Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast Asiacooperation between vessel- and fortress-based artillery was essential to
their success.
Between 1600 and 1800, the arrival of Westerners, most notably
the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French, introduced new elements
into Vietnamese military technology. Political divisions and the state of
antagonism between the Trinh and Nguyen families encouraged both
sides to acquire as many firearms as possible, particularly European-
made heavy cannon. The arms race between the Trinh and Nguyen
soon made them the most powerful armed forces along the eastern part
of the mainland.
The paramount element of the seventeenth-century Nguyen’s forces
was their navy, which was heavily armed with Portuguese cannon.^45
As shown in their encounter with the Dutch fleet in 1643, the adapta-
tion of firearms on flexible small- and medium-sized shallow-draft
ships provided for their effectiveness in coastal waters.^46 Dao Duy Tu
(1572–1634), the chief architect of the Nguyen military, described a
dozen types of weaponry using gunpowder in his book The Secret Art
of War. He declared that, “the Ming’s cannon... was perfectly superior,
but the later invention is even more fearful. Westerners are extremely
talented; their guns are miraculous. Our predecessors learned from
- Li, Nguyen Cochinchina, 45.
- Hoang Anh Tuan, Silk for Silver, 78–83.
Figure 4.1: Image of a Mong Dong warship taken from the Nguyen imperial
tripod cauldrons in Hue (photograph: the author)