but two carreras. First, there was the trans-​Atlantic voyage from Seville to Vera Cruz—​ the celebrated Carrera de las Indias—​that was undertaken annually by the New Spain fleets, and usually took about three months to complete. Then, after crossing Mexico by land to Acapulco on the Pacific coast, a Manila-​bound traveler embarked on the trans-​Pacific Carrera de las Filipinas. This carrera, by means of which, each year, the Manila galleons conveyed crown officials, soldiers, merchants, friars, and large quantities of Spanish American silver pesos across the vastness of the Pacific, was “the economic and the spiritual life-​line” of the Spanish Philippines.5 Sailing the Carrera de las Filipinas—​like sailing the Portuguese Carreira da Índia—​required some eighteen months for a round voyage. However, those setting out to Manila from Spain, given the time needed for the transit across New Spain and the wait for relevant shipping in Seville and Acapulco, normally took at least two years to complete their journey (one way). The development and institutionalization of these formidably long intercontinental shipping routes enabled the Portuguese and Spanish to travel, communicate, and transport cargoes globally and on a regular basis by sea. All three intercontinental carreras have spawned rich literatures.6

Networks of Trade Once the Portuguese had acquired the means to maintain regular seaborne communications with maritime Asia they naturally tried to structure their presence in such a way as to maximize their economic returns. This meant slotting into and exploiting maritime Asia’s already well-​developed pattern of trading circuits while 241

Anthony Rendell Disney

exhibiting little or no interest in acquiring territory for its own sake. The consequence, according to the Portuguese historian Luís Filipe Thomaz, was that the Estado da Índia initially developed as a “network” rather than an occupied “space.” The Portuguese, Thomaz argued, were interested in the circulation of goods rather than their production, in dominating seas rather than acquiring lands, and in forming working relationships with local Asian and East African inhabitants rather than securing political dominion over them.7 Another historian, John Villiers, has questioned the appropriateness of using the term “empire” at all when alluding to the formal Portuguese presence in maritime Asia. The Estado da Índia was rather “an enormous commercial network connecting various points,” including trading posts, fortresses, and official and informal settlements.8 In fact, the Portuguese breakthrough into maritime Asia (and East Africa) resulted in the development of a remarkably extensive and widespread commercial network within this truly vast region.9 The network conjoined the Portuguese crown’s official possessions—​for the most part ports, fortresses, and trading stations (feitorias)—​to each other, and to the great maritime trade centers of Asia beyond. Along this network the crown sought to drive its own intra-​Asian and intercontinental trades by imposing royal monopolies on certain key commodities, most notably pepper. It also sought to control the inter-​port trade of Asian traders, declaring the Indian Ocean to be a Portuguese mare clausum and requiring all non-​Portuguese vessels sailing its waters to purchase safe-​conducts (cartazes) from Portuguese officials. Each node on this network had its own particular role. Thus Goa was both the headquarters of the colonial administration and the Indian terminus for the Carreira da Índia. It also served as the base for Portuguese trade with Gujarat, the Kerala coast, Sri Lanka, the south coast of Arabia, and the Persian Gulf. Melaka connected the Portuguese with trading circuits in East and Southeast Asia while Hormuz was at the head of a major caravan route to the eastern Mediterranean. Informal Portuguese settlements and enclaves also linked into the trade network, as Portuguese who lived in these places utilized the traditional sea and river routes of Asia to conduct their private business. Some of them, in due course, drifted into mercenary military activity or undertook plundering enterprises. Despite the risks, unofficial Portuguese settlements and enclaves were frequently located far from the official centers of Portuguese power. Perilously exposed to the changing desires and policies of local potentates, such settlements were fundamentally insecure—​and often proved ephemeral. Perhaps the best-​known case is that of early-​seventeenth-​century Hugli in Bengal. This place was host to an informal Portuguese colony that grew rich on its trade—​until it was attacked and suppressed on the orders of the Mughal emperor Shāh Jahān in 1632. However, some unofficial Portuguese settlements like São Tomé de Mylapore became so rich and so important that Portuguese authorities eventually elevated them to official status, with an elected town council (câmara) and a captain appointed by the viceroy. The prime example of this is Macau. Founded by private traders in the 1550s, Macau was not recognized in Lisbon or Goa as formally part of the Estado da Índia until 1623, when it duly received its own resident captain. 242

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

While official Portuguese possessions were concentrated mostly on the western side of the Indian Ocean, unofficial enclaves and settlements were more characteristic of eastern maritime Asia. Moreover, a significant proportion of unofficial Portuguese settlements was established at inland sites—​which was seldom the case with formal components of the Estado da Índia. It was also true that in the course of time the “Portuguese” population of most unofficial settlements came to consist increasingly of Eurasians and Asian converts rather than European-​born Portuguese. The term “Portuguese tribe” has been coined to describe such people, their identity being determined less by their ethnicity than by their everyday culture. Members of the Portuguese tribe could be recognized by their use of Portuguese surnames, their fluency in the Portuguese language (albeit most likely in a Creole form), and their Catholic faith. Through the mid-​to-​late seventeenth century it was increasingly the Portuguese tribe that kept up the unofficial Portuguese element engaged in intra-​Asian trade—​and also supplied personnel for the lower ranks of the official Portuguese administration.10 Up to a point, the Spaniards in maritime Asia can be said to have operated through a network of trade similar to that used by their Portuguese cousins. But the Spanish, Manila-​based trading element was not as extensive as that of the Portuguese, nor did it play such a vital role in laying the foundations of empire. Spanish interest in island Southeast Asia had originally been triggered by the potential profits of the spice trade. In the 1520s Spain had focused her attention on Maluku, the principal source of cloves, rather than on the Philippines, which were not then considered major spice producers. The government of Castile thus utilized the evidence provided by Ferdinand Magellan and his lieutenants, who had been the first Europeans to cross the Pacific in the course of their celebrated round-​the-​world voyage of 1519–​21, to argue that Maluku fell within the Spanish sphere of influence rather than the Portuguese.11 However, subsequently, in the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529) Portugal and Castile had agreed that the line between their respective spheres should be drawn at 144 degrees 23 minutes east—​a decision that placed the Maluku Islands clearly on the Portuguese side. Spain seems to have accepted this loss largely in the belief that the route Magellan had pioneered between Spain and East Asia via Cape Horn was not practicable for regular communications. It was only after 1567, when Andrés de Urdaneta crossed the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain by a more practicable route through the north Pacific, utilizing the Japan Current and the prevailing Westerlies, that the Carrera de las Filipinas became possible. Spanish interest in island Southeast Asia was then rapidly rekindled. Apart from creating and maintaining the Carrera de las Filipinas, and encouraging traders from South China to do business in Manila, the Spaniards did little to further develop their official trade and communications network in Asia. There were some tentative moves to gain a share in parts of the Portuguese network, particularly during the period when the two Iberian crowns were united under the same individual monarch (1580–​1640) and both were under threat from the Dutch. In 1606, after the Dutch had driven the Portuguese out of their footholds in Maluku, a counter-​expedition assembled jointly by the Portuguese and Spaniards succeeded in recovering most of what 243

Anthony Rendell Disney

had been lost. Philip III rejected a proposal that Maluku cloves be thenceforth exported via Manila to New Spain, rather than through Goa to Lisbon, but he did decree that the Maluku islands would henceforward be administered from Manila.12 This compromise was prudent, for his Portuguese subjects would inevitably have resented any Spanish attempt to intrude into the existing Portuguese trade networks. Nevertheless, in the 1580–​1640 period, Spaniards did occasionally make use of the Portuguese Carreira da Índia as an alternative to the Carrera de las Filipinas.13 Of course, Spaniards resident in the Philippines did conduct a significant private trade, mainly in Southeast Asia. Private Spanish seaborne trade in Asia was based overwhelmingly on Manila, which was the only substantial Spanish city in the archipelago. The mainstay of this trade was the exchange of Mexican silver for Chinese silks, porcelain, and other luxury goods. These were brought to Manila by Chinese traders from Guangdong and Fujian, and also sometimes by Portuguese from Macau. The Manila Spaniards made intermittent attempts—​even as early as Legazpi’s time—​to establish a trading post of their own on the China coast, and at about the close of the sixteenth century it seemed they had succeeded. The Chinese authorities agreed they could trade through a place referred to in Spanish sources as El Pinal (the Pine Grove). The precise location of this place is unclear, though it may have been in the vicinity of Hong Kong. In any event, the El Pinal trade soon petered out, hampered by vehement opposition from the Portuguese in Macau.14 Meanwhile, Chinese traders and their hangers-​on quickly took advantage of the Spanish presence in the Philippines, settling in Manila in considerable numbers. Less than half a century after the city’s founding, its Chinese population—​which the Spanish authorities confined to a designated suburb called the Parian—​already amounted to some 16,000 people. This almost equaled Manila’s 20,000 resident Filipinos, and far exceeded its mere 2,400 Spaniards.15 Finally, despite Portuguese claims to monopoly rights over trade with Japan, intermittent direct commercial activity was also conducted in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries between Manila and Japan. Spanish merchants appeared from time to time in such places as Hirado and Nagasaki, particularly in the early seventeenth century—​and Japanese trade ships sailed to Manila. But the Spanish-​Japanese trade relationship was a tense and mutually suspicious one, complicated by Spain’s Catholic missionary agenda. With Japan’s emphatic rejection of Christianity and adoption of a “closed country” (sakoku) policy, direct commercial ties had to all intents and purposes been terminated by the late 1630s.16

Catholic Mission Networks Another network to develop out of the Portuguese presence in Asia was that of Catholic missions. It is perhaps more accurate to describe this as a cluster of discrete subnetworks, as the Iberian crowns gave the four leading missionary orders involved—​the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits—​responsibility for evangelizing particular areas 244

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

and allowed each to establish its own nodes and linkages. The most extensive and sophisticated of these subnetworks was that of the Jesuits, despite their relatively late arrival to maritime Asia in 1542. Their Franciscan rivals, the earliest of the Portuguese missionary Orders to take up the challenge to evangelize, had been in Asia since 1517. The mission subnetworks that developed in association with the Padroado, the formal “patronage” granted by Rome to the Portuguese crown over church affairs in the Estado, were even less confined to the coasts of maritime Asia than was the informal traders’ network. Missionaries penetrated deep into Asia’s interior in their dedicated campaigns to save souls. This was particularly the case with the Jesuits, who established themselves in such distant locales as the Chinese imperial court in Beijing, the remote highlands of Ethiopia, the Mughal city of Agra, Tokugawa Japan, and even the Himalayan kingdom of Tibet. Most of these places, together with others on the nodes of the Jesuit subnetwork, were located far beyond the writ of viceregal Goa.17 By the mid-​to-​late seventeenth century some Jesuits came to resent the close though not always comfortable association with Portugal that the Society had long been obliged to maintain out of dependence on the Carreira da Índia. This group, composed largely of non-​Portuguese fathers, decided to try to gain access to an alternative communications route overland to Europe by acting as intermediaries between Chinese and Russian border negotiators. Accordingly, in 1689 a party of Jesuits from the China Mission set out for Russia. Passing through north China, Mongolia, and Siberia the group reached the border town of Nerchinsk, located on a tributary of the Amur River some 350 kilometers east of Lake Baikal. There, with the Jesuits acting as go-​betweens, the Russian and Qing negotiators reached agreement on their border’s precise location. In return for their role in the affair, the Beijing Jesuits hoped to secure regular access to the overland route from Beijing to Europe via Russia. But Fr. Tomé Pereira, the Jesuit handling the negotiations, was a loyal Portuguese—​and he did not press home the request with the Russian authorities. So the opportunity to circumvent the Carreira da Índia was lost.18 In the Philippines, the Spanish accepted evangelization and the reshaping of native society along Catholic lines as fundamental responsibilities, and the Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, and Jesuit orders pursued these goals with tenacity. In 1594 each of these orders was allocated specified areas of the archipelago in which to establish and administer parishes. Central Luzon was divided up among the Augustinians to the north of Manila, the Franciscans, and Jesuits mainly to the south and the Dominicans in the Parian. Elsewhere, Samar and Leyte were assigned mainly to the Jesuits, Panay was Augustinian, Cagayan Dominican, and so on. Each Order had to construct its own mission network—​and all of them found the task extremely daunting, especially given the small number of qualified missionaries available relative to the size of the Filipino population.19 However, the seriousness of the Spanish commitment to Christianizing the Philippines, despite all the difficulties involved, cannot be doubted. It is underlined by the firm rejection of a proposal put forward in the Council of the Indies in the early 1620s to rationalize the two Iberian empires by giving the Philippines archipelago to 245

Anthony Rendell Disney

Portugal in exchange for Brazil.20 This suggestion was quickly rejected on precisely the grounds that Spain could not abandon the Philippines missions. At the same time, none of the Spanish missionary orders seem to have thought that evangelizing efforts in Asia should be confined just to the Philippine archipelago. Indeed, all of them sought to extend their activities further afield, particularly into China and Japan—​where, however, they were not much welcomed by the existing Catholic missions, which were linked to Portugal. The desire to spread the Gospel beyond the Philippines was perhaps strongest in the case of the Franciscans, with the Dominicans coming a close second. There were a number of schemes proposed to this end, some of them breathtakingly ambitious. One suggestion, which both these orders enthusiastically advocated in Madrid at the start of the 1590s, would have involved sending one hundred Franciscan missionaries and sixty Dominicans, at crown expense, directly from Spain via the Philippines to China.21 Nothing much eventuated from this; but in the 1590s Philippines-​based Spanish Franciscans did make determined efforts to extend their missionary network to Japan, where they soon came into conflict with Jesuits working within the framework of the Portuguese Padroado. These latter considered the Spanish Franciscan newcomers a serious threat to their own evangelizing efforts—​an enterprise that the Jesuits had been carefully nurturing since the pioneer visit to Japan by Francis Xavier in 1549. Their fears proved justified, for the Franciscans’ direct and unsubtle attempts at mass conversion (largely based on the Mendicant experience in Mexico) were ill suited to the sensitive Japanese context of the late sixteenth century and quickly led to disaster. Beginning with the crucifixions of twenty-​six Christians in February 1597—​for the most part Franciscan friars and their Japanese converts—​ the process of Japanese de-​Christianization gathered momentum over the next few decades and was all but complete by the 1640s. A thriving Japanese convert community that at its height had possibly numbered several hundred thousand, all but vanished.22

Formal Imperium and Territorial Empire The Portuguese did not come to Asia with any preconceived plan of acquiring an “empire” and, throughout the early-​modern era, did not regard their formal presence in Asia as constituting such. Thus the word império (Portuguese for “empire”) is seldom found in sixteenth-​or early-​seventeenth-​century Portuguese documents. Instead, the label Estado da Índia (State of India) was commonly used when referring to the King of Portugal’s formal possessions and interests east of the Cape of Good Hope.23 It was only from about the mid-​seventeenth century that some ambivalence began to set in, with the word império appearing more frequently. In one document of the mid-​1660s the Portuguese Jesuit Manuel Godinho actually treated the two terms as interchangeable, referring to “the Portuguese state or empire in India.”24 By the late seventeenth 246

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

century and subsequently through the eighteenth, it became normal practice to speak of the Portuguese presence in maritime Asia as an “empire.” While the Portuguese rarely referred to their presence in Asia as an “empire” in the first century and a third after Vasco da Gama’s breakthrough from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, this did not prevent Portuguese kings from claiming overlordship of a vast maritime region east of the Cape of Good Hope. As early as 1501 King Manuel, the Portuguese monarch who had sponsored Vasco da Gama, grandiloquently proclaimed himself “lord of the conquest, navigation and trade of Ethiopia, Persia and India.” In making such a pronouncement Manuel was not claiming to be the actual or rightful ruler of all Asia, but rather a benign and distant overlord of maritime trade and small coastal rulers. In principle, he was following a precedent set by his predecessor, João II (1481–​ 95), who fifteen years earlier, and subsequent to Portuguese voyages of discovery down the West African coast, had adopted the title of “lord of Guinea.” In both cases one of the main purposes of such claims was to warn off possible European trading rivals. In international law the claim was founded on successive papal grants to the Portuguese crown, and on the key Luso-​Castilian accord, the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). This landmark agreement, together with the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529), determined the meridian and antemeridian dividing the non-​Christian world into Portuguese and Castilian spheres of influence.25 Through the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Asian possessions that the Portuguese crown acquired consisted overwhelmingly of small coastal enclaves and trading posts. The petty rulers of such places were often persuaded to submit to the Portuguese crown by means of a legal formula derived from Roman practice. The King of Portugal would grant the ruler concerned “friendship” (amizade) and “brotherhood” (irmandade) in return for specified concessions, such as agreeing to let the Portuguese establish a trading post and build a fortress on his territory. However, actual Portuguese occupation of Asian space, and subjugation of Asian peoples, occurred on a negligible scale. Some precedents did exist in Iberian history, nonetheless, for treating the Portuguese presence in early-​modern Asia as constituting an império. In Medieval Iberia, the various kings and princes among whom the peninsula was then divided had agreed to recognize one of their number as preeminent. This honor had traditionally gone to the rulers of León, the oldest of the Medieval Iberian kingdoms, along with the title of “emperor” (imperador). But these Leonese “emperors” exercised little direct power in the kingdoms that acknowledged their formal overlordship and were merely supreme in dignity over the other Christian monarchs of the peninsula. It was with this tradition in mind, and given the rapid consolidation of Portuguese naval power in the wake of Gama’s first voyage, that King Manuel (1495–​1521) made his own claims to be the overlord of a string of petty coastal rulers in sixteenth-​century maritime Asia.26 Dom Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese viceroy of the Estado da Índia (1505–​1509), thus pointedly addressed his royal master as “emperor,” while a few years later Viceroy Dom João de Castro (1545–​48) likewise referred to João III as “emperor of the Orient.” 247

Anthony Rendell Disney

Put another way, as Portuguese representatives repeatedly emphasized to local Asian rulers, the king of Portugal was “lord of the seas” (senhor dos mares) or “king of many kings” (rei dos muitos reis).27 As (self-​proclaimed) feudal overlords, the ruling monarchs of Portugal naturally sought to extract oaths of fidelity from petty or subordinate Asian and East African rulers. Sometimes these rulers underwent a ceremonial investiture, which was normally presided over in situ by the viceroy of the Estado da Índia. Investitures were conducted with due pomp and ceremony in the name of the king in faraway Lisbon. Standard procedure was to hold a coronation ceremony at which the presiding viceroy placed a crown on the head of the ruler concerned. Other insignia, such as scepters and ceremonial swords, might also be bestowed. The coronation of the Raja of Cochin by Viceroy Almeida in 1505 was an early example.28 It did not necessarily follow from all this that the existence in Asia of a significant Portuguese “empire” was widely accepted as legitimate. For one thing, other European powers did not formally recognize the Portuguese monarch’s claims to legal overlordship, nor his status as an “emperor.” Second, throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, territory and population controlled directly by the Portuguese east of the Cape of Good Hope remained too small to convince as an entity of imperial dimensions. Ironically, it was precisely from the mid-​seventeenth century, when the Dutch and English as well as some hostile Asian powers were successfully ousting the Portuguese from various nodes on their communications network that their presence in Asia began to look more “imperial” in a conventional sense. This was because the Portuguese gradually shifted their emphasis from trying to dominate maritime trade to expanding and consolidating a territorial core, albeit one of fairly modest dimensions. This trend, which had its beginnings as early as the reign of King Sebastião (1557–​78), gathered pace from the 1630s, then continued intermittently for the rest of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century.29 In other words, as Maria de Jesús dos Mártires Lopes has pointed out, a new blueprint was developed for the Portuguese presence in Asia. It was to be a territorially compact entity with its emphasis on internal development, rather than, as in the past, primarily a network of far-​flung fortresses and trade routes. The chief components of this small, but genuinely “imperial” Portuguese Asian empire were Goa (augmented fourfold as a result of the “New Conquests” acquired in 1747–​63), Damão, Diu, Macau, parts of Mozambique, and eastern Timor.30 The trajectory followed by Portugal was therefore quite similar in principle to those traveled by the English and Dutch companies, both of which began developing commercial networks that they subsequently transformed into territorial empires. Spain’s claims to imperial status sprang from similar medieval origins as those of Portugal but had more substance. In the 1490s Spain began its conquests in the Americas and in 1519 Charles I, the Habsburg king of Spain, was elected Holy Roman emperor. For the next three decades until Charles’s abdication in 1556, he was ruler of a vast overseas empire, titular sovereign over half of Europe, heir to the Roman imperial legacy, and defender of Catholic Christendom. Many saw this providential concentration of 248

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

power in the hands of a single individual as proof that God had chosen the Habsburgs to unite Europe and, ultimately, the entire world, under a single faith and monarchy. Spanish monarchs who came after Charles were not Holy Roman emperors, but they nevertheless retained a strong sense of their universal mission. Between 1580 and 1640, when the Portuguese crown was united with that of Spain, the Spanish Habsburgs could fairly claim to be the only monarchs in the world on whose possessions the sun never set. As the viceroy at Goa bluntly pointed out to an ambassador of Shāh Jahān in 1630, he, in his viceregal capacity, represented the ruler of an empire far more extensive than that of the Mughals—​as could be readily seen by consulting any mapa mundi.31

The Iberian Empires and the Great Powers of Asia Portuguese patterns of behavior toward “the other” as described so far in this chapter were often used successfully when dealing with minor Asian powers. But they were clearly not very suitable as a basis for developing successful political relationships with major powers, particularly the great Asian territorial empires. Where diplomatic contacts with minor coastal powers usually focused on commercial concessions and privileges, and were conducted in a pragmatic fashion, treating with major powers required much more sensitivity, careful preparation, and conformity to elaborate ceremonial, often at considerable cost. There were several great Asian territorial empires with which the Portuguese had to come to terms in the process of accumulating and then maintaining the Estado da Índia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, namely, the Ottoman, Persian, Mughal, and Chinese empires and also, from the early seventeenth century, a reunited Japan. That Muslims ruled the first three of these empires complicated relations. To both Portuguese and Spaniards Islam was the traditional enemy and against that enemy Iberian Christians had long struggled in their own peninsula’s Reconquest. The Ottomans, moreover, were a significant naval power that posed a present threat to Portuguese and Spanish interests in maritime Asia, East Africa, and North Africa for most of the sixteenth century. In particular, after Selim I’s conquest of Mamluk Egypt in 1516–​17, the Ottomans began to move eastward into the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, seizing control of the western termini of the Indian Ocean trade routes. They promptly made their presence felt in the region by cultivating anti-​Portuguese alliances with local Muslim rulers from Gujarat to Sumatra and sending fleets into the Indian Ocean to contest Portuguese efforts to establish a monopoly over key sea routes. Ottoman naval activity in the Indian Ocean during the sixteenth century tended to occur in bursts, which meant periods of energetic naval action against the Portuguese alternated with periods of attempted accommodation. In short, the Ottoman threat to Portuguese naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean was prolonged and serious, with the Ottomans by and large holding their own against the Portuguese in the latter’s own element—​the sea—​for almost an entire century.32 249

Anthony Rendell Disney

The second great Asian empire—​ the Safavid Empire of Persia—​ constituted a very different case. Several considerations encouraged a rapprochement between the Portuguese and Safavid empires, despite their natural rivalry in the Persian Gulf and the deep distrust with which the viceroys in Goa viewed Safavid efforts to draw the sultanates of the Deccan into Persia’s orbit. Most important was the fact that the Safavids were both political rivals and sectarian opponents of the Ottomans, the former being Shi’ite and the latter Sunni. This gave the Portuguese some grounds for thinking it might be possible to forge a Portuguese-​Safavid alliance against the Ottomans or even convert the Shah to Christianity. A number of embassies to the Persian court were accordingly organized, from the early sixteenth to the mid-​seventeenth centuries, to explore these possibilities—​the most recent to be studied in detail being that of Don Garcia de Silva y Figueroa in 1614–​24. But, despite an agreement in principle on forming a common front against the Ottomans, there was little practical cooperation. It is somewhat ironical given the initial hopes for a Luso-​Safavid partnership that the first major loss of a significant component of the Portuguese empire in Asia was that of Hormuz, which fell in 1622 to Shah ‘Abbās of Persia, with naval backing from the English.33 The third great territorial empire confronting the Portuguese was the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent itself. Initially, the Estado was apprehensive of the Mughal rise to power, especially given the uncomfortable proximity of the new Mughal Empire to Portuguese possessions in the so-​called province of the north extending from Damão to Chaul. During the reign of Akbar (1556–​1605), for example, the emperor invited Jesuits to his court to explain the principles of the Christian religion and there were strong Portuguese hopes that the Mughals might be converted to Catholicism. In the event, this conversion never materialized and relations with the Estado da Índia became more strained—​particularly after the succession to the throne in 1628 of Shāh Jahān, an orthodox Sunni who showed little interest in learning about Christianity from Jesuit missionaries. Successive Portuguese viceroys attempted to check further Mughal expansion southward by organizing anti-​Mughal alliances with neighboring middle powers in the Deccan, such as the sultans of Bijapur and of Ahmadnagar, but to little effect.34 Finally, there is no doubt that the most impenetrable of the great Asian empires as far as the Portuguese were concerned was Ming China. The Portuguese made their first attempt to establish diplomatic relations with the Dragon Throne in 1517 when they landed an embassy, uninvited, near the mouth of the Pearl River in hopes that it would receive an imperial audience in Beijing. Despite a promising beginning, the mission was not accepted by the Chinese as a regular tribute mission and ended up a disastrous failure. Most of its members—​including its leader, Tomé Pires—​suffered lengthy detention and eventually died in custody. Half a century later a Portuguese fidalgo and private trader Lionel de Sousa secured permission from mandarin officials in Guangzhou to establish a trading post at a village near the mouth of the Pearl River. This was the origin of Portuguese Macau, which rapidly developed into the most lucrative center of Portuguese private trade anywhere in East Asia and the only place of (conditional) settlement permitted to European traders on the China coast, until the session of Hong 250

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

Kong to the British in 1842. Even so, it was not until 1667–​70 that the Portuguese attempted another official embassy to China—​150 years after the disastrous Tomé Pires embassy of 1517–​21. This second embassy—​with the help of the Jesuit mission in Beijing—​managed to secure an imperial audience after long delays, but still achieved little beyond exchanging courtesies.35

The Spanish Territorial Empire in the Philippines Castilian ideas on imperial overlordship, and on the legal and moral issues associated with conducting conquests, were already well-​developed by the second half of the sixteenth century, there having been much reflection and keen debate on such matters in intellectual circles, particularly on the part of the Dominicans.36 The fundamental consideration for the Castilian crown, however, was that God had imposed upon it responsibility for converting non-​Christian native peoples to Catholicism. Accordingly, the saving of souls became the principal justification for acquiring empire—​and non-​ Christian inhabitants of Asia, if they refused to hear the Gospel or offered armed resistance to it being preached, could justly be subjugated. There was, of course, considerable soul-​searching over how much force could be used in this process. By the time the Philippines came to be occupied, the crown had more or less convinced itself that excessive force had been used in the American conquests. The result had been a disastrous loss of population—​and this tragedy should not be allowed to repeat itself in Southeast Asia. The case for classifying the sixteenth-​century Spanish Philippines formally as an imperial possession is therefore much stronger than that for the sixteenth-​century Estado da Índia. To cite Subrahmanyam and Thomaz, right from the start the Castilians had a “concept of empire” that was “territorial to the core.”37 The Legazpi expedition of 1564–​65 had been dispatched from New Spain with the clear intention of conquering the Philippine archipelago, bringing its inhabitants under Spanish rule, and converting them to Catholicism. As Antonio de Morga, the early-​seventeenth-​century bureaucrat and sometime deputy governor in Manila, put it, Legazpi had been under orders to proceed to the islands and “try to pacify [the inhabitants] and bring them under obedience to His Majesty [Charles V] so that they might receive the Holy Catholic Faith.”38 This is precisely what Legazpi proceeded to do, drawing on Spain’s vast experience in the New World of subjugating native peoples. After pacifying much of coastal Luzon without excessive violence, he introduced the system of encomiendas used in Spanish America to control the natives. This system harnessed the resources of the new colony by forcing Filipinos to render tribute and free labor to the European settlers that the crown had “entrusted” with their care. Responsibility for carrying out the core imperial agenda in the Philippines—​that is, converting and Catholicizing the natives—​was meanwhile left to the friars and the Jesuits. With only a modest number of missionaries Christianization began slowly; but it steadily made headway. In 1583 there were already 251

Anthony Rendell Disney

some 100,000 baptized Filipinos; fifty years later the total had reached around 500,000, all under Spanish rule.39 Thus, like New Spain, the Philippines increasingly took on the character of a territorial empire, with a significant Christian native population.

Informal Conquests and Freelance Conquistadores Neither the Portuguese nor the Spanish crowns, once they had created the basic infrastructures needed to establish themselves in maritime Asia, had long to wait before they were confronted by the challenge of “informal” imperialism—​that is, imperial expansion initiated by private interests. This phenomenon was particularly noticeable in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when individual private adventurers and mercenaries from both nations pursued or promoted several ambitious proposals for conquests and occupations, mostly targeting China and mainland Southeast Asia. The authors of such schemes repeatedly lobbied the crown or its local representatives for support, although serious official backing usually proved elusive. In any event, among the places that freelancers from time to time deemed ripe for the taking were Lower Burma, eastern Bengal, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, South China, and the interior of Mozambique. Even when the Portuguese authorities in both Goa and Europe found such proposals attractive, they almost never had the resources available to pursue them seriously. The most important exception was the island of Sri Lanka in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth century, where the Portuguese crown embroiled itself in a long war of conquest. Sri Lanka was a rather special case, however, as in 1580 King Dharmapala of Kotte, its largest kingdom, had willed his crown to the king of Portugal so providing, in Portuguese eyes, clear legal justification for intervention. Against considerable local opposition, Portuguese forces gradually incorporated Kotte into the Estado da Índia during the years 1594–​1612, though it did not remain Portuguese for long. Spanish authorities likewise received proposals, mostly from settlers and churchmen resident in Asia, to undertake new conquests beyond the Philippine archipelago. From time to time one or another of these schemes would be urged pressingly upon the colonial government in Manila, which would then pass them on to Madrid. One of the most ambitious was the so-​called enterprise of China (empresa de China)—​a plan to use force, if necessary, to open China to Catholic missionaries. The proposal apparently originated with a Spanish Jesuit, Fr. Alonso Sánchez, and was enthusiastically supported by the Philippines’ governor, Diego Ronquillo (1583–​84), and the Bishop of Manila. It included the recommendation that if the Chinese persisted in refusing to allow peaceful preaching of the Christian Gospel within their country, then war should be declared on the Middle Kingdom and Spanish sovereignty imposed. Governor Ronquillo estimated that ten or twelve galleons and 8,000 Spanish troops would suffice to achieve this purpose. Perhaps not too surprisingly, the proposal encountered strong opposition, not least from mission interests committed to more peaceful methods of penetration. In Madrid it was firmly turned down.40 Finally, there were also various proposals to 252

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

seize control of Cambodia, mostly by taking advantage of succession disputes. In one instance, Governor Luis Pérez Dasmariñas dispatched a small military expedition from Manila to Cambodia in 1596 with vague plans to establish a foothold there. However, the expedition achieved little, adding nothing of substance to Spain’s Asian empire.41

Imperial Lines of Defense To protect their possessions and interests in maritime Asia the Portuguese created an extensive system of fortresses. The historian António Bocarro composed a celebrated survey of the Estado da Índia in Goa during the early 1630s that listed and described as many as fifty to sixty significant Portuguese fortresses east of the Cape of Good Hope.42 These strongholds were scattered along a periphery that stretched from Sofala to Solor, though the vast majority were located on the western side of the Indian Ocean. (In fact, there were at least thirty-​three on the west coast of India alone, including seven in Goa and its territories.) Naturally, garrisons were required to defend these structures—​and, even though they nearly always seemed to be grossly undermanned, attempting to provide for them absorbed a hugely disproportionate share of Portugal’s resources in maritime Asia. The consequence was that the Estado da Índia was far more of a military entity than were any of the contemporary European empires in the Americas—​Spanish, Portuguese, or British. Nearly all the Portuguese personnel who shipped out to Asia in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were soldados—​young, unmarried soldiers of the crown, needed to defend the fortresses and man the fleets.43 It is therefore not surprising that stories of attacks, counterattacks, and sieges feature prominently in the extraordinarily rich Portuguese literature concerning their presence in maritime Asia.

Social Interaction and Cultural Exchange The Portuguese presence in Asia created a remarkable zone of social interaction and cultural exchange. Indeed, if somewhat paradoxically, the very fact of having to defend such an extensive chain of fortresses intensified social interaction and greatly multiplied the points of contact through which it could occur. The shiploads of soldados brought out to Asia from Lisbon each year, for example, arrived unaccompanied by Portuguese women or girls. These men therefore had to find their female company locally. The consequent merging, and the development of mixed-​blood families that resulted, were fundamental realities of the Portuguese presence in Asia. Yet, until recently, the social and cultural history of Portuguese settlers and mixed-​bloods in the Estado da Índia has attracted only limited attention.44 This omission may partly be a consequence of the influence of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, whose magisterial works in the 1960s and 1970s focused attention on the economic and, more particularly, the commercial history 253

Anthony Rendell Disney

of Portugal in Asia.45 Now, however, the historiography of the Portuguese in Asia has become appreciably richer and more varied, with a growing number of regional and local studies and several important updated overviews, such as the relevant volumes of the História Nova series.46 Nevertheless, histories of social and cultural interaction in Portuguese maritime Asia remain limited. This is despite the existence of a classic model for such studies having long existed in Portuguese, in the form of Gilberto Freyre’s pioneering work on northeastern Brazil. Why, one might ask, have we not yet complemented this famed classic with an analysis of Portuguese frontier society in India or Southeast Asia?47 Between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries Portuguese and Spaniards living and working in Asia also accumulated a vast amount of information about the region, knowledge that has recently been labeled “Catholic Orientalism.”48 A crucial part of this cultural exchange, and of the further acquisition of knowledge to which it gave rise, was mediated through the Catholic missions in the course of religious proselytizing. However, it was not just a matter of preaching and teaching in order to secure converts to Catholicism. Many missionaries also made serious efforts to learn Asian languages, to understand local ways and traditions, and to adapt themselves accordingly. This was especially the case with the Jesuits, who pioneered the study of various Asian languages such as Mandarin and Tamil, and composed dictionaries, grammars, and vocabularies. The great exemplar of this kind of endeavor was the Italian Jesuit Fr. Matteo Ricci (1562–​1610), who spent years at the imperial court in Beijing and achieved an excellent grasp of Mandarin Chinese. The Portuguese were also important disseminators of European knowledge, ideas, and beliefs to Asians, particularly by way of the various missionary orders associated with the Padroado. Often Asians were intensely curious about the newcomers from the West and showed particular interest in their technology. The chronicler Fernão Lopes de Castanheda noted that the Hindus of Calicut were intrigued by the strange dress and speech of the emissary Vasco da Gama sent ashore in May 1498—​and that Vasco and his men subsequently attracted large crowds of onlookers.49 Later, of course, interest in “the other” became more sophisticated and more purposeful. When the Portuguese made contact with Japan in the mid-​sixteenth century the Japanese almost immediately recognized the significance of their firearms—​which they promptly sought to acquire and then copy.50 Interest in things Western eventually spread to areas and peoples well beyond the locales of actual Portuguese-​Asian contact. By the early seventeenth century, for example, Koreans were eager to find out about Western ways—​even though it seems unlikely that any European had yet visited Korea. Koreans sought out contacts with the Jesuits at the imperial court in Beijing—​and from the padres of the China Mission they duly obtained information about such things as Western painting techniques, maps, and scientific knowledge more generally. Taking this knowledge with them back to Korea, they then adapted it to their own purposes, thereby undergoing a degree of Westernization without suffering any direct European intrusions.51

254

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

On the Portuguese side, participation in Asian trade and in soldiering was naturally accompanied by numerous cultural exchanges. At one end of the spectrum were the extensive looting and collecting of Asian and African valuables, artworks, and curiosities. Looting, which went hand-​in-​hand with soldiering, appeared very early in the history of the Portuguese presence—​and lingered long. The seminal conquests of Governor Afonso de Albuquerque (1509–​15) involved several such activities, including his notorious sacking of Melaka in 1511. This yielded, among other treasures, a famous pair of gold lions from the sultan’s palace—​subsequently lost, along with much else, to shipwreck. A little over a century later, in December 1629, Southeast Asia yielded up another spectacular booty when Nuno Álvares Botelho annihilated a huge Acehnese force besieging Portuguese Melaka. A spectacular part of the loot—​the Acehnese admiral’s galley, along with the commanding admiral (laksamana) himself—​was triumphantly dispatched to the viceroy at Goa. The laksamana unfortunately died at Colombo before he could be put on display, significantly reducing the drama of the occasion.52 Looting tended to tail off into the rather more respectable activities of collecting curiosities and accumulating artworks. These activities appeared quite early in contact history—​and long persisted. Apart from the crown itself, significant collecting was undertaken mainly by the nobility or by wealthy merchants involved in the India trade. Much of what was collected has since perished—​partly because the goods concerned were themselves perishables but mainly as a result of neglect, accidents, or acts of God. The great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 was particularly devastating in this regard. Not only did it destroy the principal royal palace in the Portuguese capital, along with all its mementoes and treasures, but it also struck down many mansions of the nobility and many opulent religious houses. Other treasures disappeared as a consequence of subsequent looting of collections held in Portugal—​particularly during the Napoleonic Wars.53 One exotic Eastern commodity that has managed to survive relatively abundantly is Chinese porcelain. The scene at Vasco da Gama’s deathbed suggests just how early in the contact period collectors began to desire imported Chinese porcelain. When da Gama took ill in Cochin on Christmas Eve 1524 during his third and last voyage to India, he was taken to the home of a local Portuguese merchant and settler, who is reported to have richly decorated his rooms with pieces of Chinese porcelain.54 King Manuel himself was much fascinated by porcelain, acquired dinner sets for the royal household, and made eating off them fashionable for the rich. Collectors of Oriental artefacts in the sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries included the well-​ known Antwerp-​based Portuguese merchant Emmanuel Ximenes.55 Various viceroys and governors of this era eagerly acquired Asian objects—​porcelains, lacquer work, fine furniture, exquisite silks and embroideries, precious stones, and so forth. By the seventeenth century they were increasingly collecting these for their monetary value rather than as artworks or historical objects. Viceroy Linhares (1629–​35), on his return to Europe from Goa in 1636, presented King Philip IV with a jewel so

255

Anthony Rendell Disney

spectacular that it was said by one impressed contemporary to be worth the huge sum of 100,000 ducats.56 The learning of Eastern languages was a crucial element in effecting cultural exchange, as was the interpenetration of Portuguese and various Asian tongues. This interpenetration stands out as one of the single most important cultural outcomes of the European breakthrough into maritime Asia. One consequence was to propel Portuguese into becoming a language of world importance—​alongside the likes of Spanish, French, and, above all, English. All four of these languages have accumulated unusually large vocabularies, largely as a consequence of contacts with, and borrowings from, other peoples. In the case of Portuguese this is well demonstrated through Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado’s Glossário Luso-​Asiático—​the Portuguese Hobson-​Jobson—​which contains over a thousand pages of words and expressions picked up by the Portuguese in Asia. For, as Delgado explains in his introduction, Portuguese who returned home after years in the East “not only brought the riches and curiosities of Asia in their baggage, but also came [back] ‘equipped with new ideas . . .’ They returned ‘thoroughly orientalised’ and stood out not only because of their ‘extravagance’ but as a consequence of their ‘language.’ ”57 In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Portuguese came to serve as the lingua franca, particularly for purposes of trade and diplomacy, in much of maritime Asia and East Africa. It gave way to English only in the eighteenth century—​and then very gradually. The diffusion of the Portuguese language throughout maritime Asia also gave birth in time to a whole series of local Creoles. These were spoken by Portuguese-​ orientated communities in such places as Diu, Cochin, Melaka, Batavia, and Macau, and were often nurtured and reinforced by the local clergy. They are now the objects of considerable scholarly interest just as, ironically, many are rapidly fading from everyday use—​and may soon face extinction.58 From a Spanish perspective, the Philippines were a more contested kind of cultural and religious frontier. Intramuros—​the urban enclave reserved for Spaniards inside Manila—​was walled, and protected by a massive fortress. Later, after the pacification of the coastal Filipinos of Luzon and the Bisayas had been completed, an internal frontier grounded in religion and culture developed within the archipelago. Beyond the pale lived the mostly Negrito inhabitants of the northwestern Luzon mountains, who were pagan and hostile, and also the Moros (Muslims) of Mindanao. This internal frontier was both religious and military, as its mostly Dominican missions were established under armed protection within a de facto “buffer zone.” There was also an external frontier—​an outer defensive ring of fortresses to protect Spanish interests against outside enemies. This included the fort at Zamboanga (designed partly to guard against Moro raids, and partly to provide protection from the Dutch), as well as the fortress and settlement of Santíssima Trinidad in northern Taiwan. Finally, between 1606 and 1663, Manila maintained, albeit intermittently, a string of forts in the Maluku islands, especially on Ternate and Tidore.59 Within these various frontiers, Christianization—​and, to a rather lesser extent, Hispanization—​made progress through the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 256

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

The populations of Luzon, and of the northern and central Philippine lowlands generally, became effectively Catholicized through the diligent labors of both friars and Jesuits. However, in other respects the diffusion of Spanish influence across the internal frontier progressed more slowly, hampered by the modest number of Spaniards available to promote it, and their overconcentration in Manila. Even as late as the end of the nineteenth century, 90 percent of the Filipino population still could not speak Spanish.60

The Iberians and the Other European Empires in Asia In 1580, only fifteen years after Legazpi had begun the Castilian occupation of the Philippines, Philip II of Spain inherited the crown of Portugal, thereby becoming the first monarch in human history upon whose dominions the sun never set. On acquiring his new crown Philip promised that Portugal’s overseas possessions and interests would remain distinct and separate from those of Castile. Portuguese officials would continue to administer these possessions exclusively and there would be no attempt to integrate the two Iberian empires into a single political entity. This arrangement worked quite well from 1580 to around 1600, a period when the Portuguese were able to operate in maritime Asia with little outside hindrance. However, after about 1600 the Estado da Índia found itself under increasing pressure from the Dutch East India Company and, to a lesser extent, the English East India Company. When the Dutch company seized Amboina in 1605 and drove the Portuguese almost completely out of Maluku, the Portuguese did not have the required resources available in Southeast Asia to stage a counter-​operation of the magnitude required. A  credible response, therefore, could only be mounted with Spanish assistance—​and, indeed, under Spanish leadership. The Portuguese, albeit with misgivings, finally agreed to a joint operation. A Luso-​Spanish force of thirty-​three ships and over 3,000 men was assembled and proceeded to recapture most of Maluku. The operation was overwhelmingly a Spanish enterprise, however, having been launched from Manila and with Spain providing thirty of the thirty-​three ships deployed and most of the participating troops.61 Spain subsequently retained key parts of Maluku, including the island of Ternate, for over half a century.62 The recovery of Maluku by Spanish rather than Portuguese forces in 1605–​1606 reanimated an issue that had been smoldering since the creation of the Iberian dual monarchy in 1580. Did it really make sense for Castile and Portugal to continue operating in maritime Asia separately, each running its own jealously guarded trading network, as though they were competing or even mutually hostile forces? From the viewpoint of Madrid, the Portuguese possessions and settlements in Asia and East Africa were among the most valuable acquisitions brought to the Habsburg Monarchy when it inherited the crown of Portugal, constituting as they did an ideal complement to Castile’s American empire with its vast silver mines. Logically, therefore, the argument ran, why keep the two entities apart? Closer cooperation between the Portuguese and Spanish 257

Anthony Rendell Disney

establishments in maritime Asia, and the pursuit of their commercial rationalization, would surely advantage both? By the second decade of the seventeenth century the exportation of cloves from Maluku, then largely under Spanish control, via Manila and the Carrera de las Filipinas to Mexico, seemed a logical step to take.63 The seventeenth century saw further Spanish expansion in Asia to the disadvantage of Portuguese interests. In 1626—​again, primarily to counter the Dutch, who had established their presence at Fort Zeelandia in southern Taiwan—​the governor of the Philippines founded the Santíssima Trinidad fortress in northern Taiwan. The Spaniards held this stronghold until 1642.64 Finally, a few years later in 1667, the Spanish crown formally annexed the Marianas. The reason for securing this remote Pacific outpost was to provide a safe haven on Guam, where Manila galleons en route to Acapulco could, if necessary, take refuge, resupply, or carry out repairs. The next major Portuguese setback in maritime Asia—​the loss of Hormuz to an Anglo-​ Persian expedition in 1622—​intensified the “separate empires” debate. Particularly when viewed from Madrid, the maintenance of two separate Iberian empires seemed to make less sense than ever. Most Portuguese, however, continued to view any closer association in maritime Asia with their neighbors and traditional rivals with distinctly mixed feelings, believing—​probably correctly—​that the ultimate price would be forfeiture of Portuguese political control. Such an outcome was clearly unacceptable, particularly to the Portuguese fidalgo element, but also to many within the Portuguese religious orders, and perhaps most of all to the Portuguese Jesuits. It was against this background that Viceroy Vidigueira (1622–​28) and Viceroy Linhares (1629–​35) both became convinced that an end to hostilities with the English and the Dutch was imperative, if Portugal’s particular interests were to be protected. Eventually Linhares, without prior instructions from Madrid, negotiated a local provisional truce with the English East India Company, which both parties signed at Goa in January 1635. In retrospect, this was an historic turning point. The Spanish historian Rafael Valladares has argued that, by making terms with the English, the Portuguese in Asia effectively aligned themselves with an enemy nation rather than with their own Iberian neighbor and sister kingdom of Castile.65 Ostensibly, the 1635 truce with the English East India Company was signed by the viceregal government in Goa to enable its limited resources to be concentrated against its main European enemy: the Dutch. The more substantive reasons for Portuguese behavior in this regard, however, are clear. A closer relationship in maritime Asia with Spain would have involved giving up, on the one hand, part of the Portuguese Asia trade while conceding, on the other, a major opening for Spanish missionaries in areas such as China and Japan that had long been preserves of the Padroado.66 Instead of seeking strength by merging with Castile to form a greater Spain, Portugal opted for an alliance with England. The maintenance of this alliance as a guarantee for Portugal’s autonomy rapidly developed into the cornerstone of Portuguese foreign policy and was arguably the single most decisive factor in ensuring the long-​term survival of the Estado da Índia.

258

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

Twilight of Empire Portuguese withdrawal from the union with Castile in 1640, and the reconfiguration of international relationships that followed, had major consequences for both Iberian empires. The rupture also provided important opportunities to the newer European empires, which were then still in the process of establishing themselves in the region. Even before the Luso-​Spanish separation, the Anglo-​Portuguese truce signed in Goa in 1635 foreshadowed a major realignment of intra-​European relationships in Asia. Among other things, the truce implied de facto Portuguese recognition of the English right to use the sea-​route linking Europe to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope that the Portuguese had previously claimed as theirs exclusively. Inevitably, Portugal extended similar recognition to the French and other European newcomers—​though, in the case of the Dutch, not until as late as 1663. By that time the Estado da Índia was reeling from heavy territorial losses inflicted at the hands of the Netherlanders. These losses included the lowlands of Sri Lanka, Cochin, and the other Portuguese possessions in Kerala. Also lost to the Dutch were Melaka and virtually all Portugal’s other Far Eastern interests except for Macau and a few enclaves in Timor. With so many losses on land, Portuguese claims to suzerainty over Asian seas had also, in effect, to be abandoned. Spain, meanwhile, retained a more or less firm grip both on the Philippine archipelago (at least until the shock of Britain’s brief occupation of Manila in 1762–​64) and on the Carrera de las Filipinas. Spain’s retention of its virtual monopoly over the trans-​Pacific route, in contrast to Portugal’s failure to do the same for the Carreira da Índia, is explained by the fact that the latter was the only practicable all-​sea route from Europe to maritime Asia open to Europeans generally. Nor did any European power other than Spain, between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries, possess a port on the eastern side of the Pacific that could be brought into service as a terminal for trans-​ Pacific crossings. In any event, by the late seventeenth century the age of Iberian maritime dominance had given way to that of the European companies. The new reality was an Asia in which some half a dozen rival European trade networks and embryonic territorial empires, each with its own web of strategically located bases and settlements, competed for seaborne supremacy. In this new situation, Portugal and Spain were reduced to secondary players, with the Dutch becoming the dominant European presence in Southeast Asia and the English and French contesting among themselves for preeminence in the Indian subcontinent. The Iberian trailblazers who had established models for both European trade networks and European territorial occupations in Asia were thus forced to give way in large measure to northern European latecomers. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Portuguese empire in Asia, as a territorial entity albeit of modest proportions, owed its survival and longevity increasingly to its alliance with the British and to British protection. But for this alliance, the Portuguese would sooner or later have lost most of their remaining Asian

259

Anthony Rendell Disney

possessions—​most probably to the British themselves. Even as it was, the British built their Asian empire substantially on or near former Portuguese claims and sites. The regions around Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata had all been places of Portuguese interest before the East India Company had acquired them. British governors-​general based in Kolkata in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries more than once cast covetous eyes in the direction of both Goa and Macau. Indeed, during the Napoleonic Wars Goa was subjected to British occupation in 1799–​1815 and Macau briefly suffered the same indignity in 1808. After 1640, the two Iberian empires thus no longer had much impact on the great land empires of Asia such as the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Qing, and the latter increasingly ignored their former neighbors and rivals. Whereas once the Ottomans had disposed of a naval force in the Indian Ocean to be seriously reckoned with, for example, in the seventeenth century they made little effort to sustain operational warships beyond the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Nor did the Safavids have much reason to pay attention to the Portuguese once Shah ‘Abbās had ejected them from the Persian Gulf in 1622. Instead, it was a relatively minor power, the Ya’ārubi state of Oman, that was to become the principal non-​European rival of the Portuguese at sea. By the late seventeenth century, the Omanis were developing into a formidable naval power—​and a serious challenge to the Estado da Índia. In 1698 Omani naval forces successfully drove the Portuguese out of northern East Africa by seizing the Mombasa stronghold of Fort Jesus. In the southwest of the Indian subcontinent where the Estado da Índia had its administrative seat, the Marathas were eclipsing the Mughals already in the late 1600s and thereafter posed a more serious threat to the lands ruled by the viceroyalty than the Mughals ever had. Sambhaji Bhonsle, for example, nearly captured Goa during an extended siege in 1683–​84. Virtually the only bright spot for the Estado by the eighteenth century was China, ruled after 1644 by the Qing. The Portuguese found China as impenetrable as ever, but they had learned to tread carefully and work within the framework laid down by Chinese authorities and traditions. The reward—​principally in the form of direct access to the vast Chinese market through Macau—​was both invaluable, and unique to Portugal among all the Western powers. Although Spanish relations were not as successful, fragmentary evidence points to the continuation of a lucrative trade between China and the Philippines in Mexican silver. Exported to southern China via Manila itself, this key commodity, always in high demand in mainland East Asia, played a key role in lubricating the wheels of late-​seventeenth-​ and eighteenth-​century trans-​Pacific trade.

Conclusion The Portuguese and Castilian (Spanish) empires, founded in the early 1500s and mid-​ 1560s respectively, were the first European empires to be established east of the Cape of Good Hope and the only ones until the arrival of the Dutch and English East India 260

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

Companies in the early seventeenth century. This achievement was made possible by their development and then monopolistic control until about 1600 of the only two practicable maritime communications routes from Western Europe to Asia: the Portuguese Carreira da Índia from Lisbon to Goa via the Cape, and the Spanish Carrera de las Filipinas across the Pacific from Acapulco to Manila. The naval expertise of the Iberian powers and the ambitions of each to control vast oceanic spaces transformed the place of the sea itself in Asian imperial history. Hitherto, empires in Asia had been quintessentially land-​based in their origins, ambitions, and modes of expansion. They had thrived on fertile plains, grasslands, and river valleys, whereas oceans had been politically neutral in theory and served in practice to block imperial expansion and foreign influence. The Iberians reversed these axioms, making oceans the means of imperial expansion. In the process, the coasts of maritime Asia that had escaped previous empires became the regions most exposed to external domination.67 The two Iberian powers created very different empires in Asia. Spain arrived in the Pacific with the clear intention of conquering territory and then of transforming completely the political, cultural, and religious character of the lands so acquired. The politically underdeveloped and poorly commercialized societies that Spain encountered on the island fringes of Southeast Asia made such ambitions plausible. Portugal, by comparison, was essentially driven by the profit motive and acquired only small territorial possessions, strategically located for commercial purposes. A prime example of the latter was Goa itself. This lack of territorial foundations has led some historians to call the pre-​eighteenth-​century Portuguese presence in maritime Asia a network of commercial sea lanes rather than an “empire” in the traditional sense. In the long term, the historical importance of the Iberian empires for Asia is incontestable, inasmuch as they prepared the way for other European states such as the British, Dutch, and French that would use naval power to construct even larger empires in Asia. What effect, however, did the Iberian presence have on the development of imperial governance in Asian states before the heyday of European imperialism in the nineteenth century? In general, it seems that the aggressive behavior of Portuguese and Spanish agents abroad caused significant annoyance to Asian polities in the sixteenth century, but that their political and cultural impact was relatively modest. The strenuous efforts made by the Iberians to displace indigenous Asian religions and political cultures, for example, largely failed—​a failure that stood in rather striking contrast to the widespread adoption of Indic and Muslim ideas and practices in the Southeast Asia. Only a very small number of minor rulers in Sri Lanka and the Indonesian archipelago converted to Christianity, and all of these experiments proved of brief duration. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that Asian empires seem to have seen little worth imitating in the internal policies and institutions of the Iberian powers—​even in those areas that, one might have argued, were the most striking and successful in an Asian context. No Asian empire would attempt to replicate key features of Iberian regimes such as the cartaz, the networks of “forts and ports,” the legal notion of a mare clausum, or political claims to hegemony over “navigation and commerce.” Indeed, no major 261

Anthony Rendell Disney

Asian empire—​with the notable exception of the Ottomans—​would even seek to create their own version of the blue-​water navies that would remain critical to European imperial expansion into the twentieth century. The effects of the Iberian contribution in connecting Asia more efficiently and thoroughly with the rest of the world were more in evidence outside the realm of formal politics. The new sea routes pioneered by Portugal and Spain contributed, for example, to the wealth of Asian empires by stimulating both regional and international trade in uniquely “Asian” products, from spices and silk to porcelain and tea. They also connected Asia for the first time to the Americas, creating a flow of silver bullion and exotic new flora, from chilli peppers to rubber, which would have a diffused but powerful impact on Asian history. The Portuguese language, similarly, would provide a new lingua franca facilitating trade, diplomacy, and cultural contacts, while literally thousands of words and expressions from Asian languages were absorbed into Portuguese and vice versa. The Iberian powers also helped to introduce new technologies and information that would prove useful to Asian rulers, albeit only after these had been largely detached from their specifically European context. The Iberians did not, for example, introduce gunpowder technology in Asia, but they did help to inform militaries across Asia on recent European advances in weaponry and the associated changes to tactics and defensive works. The Ming, for example, noted the superiority of European firearms and sought to add Western-​style artillery and musket corps to their existing forces.68 The Ming and Qing were similarly interested in the new learning brought by Catholic missionaries, especially cartography and astronomy, but these were adapted to fit within Chinese paradigms and certainly could not be said to have had a transformative impact. The traces of Iberian influence are thus more obvious in the putti and angels that appear in Mughal dynastic portraits or the Jesuit-​designed Baroque additions to the Qing Old Summer Palace in Beijing, than in the structure of government ministries or the ideology of the state. One of the most important consequences of the Iberian imperial presence in Asia was arguably to make Asian rulers more resistant to European practices and norms. Portuguese and Spanish crusading zeal sharply antagonized Muslim rulers in South and Southeast Asia, while Iberian attempts to promote Christianity in most cases led directly to the imposition of restrictions on missionaries and Western learning generally. In many ways, the combination of increasing international trade and the need to resist Iberian political pressures helped to stimulate the emergence of states across maritime Asia that were better armed, more effectively centralized, and that regulated trade more closely than they had before the Iberian arrival. In both Japan and the Toungoo Empire in Myanmar, for example, concerted Portuguese and Spanish attempts to make inroads ultimately contributed to the emergence of stronger central governments that then proceeded to close their empires to Iberian influence.69 Such self-​strengthening occurred, moreover, through the revitalization of local political traditions, rather than through imitation of the Iberian newcomers. 262

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

Figure 9.1  Ports and Islands in East Africa and the Coast of India, 1630. Illustration by João Teixeira Albernaz. (Photo by Buyenlarge/​Getty Images.) In the international sphere, similarly, Iberian efforts to subordinate Asian spaces to European diplomatic decisions—​best represented by the agreements signed between Spain and Portugal at Tordesillas and Zaragoza—​also failed. Historians have tended to focus on the role of other European states establishing such foundations of the 263

Anthony Rendell Disney

new international order as the “freedom of the seas.” In fact, however, the failure of Iberian attempts to monopolize the sea owed at least as much to the entrenched resistance of all major Asian polities as it did the actions of British and Dutch merchantmen and privateers.70 Otherwise, the Iberians had some limited success in imposing their own diplomatic and political norms on the minor principalities of South Asia and the insular Southeast Asia, but when dealing with the great empires of Asia Iberian representatives had little choice but to conform to non-​European etiquette, ceremonies, and expectations.71 The time still lay far off in the future when European empires could expect their Asian counterparts to treat them as equals, let alone superiors.

Notes 1 The term “early modern” in European History is now usually understood to refer to approximately the period from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century. See J. H. Elliott, History in the Making (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 59. In Asian History precisely what “early modern” means is less settled, though it is commonly assumed to have had a somewhat shorter time frame. In this chapter we focus particularly on the period between the start of the sixteenth century and the early eighteenth century. 2 Vasco da Gama, a minor Portuguese nobleman, commanded the first expedition ever to sail from Western Europe to India and back, via the Cape of Good Hope—​a feat he accomplished in 1497–​99. Gama was also the first to undertake successfully, and on the same voyage, both South Atlantic trade wind sailing and Indian Ocean Monsoon sailing. At the time, his voyage was the longest measured by distance traveled that had ever been recorded. 3 Strictly speaking, no “Spanish” kingdom, government, or empire existed in this period, inasmuch as the country today known as Spain consisted of a collection of polities—​primarily Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Basque “lordships” (señoríos)—​each with its own separate laws and institutions and connected to one another by little more than a dynastic union. Throughout this volume, therefore, the word “Spanish” should be understood as convenient shorthand first for Castile and second for this conglomerate of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Basque lordships. For an authoritative recent discussion of this question, see J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–​1830 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 120–​30. 4 See especially A. H. de Oliveira Marques (co-​ord.), Nova História da Expansão Portuguesa: A Expansão Quatrocentista (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1998). In English, see the biographies of the two major figures connected with the expansion process: Peter Edward Russell, Prince Henry “the Navigator”: A Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000); and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 5 John Leddy Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses 1565–​1700 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), p. 42. 6 The literature spawned by the carreras is too vast to provide even an outline here. But readers will find a useful introduction and overview for the Carreira da Índia in various works of Charles Ralph Boxer, including: The Tragic History of the Sea 1582–​1622 (Cambridge: the Hakluyt Society, 1959), especially the introduction; Further Selections from the Tragic History of the Sea 1559–​1565 (Cambridge:  the Hakluyt Society, 1968); The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–​1825 (London: Hutchinson, 1984), esp. chap. 9; From Lisbon to Goa,

264

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

1500–​1750 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1984). An excellent succinct overview is T. Bentley Duncan, “Navigation between Portugal and Asia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Asia and the West. Encounters and Exchanges from the Age of Explorations: Essays in Honor of Donald F. Lach, ed. C. K. Pullapilly and E. J. Van Kley (Notre Dame:  Cross Cultural Publications, 1986), pp. 3–​25. There is also much useful bibliographical material in Filipe Vieira de Castro, The Pepper Wreck: A Portuguese Indiaman at the Mouth of the Tagus River (College Station: Texas A and M University Press, 2005); and R. L. Godinho, A Carreira da Índia. Aspectos e Problemas da Torna-​Viagem (1550–​1649) (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2005). For the Carrera de las Filipinas, the key work is still William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: Dutton, 1939). 7 Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, De Ceuta a Timor (Linda-​a-​Velha: Difel, 1994), pp. 207–​43 (esp. p. 210). 8 John Villiers, “The Estado da Índia in Southeast Asia,” in The First Portuguese Colonial Empire, ed. Malyn Newitt (Exeter: Department of History and Archaeology, University of Exeter, 1986), p. 38. 9 Urgent dispatches and small quantities of goods of high value but low bulk could also sometimes be sent between Portugal and India using the partly overland routes via the Middle East. 10 For a recent well-​researched study of an unofficial Portuguese community in Southeast Asia in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see Stefan Halikowski Smith, Creolization and Diaspora in the Portuguese Indies: The Social World of Ayutthaya 1640–​ 1720 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 11 For the debate over the location of the Tordesillas antemeridian on the further side of the globe, see Xavier de Castro, Jocelyne Hamon, and Luís Filipe Thomaz, Le Voyage de Magellan (1519–​1522): La Relation d’Antonio Pigafetta et Autres Témoignages (Paris: Chandeigne, 2007), esp. vol. 1, pp. 15–​29. 12 Rafael Valladares, Castilla y Portugal en Asia (1580–​1680): Declive Imperial y Adaptación (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), pp. 21–​2, 25. 13 John Newsome Crossley, Hernando de los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2011), p. 33. 14 Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, trans. J. S. Cummins (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1971). See also Schurz, The Manila Galleon, pp.  64–​7; and Paul Jorge de Sousa Pinto, “Enemy at the Gates:  Macao, Manila and the ‘Pinhal Episode’ (End of the 16th Century),” Bulletin of Portuguese Japanese Studies 16 (2008), 11–​33. 15 These figures are for about 1600. Cf. John Villiers, “Portuguese Malacca and Spanish Manila: Two Concepts of Empire,” in Portuguese Asia: Aspects in History and Economic History (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries), ed. Roderich Ptak (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, 1987), p. 54 and sources therein cited. 16 The Manila-​Japan trade is briefly described in Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, pp. 308–​ 309. See also Charles Ralph Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549–​1650 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Los Angeles Press, 1952), pp. 301–​303. 17 For the formation of a Jesuit “thalassocracy” in maritime Asia, see Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–​1750 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) esp. chap. 3. 18 J. Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-​Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk: The Diary of Thomas Pereira (Rome: I. H. S. I., 1962), esp. chaps 4–​6. 19 The systematic Catholicization of the Philippines is described in Phelan, The Hispanization, chaps  3–​6. 20 Crossley, Hernando de Los Ríos Coronel, pp. 2, 23, 171–​2.

265

Anthony Rendell Disney

21 H. de la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines 1581–​ 1768 (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 102–​103. 22 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, pp.  161–​71, 237–​47; and Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, pp. 38–​9, 50–​2. The crucified Christians, still hanging from their crosses, were seen near Nagasaki in June 1597 by the visiting Florentine merchant and adventurer Francesco Carletti. See Francesco Carletti, Voyage autour du Monde de Francesco Carletti (1594–​1606), trans. Frédérique Verrier (Paris: Chandeigne, 1999), pp. 154–​6. 23 Use of the term império seems to have crept in during the Habsburg period (1580–​1640). For example, an anonymous account of the Estado da Índia written in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century refers to “este marítimo império.” See António da Silva Rego (ed.), Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa (Lisbon:  Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1960), vol. 1, p. 249. 24 “O estado ou império lusitano índico.” See Manuel Godinho, Relação do Novo Caminho da Índia para Portugal [1665], ed. A. Machado Guerreiro (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-​Casa da Moeda, 1974), p. 17. 25 For these treaties, see Castro, Hamon, and Thomaz, Le voyage de Magellan, vol. 1, pp. 7–​29, 304. 26 António Vasconcelos de Saldanha, Iustum Imperium: Dos Tratados como Fundamento do Império dos Portugueses no Oriente. Estudo de História do Direito Internacional e do Direito Português (Lisbon: Tipografia Martinho, 1997), pp. 325–​9. 27 In 1506 and 1521 Portuguese envoys informed the rulers of Kotte and Bengal respectively that King Manuel was “king of the sea.” See Thomaz, De Ceuta a Timor, p. 221. Also Jorge Manuel Flores, Os Portugueses e o Mar de Ceilão. Trato, Diplomacia e Guerra (1498–​1543) (Lisbon: Edições Cosmos, 1998), pp. 124–​5. 28 For a description of this coronation, see Gaspar Correia, Lendas da Índia (Porto:  Lello e Irmão Editores, 1975), vol. 1, pp. 607–​609. 29 Sanjay Subrahmanyam has identified an earlier “terrestrial turn” in Portugal’s overseas presence, coinciding with the development of a plantation economy in Brazil. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires 1500–​1640,” American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (2007), 1372. 30 A. R. Disney, “The Portuguese Empire in India c. 1550–​1650,” in Indo-​Portuguese History. Sources and Problems, ed. John Correia-​Afonso (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 148–​62. Mártires Lopes’s statement is to be found in: Maria de Jesus dos Mártires Lopes, Goa Setecentista: Tradição e Modernidade (1750–​1800) (Lisbon:  CEPCEP-​Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 1996), p. 29. 31 Diary of Viceroy Linhares, September 8, 1630. Ajuda Library, Lisbon, Codex 51-​VII-​12, fol. 89. 32 See Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2010). 33 See Don Garcia de Silva y Figueroa, Comentarios de la Embaxada al Rey Xa Abbas de Persia (1614–​1624), ed. Rui Manuel Loureiro, Ana Cristina Costa Gomes, and Vasco Resende (Lisbon: CHAM, 2011), and three subsequent volumes. 34 See John F Richards, The Mughal Empire (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Nuno Vassallo e Silva and Jorge Flores (eds), Goa and the Great Mughal (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 2004). 35 For early Sino-​Portuguese relations and the founding of Macau, see Rui Manuel Loureiro, Fidalgos, Missionários e Mandarins: Portugal e a China no Século XVI (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2000); and for the embassies, see John E Wills, Embassies and Illusions: Dutch and Portuguese Envoys at K’ang-​hsi, 1661–​1687 (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1984). 266

Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497–1700s

36 Cf. John H. Parry, The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973 [1940]), esp. pp. 17, 36–​7. 37 Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Luís Filipe Thomaz, “Evolution of Empire: The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean during the Sixteenth Century,” in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, ed. James D. Tracey (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.  304. However, Sanjay Subrahmanyam has also said that he believes Spanish occupation of the Philippines was principally “to draw trade away from Portuguese-​controlled networks.” Subramanyam, “Holding the World in Balance,” 1376. 38 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, p. 55. 39 Encomiendas were legal entities granting designated Spaniards the right to exact tribute from assigned natives in return for “protecting” them and nurturing their Catholic faith. For baptismal figures, see Phelan, The Hispanization, p. 56. 40 For schemes of conquest in East and Southeast Asia, see Charles Ralph Boxer, “Portuguese and Spanish Projects for the Conquest of Southeast Asia, 1580–​1600,” Journal of Asian Studies 3 (1969), 118–​36. Also Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, pp. 257–​60; Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, pp. 50–​2, 84–​7, 104–​105; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal 1500–​1700 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), chap. 7; and Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto, The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka 1575–​1619. Power Trade and Diplomacy (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012), pp.  68–​78. 41 Crossley, Hernando de los Rios Coronel, pp. 43–​5. 42 See António Bocarro, O Livro das Plantas de Todas as Fortalezas, Cidades e Povoações do Estado da Índia Oriental, ed. Isabel Cid (Lisbon:  Imprensa Nacional-​Casa da Moeda, 1992). The precise number of fortresses in the Estado da Índia is unclear, but Pedro Barreto de Resende provides sketches of forty-​eight of them, to accompany and illustrate Bocarro’s O Livro das Plantas. However, two of his drawings depict bays rather than fortresses, while several others depict more than one fortress. Macau appears as a single fortress in Resende’s list; but, in Bocarro’s description, Macau is actually protected by two fortresses and four other minor forts or “bastions” (baluartes). 43 On this phenomenon, see Boxer, “Portuguese and Spanish Projects.” 44 An important exception is the insightful and well-​informed overview by Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–​1700 (Chichester: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2012), chaps 8–​9. 45 See Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Os Descobrimentos e a Economia Mundial (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1981). 46 See especially Maria de Jesus dos Mártires Lopes (co-​ord.), Nova História da Expansão Portuguesa. Book 5: O Império Oriental 1660–​ 1820, vols 1 and 2 (Lisbon:  Editorial Estampa, 2006). 47 Gilberto Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1936). 48 See Angela Barreto Xavier and Ines G. Zupanov, Catholic Orientalism: Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge (16th–​18th Centuries) (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015). 49 Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, História do Descobrimento e Conquista da Índia pelos Portugueses (Porto: Lello Irmão, 1979 [1551–​61]), vol. 1, chap. 15, pp. 41, 46. 50 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, pp. 28, 206–​207. 51 See Burglind Jungmann, “Korean Contacts with Europeans in Beijing, and European Inspiration in Early Modern Korean Art,” in Looking East. Rubens’s Encounter with Asia, ed. Stephanie Schrader (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013), pp. 67–​88. 52 A. R. Disney, “Malacca in the Era of Viceroy Linhares,” in Portuguese and Luso-​Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511–​2011, ed. Laura Jarnagin (Singapore: ISEAS, 2011), vol. 1, p. 51, and the sources therein cited. 267

Anthony Rendell Disney

53 A notable instance of a noble house destroyed in the earthquake was the Annunciada Palace, the Lisbon home of the Counts of Ericeira. This palace was famed for its magnificent library, artifacts, and treasures from Portugal’s overseas possessions. 54 Geneviève Bouchon, Vasco da Gama (Lisbon: Terramar, 1998), pp. 303–​304. 55 Sven Dupré and Christine Göttler are currently studying the collection accumulated by Ximenes. 56 A. R. Disney, “The Private Fortune of Viceroy Linhares” (forthcoming in “Proceedings” of the fourteenth ISIPH Conference held in Delhi, February 11–​13, 2013). 57 Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, Glossário Luso-​Asiático (New Delhi: Asian Educational Service, 1988). See especially vol. 1, p. xiii. 58 Alan N. Baxter, “The Creole Portuguese Language of Malacca: a Delicate Ecology,” in Portuguese and Luso-​Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511–​2011, ed. Laura Jarnagin (Singapore: ISEAS, 2012), vol. 2, pp. 115–​42. 59 Manuel Lobato, Fortificações Portuguesas e Espanholas na Indonésia Oriental (Lisbon: Prefácio, 2009), esp. pp. 36–​44. 60 Phelan, The Hispanization, p. 131. 61 Valladares, Castilla y Portugal, p. 21. 62 The long war of attrition over Maluku beginning in 1606 is a major preoccupation of the seventeenth-​century Spanish historian Bartolomé Leonardo y Argensola. See the eighteenth-​ century English translation of his “history”: Bartolomé Leonardo y Argensola, The Discovery and Conquest of the Molucco and Philippine Islands (London: 1708). 63 Ibid., pp. 1–​2, 21–​2, 25. 64 For the struggle over Taiwan during this period, see Tonio Andrade, How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 65 According to Valladares: “The truth that everyone knows is that the Portuguese preferred a truce with the enemy to uniting with Castilians.” Valladares, Castilla y Portugal, p. 56. But for a highly critical Portuguese evaluation of Valladares’s book, see the detailed review by Manuel Lobato in Bulletin of Portuguese-​Japanese Studies 4 (2002), 143–​53. 66 Valladares, Castilla y Portugal, pp. 56–​7. 67 Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–​ 1830 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), vol. 2, pp. 769–​70, 825. 68 Ibid., p. 625. 69 Peter Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 45. 70 Malyn Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400–​ 1668 (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 246. 71 Stefan Halikowski-​Smith, “ ‘The Friendship of Kings was in the Ambassadors’: Portuguese Diplomatic Embassies in Asia and Africa during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Portuguese Studies 22, no. 1 (2006), 111–​13.

268

Chapter 10

Chartered Companies and Empire Peter Borschberg Introduction This chapter deals with a kind of organization—​the chartered company—​which historically did not always evolve into imperial structures. Not everyone would agree that chartered companies were engaged in empire-​building in Asia before 1800, and those who do might further contend that developing imperial traits was the exception rather than the norm. They might further argue that only the two giants, the Honourable East India Company (EIC) and the Verenigde Oost-​Indische Compagnie (VOC), or Dutch East India Company, merit closer attention. Such consideration, moreover, would only apply to the last decades of their corporate lifespan, namely, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward. This chapter, however, takes a broader view of the East India companies as trading ventures and instruments of empire, especially as the building blocks for a subsequent phase of empire-​building. In other words, the era of the East India companies can be seen in terms of a transition, or prelude, to High Imperialism. Their longevity and success depended on several factors: the moment at which they were formed, the place(s) in which they had their principal markets, support from the home government in the form of capital injection and subsidies, or also interference in company management. All chartered East India companies were joint projects of sorts: at home in Europe, they can be seen as joint projects between government, the sociopolitical elites, and the mercantile classes. At the other end is the ability of these companies to form working relationships with the elites and diasporic communities in and around their Asian base(s). Bringing the minor European entities into the picture serves to create a more balanced perspective and highlight that the EIC and VOC were the exceptions rather than the norm. Most chartered companies were founded in the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, but their heyday was during the early-​modern period covering the two centuries between 1600 and 1800 approximately. Chartered trading companies covered a range of organizational forms and sizes, and as a rule they were organized as joint stockholder companies. In the sixteenth century chartered companies were formed to exploit particular resources, such as fishing or whaling, or to carry out trade with designated regions, such as in the case of the Spanish (1530), Muscovy (1555), Venice (1583), or Levant (1592) companies. The English (EIC) and Dutch (VOC) East India companies, formed in 1600 and 1602, respectively, bore common traits with these earlier ventures. Several directors of the Levant Company, for example, also served in the EIC during the

269

newgenrtpdf

Peter Borschberg

270

Figure 10.1  Historic towns in Asia, 1600. Map provided by Peter Borschberg.

Chartered Companies and Empire

early phase of its corporate lifespan. Together with the many similarities between the East India and other chartered companies, there were also some significant differences. While the VOC had been formed as a joint stockholder company right from the time of its foundation, the EIC only became one in 1657. Some of the East India companies represented the capitalist robes of evolving colonial projects—​such as notably the various French ventures and the Portuguese East India Company. Others can be seen as joint ventures between the state and merchant communities, in which imperial motives were minor or absent. This was the case, for example, with the Danish, Swedish, and Ostend companies. All of them, however, were founded as profit-​driven corporate entities. Building and maintaining company infrastructure at key trading locations around Asia generally laid the foundations for what later became a sustained (colonial) presence. Such infrastructure included ports, docks, warehouses, settlements, and fortifications that remained operational and intact even after a company lost its charter, went bankrupt, merged with competitors, or was liquidated. Once the corporate shell had been taken over by the state and liquidated, the fixed assets passed into the ownership of the state, and became infrastructure of a new company, or were occasionally sold to (foreign) competitors. In this way, the overseas assets of the defunct companies came under direct control of the home state and rarely, if ever, returned to local Asian polities. This was most visibly the case with the winding up of the assets belonging to the New French East India Company (Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes Orientales) in 1794, the VOC after 1795, and the EIC after 1858. The latter two liquidations transferred rule over much of modern-​day insular Southeast and South Asia to the Dutch and British governments respectively. It was on the infrastructure of defunct companies, therefore, that European powers in the later half of the eighteenth century and especially during the nineteenth century built, expanded, and consolidated their imperial presence. The chartered companies may not originally have represented institutions of imperial presence and rule strictly speaking, but through their fixed assets, administrative structures, know-​how, and networks, they laid the foundations of what would become the age of High Imperialism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Together with the chapter on the Iberian empires by Anthony Disney, this is one of only two chapters in this volume that addresses non-​native Asian imperial structures. Just how “European” were they, however? While all chartered companies represent a joint project in some respect, their composition hardly qualifies as national in a narrow sense: there were many foreigners among shareholders and among the company servants, albeit not necessarily among the senior officers of the company. Furthermore, to insist only on a given East India Company’s European core, agenda, and shareholder base would deny its roots and support in Asia, especially among the diasporic mercantile communities. A company’s long-​term success depended as much on the open or tacit support of mercantile and political elites in Asia as on the politics at European courts and even the prowess of financial centers like London, Paris, and Amsterdam. The chartered East India companies—​especially the two long-​term survivors, the EIC 271

Peter Borschberg

and VOC—​inserted themselves into preexisting business networks, adopted Asian business practices, created economies of scale, and played the political games of the Asian powers. They also forged from an early stage a working relationship with diasporic commercial elites to establish and consolidate their grip on certain commercial activities. The VOC’s synergy with the Chinese diaspora, for example, traces its beginnings to the opening decade of the seventeenth century and arguably grew with the company’s clout across Southeast Asia.1 The Dutch also co-​opted the Chinese in the running of their colonial settlements, not least in Batavia, through the sale of monopoly concessions. The EIC would do the same in its Southeast Asian settlements, such as notably in Singapore after 1819.2 But such synergy was not limited to the diasporic communities of Southeast Asia. Local political elites (who generally also dominated local economic activities) co-​opted the VOC, as the cases of Johor and Siam illustrate for early-​seventeenth-​century Southeast  Asia.3 Adaptation and accommodation were also vital for both securing and maintaining the goodwill of Asia’s (powerful) rulers. The VOC, for example, became a tributary of China, but the company’s governor-​general who resided in Batavia on the island of Java began to behave like an Asian tributary overlord with all the pomp and visual trappings that this entailed. The VOC, in other words, had found its place within the hierarchy of Asian rulers. The company had enjoyed a considerable degree of independence in managing commerce and its diplomatic relations with Asian monarchs, but over time, the VOC—​not unlike its counterpart, the EIC—​began to resemble an Asian patron state with its clients tied to the company by treaty and alliance. Europe’s chartered companies operated across a range of maritime and coastal spaces in Asia, Africa, and the Americas and beyond. This chapter limits the geographic scope to the littoral of the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, in other words, the maritime and coastal spaces reaching from the southeast and eastern coast of Africa across to the Japanese Islands, and as far south as Timor in the Indonesian Archipelago. This maritime space, in fact, broadly aligns the area that fell under the purview of the Portuguese viceroy in Goa before 1800 but also aligns with the area covered by the VOC charters.4

Research The history of European chartered companies active in the east and western hemispheres has been subject to renewed and vigorous research in recent decades. With specific reference to Asia, much of this research interest has focused on the two behemoths and long-​term survivors: the EIC (1600–​1874) and the VOC (1602–​1799). These two chartered companies founded at the beginning of the seventeenth century are seen to have laid the foundations of the British and Dutch Empires in Asia respectively. The VOC was the Asian arm of what some authors have dubbed the “First Dutch Empire.”5 With respect to the long-​term process of empire-​building, East India companies today form an indispensable part of the picture. Holden Furber dedicated an entire section 272

Chartered Companies and Empire

of Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, titled “Structures of Empire,” to the discussion of different chartered companies that were active in Asia during the early-​modern period.6 An overview of the most important companies trading in the East and West Indies, as well as in the Arctic, Russia, and the Levant during the period 1500–​1800, can also be found in the older but still helpful study of Pierre Bonnassieux, Les Grandes Compagnies de Commerce (the Great Companies of Commerce), originally published in 1892 and now made available in several reprints.7 Besides the diversity of the East India companies studied, there is a growing interest in their different activities and achievements. Several studies have been published discussing how the chartered companies became innovators, their role in developing financial centers like London and Amsterdam, or their specific long-​term contributions toward bookkeeping and corporate management.8 There have also been efforts to explore their activities beyond the confines of management, commerce, and trade, such as their contribution toward warfare and diplomacy, in the development of international law, statecraft, and republican discourses, as a patron of the arts, in the advancement of science and astronomy, as information and knowledge networks, or their contributions toward the study of geography, cartography, medicine, biology, and anthropology.9 In addition to examining the East India companies as a phenomenon, there has also been a growing interest in comparing them with contemporary structures such as nonstate global forces, as agents of globalization, in debates about the responsibilities of multinational corporations, transnational corporate liability, or transnational legislation and jurisdiction.10 In this chapter, the focus is placed on the chartered East India company as a foundation or as an instrument of empire. This covers the more conventional interest in the issues of war, peace, diplomacy, and (shared) sovereignty, as well as the quasi-​state, sovereign company or company-​state11; or alternatively as an ever-​evolving set of political, social, and economic networks.12

What Is a Chartered Company? A chartered (trading) company is a business-​based and thus profit-​oriented trade organization that has been granted a type of constitution by its home government. This constitution, or charter, establishes the hybrid private-​public legal persona of the company. The charter is a document of far greater significance and complexity than today’s articles of association or certificate of incorporation. The VOC offers an excellent case study in this regard. Early ventures operating in the East Indies, including significantly the so-​called voorcompagnieën (predecessor companies) of the VOC, had been entirely private, unincorporated ventures. The decision of the States-​General, the federal assembly of the Dutch Republic, to issue a charter establishing the VOC in 1602 marked a key innovation with reference to East India trade. It firmly established limited liability for the shareholders and the directors from creditors, staked out the responsibilities 273

Peter Borschberg

of management, and distinguished more cleanly between company management and a stakeholder’s entitlement to a share in the company’s profits.13 The charter of the VOC created a standing legal personality to which the Dutch States General contractually delegated certain rights, prerogatives, and privileges that brought together elements of the private and the public spheres.14 The company’s exercise of such delegated rights, however, was never absolute or unconditional, for the States General retained the power to override any decision of the VOC’s central board of directors. Other officers and institutions of government retained either the capacity or the clout to influence and informally steer the decisions of the directors.15 As P. W. Klein observed: “The distinction between the company as a private body of enterprise and as a public authority enjoying more or less sovereign power was actually somewhat lost.”16 It is characteristic of the early-​modern company charters that they identified and staked out a so-​called chartered territory. This is a region carved out for the company in which it was to conduct its operations and enjoy a monopoly of trade with the home country. The VOC’s chartered territory, for example, covered the region of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans and their littorals between the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and Cape Horn in South America. The territory covered by the charter was normally allocated to the company with trading privileges and certain quasi-​sovereign powers delegated by the state. As a result, the trade in all (or at least designated) goods between the home country and the territory assigned by the charter was the prerogative to this company or its agents. However, not all monopolies were created by charter, and this is especially true of the VOC’s spice monopoly. Conceived during the first two decades of the VOC’s lifespan and theoretically defended by Hugo Grotius, this spice monopoly was not anchored in the charter, but rather gradually built up through violence, war, and conquest and also via a web of delivery contracts concluded with Asian rulers. These contracts secured for the VOC exclusive supplies of spices guaranteed by the Asian rulers in exchange for pledges of protection against common (European) enemies.17 While it was not unusual before 1600 to establish chartered ventures that were dedicated to organizing and promoting trade in a broadly defined region (such as the “Levant” or “Muscovy” Companies), the EIC was the first chartered company to carry the title “East Indies” in its name. A number of smaller and highly leveraged Dutch partnerships formed in the late 1590s also carried the name “East Indies” in their name, but they were not entities conceded and backed by a charter. Admittedly, the EIC’s first charter only tenuously staked out the target markets, employing elastic toponyms or place names like “Africa” and “East Indies” and “as many of the islands, ports and cities, towns and places, thereabouts” as the company’s trading grounds.18 While the words “East India” featured in the EIC’s name, trade would also be promoted in a region that was broadly defined and not limited to the East Indies strictly speaking. That was important, for as history shows, the British colonies in North America would emerge by the eighteenth century as a key sales market for the EIC’s goods and produce.

274

Chartered Companies and Empire

Era of the East India Companies When was the heyday of the East India companies? Broadly speaking, the flourishing of the chartered East India companies spans a period of about two centuries from the beginning of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century. The majority of the East Indian chartered ventures had been founded and went bankrupt in this period, with the notable exception of the EIC. As will be argued later, this company experienced a fundamental transformation during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, after which its character as an integrated trading institution was steadily eroded. Within the period between 1600 and 1800, Niels Steensgaard distinguished three phases in the development of the European chartered companies operating in the East Indies. The first phase starts at the beginning and ends around the end of the seventeenth century. This period is marked by the decline of Spanish and especially Portuguese power in the East Indies. Chartered companies founded in this period, such as notably the VOC, were to compete against the Iberian powers, and even wage war against them in Asia. The second development is the transfer of Spanish possessions in the Netherlands and Italy to Austrian overlordship. This era saw the formation of several chartered ventures based in Ostend, Antwerp, and Trieste. A short period bridging the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries is the shortest and least significant of Steengaard’s three phases. It falls between the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the Wars of Spanish Succession until 1714. The main developments in this period cover the reorganization of British trade in the East Indies, the passing of a deregulating act (1694), and the founding of a (short-​lived) rival to the EIC, the English Company Trading in the East Indies. This company operated for around a decade between 1698 and 1708 and merged with the old EIC to form a new, united company.19 The third phase lasts from the end of the Wars of Spanish Succession (1701–​14) until the end of the eighteenth century that was marked by the onset of the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. The War of Spanish Succession had achieved two things: first, the installation of a Bourbon candidate on the Spanish throne. Second, this led to a tightening of dynastic interests in France, Spain, and their colonial possessions, expressed most visibly in the so-​called Bourbon Family Pacts of the eighteenth century. Looking at the chartered companies in terms of their numbers active in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific regions, their apex falls in a period covering a little over six decades between the 1680s and the 1750s. This age became synonymous with Europe’s pursuit of mercantilist trade policies.20 During the first half of the eighteenth century, Europe also experienced a massive surge in commerce with China. Two peaks in company foundations had taken place in the period around 1600–​25 and again in 1660–​80.21 A third wave took place in the years 1719–​35. This latter period saw the birth in 1719 of the French Perpetual Company of the Indies

275

Peter Borschberg

(Compagnie Perpétuelle des Indies) that is also known as the Company of the Indies (Compagnie des Indes). It was established by crown intervention and by merging some struggling French ventures into a new single company. There was also the founding in 1722 of the short-​lived General Company Established in the Austrian Netherlands for the Commerce and Navigation to the Indies (Compagnie générale établie dans les Pays-​Bas Autrichiens pour le Commerce et la Navigation aux Indes), or Ostend Company for short. Both Britain and the Dutch Republic bitterly opposed its formation and by 1727, they had persuaded Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI to suspend the company’s charter. The Ostend Company was liquidated in 1731.22 In Scandinavia, there were the Swedish and the (refounded) Danish East India companies of 1731 and 1732/​4, respectively.23 Companies founded after 1735 include two Brandenburg-​ Prussian ventures established at Emden: the Royal Prussian Asiatic Company at Emden for Canton and China (Königlich Preußische Asiatische Compagnie in Emden nach Canton und China) in 1751 and the Bengal Trading Company at Emden (Bengalische Handlungskompagnie zu Emden) in 1753, the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp (Société impériale asiatique de Trieste et Anvers—​ sometimes called the “Austrian East India Company”) in 1775, the Spanish Royal Philippine Company (Real Compañía de Filipinas) in 1785, and the French New Company of the East Indies (Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes Orientales) in 1785.24 Most of these later ventures had a short life span. The founding of colonies, forts, and factories was not limited to the VOC and EIC: the French had several colonies along the eastern coast of India including Carical (Karaikal), Pondichéry (Puducherry), and Yanam (Yanaon), Chandernagore in Bengal, and Mahé (Mayyazhi) on the Malabar Coast. They remained part of French India well beyond the life span of the Nouvelle Compagnie, namely, until the 1950s. The Ostend Company maintained settlements at Banquibazar (Ichapore) in Bengal and Cabalon (Covelong, after 1746 ruled by the French) on the Coromandel Coast. The Danish Company had Tranquebar (Tharangambadi) and Serampore (Frederiksnagore, Sarampur). These Danish colonies were sold in 1845 together with the Nicobar Islands, or Frederiksørne, to the British. Despite earlier Danish claims to the Nicobars, the Antwerp Company maintained factories on the Malabar Coast of India, on Nancowery (Nicobar Islands) and also briefly at Delagoa (now Maputo) Bay in present-​day Mozambique.25 The golden age of the EIC is situated in the period between 1680 and 1760.26 For the VOC a similar period applies, albeit somewhat shorter, namely, from the 1680s until about 1740–​50. This dating is broadly based on the company’s size and frequency of dividend payments, though it does not reflect the VOC’s overall state of financial health. Profits were recorded for the years 1680–​85 and 1689–​92, and thereafter the company consistently recorded losses with the exception of the five years between 1745 and 1752.27

276

Chartered Companies and Empire

Why Companies? Why did the chartered company become an instrument to further commercial and political agendas? To answer this, it is best to glance briefly at working alternatives that existed at the time. The most important of these alternatives, with reference to Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral at large, was the Estado da Índia, or Portuguese Asia. In the early 1600s, political leaders and merchants had come to consider certain features of the Portuguese system worthy of emulation, while others clearly seemed undesirable. The VOC, for example, recognized the advantages of having a central administrative and logistics base in Asia, just as the Portuguese had at Goa.28 The chartered companies also claimed a blanket monopoly of trade similar to that asserted by the Portuguese crown, but each developed different strategies for maintaining and administering this monopoly: the Portuguese crown leased voyages to private traders and built up a protection system based on the management of trade and the containment of piracy by issuing cartazes (safe conduct passes).29 By contrast, the VOC upheld its monopoly of trade and internalized protection costs as an institutional innovation.30 Company employees, moreover, were prohibited from trading on their own account. This was a prohibition that the Dutch found difficult to enforce in practice and which set them apart not only from the Portuguese but also from the English and most other European competitors. As P. J. Marshall has reminded us: “It is important to remember that much British trade in Asia was conducted not by the Company’s agents on behalf of their employer, but by them and by other British people on their own behalf.”31 Perhaps the most prominent difference that set the chartered companies apart from their Iberian counterparts was their relation to religion. As is known, the Iberian crowns had received papal sanction of their early colonial enterprises in return for an obligation to encourage missionization and act as patrons of the church in the East and West Indies. This became a costly undertaking. By contrast, the companies generally limited religious activity to provision of the sacraments to company employees, their families, to company slaves, or to residents of the scattered forts, factories, and colonial settlements. Chartered companies made innovations to business practices, especially with respect to their standing paid-​in capital.32 Considerable ink has been spilled on the origin of stockholder corporations during the second half of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth century.33 Partnerships were formed for a single venture and subsequently dissolved on the completion of the voyage. The English Levant and Muscovy companies and the early EIC worked in a similar manner, as did in fact the Dutch trading ventures before 1602.34 These were business ventures engaged in long-​distance trade. A standing capital base, however, lent the company a “permanent structure” that “outlasted any shifting group of investors, making it possible to dispose continuously of a large stock of fixed assets.”35 The VOC fixed the prices of spices and other

277

Peter Borschberg

commodities and gradually released stock on to the market. This practice enabled the company to retain capital and make the necessary long-​term investments in Asia. Rather than cash out the profits after a single voyage or on the dissolution of a partnership, stakeholders could sell their shares on the bourse.36 The chartered company, moreover, spread risk across its shareholder base. In this way, a company could become an evolving joint project of the government with mercantile interest groups. This joint project could last only for a short duration and could change as a result of external shocks, geopolitical developments, or company mergers.37 Examples of such mergers include the formation of the VOC or the French Compagnie Perpétuelle des Indes.38 Chartered companies emerged as the most accepted means of securing commercial interests over the long term. Such continuity was created, for example, by building and maintaining trading infrastructures in Asia and placing them at the disposal of the company or country traders. Chartered companies also benefitted from creating economies of scale, even if they were not turning a regular profit.39 Generating income and maintaining an acceptable level of profitability were certainly topics of many internal company debates. Among the key points of discussion were these: Should the company defend and actively manage its monopoly within the designated charter region, or should it farm out the trade in less profitable goods and commodities to private traders for a fee or for a portion of the profits?40 Should the company own expensive infrastructure that quickly depreciated—​such as ships—​or should it lease these from independent ship owners?41 An eye on the bottom line helped to run the companies more efficiently, but cost controls alone proved insufficient to ensure a regular profit.

Were the East India Companies Successful? Steensgaard wrote of the VOC that “the yardstick of success was not victory or conquest, but the financial results.”42 One may find this statement intuitive, but it is also overly simplistic. Success has many faces, and financial gain is not historically a prerequisite for establishing the foundations of empire. Moreover, what should the criteria for measuring this success be over and beyond profitability? Longevity? Size? Return on invested capital? The division of capital risk between the government and private investors? The degree of government control and intervention? The size and scope of the charter territory? Their success in maintaining a monopoly (or sometimes an oligopoly) in the home market? A  combination of all these? While certainly valid to a point, the size, life span, or profitability of a company only yield an incomplete picture. Given the profit-​driven raison d’être of the chartered companies, just how one was to measure those profits was a question not easily answered. The complicated structure of the VOC with its six chambers and Asian outposts made it difficult to ascertain the company’s financial health as a whole. Such considerations led to initiatives in the VOC 278

Chartered Companies and Empire

and the EIC to centralize and improve accounting at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. To employ current criteria to gauge a company’s success would distort the historic context as well as the objectives for which it had been founded. While the East India companies shared common traits, each was also to serve a specific role in their home market. The VOC, for example, had been founded with an eye to promoting trade with the East Indies in defiance of Iberian policies of exclusion and obstruction. Through the sweeping, quasi-​sovereign powers it had been granted, however, the VOC was also to serve as a privately funded instrument of war against the global empires of Spain and Portugal, across the vast area covered by its charter. The VOC, in other words, was established both as a war machine and as a trading venture. Its longevity was as much due to profits, as to government subsidies and inadequate, sporadic returns on capital that were sometimes paid in kind.43 By contrast, the Danes had twice refounded the much smaller counterpart(s) of the VOC in order to help develop Denmark’s domestic institutions and financial infrastructure (banks, insurance, financial markets). The Danish companies arguably had the lowest level of government support and intervention. This, in part, explains why war and a total loss of capital induced the demise of the first two Danish East India companies.44 In its third incarnation, the Danish company had focused on maintaining fixed infrastructure (notably at Tranquebar and Serampore) while trade was outsourced or farmed out to private traders for a fee. At the other end of the spectrum was the Second French East India Company, the Compagnie des Indes Orientales. The crown became the company’s major shareholder. As the eighteenth century progressed, the French crown discovered it was bleeding capital. Of this and related phenomena, Steensgaard concluded: Their (i.e. the chartered companies’) historical significance was the unique combination of the time perspectives of power with the time perspectives of profit, in other words in the balance between the forces of the market and the power of the government. Their unplanned losses became unexpected investments that led from the Age of Discoveries to the existence of the modern world marketplace.45 The passage contains two important points that need further unpacking in the present context. The first concerns the idea of balance; the second the treatment of investment capital. It is problematic to consider the early modern chartered companies as a multinational corporation of a recognizably modern type.46 As joint projects, chartered companies “could balance the powers of a government and the forces of the market in such a way that they would use government power to reinforce their commercial position without fear that government power might be imposed on them for other goals.”47 Still, they underwent significant institutional and structural change, especially the EIC and the 279

Peter Borschberg

VOC. Most companies relied in some form of support or subsidy from the government. The VOC enjoyed direct and indirect support from the home government while the second French Compagnie des Indes Orientales (1664) and the short-​lived Portuguese Companhia do Comércio da Índia (1628) had the crown as their major shareholder.48 The crown acted in unison with groups of private investors to facilitate the procurement of new goods or commodities, and in turn developed channels to market these in Europe. Two such commodities that transformed European consumer culture during the eighteenth century were tea and coffee, and over time tea emerged as the largest single commodity of trade for several East India companies.49 The corporate joint projects forged between government and merchants transformed attitudes in Europe toward capital, risk, and liability. The structure of the shareholder company made it possible to solicit surplus funds and working capital from across a broader spectrum of society, while at the same time limiting the risk of loss to the overall performance of the company. For sure, capital was not always put to efficient use, but it did enable the chartered companies to embark on making costly long-​term investments. In the early years of the VOC, for example, fleet commander Admiral Cornelis Matelieff lamented that his fellow company directors were old men who only maintained a short-​ term horizon when it came to trade. He sought to co-​opt senior members of the government into recognizing the need to invest heavily in long-​term infrastructure, a plea, incidentally, that was not ignored.50 In order to have sufficient capital at its disposal to make the necessary investments in Asia and also fight the war against the Iberian powers East of the Cape of Good Hope, the VOC gave its shareholders a meager return on capital.

Importance of the Charter Territory How important was the size or geographic location of the charter region for ensuring the long-​term success of a given company, or even in offering opportunities for empire-​ building? To answer this question it helps to briefly broaden the horizon and make some comparisons with chartered companies active in the Americas. While the latter were generally involved with the direct exploitation of resources as well as in colonial settlement (as in the case, e.g., of the Virginia Company or the Atlantic fishing ventures), the East India companies, as a rule, were unconcerned with settlement and resource exploitation, at least up until the first half of the eighteenth century.51 Instead, their focus was placed on bartering and trading of commodities, manufactures, or slaves, maintaining infrastructure and fortifications, and raising taxes on trading goods. Moreover, the East India companies acted as transportation and marketing organizations, challenging their operations by mounting overheads. The trade monopoly granted by the home government for the company’s charter region was more often than not a double-​edged sword. It existed first and foremost on paper. Defending the trading monopoly both at home as well as beyond the jurisdiction 280

Chartered Companies and Empire

of home courts and outside a company’s home ground was a time-​consuming and a very costly undertaking. The larger the region staked out by the company charter and the larger the population within that area, the more complex and costly the suppression of interloping and smuggling proved to be.52 In fact without direct or active government support, the companies arguably could not have suppressed interloping and smuggling on their own. Interloping and smuggling were not the only developments that were undermining the company monopoly. The EIC also fought battles to preserve its monopoly in Parliament, namely, against the political proxies of private merchant groups based in Bristol, Liverpool, and London.53 In addition to taking on real and potential enemies at sea, in Parliament and in the courts, the size and location of the charter area posed additional challenges. It was clear that some regions could not be profitably exploited. India, China, and parts of insular Southeast Asia were easier to exploit than, say, east Africa. The charter region was crucial to the long-​term success of a company insofar as it determined the range and volume of the goods that could be traded. The diversity and volume of trading goods together with the ready availability of cheap labor had to be carefully managed to meet the fickle demand of the European markets. Overall, the opportunities for profitably exploiting a charter region were more important for securing the stability and long-​term success of a given company than the political and economic policies and conditions at home.54

Were All Chartered Companies Instruments of Empire? The hybrid nature of the chartered companies rendered them more than just commercial enterprises, and many exercised far-​reaching quasi-​sovereign powers on behalf of their home governments. The VOC offers a case in point. The first charter of 1602 already granted the company sweeping powers to declare war and make peace, conduct diplomacy, sign treaties in the name of the states-​general, appoint and dismiss magistrates, mint coins, pronounce justice, and so on. These were all powers that were normally associated with the rights of a sovereign ruler, and the VOC was, as its predecessors had been, to limit itself to trade. The French Compagnie des Indes Orientales should be seen in a similar light, even if it controlled fewer possessions and was financially less robust. In its heyday from the late seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, the French Company’s activities were always tightly knit to the interests and political ambitions of the French royal court. What about the minor East India companies? The problem here is that while these companies shared with their Dutch and British counterparts certain forms and structures in common, they differed considerably in terms of aims, size, and longevity. East India companies such as the various Danish and Brandenburg ventures were designed specifically with an eye on developing home industries and institutions, not necessarily on securing market share of Asian produce, manufactures, or developing a critical presence 281

Peter Borschberg

overseas. They generally represent a synergy of government and private interests at a given point in time, a synergy that was tied to the evolving and shifting policies of home governments. When they had served the purpose for which they had been established, they were either dissolved, had their charter suspended, or given a face-​saving exit by merging them into other more successful entities. The Portuguese, Ostend, and Brandenburg companies come to mind in this context. The lesser companies were not without their bases, factories, and settlements in Asia and sometimes also Africa. Like the EIC and VOC, the minor companies often maintained a presence across different degrees of independence, autonomy, and self-​ administration. The size varied from a couple of dozen to several hundred or even thousands of inhabitants. As a company settlement, the VOC’s Batavia clearly led the way. Pondicherry on the Coromandel Coast of India was acquired by the French in 1674, and remained a French settlement well beyond the life span of the Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes Orientales, as mentioned earlier. Similarly, Tranquebar was acquired in 1620 and continued to remain a Danish possession across the life span of three Danish East India companies until 1845. By contrast, Banquibazar (present-​day Ichapore) was established by a paravana (permit) granted by the Nawab of Bengal, Murshid Qulī Khan, to the Ostend Company on July 5, 1727.55 It comprised a factory with some surrounding land and minor settlements nearby. The black and gold flag of the Holy Roman Empire kept flying above the factory even after the emperor suspended the charter in 1731, and Banquibazar continued to serve as a factory-​colony of the Austrian Netherlands until 1745. How should we understand these factories, fortifications, and their surrounding dependencies? Were they colonial possessions properly speaking? Some were built with permission or leased from a local Asian overlord. Other settlements (with some surrounding land) had been acquired as sovereign possessions, mainly however as booty of war seized from the Portuguese, as was notable in the case of Melaka in 1641. In a publication from 1930, for example, the Antwerp city archivist Floris Prims dubbed Banquibazar “Belgium’s first colony.”56 Were such factories and settlements colonies in the sense that they did not return to local rule with the bankruptcy of a given company, but continued to be administered directly or indirectly (through a successor company) by a European government? What does this tell us about empire and imperial reach? Readers today are perhaps accustomed to imagining empire in terms of large-​scale settlement over the longue durée. But this ignores two important points: first, the very idea of empire comprises different levels and degrees of control, from outright sovereign possessions (direct rule) to areas ruled by an indigenous ruler whose actions can be influenced and controlled (indirect rule). To put things into a temporal perspective, European high imperialism enjoyed its apex for only about five decades, or from around 1870 to 1918. Against this backdrop, how are we to view these possessions of the early East India companies, especially the factories, fortresses, and settlements of the lesser companies? True, Banquibazar’s heyday lasted for only two decades, but the Danes were in Tranquebar for well over two centuries, and the French held on to 282

Chartered Companies and Empire

Pondicherry for just under three. Does size matter here, and are these colonial settlements of the Danes, French, and the Austrian Netherlands also manifestations of empire? To answer this question, it is helpful to turn to the EIC and the VOC and ask: When are the major turning points in their history and when, by the latest, can we say that they had transformed into imperial structures or instruments of empire in Asia?

From Companies to Company States Examining the two long-​term survivors, the EIC and the VOC, there are several landmark developments that help account for their transition from predominantly business-​ oriented enterprises to predominantly instruments of empire. As chartered companies they shared in common a number of key features: they were both profit-​driven entities that kept an eye on the bottom line and they jealously guarded their monopolies and trading privileges, even when this meant adopting a militarily aggressive and commercially ruthless stance toward other European competitors (as their behavior toward the Ostend Company in the 1720s clearly shows).57 When the EIC and VOC expanded trade in commodities such as tea, coffee, and opium during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they also became subject to tighter financial controls, cost-​cutting, and bureaucratization as a way of maintaining control over expanding volumes of trade and of the growing colonial settlements. While the Dutch company continued to focus on intra-​Asian trade (a trade that actually ceased to be profitable after 1690) and banned company servants from trading on their own account, the EIC was moving in a different direction.58 After 1661, the EIC decided to sideline intra-​ Asian trade and focus instead on expanding commerce with the British home market.59 This commercial reorientation helped to transform the British company into a more competitive enterprise. Before 1773, moreover, company servants were permitted to trade on their own account. Another key operational difference is worth highlighting here. The Dutch had imitated the Portuguese example by centralizing their Asian operations at a single location, namely, the port city of Batavia, or present-​day Jakarta. In contrast, the EIC had not hitherto centralized its Asian operations but instead allowed local factories considerable autonomy. After 1720, however, the company directors united the various possessions of the EIC in South Asia into the three “presidencies” of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, each under its own governor. During the initial years, there was little coordination between them, as each presidency maintained direct contact with the Court of Directors in London, built up their own administration and infrastructure, and even maintained their own armies. British Parliament, however, fundamentally changed this arrangement in 1773 with the Regulating Act. This created a more unified company and tightened government supervision over its operations. The new governor-​general who was based at Calcutta was a crown appointee, further blurring the division of crown and company in India and paving the way for eventual rule of India from Whitehall.60 283

Peter Borschberg

The EIC and VOC also operated in different political environments in Asia: the EIC would consolidate its power in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries thanks to its privileged position within the Moghul Empire. As time progressed, the British Company jockeyed to fill the power vacuum created by the waning and erosion of Moghul authority. The VOC, however, found itself involved since the late seventeenth century in a series of drawn out and costly wars that erupted over succession in the Javanese kingdom of Mataram.61 Still, both companies seized the opportunity to exploit local rivalries and expand territorially, politically, and economically at the expense of their once powerful neighbors. A gauge for ascertaining the transformation of the VOC in the course of the second half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries was its growing proportion of non-​trading revenue after about 1700. Trade-​related activities of course continued to generate the largest proportion of revenues, but a scrutiny of the financial accounts also shows a growing proportion of revenues deriving from non-​trading activities such as customs, imposts, duties, taxes, and other state revenues. J. P. de Korte’s study of the VOC’s accounts has revealed that between 1640 and 1760 the proportion of revenue generated from non-​trading activities quintupled from around 10 to 50 percent.62 This significant growth of non-​trading income reflects the company’s evolution into a company-​state, especially in its dependencies around the Indonesian Archipelago. As the VOC came to assume more responsibilities over lands and peoples, however, it also saw its expenditures rise very significantly. By 1725, Batavia’s capital surpluses accumulated during the previous century had been consumed because of escalating costs and expenditures.63 Hereafter, the VOC’s Asian operations became progressively dependent on support and direct cash injections from Europe. Another ominous sign was that the company failed to register regular profits after the beginning of the eighteenth century. As the VOC expended its business, it also faced escalating costs and rising overheads. Rather than expand its paid-​in capital base, the company increasingly sought to overcome financial bottlenecks with borrowed funds in the form of bonds. The price the company subsequently paid for this move was mounting interest payments on the funds borrowed. These payments had to come out of flagging company revenue and profits, a situation that had been made worse by heavy competition from the British in the Bengal and Coromandel textile trade.64 During the Fourth Anglo-​Dutch Naval War (1781–​84), the situation reached a breaking point, and in the final year of this conflict, Dutch overseas trade ground to an almost complete halt. The British had seized VOC factories in Bengal as booty of war, and the Dutch company found itself not only steeped in debt, but also in a financial crisis from which it would never recover.65 VOC operations came to a definitive close in 1795 with the onset of the Napoleonic Wars and the transformation of the United Netherlands as the French client state, the Batavian Republic. War and debt have been blamed for the VOC’s failure, and its endemic corruption arguably accelerated its demise.66 Without regular support and intervention from the Dutch state, the company could not have survived as long as it did.67 284

Chartered Companies and Empire

Some of the developments in the EIC mirror those of its Dutch competitor and these include financial reform, bureaucratization, and the expansion of trade in commodities such as tea and coffee. The EIC came to rely increasingly on the tea trade with China, and this segment alone reached 60 percent of the company’s aggregate trade.68 However, there are also important differences that, with the benefit of hindsight, may very well have given the British company an unexpected lease of life. Four developments that should be mentioned in this context are: the Carnatic Wars, the conquest of Bengal, the tighter relationship with the British government, and the EIC’s handling of its Asian monopoly. Following the VOC’s eviction of the EIC from Banten, their principal factory in insular Southeast Asia, in 1682, the EIC focused its activities on the Indian subcontinent, restricting its trade in the Indonesian Archipelago to the western coast of Sumatra, especially at Barus and Bencoolen (Bengkulu).69 On the Indian subcontinent, the establishment of presidencies of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta had helped the company consolidate its position against its principal European rival there: the French. EIC armies and their South Asian allies defeated the French (and their local allies) in a series of conflicts known as the Carnatic Wars between the mid-​1740s and the end of the Seven Years War (1763). This period also marks the transition of the EIC from a loose confederation of merchants to a company state.70 As H. V. Bowen put it: “The transformation of the company from trader to sovereign is . . . quite clearly discernible from even the most cursory examination of the military and political events that unfolded in India after 1740.”71 The conquest of Bengal took place against this backdrop of an escalating conflict with the French and a politically receding Moghul Empire. Fearing a French attack on its factories in Bengal, the EIC insisted on strengthening its fortifications at Calcutta in defiance of protestations by the Nawāb of Bengal, a vassal of the Mughal emperor. The Nawāb sought to punish this affront by attacking and capturing Calcutta in 1756. A counterforce led by Robert Clive recaptured the city for the British and defeated the Nawāb at Plassey (Palashi) in June 1757. The EIC pressed home its advantage and seven years later imposed a treaty on the Mughal emperor, Shāh ‘Ālam II, by which it secured the formal right to act as revenue collector (dīwān) for the Mughals in the province of Bengal. Thereafter, within a relatively short space, the EIC transitioned from a predominantly trade-​oriented enterprise to become the civil and judicial administrators of one of the Mughal Empire’s most prosperous and populous provinces. Like the VOC in the Indonesian Archipelago, the business of the EIC was increasingly caught up with collecting tax revenues on agriculture. The EIC conquest of Bengal was almost certainly the single most important development that the British company made in the course of the eighteenth century, if not in its entire corporate life span. However, they could not have achieved this on their own: acceptance of British company rule over Bengal by the Mughals as well as collaboration with local elites proved important. The third major development links into the aforementioned events in Bengal. The acquisition of this province with its estimated twenty million inhabitants 285

Peter Borschberg

accelerated the bureaucratization of the EIC. After the 1770s, the swelling legion of administrators demanded a better, tighter, and more uniform supervision. Different practices and procedures that had evolved under the three separate presidencies were harmonized. Financial administration was tightened and bookkeeping was centralized. With these developments, the company also became more closely tied to the home government, a relationship best exemplified by the establishment in 1784 of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, also known as the Board of Control, or India Board, for short. By the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, the EIC was an organization in full transition:  efforts to keep it financially self-​ sustaining had been the top concerns, priorities, and objectives of the old chartered company. Bureaucratization, administration, and centralization under the eye of the home government in London were, by contrast, developments associated with the later era of the British Raj. The fourth development concerns the erosion of the company’s monopoly rights against the backdrop of new economic thinking, inspired by Adam Smith, which championed open markets and competition. As the focus of operations moved away from direct involvement in trade, the EIC was required to let go of parts of its trading monopoly. In 1813, the country traders became the chief beneficiaries of the new modus operandi and in 1833 Parliament abolished the company’s ability to bar non-​ Company merchants from carrying out trade with China.72 After the fall of this last bastion in its monopoly, the EIC would only survive another two and a half decades until 1858. The governments that had once created and supported the establishment of chartered company monopolies during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had made an about-​turn, and gradually dismantled these by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By this era, commercial monopoly had become a dirty word. At the end of this section, a summary of the salient conclusions is warranted. Concerning the question when the chartered companies had evolved into company states, the approximate dates for the VOC and EIC are to be found around the middle of the eighteenth century. For the VOC it was the early 1740s, for the EIC a little over a decade later in the wake of the Carnatic Wars and especially Battle of Plassey in 1757. The transformation of company operations away from an integrated trading and transportation enterprise took place against the canvass of territorial growth (both lands under direct and indirect rule), bureaucratization, and the growing corps of administrators not directly involved in trade, as well as the growth of non-​trading revenue, both in absolute as well as in proportional terms. We need also remember that all of this took place against the backdrop of expanding trade volumes, mainly in stimulants such as tea, coffee, and opium. This transformation of the company’s focus and operations was not planned strictly speaking, but rather the result of opportunities recognized and seized. None of this could have happened without active support from the home governments.

286

Chartered Companies and Empire

Legacies of the Chartered Companies By the dawn of the nineteenth century, the era of the East India companies had almost ended.73 As a business model and especially as an instrument of empire, chartered companies continued to be used, particularly in Africa. Just as in earlier times, the chartered companies assumed there an important role in opening up trade with new markets and in forging a working relationship of private capital, entrepreneurship, and government. One thinks here, for example, of the British South Africa Company founded by the controversial British tycoon and imperialist Cecil John Rhodes.74 The EIC served as its model. Researchers have long mulled over the long-​term legacy, or legacies, of the chartered companies. At the beginning of the third millennium, their findings have been put together in volumes commemorating the fourth centennial of the EIC’s and VOC’s founding. Their legacy is a mixed one. On the one hand, they continue to inspire the historical imagination and have long served as a source of national pride, especially in Britain and the Netherlands. The mountains of paper that are among the most tangible facets of their legacy offer a wealth of knowledge about trade, peoples, and histories of Asia that may not be recorded by indigenous Asian sources. The association of chartered companies with commercial monopolies and mercantilist economics have long made them maligned institutions, not least by the advocates of free trade during the late eighteenth century and especially also by the political left. In Asia as in other parts of the world, these companies laid the foundations and shaped some postcolonial nation-​states and their populations. They are responsible for creating ethnic minorities in the Americas, in Africa, and of course Asia. While rarely, if ever really financially self-​sustaining in the long run, the chartered company stood out as an accepted and acceptable instrument for bringing together interest groups in government and business, both at home and overseas. Governments always had a stake in the venture, ranging from the role of facilitator to the dominant shareholder or even the shareholder of last resort. Business interests could be galvanized by the lure of potential profits while governments formed other ventures by arm-​ twisting members of the aristocratic and merchant classes. Chartered companies were capable of striking a balance between the short-​term, profit-​oriented inclinations of the merchant with the perceived need of directors and company agents to build infrastructure and maintain security.75 The relationship of the entrepreneurial segments of society and the government, however, was always fluid, a dynamic that is exemplified in the evolving priorities and fates of the individual companies. Chartered companies could be used and abused to serve government agendas or to fight wars at the company’s and shareholder’s expense, as the history of the VOC evidences. Support for a venture could also be quickly dropped once specific objectives had been fulfilled, such as in the case of the Portuguese East India Company. As the examples of the two company giants, the EIC and VOC show, non-​trading revenue of a given company serves as an indicator of their transition from being

287

Peter Borschberg

predominantly a trading venture to a company-​state. Some additional observations are worth making here: as these companies expanded both the volumes of trade as well as the range of goods traded, and as they transformed from trading ventures into institutions of colonial control, they became more bureaucratized and increasingly risk-​adverse. When they became unwieldy, lethargic institutions, the symbiotic relationship with their home government also shaped their destiny. It was evident that they had become instruments of empire, but they were not necessarily strong and active participants in formulating imperial policy. These observations also offer an opportunity to revisit a point raised at the beginning of this chapter: How and in what ways can the study of the lesser East India companies inform about their specific role as agents or instruments of empire? To concentrate on the big players, the EIC and the VOC may falsely lead readers into thinking that they are the norm, rather than the exception. What the lesser companies can teach is this: in order to carve out a niche for themselves in Asia, the smaller chartered companies had to be willing to take on greater risks, offering a sharp contrast to the increasingly lethargic and bureaucratized corporate giants EIC and VOC. The wars that engulfed Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were conflicts that were fought globally. The Dutch Revolt (1568–​1648) is a case in point, as is the Thirty Years War (1618–​48), the War of Spanish Succession (1701–​14), or the Seven Year War (1756–​ 63). Such conflicts had opened up opportunities for trade, but they also posed very serious threats and could easily break a company, as experienced by the first Danish East India Company. This experience fundamentally changed the Danish strategy. Stefan Diller and Jurrien van Goor have observed that the Danish Company “managed to eke out a precarious existence by maintaining a low profile between the belligerent European powers,” the latter being a reference to the Dutch, the English, and the French.76 The Ostend Company, by contrast, was not so lucky: though operationally successful, it became almost right from the start a cause of disagreement between the great European powers who questioned its legality based on the Westphalian settlement of 1648 as well as the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. The debate surrounding the founding of the Ostend Company had arguably unleashed the most significant theoretical discourse on global free trade since the controversy over Hugo Grotius’s Mare Liberum (1609) a century earlier.77 Though the company’s voyages were suspended, its charter revoked, and the enterprise liquidated in 1731, the factory at Banquibazar continued to operate for about another decade. The Ostend Company’s fate at the hand of Austrian Imperial and European politics drove its shareholders to reorganize themselves under a new charter obtained from the king of Sweden. The eighteenth-​century chartered company ventures expressed a change in thinking that was taking place in Europe about the role of government in economics. During the Age of Enlightenment, governments and rulers came to see it as their duty to promote the development of national industries and the general welfare of their people. Mercantilist policies that ensured more bullion entered a given country than went out are as much an expression of this age as the budding idea of free trade. The large East India companies 288

Chartered Companies and Empire

came increasingly under siege from country traders and their proxies in parliament, as well as from intellectuals who in their pamphlets and publications were waging debates on the merits of free trade. In this sense, one should bear in mind that the lesser East India ventures were as much about opening up colonial trade and finding export opportunities, as they were designed to help develop financial and commercial infrastructure at home. This bigger picture is crucial for weighing the success and legacy of the lesser chartered companies, especially those founded in the eighteenth century. In light of the above, one can also conclude that profitability, longevity, and continuity are inadequate criteria to measure the success of a given venture. The French companies exemplify this particularly well. Despite the hemorrhaging of capital, the refounding of ventures, and the amalgamation of smaller entities in 1719 to create the French Compagnie Pérpetuelle des Indes Orientales, the latter still emerged as the most formidable competitor and political rival to the EIC and VOC in India. Finally, the basis of empire was laid in Asia through the building and maintenance of infrastructure in the form of factories, forts, and settlements, as well as in establishing or tapping into commercial networks. The lesser companies either established new facilities (such as the Ostend Company in Banquibazar), or reused those of their defunct predecessors (such as the Danish Company at Tranquebar). Facilities built by one company were either passed on to a successor organization, acquired by the home government, or seized by a rival European power and confiscated as booty of war. The Dutch did this with Portuguese settlements around Asia in the seventeenth century and the French and English in the eighteenth century. Rarely, if ever, did a facility transfer permanently into the possession of the local or neighboring Asian overlord unless this facility had been destroyed or abandoned. This observation is crucial, for it is on the infrastructure, contacts, and networks of defunct companies that the great powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries established the next stage of their imperial (ad) venture.

Notes 1 For the earliest testimonies of Dutch cooperation with the Chinese diaspora, see T. Weststeijn and L. Gesterkamp, “A New Identity for Ruben’s ‘Korean Man’: Portrait of the Chinese Merchant Yppong,” Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 66, no. 1 (2016), 143–​69, esp. 155; L. Blussé, “Inpo 恩浦, Chinese Merchant in Pattani: A Study in Early Dutch-​Chinese Relations,” in Proceedings of the Seventh IAHA Conference, held in Bangkok, 22–​26 August 1977, ed. K. Sawanagul (Bangkok:  Chulalongkorn University Press, 1977), pp. 294–​309; Leonard Blussé, “Het ware gezicht van de eerste Chinees in Vlissingen,” Zeeuws Tijdschrift 72, no. 1 (2016), 74. 2 C. Dobbin, Asian Enterpreneurial Minorities: Conjoint Communities in the Making of the World Economy, 1570–​1940 (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 53; C. Trocki, “Boundaries and Transgressions: Chinese Enterprise in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Southeast Asia,” in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, ed. A. Ong and D. M. Nonini (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 61–​85.

289

Peter Borschberg

3 P. Borschberg, The Singapore and Melaka Strait: Violence, Security and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden and Singapore:  KITLV Press and NUS Press, 2010); P. Borschberg (ed.), Admiral Matelieff’s Singapore and Johor, 1606–​1616 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2016); Bhawan Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom c.1604–​1765 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 4 For the original Dutch text of the first VOC charter with an English translation, see W. G. Grewe (ed.), Fontes Historiae Iuris Gentium. Sources Relating to the History of the Law of Nations (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 171–​6. 5 J. Jacobs, “The Seventeenth-​ Century Empire of the Dutch Republic, c.1592–​ 1672,” in The Worlds of the Seventeenth-​Century Hudson Valley, ed. J. Jacobs and L. H. Roper (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), p. 3; also P. Borschberg (ed.), Journal Memorials and Letters of Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge. Security, Diplomacy and Commerce in 17th-​century Southeast Asia (Singapore: NUS Press, 2015), p. 47. 6 H. Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient 1600–​1800 (Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 185–​229. 7 P. Bonnassieux, Les grandes compagnies de commerce. Étude pour servir à l’histoire de la colonisation (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1892). 8 N. Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century: The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade (Chicago and London:  University of Chicago Press, 1974); J. P. de Korte, De jaarlijkse financiële verantwoording van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984); De Korte The Annual Accounting in the VOC (Leiden: NEHA, 2000). 9 See, for example, G. Knaap and G. Teitler (eds), De Verenigde Oost-​Indische Compagnie tussen Oorlog en Diplomatie (Leiden:  KITLV, 2002); S. Huigen, J. L. de Jong, and E. L. Kolfin (eds), The Dutch Trading Companies as Knowledge Networks (Leiden: Brill, 2010); G. Schilder and H. Kok, Sailing for the East. History and Catalogue of Manuscript Charts on Vellum of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), 1602–​1799 (Utrecht: HES & De Graaf Publishers, 2010); R. Parthesius, Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters. The Development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Shipping Network in Asia, 1595–​1660 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010); G. Schilder, J. Moerman et al., Grote Atlas van de Verenigde Oost-​ Indische Compagnie—​Comprehensive Atlas of the Dutch United East India Company, 7 vols (Voorburg:  Uitgeverij Asia Maior, 2006–​10); J. A. Somers, De VOC als volkenrichtelijke actor (Deventer:  Gouda Quint and Rotterdam:  Sanders Instituut, 2001); K. Zandvliet, De Nederlandse Ontmoeting met Azië 1600–​ 1950 (Amsterdam:  Rijksmuseum, 2002); F. S. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company. Expansion and Decline (Zuphen: Walburg Pers, 2003); L. Blussé and I. Ooms, Kennis en Compagnie. De Verenigde Oost-​Indische Compagnie en de moderne wetenschap (Amsterdam:  Uitgeverij Balans, 2002); J. E. Wilson, The Domination of Strangers: Modern Governance in Eastern India, 1780–​1835 (Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2011). 10 See, for example, A. M. Carlos and S. Nicholas, “Giants of an Earlier Capitalism: The Chartered Trading Companies as Modern Multinationals,” Business History Review 62 (1988), 398–​419; K. N.  Chaudhuri, “The English East India Company in the 17th and 18th Centuries:  A Pre-​modern Multinational Organization,” in Companies and Trade. Essays in Overseas Trading Companies during the Ancien Régime, ed. L. Blussé and F. S. Gaastra (Leiden:  Leiden University Press, 1981), pp.  29–​46; N. Robins, The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (London: Pluto Press, 2012). 11 P. J. Stern, The Company-​State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); J. van Goor, “From

290

Chartered Companies and Empire

Company to State,” in Prelude to Colonialism: The Dutch in Asia (Hilversum:  Verloren, 2004), pp. 83–​98; A. Westeijn, “The VOC as a Company-​State:  Debating Seventeenth-​ Century Dutch Colonial Expansion,” Itinerario 38, no. 1 (2014), 13–​34. 12 K. Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 13 O. Gelderblom, A. de Jong, and J. Jonker, “An Admiralty for Asia: Business Organization and the Evolution of Corporate Governance in the Dutch Republic, 1590–​1640,” in Origins of Shareholder Advocacy, ed. J. G. S. Koppell (New York: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 29–​60, esp. pp. 30, 54. 14 On this, see also N. Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution in the History of European Expansion’ in Blussé and Gaastra (eds), Companies and Trade, p. 247. 15 Gelderblom et al., “An Admiralty for Asia,” pp. 40–​1, 44. 16 P. W. Klein, “The Origins of Trading Companies,” in Blussé and Gaastra (eds) Companies and Trade, p. 23. 17 G. N. Clark and W. J. M. van Eysinga, The Colonial Conferences between England and the Netherlands in 1613 and 1615, 2 vols (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1940–​51); P. Borschberg, Hugo Grotius, the Portuguese and Free Trade in the East Indies (Leiden and Singapore: KITLV Press and NUS Press, 2011). 18 Grewe, Fontes Historiae Iuris Gentium, “Charter Granted by Queen Elizabeth to the English East India Company, 31 Dec., 1600,” p. 165. 19 Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution,” pp. 261–​2. 20 Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, p. 186. 21 For an overview of the various French companies focusing on Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Bonnassieux, Les grandes compagnies de commerce, pp. 253–​343. 22 See specifically J. Crokaert, La Compagnie d’Ostende (Brussels and Paris:  C. Van Oest, 1919); G. H. Dumont, Banquibazar (Antwerp: L’Amitié par le livre, 1948); M. Huisman, La Belgique commerciale sous l’empereur Charles VI: la Compagnie d’Ostende (Brussels: Henri Lamertin, 1902); M. Kessler, K. Lee, and D. Menning, The European Canton Trade in 1723: Competition and Cooperation (Berlin-​New  York:  Oldenbourg-​De Gruyter, 2016); G. Lefèvre, De Indische Compagnie an Oostende (Antwerpen: K. Dirix van Riet, 1925); J. Parmentier, De holle compagnie. Smokkel en legale handel onder Zuidnederlandse vlag in Bengalen, c.1720–​1744 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1992). 23 Concerning these companies, see as a general overview the study by Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, esp. pp.  185–​229. For specific studies on these companies, see D. C. Willington, French East India Companies: A Historical Account and Records of Trade (Lanham:  Hamilton Books, 2006); O. Feldbæk, Danske Handelskompagnier, 1616–​ 1843: Oktrojer og interne Ledelsesregler (Copenhagen: Selskabed for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 1986); C. Koninckx, The First and Second Charters of the Swedish East India Company (1731–​1766) (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1980); S. T. Kjellberg, Svenska Ostindiska Compagnierna, 1731–​1813 (Malmö:  Allhelms Förlag, 1974); S. Diller, Die Dänen in Indien, Südostasien und China (1620–​1845) (Wiesbaden:  Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999) ; M. Krieger, Kaufleute, Seeräuber und Diplomaten. Der Dänische Handel auf dem Indischen Ozean (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998). 24 For an overview of the various Austrian, German, Scandinavian, and Spanish companies focusing on Asia, see Bonnassieux, Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, pp. 425–​39, 450–​ 2, 465–​7, 472–​5. For the Brandenburg-​Prussian companies, see H. Berger, Überseeische Handelsbestrebungen und Koloniale Pläne unter Friedrich dem Grossen (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1899); K. Jahntz, Privilegierte Handelscompagnien in Brandenburg und Preußen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Gesellschaftsrechts (Berlin:  Duncker & Humblot, 2006).

291

Peter Borschberg

For the Austrian or Antwerp Company, see W. Markov, “La Compagnia asiatica di Trieste (1775–​1785),” Studi Storici 2, no. 1 (1961), 3–​28; and J. Everaert, “Willem Bolts:  India Regained and Lost:  Indiamen, Imperial Factories and Country Trade (1775–​1785),” in Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History, ed. K. S. Mathew (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), pp. 363–​9. For the Royal Philippine Company, see also W. L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1959), pp. 409–​18; and for the Prussian companies, Berger, Überseeische Handels-​bestrebungen. 25 S. H. Carlson, Trade and Dependency: Studies in the Expansion of Europe (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsalensis, 1984), p. 106. 26 L. Blussé and F. S. Gaastra, “Companies and Trade: Some Reflections on a Workshop and Concept,” in Blussé and Gaastra (eds), Companies and Trade, p. 7. 27 G. C. Klerk de Reus, Geschichtlicher Überblick der Administrativen, Rechtlichen und Finanziellen Entwicklung der Niederländisch-​Ostindischen Compagnie (Batavia and The Hague: Albrecht & Rusche and Martinus Nijhoff, 1894), Beilage V. Also F. S. Gaastra, “The Dutch East India Company,” in Blussé and Gaastra (eds), Companies and Trade, p. 61. 28 This was a point made by Admiral Cornelis Matelieff in his memorials, for instance. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company, pp. 39–​40. 29 K. S. Mathew, “Trade in the Indian Ocean and the Portuguese System of Cartazes,” in Government and Governance of European Empires, 1450–​1800, ed. A. J. R. Russell-​Wood (Alsdershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 97–​112; Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, p. 185. 30 Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution, esp. pp. 151–​3. 31 P. J. Marshall, “Afterword: The Legacies of Two Hundred Years of Contact,” in The Worlds of the East India Company, ed. H. V. Bowen, M. Lincoln, and N. Rigby (Woodbridge and Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2002), p. 227. 32 F. S. Gaastra, “War, Competition and Collaboration: Relations between the English and Dutch East India Companies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Bowen et al. (eds), The World of the East India Company, p. 50. Generally also T. K. Rabb, Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England, 1575–​1630 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 26–​35. 33 For a short overview of the development, see S. Klosa, Die Brandenburgische Compagnie in Emden (Frankfurt/​M: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 9–​15. 34 Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution, p.  137; O.  Prakash, “The English East India Company and India,” in The World of the East India Company, p. 2. 35 Klein, “The Origins of Trading Companies,” p. 23, citing Barry Supple. 36 Gelderblom et al., “An Admiralty for Asia,” p. 51. 37 Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution,” pp. 262, 263. 38 Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, pp. 207–​8. 39 Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution,” pp. 255, 258. 40 An example of the latter was the Compagnie royale de Chine, chartered in 1698, which was to cede 5 percent of its profits to the Compagnie des Indes Orientales; P. H. Boulle, “French Mercantilism, Commercial Companies and Colonial Profitability,” in Blussé and Gaastra (eds), Companies and Trade, p. 109. For a brief but useful exposé on this company in general, see Bonnassieux, Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, pp. 340–​4. 41 Concerning the management and leasing of ships by the EIC, see the study by L. S. Sutherland, A London Merchant, 1695–​1774 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1933). For the Scandinavian and German companies, see C. Koninckx, “Ownership in East India Company Shipping: Prussia, Scandinavia and the Austrian Netherlands in the 18th Century,” in The Organization of Interoceanic Trade in European Expansion, 1450–​1800, ed. P. Emmer and F. S. Gaastra (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), pp. 255–​64.

292

Chartered Companies and Empire

4 2 Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution, p. 137. 43 Klerk de Reus, Geschichtlicher Überblick, Beilage VI. See also Gelderblom et al., “An Admiralty for Asia,” p. 50, esp. in reference to the “unmunerative VOC monopoly” of the early years; P. van Dam, Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, ed. F. W. Stapel, 8 vols (The Hague:  Martinus Nijhoff, 1931–​43), I, pp. 433–​4. Also N.  Steensgaard, “The Dutch East India Company as an Institutional Innovation,” in Emmer and Gaastra (eds), The Organization of Interoceanic Trade, pp. 133–​56. 44 Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution,” p. 259. 45 Ibid., p. 264. 46 K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 5; Klein, “The Origins of Trading Companies,” p. 23; Gelderblom et al., “An Admiralty for Asia,” p. 51. 47 Blussé and Gaastra, “Some Reflections,” p. 11. 48 D. C. Wellington, The French East India Companies: A Historical Account and Record of Trade (Lanham:  Hamilton Books, 2006), pp. 19–​20; A. R. Disney, “The First Portuguese India Company,” Economic History Review 30, no. 2 (1977), 242–​58; C. R. de Silva, “The Portuguese East India Company, 1628–​1633,” Luso-​Brazilian Review 11, no. 2 (1974), 152–​ 205; G. D. Winius, “Two Lusitanian Variations on a Dutch Theme: Portuguese Companies in Times of Crisis, 1628–​1662,” in Blussé and Gaastra (eds), Companies and Trade, pp. 119–​34. 49 See the excellent comparative study by Chris Nierstrasz, Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles: The English and Dutch East India Companies (1700–​1800) (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 50 Borschberg, Journal, Memorials and Letters, esp. pp. 132, 138. 51 Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution,” p. 256. 52 Klein, “The Origins of Trading Companies,” p. 26. 53 Bonnassieux, Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, p. 105; Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, p. 193. 54 Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution,” pp. 259–​60. 55 Parmentier, De holle Compagnie, p. 27. 56 F. H. L. Prims, De stichting van Banquibazar: onze eerste kolonie (1724–​ 1727) (Antwerpen: Leeslust, 1930). 57 Chaudhuri, “The English East India Company in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” p. 35. 58 Gaastra, “War, Competition and Collaboration,” p. 55. 59 P. J. Marshall, “Afterword,” p. 227. 60 Bonnassieux, Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, p. 105. 61 See esp. M. C. Ricklefs, Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi (1749–​1792) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974); M. C. Ricklefs,  War, Culture and Economy in Java, 1677–​1726 (Melbourne: Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1993); L. W. Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger: The Dutch East India Company in Java, 1680–​1743 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996). 62 De Korte, De jaarlijkse financiële verantwoording, p. 47. 63 On these reserves, see Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution, esp. pp. 140–​1. 64 E. M. Jacobs, Koopman in Azië. De handel van de Verenigde Oost-​Indische Compagnie tijdens de 18de eeuw (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2000), pp. 112–​13. 65 Gaastra, “War, Competition and Collaboration,” pp. 66–​7. 66 C. R. Boxer, Jan Compagnie in War and Peace, 1602–​1799 (Hong Kong:  Heinemann, 1979), pp. 73–​105; also C. Nierstrasz, In the Shadow of the Company: The Dutch East India Company and Its Servants in the Period of Its Decline, 1740–​1796 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); I. G. Dillo, De nadagen van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, 1783–​1795: Schepen en Zeevarenden (Amsterdam: De Bataafse Leeuw, 1992).

293

Peter Borschberg

6 7 Gaastra, “War, Competition and Collaboration,” p. 67. 68 Nierstrasz, Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles. 69 Gaastra, “War, Competition and Collaboration,” p. 53; Bonnassieux, Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, p. 104. 70 Bonnassieux, Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, p. 109. 71 H. V.  Bowen, “ ‘No Longer Mere Traders’:  Continuities and Change in the Metropolitan Development of the East India Company, 1600–​1834,” in Bowen, Lincoln, and Rigby (eds), The Worlds of the East India Company, p. 19. 72 Bonnassieux, Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, p. 118. 73 Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, pp. 169–​85. 74 J. S. Galbraith, Crown and Charter: The Early Years of the British South Africa Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). 75 Steensgaard, “The Companies as a Specific Institution,” p. 258. 76 Van Goor, “From Company to State,” p. 86, citing Diller, Die Dänen in Indien, pp. 267–​301. 77 F. E. R. de Pauw, Het Mare Liberum van Grotius en Pattijn (Brugge: Uitgeverij voor Rechts-​ en Bestuurswetenschappen die Keure, 1960).

294

Index

‘Abbās I 119–​21 Abbasid Caliphate and Empire 18, 22, 107, 111–​12 Aceh 216–​17, 223, 226–​8, 230, 233–​4 Islam 222 Ottomans 129 trade 222, 224 war 224–​7, 230–​1 Afghanistan 118, 141–​2 Africa 11–​12, 131, 242, 248, 260 Akbar culture 154–​6 expands Mughal Empire 143, 158 governance 146, 148, 155 lineage 153 religion 155–​7, 160, 250 Altan 60–​1 Amu Darya River 15 Amur River 79, 93, 98 Anatolia 111–​13, 115–​17, 127 Angkor 207, 209–​10, 253 decline 205–​6 empire 195–​6, 205 kingdom 199, 205, 208 mandala 198 Annam 43, 63 Aq Qoyunlu 117–​8, 120, 122 Arabia 110, 116, 242 Arctic Ocean 6 art 33 Asia definition 1–​3, 6, 9 imperial governance 1–​2, 4–​6, 9 Atlantic Ocean 2 Aurangzeb 144–​6, 150, 155, 157 Ayudhya 198, 200, 204–​5, 222 Bābur, Ẓahīr al-​Dīn Muḥammad 118, 141–​3, 152–​3 Baghdad 18, 21, 34, 111–​12 Bashkirs 180, 183–​4, 187, 189, 190 Bayazid I 34, 115–​16

Beijing 17, 245 defences 56 imperial capital 43, 60, 77 Bengal 143–​4, 242 governance 148, 150 East India Company 150, 284–​5 Black Sea 19, 35, 172 Bukhara 36–​7, 107 Bolan Pass 141 Borneo 11 Brazil 246 British Empire 2, 175, 250, 260 Buddhism 37 Ilkhanids 20, 33 Ming 62, 66 Mongols 28, 62 Mongol debates 22 Qing 92 Russian Empire 189 Southeast Asia 206–​10, 216 Tibetan 62, 66, 92, 189 Burma 195, 200, 204, 209 Byzantine Empire 29, 33, 107 Ottoman Empire 113–​14, 116, 126 Russian Empire 176–​7 Turkmen empires 111–​12 caliphate 18, 22, 107, 110–​112, 124, 129, 132, 154, 158–​61, 226, 234 Cambodia (see Angkor) Carreira da Índia 241–​5, 259, 261 Carrera de Filipinas 241–​4, 258–​9,  261 Caspian Sea 35, 181 Castile (see Spanish Empire) Catherine II 178, 188 Caucasus 15, 172 Central Asia Chinggisids 31–​7 empires 3 Mongols 30–​1 Mughals 142, 144

Index

Russians 184 nomads 111 Cha‘adai 19, 21, 29 Chaghatai Khanate (also see Tīmūr Lang) 19, 28, 34, 37, 115, 152, 153 Champa Ming 63 Mongols 18 empire 199, 205–​6, 210 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 121 chartered companies 13, 131, 149, 269, 273 agents of empire 281–​2, 288–​9 Asian networks 271, 289 dissolution 271, 276 foundation 269, 271, 276 legacies 271, 276, 282, 287–​9 structure 271, 273, 279–​80 China 246 All-​under-​Heaven (tianxia) 24, 44–​6, 79, 209 classical knowledge 24, 33, 45–​6, 50, 67 empire in 4, 31 examination system 5, 50–​1, 53, 91 historiography 2–​3 Mongols 16, 18–​19, 23 Chinggis Khan ascent 16, 25, 80 emperor 9, 24, 121 governance 21, 23, 31 inheritance 17 lineage 19–​20, 30, 126, 142 wars 17, 26–​8 Chinggisid Era crucible of empires 9–​10, 24, 35 decline 33, 35–​7 foreign relations 27–​8 legacies 29–​30, 36–​7 succession politics 17–​18 trade networks 12 Chosŏn (see Korea) Christianity Byzantine Empire 108–​10, 176 Ilkhanate 20, 28 Mongols 28, 188 Ottoman Empire 115, 125–​6 Portuguese Empire 245–​6, 250–​2, 261 Roman Empire 107–​9 Russian Empire 172–​4, 176, 188 Spanish Empire 244–​6, 251–​2, 256–​7

296

Confucianism  governance 21, 43, 61, 65 ideology 46 imperial lineage 5 Korea 67 Ming Dynasty 43, 53–​4, 61, 65 religion 53–​4 Vietnam 207–​9, 213 n.41 Yuan Dynasty 29, 32 Constantinople (see Istanbul) Cossacks 182–​4, 189 Crimea 35, 126, 175, 178–​9, 187 da Gama, Vasco 239, 254, 264 n.2 Đại Việt (see Vietnam) Daoism 22–​3, 29, 54 dawlat/​daulat/​devlet 110, 121–​2, 124, 221, 228, 233 Delhi 107, 143, 148 Sultanate 34, 152–​3 dhammarāja/​dharmarāja 151, 206 Dīn-​i Ilāhī (see also Akbar) 157 Dutch East India Company/​Verenigde Oost-​ Indische Compagnie (VOC) 149, 163, 257–​8, 269 Asian networks 272 empire 283–​4, 286 foreign relations 272, 279 foundation 273–​4 maritime trade 274, 277, 281, 283, 284, 286 structure 273–​4, 277–​80, 283 termination 284 Dutch Empire 2, 272 English East India Company (EIC) 149–​50, 258, 269 Asian networks 272 dissolution 286 1857 “Mutiny” 150 empire 283, 285–​6 foreign relations 272 foundation 274 Mughal Empire 163, 284–​5 structure 277–​8, 283, 286 trade 279, 281, 283, 285–​6 Egypt 1, 28, 116 enfeoffdom 50, 63 Esen 59–​60 empire expansion 4–​5, 7, 9, 10

Index

historiography general 3–​4, 254, 273 historiography mainland Southeast Asia 195–​200 historiography Malay world 215, 222, 224, 231–​2 legitimacy 5, 10, 45, 108–​9 lineages  state structures 5, 145, 174 states systems 9, 11, 45, 109 theories general 2–​5, 288 theories Malay world 215–​19 theories maritime 11 theories Sinic 45 theories Southeast Asia 195–​200 emperor, title of (referent non-​English terms) 1, 11, 134 n.38 Aceh 225–​6 Greek 108–​9 Mongols 23–​4 Mughals 142, 144, 155, 169 n.71 Ottoman 121–​4, 126 Persian 108, 121–​3 Portuguese 247–​8 Roman 108–​9 Russian 176, 179 Safavid 120–​4 Sinic 45, 80 Estado da Índia (see Portuguese Empire) Eurasia Chinggisids 11, 33 empire in 5, 66, 130 geopolitical concept 2, 6 Mongols 9, 31 Russians 172, 174, 181, 190 Europe 6, 275, 284 empire in 2–​3, 9, 29 maritime expansion general 12–​13, 131, 233, 261 maritime expansion Iberian 130–​1, 222–​3, 239, 241, 254 Ottoman Empire 114, 116 political theorists 1, 4

Gibraltar 12 globalization 6, 13, 262 Goa 239, 242, 248–​9, 258, 260 Gobi Desert 15, 179 Golden Horde foreign relations 28 territory 19, 36 Russia 174–​5, 177, 188 wars 33–​5, 117 Great Wall 56, 58, 60, 84 Greece 1, 107–​9, 120, 129 Grotius, Hugo 274, 288 Gujarat 141, 143, 221, 242, 249

France 28, 126, 190 French Empire 2, 284–​5 Funan 195

Habsburg Empire 2–​3, 126–​7, 130,  248–​9 Han Chinese 43, 45, 47 Han Dynasty 43–​5, 47 Herat 32, 36, 142, 153 Himalayas 15, 141 Hinduism 144, 254 concept of rule 151, 206, 208 literature 155 Mughals 156–​7, 160 states 152 Hindu Kush 15, 120 Hongwu civil service 53 establishes Ming Dynasty 43–​5 foreign relations 63–​6 frontiers 55–​6, 58, 62 governance 48–​54, 62, 69 Hua-​Yi discourse 44–​7 legitimacy 47, 50, 71 n.8 religion 53–​4 tax collection 54 Hormuz 221, 239, 242, 250, 258 Hua-​Yi discourse concept 44–​5, 65 Ming 46–​7, 60, 62–​3, 65–​7, 70 Hülegü 35, 112 governance 21 religion 28 wars 18, 22 Humāyūn 29, 143, 152–​4, 159 Hungary 17, 129

German Empire 2 gaza/​gazis 112–​15, 117–​18, 124

Ibn Khaldūn 113 Ilkhanate 19, 23, 28–​9, 32–​3, 112–​13

297

Index

India 2, 12, 141 Indian Ocean 6, 141 European penetration 12, 242, 275 Ming voyages 12, 65 trade 221, 242, 275 wars 131, 249, 260 indirect rule 5 Indonesia 6 Indus River 34 Inner Asia 3, 15, 30, 37, 59, 107 Isfahan 120 Islam 5 caliphate 107, 110, 124 empires 3, 28–​9, 31 expansion 11, 110, 128 law codes 21, 31, 110, 113, 130, 156 Malay world 217, 220, 225, 234 Mongols 21 Mughal Empire 155, 160 Ottoman Empire 123–​4, 129–​30 160 Safavids 117 ulema/​ulama 21, 110, 112, 124, 130, 147, 156–​7, 160, 234 world order 3, 11, 33, 112 Ismā’īl I 118–​19, 121–​2 Istanbul 107, 109–​10, 116, 121, 127 Jahāngīr 143, 153, 155, 157–​9 Japan 6, 9 empire 1 Ming 43, 61, 63–​5, 67–​8 Mongols 28 Portuguese 13, 244, 246, 256 Spanish 244, 246 Qing 100 Java 13, 27, 198, 220 Jesuits 28 agents of empire 95–​6, 245, 251–​2, 254, 258 Ming court 11, 254 Mughal court 250 Nerchinsk, Treaty of 95–​6, 245 Qing court 11, 95 Jiajing Emperor 52, 60–​1, 67 Jin Dynasty 23–​4, 47 Judaism 20 Jungars/​Jungaria 77, 85, 91, 93–​7, 184, 187 Jurchens 15, 47, 56, 58, 62, 69, 79–​81 Johor empire 228–​31

298

foreign relations 223, 225 orang laut 229–​30, 233 state 216, 234 sultanate 223 Kabul 107, 142–​3, 152–​4, 158 Kalmyks 184–​5, 188–​90 Kandahar 143–​4, 158 Kangxi Emperor 84–​5, 89, 93, 95–​6 Kazakhs (Kazakshtan) 31, 37, 90, 187 Kazan 35, 177, 180–​2, 187–​8 Khiva 37 Khokand 37 Khyber Pass 141 Khwarazmian Empire 17, 26, 31, 36, 112 Kiakhta, Treaty of 179 Kipling, Rudyard 6 Korea 254 Ming 43, 56, 58, 63, 65, 67–​8 Mongols 17–​18, 60 Lahore 107, 142–​3 Legazpi, Miguel López de 239, 244, 251, 257 Liaodong 55, 58, 69, 79 Macau 242, 244, 248, 250, 260 Machiavelli, Niccolo 180 Magellan, Ferdinand 243 Marathas 141, 144–​5, 160, 260 Majapahit 195, 198–​9, 215 Malay world empires 215–​17, 222, 227–​31, 234 institutions 221, 226–​31 Islam 221–​2, 225, 231, 234, 275 polities 216, 233 trade 220–​4 wars 224–​6, 232 Maluku 243–​4, 257 mamālik/​memalik 120, 122, 127 Mamluks 27–​9, 33–​4, 116 Manchuria 56, 79–​80, 83, 96 Manchus ( see Jurchens) Manila 243–​4, 252, 256–​7, 259 maritime trade Aceh 224, 226 Eurasia 11, 226, 275 global 262, 280 Melaka 220–​1

Index

Southeast Asia 222, 226, 237 n.83 Srivijaya 217–​19 Marx, Karl 1 Mecca 124 Mekong River 195, 205 Mediterranean 6, 108, 110, 226 Mehmed II 109, 116, 121 Melaka battles 239, 282 empire 215–​16, 220–​3, 226, 234 Straits of 12, 131, 216, 218, 223–​5, 242 trade 220–​1, 239 Mencius 46, 51 Mesopotamia 34 Mexico 241 Middle East 3, 18, 28 migrations 11, 31, 61, 110, 112, 184 Ming Dynasty 10–​11, 34 decline 52, 66, 68–​9, 82–​3 eunuchs 51–​2, 60, 66 foreign relations 43–​5, 47, 55, 63–​5, 67, 250–​1 frontier defences, strategy 50, 56, 58–​60, 67–​8 frontier management 44, 47, 55–​6, 59–​63 governance 43–​4, 48–​54, 61–​3, 70 Han-​centric 43, 46–​7, 53, 61–​2, 66, 70 ideology 48–​54, 61–​2, 65–​6, 70 institutions 48–​54, 61, 70, 72 n.28 laws 50, 53 legitimacy 43–​7, 49–​50, 66, 70 maritime affairs 12, 63–​7 tax systems 54–​5, 68, 82 tributary system 45, 55–​6, 59–​60, 63–​8, 70 worldview 43–​5, 47, 52–​3, 66 Möngke 18, 21, 27, 35 Mongol Empire 2, 9–​10, 12, 15 breakup 10, 17–​19, 28, 33, 37 concepts 9, 16–​17, 20, 23–​7, 30–​1 conquered peoples 24, 26–​7 31 diversity 16, 31 expansion 9, 11, 17–​18, 24–​8, 31–​2, 80, 112–​13 formation 16 governance 19–​23, 31–​2 legacies 9, 18, 29–​31, 33–​7, 126 legal systems 21, 26, 28, 31 legitimacy 9, 17, 19, 21, 25–​30, 33, 35, 37 lineages 10, 17–​20, 28–​30, 35–​7 postal systems 30, 32

Secret History 23, 26 vengeance code 25–​7 world order 9, 16, 24, 26–​9, 31–​2, 112 Moscow 174–​5, 183, 187 Mughal Empire 3, 33, 37, 124 decline 148–​50, 160 establishment 142–​3 expansion 143–​5, 158 foreign relations 157–​8, 160–​1, 250 governance 145–​7, 149, 153, 155–​6, 162–​3 ideology 150–​2, 154, 156–​7, 160, 162 law codes 31, 147 legitimacy 152–​5, 157 lineages 142, 153 military power 143–​6, 164 n.10 tax systems 145–​6, 148 Muscovy 171–​5, 177, 182–​3, 187–​9 Myanmar (see Burma) Nanjing 43, 87 Neo-​Confucianism 48–​51, 66, 70 Nerchinsk, Treaty of 95–​6, 179, 181–​2, 245 Nogays 31, 35, 171, 180, 183 nomads 15, 22, 47, 55, 110–​13, 183 empires 16, 47, 112, 171 military power 16, 112, 180–​3 Nurhaci 77, 80–​1, 83, 91 Ögödei 17, 21–​2, 24–​5, 30, 80 Opium Wars 97–​8 Orhan 114–​15 Orenberg 183–​4, 189 Osman 113, 115, 123 Ottoman Empire 3, 10, 12, 34–​5, 107, 109, 131, 159–​60 establishment 113–​14 expansion 115–​16, 118, 124, 131 frontiers 127–​9 governance 115, 120, 123–​5, 127, 129–​31 Indian Ocean wars 225, 249 law codes 31, 124–​5, 129 legitimacy 109, 113–​15, 120–​4 rebellions 116 world view 114, 120–​3, 125–​6, 129 Pacific Ocean 6, 9, 182, 239, 241, 243, 259, 275 Pagan 18, 199, 207 Panipat 143, 152 Persia 18, 21, 33–​5, 107

299

Index

ancient 1, 3–​5, 108 culture 4–​5, 33, 108, 111–​12, 119, 129, 136 n.74, 155, 161 governance 23, 110 language 5, 108, 120–​2, 142, 152 Persian Gulf 130–​1, 239, 242, 249–​50 Peter the Great 172, 178, 181–​2, 188–​9 Philippines 6, 152, 199 Spanish Empire 241, 243, 245–​6, 251–​2, 256–​7, 259 trade 241, 243, 259 piracy 61, 64, 67–​8 Poland 17, 128, 175, 178, 181, 188 Pontic Steppe 6, 172, 181 Portuguese Empire 13, 131, 144, 239,  252 culture 254–​6, 262 establishment 239 defence 249, 253, 257–​8, 260, 267 n.42 foreign relations 245–​7, 249–​51, 258–​9 ideology 247–​8 maritime empire 240–​1, 243, 247, 258, 261 maritime trade 67, 241–​2, 247, 255, 260 peoples 243, 253–​4, 256 religion 244–​6, 249, 258 territorial empire 246–​8 trade network 242, 261, 277 prebendal grants  iqṭā’ 111, 145 jāgīr/​mansab 87, 145–​7 pronoia  111 tımar/​tiyūl 115, 125, 127 Punjab 142, 153 Qājār Dynasty 131 Qara-​Khitai 15, 17, 26, 28 Qaraqoram 21, 124 Qarā Qoyunlu 117–​18 Qianlong Emperor 87, 89, 94, 98 Qing Dynasty 2–​3, 12, 37, 46 Banner system 85–​7, 89–​91 decline 87, 97–​100 establishment 77, 81–​5 foreign relations 92, 99–​100, 179 frontier management 91–​5 governance 85–​6, 88, 90–​1 institutions 85–​7, 90–​1, 98 legitimacy 84, 94, 98 Manchu language, identity 87–​90

300

Russia 93–​7 territorial expansion 85–​6, 93–​8 Qubilai Khan 18, 22, 28–​32, 35,  46, 66 quriltai 22, 37 Ranjit Singh 141 Red Sea 130, 226, 249 religion empire, general 4, 108–​9, 262 Eurasia 11 Ming 53–​4 Mongols 20, 22, 27–​9 Mughal Empire 155–​7 Ottoman Empire 124, 130 Russian Empire 188 Safavids 117 wars with Christian states 28, 116 Roman Empire 3–​4, 107–​10 Romanov Dynasty 10, 176, 179 Rurikid Dynasty 171, 174–​6 Russia 16, 19, 21, 92, 171–​4 Russian Empire 10, 12, 126 expansion 11–​12, 93, 180–​4, 186–​7, 189–​90 European influences 173–​4, 177–​8, 190 frontiers, defences 179, 183–​4, 189–​90 governance 186–​8 historians 7 n.4 religion 176–​7, 179–​80, 184, 188–​90 trade 181–​3 Safavid Empire 3, 10, 33, 158, 250 establishment 117 expansion 118–​19, 144 governance 110, 119–​20, 125, 127, 129–​31 legitimacy 109, 117, 120–​5, 138 n.98 rebellions 119 religion 116–​18 St. Petersburg 172, 187–​8 Samarqand 35, 36, 107, 152–​3 Sanskrit 4, 150, 152, 155–​6, 197, 200 Sassanid Empire (see Persia)111 Selim I 116, 118, 122 Seljuk Empire 111–​14, 123 Shāh Jahān 143–​4, 146, 157–​8, 242, 249–​50 Shaybanids (see Uzbeks) Siam 13, 65, 200, 205–​6, 212 n.24 Siberia Chinggisid 35–​6

Index

Muscovy 175 Russian Empire 172–​3, 179, 182, 184, 188–​90 Silk Road 31–​2 silver 13, 61, 67–​8, 82, 148, 244, 257, 260 Sinai Desert 6 Sinic World Order empires 5, 10, 63, 66, 80, 100 Eurasia 3 tributary system 55–​6, 65, 70 Śivaji Bhonsle 145, 160 slaves 5, 86, 115, 119, 125, 180 Song Dynasty 79 decline 18, 80 legitimacy 46, 71 n.8, 71 n.13 worldview 23, 47–​8, 72 n.25 South Asia 141 South China Sea 12 Southeast Asia 9–​12, 18, 55, 63, 195–​6 Indic kingdoms 206–​9 states 196–​200, 205–​6, 211, 215–​16, 220, 228 Sinic world order 65, 195, 207–​10 Southwest Asia 3, 5, 10, 107 Spanish Empire 2, 13, 131, 175, 264 n.3 defence 256, 258–​9 establishment 239, 243, 261 foreign relations 243–​4 governance 251 ideology 248, 251 maritime trade 67–​8, 149, 239, 241, 243–​4, 259 religion 245–​6, 251, 258 territorial empire 240, 249, 251–​2, 257, 261 unified monarchy, Portugal 243–​4, 257–​9 Srivijaya 195, 198–​9, 215–​20, 234 steppe empires 12, 15, 25, 58 peoples 55–​6, 62, 91, 113 Sufis/​Sufism 112, 116–​19, 146, 153, 154, 156–​7, 227 Süleyman I 116, 126, 160 Sumatra 12 Sun Yat-​sen 46 Syr Darya River 15 Taiwan 84, 97, 258 Tajik 113, 117 Ṭahmāsp 119, 143 Tang Dynasty 45, 47 Tangut Empire (see also Western Xia) 26, 29, 31

Tashkent 36 Tatars 31, 187 tax collection, farming 20, 54–​5, 111, 125, 127 Temüjin (see Chinggis Khan) Thailand (see Siam) tianxia (see China) Tibet 29, 55, 62–​3, 92, 189, 245 Tīmūr Lang 59 lineage 35, 122–​3, 142, 155 title 134 n.38 wars 34–​5, 115, 117, 153 Timurid Empire decline 34–​7 establishment 18 expansion 34 Europeans 12 ideology 33, 122–​3, 146 Islam 31 Toungoo (see Burma) trade  Eurasia 11, 96 global 67–​8 Malay world 217–​21 Ming 58–​9, 61, 64, 82 Mongols 26, 32–​3 Tordesillas, Treaty of 247, 263 Tumu Incident 60, 63 Turco-​Persian region 3, 5, 107 structures of empire 112, 120, 123, 129–​30, 152 Turkestan 32 Türkmen 111, 113–​15, 117, 119 Turkmenistan 118 Urals 171–​3 Uyghur 17, 24, 28, 30 Uzbeks 31, 36–​7, 118, 120, 142, 157–​8 Uzbekistan 142, 158 Vietnam 10 China influence 207–​10 Empire 195, 199–​200, 204–​6, 231 Ming 64–​5, 204 Mongols 18 Qing 85, 92, 100 Volga River 18, 35 Wanli Emperor 52, 69, 82 Weber, Max 1

301

Index

Western dominance 2, 6, 131–​2,  261–​4 Western Xia (see also Tangut Empire) 17 women 20, 227–​8, 231 World history 4, 7, 13, 148, 190 Xinjiang 60, 97, 184, 190 Xuande Emperor 51 Yingzong Emperor 52, 60 Yongle Emperor 12, 43–​4, 50–​1, 53, 55, 58, 64–​6, 70

302

Yongzheng Emperor 89 Yuan Dynasty 18 decline 34, 43, 46 governance 22–​3, 32 ideology 28–​9 legacies 44–​8, 70 Yunnan 18, 32, 55, 61, 63 Zaragoza, Treaty of Zhengde Emperor 52 Zheng He, Admiral 12, 65 Zhu Yuanzhang (see Hongwu)