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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
The historiography of the Mongolian expedition to Java reveals a history of misunderstandings of a historical series of misunderstandings. The original sequence of events, from Meng Qi to the Mongol-Javanese alliance of Wijaya to Wijaya's ambush is as far as can be determined a history of Mongol-Javanese misunderstandings much more than a history of Wiraraja's deliberate deceits. And the histories of that history, are two histories following national lines; each completely misunderstanding and even being completely unaware of the other. Even the name of the Mongols and their country is a misunderstanding in the Javanese versions! The two histories proceed from the facts which had meaning for their writers: Meng Qi and the princesses, the symbols and bearers of authority.
What the campaign reveals of the Mongols and Khubilai at the end of his reign has never been seriously considered. Mongolists and Javanists have discussed the number of ships, the chronology, and the economic or religious background, keeping the discussion focused on details while failing to provide a story in which these details could acquire any meaning. Historians writing on this period of Indonesian history have developed elaborate narratives of spiritual warfare and the clash of worlds without first acquainting themselves with the nature of Mongol religious and political attitudes and practices. Twentieth century commentary on that original sequence of events has followed one or another of those early versions by either relegating the story to a footnote, regarding it as the incomprehensible and misguided folly of an emperor in decline; or by viewing the Mongols as an unimportant detail, a foreign power beaten back shortly after arriving. Neither the extraordinary importance for the Mongols of envoys in general and Meng Qi in particular nor the importance of the princesses for the Javanese has been understood by modern scholars in discussions of these works and the history they describe and interpret.
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