390 Part V: Southeast Asia
technology (keels, rudders, sails), new navigational techniques, and increases
in vessel size. A shift to a money economy made possible large-scale invest-
ment in surpluses for export. The Song “economic revolution” put Chinese
paper, silk, textiles, ceramics, porcelain, iron, and steel into international trade
(Risso 1995). Most of this trade was conducted along the southern shipping
routes through Southeast Asia.
The Chinese Diaspora. Remarkable as it may seem, the arrival of sweep-
ing Chinese influence in Southeast Asia may be traced to the burgeoning
strengths of a tribal people thousands of miles to the north in the arid lands cut
off from the warming tropical influences by the Himalayas. In 1206 the unruly
Mongol tribes conferred the title of Universal Ruler on their new leader: Geng-
his Khan. Not chakravartin, but Genghis Khan was the title. He, too, conceived his
mission as divine, setting out with his sons and generals to conquer the world.
He came far closer to doing so than any Southeast Asian devaraja ever did.
It was his grandson, Kublai Khan (1215–1294), who completed the con-
quest of China, and in 1285 and 1287, the Mongols conquered Hanoi. In 1287,
Kublai’s grandson, Timur Khan, occupied the Indic state of Pagan in Burma.
These Mongol invasions in southern China set in motion a stream of refugees
who fled south out of harm’s way. The invasion of Nanchao in Yunnan Province
in 1253 impacted the Dai, among others, who began moving in large numbers
into territories dominated by the Khmer. This movement, however, rather than
“Sinicizing” Khmer territory, ended with Indianizing the Thai, Lao, and Shan.
It was in the island areas that enduring Chinese influence began most to be
felt. Sumatran and Javanese traders were quick to send envoys to Kublai’s capi-
tal, seeking preferred-port status. This led the Javanese into risky competition
in Javanese seas with Mongol (Yuan dynasty) fleets, and for a time it seemed
the Mongol Empire would include Java. But the new Javanese state of Majapa-
hit first defeated the Mongols and then reestablished friendly trade relations
with China in 1293. They also opened trade relations with Western Europe
through Venice, making Javanese ports essential centers in the early phases of
the “world economy.”
Although China’s central government went through periods of convulsive
withdrawal from all foreign connections, as when Ming emperors created a
policy that banned all overseas trade, declaring that “not even a little plank was
allowed to drift to the sea” (Blusse 1989), this did not stop the southeastern
provinces from a trade they had engaged in for centuries. Two regular routes
were plied by Chinese junks outfitted by prominent Chinese families with capi-
tal from their landed estates. One route went along the mainland coast from
Vietnam to the Malay Peninsula to western Java. Another route went via
Japan, down the Ryukyus, Philippines, and eastern Indonesian islands, ending
in Manila (Andaya 1992). In a number of these locations small overseas Chi-
nese trade communities had settled by the sixteenth century or earlier. These
Chinese communities became the commercial “entrepreneurs” in places like