‘annexed’ a number of small Tai principalities formerly tributary to
China failed to provoke a response.
Succession disputes were another source of civil conflict and
social disorder. These particularly interested the Chinese, for it was
Chinese policy to endorse only legitimate lines of succession. Usurpers
were not tolerated, for their actions went against the moral law of
Heaven. Yet it was often easier to endorse a properly submissive
usurper who appeared to have a good hold on power than to restore a
discredited legitimate line. When, in 1541, the Vietnamese usurper,
Mac Dang Dung, offered not only his abject submission, but also five
mountainous frontier districts in response to a threatened Chinese
invasion in support of the deposed—but in Chinese eyes still legiti-
mate—Le dynasty, the deal was graciously accepted.
The period from the 1580s to the fall of Beijing to the Manchus
in 1644 was one of decadence, rebellion and final collapse of the Ming
dynasty. The court fell under the control of powerful eunuchs who
took no interest in relations with Southeast Asia. Apart from regular
embassies from Vietnam and Champa, tribute missions from other
polities (Cambodia, Siam, Java) were irregular. The last embassy from
Burma arrived in 1567 and from the Philippines (Luzon) in 1576. Yet
this was a crucial period in Southeast Asia, for it saw the arrival
and consolidation of power of the Dutch East India Company (VOC),
followed later by the English and French.
The first Dutch vessels to reach Southeast Asia arrived on the
Java coast in 1596. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company obtained a
monopoly on all Dutch trade with Asia, and set about excluding its
European rivals. First the Portuguese were driven out of the Maluku
islands (1605), then the English were excluded from the Banda islands
(1623). This left the principal spice (cloves, nutmeg and mace) pro-
ducing region of Indonesia entirely in Dutch hands. In 1640 the Dutch
drove the Portuguese from Sri Lanka and, the following year, they took
Melaka, leaving East Timor as the only Portuguese toehold in the
Nanyang.
Enter the Europeans