Intermission
The State of the World - 1500
East Asia and Indonesia
East Asia, from the Taklimakan to Korea, and from Manchuria to the Mekong Delta.
Across the Tarim basin, we find the two great empires of Ming Dynasty China and Khmer Indochina. One of the more peculiar things to be observed is the fact that the Chinese Empire, shedding away - at least it appears so - its policy of tributary states, has accepted the Khmer Empire as an equal partner, perhaps owing to the adoption of the Khmer elite of several Chinese customs and practices. Nevertheless, these two nations undoubtedly dominate the political landscape of the East, sealed in a - so far - mutually beneficial alliance. That is not to say there isn't tension between the two, as China desires to retake the region of Annam - Northern Vietnam - historically the target of Chinese colonization, ever since the time of the Yellow Emperor, Qin Shi Huang.
China; the Asian giant lies at the eastern end of the Silk Road, supplying the West with all manner of products: silk, porcelain, lacquerware, tea, and eventually, cotton, tobacco, sugar and other New World crops. The great Yangtze and Yellow rivers cut through China, leaving behind fertile valleys, their life-giving properties enhanced by crafty irrigation systems and canals, resulting in some of the most efficiently cultivated - and well-stocked - lands in the world. The great surpluses of food throughout the centuries - especially in the late decades of the 15th century - combined with wise governance have allowed for a population boom and for many skilled artisans to populate both state-run and private workshops, producing the products China is so famous by.
The barren Taklimakan extends across Central Asia, its dreaded heat abated only along a few watering holes.
In the past years China has increasingly begun to expand into the traditional westward route, in the Taklimakan Basin, that leads into Transoxiana and, beyond it, the Middle East and Europe. By establishing garrisons and colonies in the oases that dot the sands of the desert, China has secured the profitable Silk Road, and allows for a much safer passage of merchants and travelers between East and West.
The Ming however, are also extremely open to sea trade. The expeditions of Zheng He - a Muslim eunuch in the service of the Ming Emperors - to India, Arabia and East Africa lead to a widening of the commercial opportunities of the Chinese. Chinese communities dot every commercial hotspot of Asia, supplementing the traditional overland trade through Central Asia.
Zheng He's great expedition leaves for unknown waters. This gigantic undertaking resulted in a total of 13 voyages, in which the Chinese came across a variety of peoples and goods, solidifying their knowledge - and trade contracts - with the states surrounding the Indian Ocean.
In spite of - or because of - this great economic activity across the seas of China, anarchy reigns. The Wokou pirates have seized - and built a dozen more - vital ports and cities in Taiwan, the Philippines, southern Korea and in smaller Japanese islands, and raid the intense stream of junks that arrive each year to trade in the port cities of Fukien. They have become intolerable to a degree that the Japanese daimyos of Satsuma, the Shimazu, have taken Okinawa to punish the Kingdom of Ryukyu's support for the ruthless buccaneers. The Chinese have taken steps to punish the pirates, but expenses elsewhere have detracted support - and funds - for the enterprise. Surprisingly, these rugged bandits of the sea have begun a large wave of colonization, using slave labour on pirate-owned plantations to supplement the cargo they seize and sell back at the many - and difficult to guard - ports of East Asia.
Khalil al-Rashid on his return to Tunis.
A Muslim traveler of the early 16th Century (specifically 1511-1536), Khalil al-Rashid ibn Muhammad*, which journeyed all across the Old World, from Italy to Japan, would write in his 'Travels' - a book containing both containing retellings he made later in his life, as well as letters and excerpts from his travel journal; with the importation of the printing press into the Caliphate, his works would be widely disseminated - about China:
Khalil al-Rashid said:
In the lands of Cathay there is much wealth to be found. Great factories of all manner of luxurious products are spread across the land, and from each exits daily a bounty that can be evaluated in no less than 30,000 gold dirhams. From Peking to Ganzho (sic) there is plethora of canals, allowing for the many harvests collected along the Empire of the Ming to be taken for storage, and for the circulation of merchants who ply their trade along the busy riverside bazaars.
The realm is ruled by a Sultan who lives separated from his subjects, and is surrounded by his court and his ministers in the 'Forbidden City' in Peking (...) he is rarely seen outside the palace, or at all for that matter, but his officials carry out his orders with great haste and precision, as his word is law, and he is worshipped as if a living god. They are also said to follow the teachings of one Confucius, who is universally revered as a fountainhead of knowledge, but I'll have to investigate this line of thought further if I'm to make an account of it here.
Most remarkably perhaps, is the great number of fellow Muslims, Turks and Arabs mostly, both in Peking and elsewhere, who maintain their loyalty to their ruler despite this blasphemy (...) these same people have, however, have treated me with great hospitality giving me clothes when mine were ripped, and food when mine was scarce, and are delighted by the tales of my journeys. Among them I have met a Jewish trader who has taken me in with great friendliness as well, and has offered me a place in his caravan that is due to leave for Samarkand this Spring. I have decided to accept his offer. To think that by next year I could be back in Baghdad!
In the meantime I'll seek a passage to Japan and Korea. I've heard tales of the great monasteries of Nara from the local people.
From this description we can infer several facts of Chinese society at the time: the productivity of the manufactories, the infrastructure for grain storage, the Emperor's isolation from the general populace, the vibrant Muslim trading community, among others.
The ancient, yet splendid temple complex of Angkor Wat stands still today in the Khmer capital.
To the South, resides the resurgent Khmer Empire, with its golden temples shining in the sunlight. Brought back from the brink of destruction by King Ponhea Yat, the reinvigorated kingdom quickly subjugated its former nemesis, the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya, and uniting the region in a show of great vitality by the seemingly crumbling Khmer kingdom. While further expansion was accomplished with the conquest of Dai Viet and the western Thai princedoms, the realm mostly descended into peace as the absorbed peoples were assimilated into the social fabric, and granted lands and privileges in return for loyalty, only for these same benefits to be later stripped shortly after they became honest, tax-paying subjects, in a show of great pragmatism by their rulers. At the same time there is a certain Sinicization of the ruling classes, who have taken in certain habits such as tea-drinking and the use of silk dresses for official occasions.
The current Khmer state is what could be termed an absolute monarchy, ruled from the great city of Angkor. The Khmer Empire is reliving and even surpassing its past glory, with great building projects : complex irrigation works, monasteries and temple complexes to Buddhist deities are and have been built, using mostly convict labour by the unruly Thais, who permanently rebelled in the first decades of their conquest.
In the mountains where the Jade Palace of the goddess Xi Wangmu - the Queen Mother Mother of the West - is nestled, Tibet holds a firm hand on the desolate plateau that forms its dominions, from the capital city of Lhasa in the southern parts of the country. Increasingly, the monasteries and their heads accumulate power, intending to establish a pious theocracy, but for now control remains in the various noble lineages and their elected kings.
However, the monasteries are closer to the people, and enjoy their support, and the nobles must find a way to curb or soften the monks' power if they are to remain in power. The warrior monks many monasteries have at their disposal are a formidable force, and a stable Tibetan government has to enjoy its favour, lest it fall under their and their brothers' control...
Indonesia, with the empire of Brunei and the city-state of Makassar's lands.
In the great archipelago that is Indonesia, two powers battle for supremacy; these are the Sultanate of Brunei and the empire of Makassar.
Brunei rose to prominence after it successfully intervened on the Khmer side during a war against the Sultanate of Malacca. With remarkable haste, the defenseless Malacca and the surrounding areas were occupied, and the sultan was presented with a very reasonable - a least to the Bruneians - request: that he appoint Sultan Sulaiman of Brunei as his only successor. With a knife to his throat, the old Sultan begrudgingly accepted the terms, and was then decapitated on the spot, with is death attributed to 'plague'. In a most surprising twist, this 'plague' seemed to target only those of the Malacca ruling classes who, in private or in public, spoke out against the Bruneian occupation of their land. Since the territory was already in full military occupation, disturbances were mild, but Sultan Sulaiman eventually acquiesced and made Malacca a 'constituent kingdom' nominally under its own administration, but in fact still suffering from the occupation and integration.
Sultan Suleiman the Great of Brunei, who launched the backwater kingdom into a major Asian power.
The next step was taken with the surprisingly easy conquest of the island of Java, as the decadent Majahapit empire and the puny princedoms of the island's western tip were soon overcome and the island established as a semi-autonomous protectorate under hereditary Bruneian governors and nobility. However, the crown jewel of Suleiman's conquests was the isle of Sumatra. Biding his time to court the various pretenders, he instructed those in whose good graces he was to ride to the northern capital of the sultanate, while he handled things in central and southern Sumatra. How his allies were fooled, we shall never know; but the truth is that the massed armies of the would-be sultans met outside the capital, and battled out the dead king's succession. Exhausted, they saw that they had been pushed into a powerless power struggle, one where Sulaiman held all of the cards... For his amusement, Sulaiman decreed that all of the island would be his except for the devastated capital of Kataraja, leaving all of the nobles to bleed each other out in petty disputes before he gives the coup de grâce to the tricked rulers of the island.
However, Sulaiman is growing old... And only his death will prove what binds the Bruneian Empire together: the Sultan himself, in which case the empire will surely descend into chaos in the wake of his sucession; or the stable government structure he has created...
Rebuilt at a later time, Makassar's Friday Mosque, despite its humble exterior - excluding the lavish mosaics that decorate its walls - was home to an elaborate set of silver goblets, cups and other objects, used in the characteristically Makassarian Muslim ceremonies of the early 16th century. They were later thieved by Portuguese adventurers, and both the cups themselves and the tales of a lost civilization - perhaps the famed kingdom of Prester John - brimming with silver, served to entice Portuguese exploration in the area and the establishment of major ports and colonies dedicated to the growth of spice in the excellent soils of the Spice Islands.
To the East we find the colonial empire of Makassar - which could be called the Athens to Brunei's Sparta, given its maritime expertise. While official inscriptions are rather rare due to the anarchic and still somewhat mysterious fragmentation and destruction of the Makassarian empire - it is believed it is due in part due to the untimely eruption of a series of volcanoes (drastically reducing the spice production the state depended on) in the decade of 1530, and when the Portuguese arrived and integrated several territories into their Oriental Empire, they remarked that there was little in the way of a functioning organized state - we can piece together a rather vivid picture of the empire in its glory days, thanks both to the Bruneian state chronicles, and the reports of travelers and traders, especially al-Rashid:
Khalil al-Rashid said:
Dear Aziza*,
Surprisingly, I've quickly taken to the tropical air, and write to you once more at your request of hearing the stories of this poor traveler.
To the west of Malacca and the larger isles of Sumatra and Brunei, is the city of Makassar and its vast holdings, spread across the expanse of the blue ocean. In the city itself we can sense for miles away the smell of the spices the empire is so famed for.
Past the bazaars, which filled to the brim with both traders and great amounts of mace, nutmeg and cloves drying in the sun, in the city centre we can find the most modern and exquisite mosques I have ever seen, with furniture from China, incense from Yemen and sandalwood from India (...) their luxury borders on the profane, and I can understand this rich people's - who are, after all, little more than first generation neophytes - concept of religion as a way of honoring Allah, perhaps more so than to follow his teachings. If I take it that way, then I can also comprehend the Christians' obsession with building their cathedrals ever higher, with gold leaf walls...
Beyond the city itself, I've been told there isn't all that much to see. The outlaying lands of Makassar are said to be little more than plantations and small settlements, so I shall depart soon for the Khmer Empire. I've heard marvels about Angkor. Then, I'm planning to head up through Vietnam, to Ganzho (sic), so I can visit China. You may be thinking I'm aping Ibn Battuta's journeys, dear Aziza, but it is true that I very much admire his writings, and his sound advice has kept me alive far too many times to ignore.
Hoping this letter finds you well,
Khalil.
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* He left his home city of Tunis while still young, as a result of his father's death at the hands of a rival family. He went on to visit the entire Muslim World, and far beyond it. He returned in his later years to Tunis, writing and compiling his 'Travels', which is still today an important piece of travel literature, and a vivid (and mostly factual) account of the world from Italy to Japan in the first half of the 16th Century.
* Khalil Al-Rashid's lover, who remained - as far as we know - chaste in a life of waiting for her love to return from abroad, only to die days before the arrival of Khalil. This picturesque detail has led many to compare Khalil with an unlucky Odysseus, never to find his way back to his beloved Penelope. In practical terms however, she left Al-Rashid's letters in such a strictly organized way that he found that not one was missed or misplaced, despite some having arriving more than 20 years earlier than others.
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That was long.