This response has more to do with mandalarelations and the
workings of karma than with a failure of nerve or diplomacy. The
kingdoms of Southeast Asia, both mainland and maritime, were in
frequent communication with each other. Their trading contacts
provided useful sources of information about conditions elsewhere,
political as well as economic. Powerful kings sought queens from
distant kingdoms as evidence of their prestige and power. One of
Kertanegara’s principal queens, for example, was a Cham princess.^8
There was apparently little, therefore, to prevent the formation of
some kind of coalition in order to present a unified opposition to
Chinese power. Yet this never happened. Balance-of-power thinking
is European, not Southeast Asian. For Southeast Asian rulers there
was another, surer way to ensure the security of their realms, and that
was by acquiescing in the Chinese world order, humiliating though
this might occasionally be.
The events of the second half of the thirteenth century proved,
however, that the Chinese world order also had its downside for those
on the receiving end. In dispatching envoys to all those states listed in
Chinese records as tributaries to the Middle Kingdom, Khubilai Khan
was responding as previous Chinese emperors had done when found-
ing new dynasties. He sought thereby to exalt himself as Son of
Heaven through reinforcing the Chinese world order. The ritual pres-
entation of homage and tribute constituted public and formal
endorsement of the hierarchical relationships that comprised that
order. Failure to respond risked imperial vengeance. Thus for mainland
Southeast Asian kingdoms in particular, reunification of the Middle
Kingdom under a new dynasty ushered in a dangerous period of threat-
ened intervention.
For the maritime kingdoms, the lessons were somewhat differ-
ent. The projection of Chinese sea power was worrying, for China
evidently had the means to construct a powerful navy (as the Ming
were again to demonstrate). But the Yuan navy was a patchwork
force including elements of both the Song and Korean navies. For a
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia