Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast Asiastate sources) encourage a court imaginary of warfare or depict an
increasingly nationalized picture of antecedent warfare and the armies
involved and as highland societies depict that warfare in ways that
reflect contemporary perceptions. When examined in their own time
with contemporary documents and an extensive knowledge of the local
terrain and culture, historians such as John Whitmore (2004) and John
Fernquest (2006) have suggested in earlier work that local, immediate
experience was more influential to indigenous military developments
than some of the classical texts to which historians of warfare in the
region often conventionally turn.^22
Inspired by earlier calls within the region, admittedly prompted
by nationalist historiography, to challenge the technological edge
conventionally ascribed to the Europeans in the region from the
sixteenth century,^23 scholars began to re-emphasize the importance of
military technology that emerged from within Asia. Michael W. Charney
(1997) argued that Asian military technologies fared well against the
Europeans, especially on water and Sun Laichen (2003) drew attention
to the Chinese origins of the gunpowder revolution in the region.^24
Together, these scholars and other historians prompted the emergence
of the technology approach that argued that technological change and
adaptation was the driving force for changes in warfare. As Christopher
E. Goscha (2003) has observed, this approach has helped to find the
“historical connections and exchanges” that were lost within nationalist
- See Whitmore’s comments on his weighing of the possible influence of Tran Quoc
Tuan’s thirteenth-century treatise, the Binh Thu Yeu Luoc, as opposed to immedi-
ate influence of experience in Vietnamese fighting with Ming and Tai forces in late
fifteenth Century Vietnam in John K. Whitmore, “The Two Great Campaigns of
the Hong-duc Era (1470–97) in Dai Viet”, South East Asia Research 12, 1 (2004):
119–36. As Fernquest observes, the most important challenge obstructing the
larger hegemonic states in terms of warfare in fifteenth-century Burma were locali-
ties and their autonomy, requiring bespoke military strategies to bring them under
control. See Jon Fernquest, “Rajadhirat’s Mask of Command: Military Leadership
in Burma (c. 1438–1421)”, SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 4.1 (Spring 2006): 21. - See for example Sudjoko’s Ancient Indonesian Technology: Ship Building and
Firearms Production in the Sixteenth Century ( Jakarta: - Charney, “Shallow-draft Boats, Guns, and the Aye-ra-wa-ti”, 16–63; Sun, “Military
Technology Transfers from Ming China and the Emergence of Northern Mainland
Southeast Asia”, 248–73.