1 - The Port before “The Port”

Summary

Contrary to the claims of Vietnamese historiography, Chinese settlers had arrived in the water world well before the Viet. Their presence owed much to Cambodia’s focus on maritime trade, its encouragement of multiethnic trading communities, and conflict with Siam over the crucial Gulf of Siam passageway. Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong became the largest demographic group in the kingdom, overseeing foreign trade and forming their own mercenary armies. Their numbers and influence grew further as a result of the dynastic transition from Ming to Qing, competition among armed mercantile organizations for control over the East Asian sea-lanes, and the scramble between Cochinchina and Siam for influence over Cambodia. The enterprising Mo Jiu embodied and exploited these trends in forging his own polity at The Port.

Hà Tiên of Annam used to be a remote wilderness. It has been over 30 years since my father opened it up. The people are starting to live in peace and have learned a bit about how to plant and cultivate.

—Mo Tianci, 1736¹

When did the Chinese first settle down in the water frontier of mainland Southeast Asia? How did their arrival lay the foundations for Mo Jiu’s establishment of The Port? The official Nguyễn Veritable Records (Thực lục) and biographies, compiled during the mid-nineteenth century, provide a precise sequence of events. In the summer of 1679, a fleet of around fifty ships and over 3,000 soldiers and their families appeared off the coast of present-day Đà Nẵng, in central Vietnam. They were commanded by C: Yang Yandi V: Dương Ngạn Địch (d. 1688), head of the Dragon Gate (Longmen) Garrison, located in Qinzhou prefecture of extreme western Guangdong, bordering Vietnam. Joining him was his assistant, C: Huang Jin V: Hoàng Tiến, and C: Chen Shangchuan V: Trần Thượng Xuyên (1626–1715), military commander (zongbing) of Gaozhou, Leizhou, and Lianzhou (Gao-Lei-Lian), the three adjacent prefectures east of Qinzhou. They forwarded a petition to the lord (chúa), Nguyễn Phúc Tần (Lord Hiền, 1620–1687, r. 1648–1687), claiming to be subjects of the fallen Ming dynasty. Out of righteousness, they refused to submit to the new Manchu dynasty and requested refuge in Cochinchina.²

Lord Hiền deeply pitied the destitute crew and admired their steadfast loyalty. But the presence of so many armed men intimidated him and, unable to understand their language, he suspected their true intentions. Did they want to undertake a violent seizure of power and form a new base overseas after their defeat in the homeland? To be safe, the lord sent them far away from his capital in Huế to the fertile water world then under Cambodian control. Earlier in the seventeenth century, the Nguyễn had obtained from the Cambodian king an enclave at Saigon (K: Prey Nokor V: Sài Gòn). Lord Hiền was looking to expand the Cochinchinese presence into the sparsely populated hinterlands. These military units would allow him to readily achieve his aim without having to expend his personal resources. Accordingly, Lord Hiền ordered his vassal, the Cambodian king, to accept the refugees. They settled down in K: Donay V: Đồng Nai, the province surrounding Saigon. Chen Shangchuan and his soldiers ended up north of the enclave, in present-day Biên Hòa, while Yang Yandi and Huang Jin formed a base at K: Mesar V: Mỹ Tho to the south, on the banks of the main Mekong branch.³

This version of how the Chinese came to the water world has been the most widely referenced. It is largely lifted from an early nineteenth-century gazetteer on the water world. Its author, C: Zheng Huaide V: Trịnh Hoài Đức (1765–1825), was a Minh Hương who served as a Nguyễn dynasty official.⁴ He, in turn, heavily based his writing upon a historical fiction entitled the Việt Nam khai quốc chí truyện (Chronicle of the founding of Vietnam), which dated, at the latest, back to the early eighteenth century.⁵ The novel only mentions Yang Yandi, claiming that he fled with his men in defeat after the Qing occupied their base. His original destination was Nanjing.⁶ However, Yang’s fleet, consisting of 200 ships, blew off course during a storm and was decimated, with only fifty remaining. When he finally saw land, he ordered his troops to attack and conquer the place. A subordinate stopped him, telling him that it was Cochinchina and went on to describe how powerful and prosperous it was. Yang quivered in fear and decided that he had no other choice than to submit to the Nguyễn lord. The rest of the narrative is similar in content to the nineteenth-century sources except at the end. The lord ordered the Cambodian king to grant Yang and Huang Jin a base at Mesar. Yang then became sworn brothers with the Cambodian ruler and paid tribute to the Nguyễn lord every year.⁷

After this dramatic story, drawn and adapted from the historical fiction, Đức’s gazetteer and the official compilations go on to document the arrival of Mo Jiu in the water world, treating it as a completely unrelated event. Jiu had migrated to Cambodia to escape the Qing and stayed at the river port of Phnom Penh. After obtaining territory at The Port and achieving phenomenal success, his new settlement immediately came under threat from the Siamese, who took him hostage. He eventually managed to escape and, soon after his return, sought protection by becoming a Nguyễn vassal.⁸

The primary narratives of the Dragon Gate and The Port’s establishment blend nicely into nationalist-inspired Vietnamese historical studies written in the twentieth century and beyond. They argue that the water world before the seventeenth century was an empty space with no true master. Although there were some Khmer and Austronesians, they formed scattered, atomized communities, and the Cambodian state exercised little to no oversight over them. The Viet settlers were the first to arrive on a sufficiently large scale to fully possess the land. The Cochinchinese state followed suit, establishing institutions for effective governance not just for the Viet but also for the Khmer and other ethnic groups. Vietnamese scholars use the phrase: “the people come first, and the country follows after” (dân đi trước, nhà nước theo sau) to characterize this symbiotic process of expansion.⁹ The story of the hopeless and lost Ming loyalists reinforces the notion of the Chinese as complete strangers whose arrival in the water world occurred entirely under the guidance of the Viet and the patronage of their Nguyễn hosts.

But a careful examination of multiple historical records shows that the Ming loyalist refugees were not stepping onto terra incognita. During the sixteenth century, well before the arrival of the first Viet, Chinese merchants and settlers, along with Japanese, Austronesians, and Europeans, already had an established presence in the water world, especially the Gulf of Siam littoral. They benefited from the emergence of an intra-Asian trade centered upon Ming China’s voracious demand for silver from Japan and the New World. Moreover, the Cambodian court, dependent on this lively commercial exchange, paid special attention to the maritime zone. It actively welcomed different foreign groups to its shores. Besides their business, it also enlisted them as mercenaries to strengthen its control over the coast and support its struggle against Siam, its preeminent rival before the intervention of Cochinchina. As Cochinchinese involvement intensified over the seventeenth century, the Chinese acquired an increasingly prominent position as a third force able to balance out the two formidable neighbors.

The Ming loyalists themselves were no strangers to the water world. They had extensive commercial ties throughout the South China Sea. From at least the mid-1660s, they established bases in precisely the areas of the water world where the Nguyễn lord purportedly authorized them to settle down. As the latest group of Chinese arrivals in Cambodia, they were also the largest and most organized. They owed much of their strength to their association with the Zheng family, the leading anti-Qing resistance force in southeastern China, based in Fujian and Taiwan. The Zheng revived Chinese maritime power in East Asia, a preeminence that the Qing inherited after eliminating them in 1683. By stepping out of an exclusively Vietnamese historical context, and factoring in Cambodian, maritime East Asian, and global perspectives, we can also discover significant connections between the Dragon Gate and Mo Jiu. Although not entirely conclusive, much evidence points to both being originally part of the same group of Ming loyalist arrivals in the water world. It certainly challenges the Vietnamese narrative, which treat the two as largely separate from one another. Whether directly or indirectly, the enterprising Mo Jiu exploited this relationship in forging his own polity at The Port.

Multipolar Confluences

Since ancient times, The Port, together with the northern littoral of the Gulf of Siam, stood at the crossroads of the shipping and trade routes encompassing the China Seas, Strait of Melaka, and Indian Ocean. From approximately the first to the fifth centuries CE, the area had experienced a lengthy period of power and prosperity as the core part of the thalassocracy of Funan. At its height, Funan dominated coastal Southeast Asia and controlled the flow of goods between China and India. Although multiethnic in its composition, the population appears to have consisted mostly of Austronesians. After the fifth century, Funan experienced decline and marginalization from Asian maritime trade and gradually disappeared from the historical records.¹⁰

The subsequent situation in the water frontier remains unclear. There is evidence of scattered Austronesian-speaking communities inhabiting small villages along the river mouths and coastline of the Gulf of Siam. Some of them resided entirely on their boats. They were probably closely related to and often communicated with the Orang Laut, the sea peoples active in the waters farther south, around the Strait of Melaka and the island of Sumatra. They would fish, conduct small-time trade, or engage in piracy upon passing ships.¹¹

The rest of the water world entered the orbit of the Angkor Kingdom, as Khmer descended into the Kampuchea Krom floodplain from the heartland of the Great Lake. They followed the Tonle Sap River to Phnom Penh, where the river integrates into the main eastern Mekong branch and the western Bassac tributary, both flowing in a southeastward direction. The most fertile areas of the water world lie along these two channels. The waterways leave behind fine soils suitable for the wet-rice agriculture that the Khmer primarily practiced. They also feed into a dense network of canals that crisscross the delta, providing a source of irrigation and an efficient means of local transportation by boat. The Khmer settled down in large numbers between the two rivers, mostly on higher elevated levees to avoid flooding. Some continued farther down to the coastal areas. Where the main Mekong branch and the Bassac fan out into many river mouths before emptying into the South China Sea, the Khmer took up residence on top of sand dunes parallel to the sea. They hovered above a landscape characterized by frequently submerged swampland.¹²

Eventually, upon reaching the Gulf of Siam littoral, the swamps on the north and east give way to a chain of low-lying forested hills. Along the present-day Vietnam-Cambodia border, the elevation starts to climb. What the Vietnamese call the Seven Mountains (Thất Sơn or Bảy Núi) and known in Khmer by various names for the individual peaks, begin southwest of the Bassac river port of K: Moat Chrouk V: Châu Đốc. Although not higher than 700 meters, they mark the beginning of the Cardamom and Elephant Ranges, which extend all the way westward to the Thai border. Between the mountains and the Gulf of Siam lies a long strip of beach ridge that starts at Royal Market (K: Phsar Reachea V: Rạch Giá) and stretches across the Cambodian coastline to Kampong Som (present-day Sihanoukville). The Port’s harbor and urban center lies at the heart of this seaside plain. Unlike the Austronesians, who typically lived on the ridge, the Khmer preferred to settle in the interior, on the elevated bases of the hills. Both groups also ventured into the gulf itself, where they would find hundreds of forested islands, large and small, perfect sites for fishing. The biggest of them is Phú Quốc (C: Fuguo K: Koh Tral), with an area of 574 square kilometers.¹³

Philip Taylor, based upon his extensive interviews and visits to Theravada Buddhist temples (wat) during his fieldwork in Kampuchea Krom and an analysis of the etymology of names, has provided tentative evidence of some form of royal oversight during the Angkor period. A few kings may have undertaken tours to the water world during the fourteenth century. A customs administration may have been established in certain ports that handled overseas trade. The temples may have acted as vehicles of local governance and forwarded revenues to the center.¹⁴ Overall, however, the water world constituted a marginal frontier within Angkor’s sphere of influence.

This area once again acquired a position of prominence after the fourteenth century amid Angkor’s decline, which occurred in tandem with the growing power of its former vassals, especially Siam under the Ayutthaya Kingdom (1351–1767) and Laos. In 1431, after Siamese forces sacked Angkor, the royal court fled eastward. A more downsized kingdom was reestablished and centered upon the vicinity of Phnom Penh. The city’s access to the sea-lanes through the branches of the Mekong made Cambodia ever more dependent upon the maritime Asian trading networks.¹⁵

This development coincided with China’s increased reliance upon silver from overseas to sustain the monetization of its commercialized economy. The Ming partially relaxed its long-standing ban on private trade and travel abroad in 1567. However, it continued to forbid direct ties with Japan, the largest supplier of silver, because of the refusal of the Japanese warlords to abide by the tributary system and their encouragement of illicit smuggling and piracy, which wreaked havoc on the mainland coastline. As a result, Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, became a meeting ground for Chinese and Japanese traders. By the early seventeenth century, the Chinese, most of them from southern Fujian (Minnan), constituted the largest group of foreigners in Cambodia, numbering 4,000–5,000 people. The Japanese population was tiny in comparison, at around 80–100 families, but exercised a disproportionate influence. They handled the exchange of silver for Chinese silk and other luxury products and procured, for the Japanese market, deer and other animal skins that served as decoration in samurai armor. The Japanese also controlled the production sources and crucial links in the domestic supply chain.¹⁶

Around this time, the Europeans appeared in the sea-lanes of East Asia. They competed fiercely with each other and with local merchants to control the flow of spices, essential for preserving and flavoring food, and other natural resources from island Southeast Asia to India and Europe.¹⁷ Eventually, they, too, entered the intra-Asian silk-for-silver exchange. After seizing Melaka in 1511, the Portuguese successfully connected the Ming to Japan through the establishment of outposts at Macao, off the tip of Guangdong Province, and Nagasaki in Kyushu.¹⁸ In 1571, the Spanish acquired a base at Manila after their conquest of the Philippine Islands and made it a transit point for silver from the New World.¹⁹ Since at least the middle of the sixteenth century, an Iberian colony flourished near Phnom Penh, together with missionaries of the Dominican and Franciscan orders dispatched from Melaka and Manila.²⁰ These “Iberians” were highly diverse, consisting of Europeans, Africans, South Asians, and mixed creole offspring.²¹

The expansion of Portuguese influence in island Southeast Asia prompted a dispersal of large numbers of its Austronesian population to ports across maritime East Asia, where they mixed and forged a pan-Malay trading diaspora. Destinations included Phnom Penh and the water world of Cambodia and Ayutthaya, the capital of Siam. These communities were founded upon a shared belief in Islam and the acceptance of Arab and Persian cultural influences. Other groups, such as the Cham, Javanese, the Minangkabau of Sumatra, and the Bugis from Sulawesi, retained their ethnic affiliation but could simultaneously affiliate with the broader Malay identity. They, too, circulated among the different ports in the region, forming their own networks.²²

Over the course of the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) expelled the Portuguese from the Malay Peninsula and Indonesian archipelago, largely achieving domination over the spice trade to Europe. In 1619, it established an Asian headquarters for operations at Batavia, on the island of Java. From there, the company oversaw a burgeoning network of trading posts, or factories, that eventually stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan. As it sought to control the intra-Asian trade, the VOC engaged in territorial acquisition. To compete with Macao and Manila in the supply of silver to China, and to establish a base for the export of deerskins to Japan, it occupied the island of Taiwan in 1624.²³ The motivation to overpower its rivals in the trade in deer and other animal skins prompted the Dutch to also open up factories at Phnom Penh and Ayutthaya in 1636. In 1641, the Dutch seized Melaka from the Portuguese, followed by Makassar in 1667. As a result, Portuguese took refuge in Cambodia in much larger numbers than before.²⁴

Besides Phnom Penh, many foreigners established a presence in the water world. The Gulf of Siam, in particular, served as an important waterway for trade and access to the South China Sea. For this reason, it was hotly contested between Cambodia and Siam. From the mid-fourteenth century, political and economic competition between the two kingdoms intensified, often erupting into full-scale warfare. Contrary to the Vietnamese scholarly consensus that the Cambodian court exercised no effective management over the water world, it, in fact, paid careful attention to the consolidation over at least the strategic coastal area. It divided the maritime zone into two sets of provinces. Sacred Pond (K: Preah Trapeang V: Trà Vinh), Bassac, and Black Water (K: Tuk Khmau V: Cà Mau) guarded the mouths of the Mekong from the South China Sea. Situated along the Gulf of Siam were Kampong Som, Kampot, Kramoun Sar, Banteay Meas, and Seashore, or The Port’s core area.²⁵ Collectively, these provinces became the first line of defense for Phnom Penh from Siamese naval invasions and, when Cambodia was strong, the staging ground for campaigns against Siam.

There is much confusion about the relationship between Banteay Meas and The Port. As Sakurai Yumio and Kitagawa Takako show, European sources contemporary to the eighteenth century, and often even the same record, give conflicting narratives about the place they called Ponteamas.²⁶ Sometimes they consider Banteay Meas and Seashore to be the same place, and on other occasions, to be separate. In similar fashion, the various versions of the Cambodian Royal Chronicles either speak of a single Banteay Meas or list Seashore as a distinct province.²⁷

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Seashore originally constituted an integral part of Banteay Meas, being, literally, its seashore. Some Cambodian sources also call it the “river promontory of Banteay Meas.”²⁸ They are referring to The Port’s main waterway, known as Fortress River (C: Jiangcheng V: Giang Thành). It has two sources, both from mountains about forty to fifty kilometers away from the city center. After the branches join about two kilometers from the current Vietnam border, Fortress River widens considerably as it pursues a southwesterly direction. Eventually, it merges into a lagoon before narrowing again and flowing into the Gulf of Siam. The lagoon, known as East Lake (C: Donghu V: Đông Hồ), formed an ideal harbor for ships to congregate.²⁹

The administrative center of Banteay Meas lies to the northeast of Touk Meas Mountain, one of the sources of Fortress River. The settlement fulfilled a vital role as an inland hub for land transportation, given its location midway between Phnom Penh and The Port. A water route also passed through during the rainy season, from April to November. Canals would form from flooding near the other origin of Fortress River, on a mountain situated amid a swampy marshland.³⁰ They provided access for vessels from The Port to Banteay Meas and Moat Chrouk, where they could sail onward to Phnom Penh via the Bassac.³¹ Banteay Meas was traditionally the commercial center, and the area of The Port served as a thoroughfare for goods.

However, when deemed strategically necessary, such as defense against a Siamese invasion, Seashore would be separated into its own province, where important military installations would be placed. Together with Sacred Pond, next to the South China Sea, it would be given an honor ranking of nine. This was just one level below the strategic super-provinces of Santuk, Ba Phnom, Tbaung Khmum, Pursat, and Treang. Known as the “Four Columns,” these provinces of the highest tenth rank functioned in a cosmological sense like cardinal points of a mandala, providing balance and stability to the kingdom. In practical terms, they formed a core inner ring of defense around Phnom Penh. Their governors assumed the highest noble rank of oknha. Provinces of the ninth rank also had strategic significance. They stood in the outermost of the concentric circles of the mandala, surrounding the super-provinces and forming the frontiers of the kingdom’s projection of power. Seashore guarded the other provinces along the Gulf of Siam and collected duties from trade, while Sacred Pond was responsible for the South China Sea. The customs revenues went to the central Ministry of Justice (Yomreach), since the office’s income came from its cosmological direction facing the southeast.³²

According to the Cambodian Royal Chronicles, a Chen Chong Tok, who was based at The Port and either held the highest noble rank of oknha or the third highest chaoponhea, led troops each time conflict broke out with Siam. The name appears in the chronicles on at least three occasions from the 1570s to 1630s. “Chen” means Chinese in Khmer, while “Chong Tok” is a corruption of zongdu (governor-general). It must refer to a generic title rather than any specific individual since Chen Chong Tok was documented to have been killed in action two times. Their task was to lead Chinese troops and handle maritime defense. They were probably the prototypes for the Mo later on.³³ The presence of this prominent position shows that there was already a substantial Chinese population in the water world, including Banteay Meas and its surroundings. Joining the Chinese were war captives from Siam and Laos, who were resettled in the area, along with Cham and Malay.³⁴

The Cambodian court increasingly depended upon foreigners to supervise and protect its vital maritime linkages. Overseas trade came under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Kralahom), whose head held the oknha rank. It, in turn, appointed two officials, both of Minnan origin, to take overall charge of trading vessels and the foreign communities. One of them, Srey Sramut (Master of the Seas) supervised the Chinese, Japanese, and junks from the rest of Asia, while the other, Desa Nayok (Master of Foreigners), handled the European ships. They both possessed the rank of chaoponhea.³⁵

The individual foreign communities were each placed under a headman, known as a shahbandar (port master), appointed from among the individual groups and who answered directly to the two officials. At Phnom Penh, which contained the highest concentration of foreigners in the kingdom, the shahbandars resided in separate neighborhoods in the suburbs or satellite towns. The court also allowed the Chinese, Japanese, Austronesians, and Iberians to organize their armed forces to be placed under their own commanders, like Chen Chong Tok, and serve as mercenaries.³⁶

Between Two Powers

The militarization of the foreign communities reflected the fragile foundations of Cambodia’s prosperity. Domestically, it had much to do with the structural weaknesses in the kingdom’s political structure. In fact, four formal centers of power coexisted uneasily with one another. Besides the king, there was a viceroy (oupareach), usually a brother or son who would be next in the line of succession. An abdicated ruler or a royal relative ineligible to inherit the throne would become a co-king (oupayureach). These rules did not always apply. In some cases, the co-king could also qualify for the succession. Then came the queen-mother. Each maintained a palace and personnel in a replica of the royal court. The king oversaw a bureaucratic apparatus consisting of over 100 oknha. The court of the co-king, on the other hand, had 51 oknha, while the viceroy had 40, and the queen-mother, 25. In addition, 7 provinces out of some 30 to 60 served as the appanage of the co-king, 5 belonged to the viceroy, and 3 to the queen-mother. Of course, the total number of provinces and officials fluctuated over time.³⁷ This dispersal of power created significant ambiguity, especially when determining the succession.

Moreover, the organizational structure of the kingdom became ossified, since its basis of legitimacy depended primarily upon ordering society in a rigid, predictable hierarchy. As Grégory Mikaelian shows, Khmer identity became equated with the peasant-cultivator, and imbued with a sacred quality celebrated and reinforced in myths and legends. Non-servile commoners attached themselves to high-ranking patrons of their choice in the capital, whether an oknha or a prince or princess. They would pay their taxes and render labor and military obligations through these elites. In exchange, the elites protected their clients and served as advocates during disputes. Commoners could switch patrons at will. A good patron could not only retain clients, but those with a large number of them could also attain greater influence at court. The water world, on the contrary, was characterized by greater cosmopolitanism, mobility, orientation toward trade, and vulnerability to invasion. There, foreign groups became more important as they specialized in mercantile and protection services. The court depended upon them for a large share of its income.³⁸

After 1594, when Siamese troops invaded and sacked the old capital of Longvek, near Phnom Penh, Cambodia submitted to the suzerainty of Ayutthaya. The increased disadvantage in the competition with its neighbor both in the lead-up to and aftermath of this traumatic event exacerbated power struggles at the court, especially over the succession. The conflicts, in turn, exposed and widened the structural problems faced by Cambodia, creating opportunities for outsiders to intervene in its affairs. Siam, of course, constituted the most persistent external presence in the kingdom. It sought to fully control the throne and determine the succession by keeping princely heirs as hostages at Ayutthaya and providing refuge for pro-Siamese royal relatives who were on the losing side in power struggles.³⁹

The Cambodian rulers understood their neighbor’s intentions, and some of them enlisted the support of the kingdom’s multiethnic mercantile communities to counter the threat. Often, the solution proved far worse than the problem. Separatist tendencies emerged in the water world, as the rift with the agrarian interior grew. Several times during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Cham and Malay Muslims and Lao, sometimes with the support of the Japanese and Iberians, rebelled or backed Khmer warlords who forged independent power bases. Mercenaries from these groups, along with the Chinese, also took advantage of the decentralized power structure at the court to participate in intrigues and succession struggles.⁴⁰

In seeking a more reliable counterbalance to Siam, other Cambodian rulers turned toward the recently established state of Cochinchina in south-central Vietnam. The area once belonged to several Cham kingdoms, but in 1471 the Lê dynasty had exterminated all but one of them and occupied their territories, extending from the north of Huế to Quy Nhơn. Over the sixteenth century, the Lê gradually disintegrated amid internecine struggles among its leading clans. The Trịnh became the real power behind the Lê rulers in Hanoi. The Nguyễn, on the other hand, exiled themselves to the northern edge of former Cham territory. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, they established a seat of power at Huế. They relied upon overseas trade for much of their revenue. Nearby Hội An became a lively cosmopolitan port, with diverse Chinese, Japanese, Iberian, and Dutch mercantile communities. Over the next few decades, the Nguyễn lords grew independent of the north and stopped forwarding taxes to Hanoi. Their state came to be called Cochinchina, as opposed to Tonkin, under the de facto control of the Trịnh. Both entities, however, maintained a nominal allegiance to the Lê rulers, the only ones who received recognition and investiture from China, Vietnam’s tributary overlord.⁴¹

From 1611 to 1653, through a series of military campaigns, combined with marriage alliances, the Nguyễn succeeded in pushing their boundaries down the coastline of the South China Sea at the expense of the rump Cham state of Panduranga (1471–1697). They organized the Frontier Suppression camp (Trấn Biên dinh) to administer the newly conquered areas and forced the Cham to submit as subordinate vassals. As a result of this round of expansion, Cochinchina directly shared a northern border with Cambodia.⁴² During the 1620s, the Trịnh reacted to Cochinchina’s growing independence and assertiveness by launching a war that dragged on inconclusively along their border for the next fifty years. Since the Mekong Delta became an important source of rice for troop provisions in the struggle against Tonkin, it became imperative for the Nguyễn to establish and maintain friendly ties with Cambodia.⁴³

In 1619, Chey Chettha (1576–1628, r. 1618–1628) ascended the Cambodian throne. He made three decisions that would have a profound impact on the subsequent historical trajectory of his kingdom. For one, he established a permanent royal capital at Oudong, about fifty kilometers up the Tonle Sap River from Phnom Penh. Secondly, he sent an embassy to Huế to ally with the Cochinchinese regime and free himself from dependence upon Siam. He took the hand of a daughter of the Nguyễn lord, a princess known in the Cambodian records as Ang Chov. Thirdly, in 1623, Chey Chettha granted the Nguyễn lord a lease on the port of Saigon. Located at the edge of the water world, in a hazy, undefined border zone with the Cham territory to the north, the Khmer had only established a province there at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Now, Chey Chettha allowed the Cochinchinese to freely sail their ships to Saigon to procure grain and station their troops and officials to protect and tax their merchants and settlers.⁴⁴

Chey Chettha’s pursuit of closer ties with Cochinchina had three important consequences. The outpost at Saigon became a conduit for the large-scale influx of Cochinchinese migrants into Cambodia. Some of them settled down in “two grand villages” close to Phnom Penh. By the 1660s, their population numbered around 400.⁴⁵ Many more went into the water world. The majority of these “wandering people” (lưu dân) came from Quy Nhơn, the southernmost frontier of Cochinchina at the time. Since the area had not long been conquered from Champa, Cham also participated in the southward migration. They were escaping poverty, warfare, famine, and onerous government impositions.⁴⁶ Most of the settlements were clustered around Saigon, in the surrounding, sparsely populated countryside of Donay. A few, however, filtered out farther onto the Gulf of Siam coastline and Phú Quốc and other offshore islands. Like elsewhere in the water world, they formed small communities that cultivated rice and fished.⁴⁷

The new settlements received the active support of the Vietnamese princess, Ang Chov, at the court in Oudong. Her influence rapidly grew. She was elevated to the position of queen-mother and continued to hold this position after her husband’s death. She had her own officials and provinces. On several occasions, different Cambodian rulers requested the return of Saigon, but each time she was able to use her influence to persuade them to drop the matter, gradually making the Cochinchinese occupation permanent.⁴⁸

Ang Chov further paved the way for direct Cochinchinese intervention in Cambodia when renewed crises rocked the court. The reigning king, Ponhea Chan (1614–1659, r. 1642–1658), had converted to Islam and displayed great favor toward the Austronesian communities. In doing so, he alienated the influential Theravada Buddhist clergy and much of the court and elites. These elements rallied around two royal princes with close ties to the queen-mother, Ang Chov. She sent a request to the Nguyễn for military assistance. In 1658, Lord Hiền dispatched troops into Cambodia and captured Ponhea Chan, who was brought back to Cochinchina in a cage and died shortly thereafter. The Cochinchinese then turned upon the two princes, Barom Reachea (1628–1672, r. 1658–1672) and his brother Reameatipadey, but the invaders were defeated and forced to retreat. Barom Reachea then assumed the throne, and Reameatipadey became co-king.⁴⁹

This intervention showed that Cochinchina had joined Siam as a formidable outside player in Cambodian affairs. The Cambodian king, Barom Reachea, soon found himself having to strike a delicate balance between the two. Most of the retinue of the former Muslim king, Ponhea Chan, had taken refuge in Siam. Cochinchina, on the other hand, backed Reameatipadey. Under the patronage of the co-king, large numbers of Viet migrants continued to flow into the kingdom, congregating in Phnom Penh and around Saigon.⁵⁰ Barom Reachea, needing a firmer base of support, turned toward an emerging third power: an organized maritime Chinese regime.

The Rise of Maritime Chinese Power

During this period, innovations in social organization across maritime East Asia bolstered the autonomy and durability of overseas Chinese communities. During the sixteenth century, smugglers and pirates from South China roamed the seas and traded in various parts of Southeast Asia. Wheeler speaks of the island of Hainan as a point where the maritime routes diverge. For junks from Guangdong, they tended to pass through the northern part of the island and enter the Gulf of Tonkin. Ships from Fujian would venture farther, rounding the southern end and crossing the open sea to central Vietnam, the water world, and beyond. The pirates provided much of the maritime infrastructure for more elaborate forms of networks and organizations. In fact, the successful Nguyễn establishment of Cochinchina owed much to the help of Fujianese armed traders, who supplied them with weapons and goods for the Japanese market.⁵¹

Meanwhile, in the coastal areas of China, the need for residents to distinguish themselves as upright subjects from the smugglers and pirates before central and local authorities stimulated the growth of lineages tied together by a common ancestor and genealogy.⁵² Serving as mediators between local society and officialdom, these organizations, led by prominent gentry, proved highly successful in forwarding revenues and ensuring compliance with laws. Moreover, they could pool, preserve, and redistribute capital, making them ideal vehicles for overseas investment and immigration. Ironically, these activities often brought them into collaboration with smugglers and pirates.

Once overseas, Chinese immigrants benefited from the policies of East Asian rulers and the European colonial authorities. Headmen, such as the shahbandar in Cambodia and the kapitan in Batavia, governed their communities according to their own laws and customs. These leaders and the wealthiest merchants and tax farmers formed an elite class that replicated the gentry and lineage organizations in their native places. The stability of their position in Southeast Asian society drew large numbers of them away from purely overseas trade toward the long-term investment in internal trading networks. They also played a key role in recruiting more immigrants to open land for agricultural exploitation. Andrade uses the term “co-colonization” to speak about this mutually beneficial partnership with the Chinese in the case of the VOC and other European outposts in Asia. However, this term equally applies to states in maritime East Asia, such as Cambodia.⁵³

Despite their numbers, the Chinese initially coexisted with other mercantile communities in a multipolar environment. To compete with the Japanese, Iberians, and Dutch more effectively, and protect themselves during disputes and conflicts, southern Fujianese (Minnanese) gentry, merchants, smugglers, and pirates consolidated into armed trading organizations. The biggest and most successful of them came under the leadership of the Zheng family, whose members officially joined the Ming as officials in 1628. They then used their new positions in the Fujian and Guangdong bureaucracy to forge a private military force with a formidable naval fleet. Besides conducting lucrative trade with Japan and Southeast Asia in their own capacity, the Zheng required all merchants sailing abroad to purchase their passes and fly their flag or risk predation from their patrols.⁵⁴

Two major events provided a further boost to maritime Chinese power. One was the decision of Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate to severely restrict private trade and linkages to maritime Asia. Over the 1630s, the shogunate issued a series of edicts that expelled the Iberians and banned Japanese subjects from leaving or returning to the country. The remaining private trade was confined to Nagasaki and left exclusively in the hands of the VOC and Chinese merchants, both from China and Southeast Asian ports. The measures marginalized and eventually completely removed the Japanese as commercial rivals of the Chinese and the VOC and greatly weakened the Iberian trading network.⁵⁵

The second significant event was the downfall of the Ming in 1644 and the occupation of China by the Manchus, a process that lasted for almost half a century. The newly proclaimed Qing dynasty ran into fierce resistance from various Ming loyalist groups in southern China. The Zheng organization joined their ranks. Under the leadership of Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662), the organization forged a base on the islands of Fujian and Guangdong. Its overseas commercial network continued to operate and expand with the protection of his navy. The Qing tried to cut off this crucial source of income by reviving the Ming-era sea ban in 1656 and, starting in 1660, undertaking a brutal removal of coastal residents into the interior to cut off sources of food and products for trade. Unable to survive on the mainland, Zheng Chenggong attacked Taiwan in 1661 and forced the Dutch to surrender and leave the island. He and his descendants ruled over a maritime kingdom based on Taiwan for the next two decades. The draconian Qing sea ban left the Zheng as the largest and most important intermediaries to China. They succeeded in bringing most of the Chinese merchants in maritime East Asia under their authority.⁵⁶

During the 1660s, the Zheng appeared to have the ambition of expanding their territory beyond Taiwan. Besides their core Minnanese constituency, they forged ties with smugglers and pirates in neighboring Guangdong. Other than the fertile Pearl River Delta around Guangzhou, the province tended to be deficient in arable land and resources. Many of the rebel bands operated around the Leizhou Peninsula, located to the west of the Pearl River Delta and directly facing Hainan across a narrow strait about twenty kilometers long. The peninsula proper, along with the adjacent mainland from Yangjiang westward to Qinzhou, was a vast desert of barren grasslands, an economic backwater that suffered persistent demographic decline. The complex Gulf of Tonkin coastline, full of small islands and passageways, made the area hard to access and an ideal piratical den. Moreover, its proximity to the Vietnam border provided easy avenues of escape in the event of attack from government forces.⁵⁷

After the collapse of the Ming, a chaotic situation prevailed along the Guangdong coastline. As Robert Antony shows, lawless elements sometimes fiercely resisted entering Manchu forces under the banner of Ming loyalism, while at other times collaborating with the Qing, switching back and forth between the two, or proclaiming new, short-lived dynasties of their own. The leaders opportunistically appropriated different symbols to legitimize their local political economy based on plunder. One of the strongmen, Deng Yao (d. 1660), established a base at Dragon Gate during the 1650s. His subordinate commanders included Yang Yandi and Huang Jin, the protagonists who make their appearance at the start of the chapter. There was another figure, Xian Biao, who later played a key role in linking the two to Cambodia. Relentless attacks from the Qing dislodged Deng Yao and his followers from Dragon Gate in 1660. They subsequently fled across the Vietnam border. In 1661, a combined Qing-Tonkin offensive resulted in the capture of Deng, who was promptly executed.⁵⁸

Xian, Yang, and other followers took refuge with a semi-autonomous local strongman in Tonkin, who furnished them with ships and weapons. Around this time, they also joined the Zheng maritime network. Through this connection, the Hainan routes merged into an integrated trading system, as Guangdong-based traders went beyond their traditional haunts near the Vietnamese border to become an increasingly influential presence in maritime East Asia. At least from the 1660s, the Dragon Gate conducted significant trade with Cambodia and Batavia. The Qing soon doubled down on its demand for Tonkin to extradite Xian and his group. Moreover, the VOC, in retaliation for its loss of Taiwan to the Zheng, launched a blockade of Tonkinese ports from 1663 to 1664 in an attempt to monopolize its key exports and deny them to the Chinese, many of them Zheng-affiliated merchants.⁵⁹

Under these pressures, the Dragon Gate contingent relocated to Taiwan. Xian, Yang, and others lost some of their autonomy from their earlier days as opportunistic predators. As Zheng Chenggong’s successors set out to forge a maritime state on the island by establishing bureaucratic institutions, the Dragon Gate became more integrated into the military hierarchy as subordinate commanders. Yang Yandi’s unit, for instance, was named the Propriety and Martial Company (Liwu zhen). They became what Wheeler calls “client military entrepreneurs.”⁶⁰ The Zheng wanted to utilize the Dragon Gate to open new land for natural resource exploitation and control strategic ports in maritime East Asia. Since Xian, Yang, and others already had close trading ties with Vietnam and Cambodia, this area was a direction where they could spearhead the expansion. Their interests would be in full alignment with the Zheng.⁶¹

In 1666, Xian Biao led a fleet of eight or nine junks and fifty-six men to the mouths of the Mekong. They settled down at Donay, the Cambodian province surrounding the Cochinchinese enclave of Saigon. It was a fertile area that could supply the needs of Taiwan and control the maritime approach to Phnom Penh and the flow of deerskin to the Japanese market. The settlements under Xian and his Dragon Gate associates prospered as a result. Vietnamese sources claim that the area only became a major commercial center during the 1680s. In fact, since the early seventeenth century, Donay had been a congregation point for the mercantile groups active in maritime East Asia, including Chinese, Austronesians, Europeans, and Japanese. The Dragon Gate brought these groups under its oversight. They also recruited Viet settlers to open new land, allowing Donay to achieve greater agricultural self-sufficiency.⁶²

King Barom Reachea invited Xian Biao and his followers to Phnom Penh in the beginning of 1667. Over the course of the year, under Xian’s patronage, some 3,000 more Chinese arrived, becoming the first organized Cantonese community in Cambodia. They may have been the forces of his subordinates or units from Taiwan, along with merchants. The newcomers quickly matched the original Fujian population in numbers. In fact, the ruler amended the code on the regulation of overseas trade. In addition to the Fujian shahbandar, he created a post specially for Xian as head of the Guangdong community.⁶³ Xian and his men soon got involved in the power struggles at the court. With the king’s encouragement, they initiated a massacre of the Cochinchinese throughout the country, killing about 1,000 of them, including 500–600 in Phnom Penh. Through these brutal means, they helped Barom Reachea remove the influence of the Cochinchinese-backed co-king, Reameatipadey, the patron of the hapless victims.⁶⁴

Xian exploited his favorable position to wage a personal vendetta against the VOC for blockading his ships at Tonkin and not repaying a debt owed to him. On the night of July 9, he, along with an armed band, broke into the Dutch trading lodge and murdered the head of the factory and some of his employees. Several months later, Barom Reachea wrote a letter of apology to Batavia. He reported the arrest and execution of Xian’s alleged co-conspirators, the Fujian shahbandar, known in the Dutch records as Pavie, and six of his subordinates and the imprisonment of three Dutch turncoats who had joined in their massacre.⁶⁵

Xian, on the other hand, had already fled Cambodia, since Chinese sources reveal that he was once again preying off the coasts of Guangdong and Hainan during the 1670s. In 1674, the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories, a revolt of three generals based in southern China, broke out against the Qing. The Zheng allied with the turncoat Qing commanders and returned to their old mainland coastal bases. In 1677, Xian Biao and Yang Yandi left Taiwan and recaptured Dragon Gate. Antony explains that they may have abandoned the Zheng cause, which was on the verge of defeat. However, during 1676 and 1677, the Zheng and the feudatories were enjoying significant successes. They reoccupied coastal Fujian and penetrated as far as the Pearl River Delta. Their defeat would only become apparent two years later. Moreover, Yang left his wife and family behind in Taiwan. Seen in this context, Xian and Yang acted as vanguards for a seemingly imminent Zheng expansion into western Guangdong. By connecting the mainland acquisitions to the China Seas, including trade and communication routes between Taiwan and the water world, the Zheng could forge a more integrated commercial empire.⁶⁶

The Enigma of Mo Jiu

Meanwhile, the situation in Cambodia rapidly deteriorated. In 1672, Barom Reachea was assassinated by his ambitious son-in-law. The co-king, Reameatipadey, fled to Cochinchina, where he soon passed away. Remeatipadey’s nephew, Ang Nan (1654–1691), succeeded him in this role. The same year, Cochinchina reached a ceasefire with its northern neighbor of Tonkin that ended open hostilities and fixed a mutual boundary. The two sides would maintain a tense but peaceful coexistence for over a century. The Nguyễn now had the manpower and resources to devote entirely toward the southern frontier. In 1674, when the deceased king Barom Reachea’s son, Ang Chee (1652–1677, r. 1673–1676), overthrew the son-in-law usurper, Lord Hiền dispatched an army to assist the new co-king, Ang Nan. The Cochinchinese initially made significant gains until King Ang Chee called for help from Siam. Siamese aid turned the tide of the war. In 1675, the bulk of the Cochinchinese forces withdrew. Ang Nan went along with them to Donay, where, under Cochinchinese protection, he continued to control a smaller portion of Cambodia, mostly the coastal areas.⁶⁷

According to the Việt Nam khai quốc chí truyện, the same historical novel that mentions Yang Yandi’s dramatic quest for asylum from the Nguyễn lord at the beginning of this chapter, the person who suggested that King Ang Chee appeal for aid from Siam was an oknha at his court. The nobleman was called Lặc Chi Gia, a “man of the Great Ming.” The name corresponds to the Khmer title of Reachea Setthi, meaning “wealthy man of the kingdom.” In the Cambodian hierarchy, he was the official in charge of customs at the ports.⁶⁸ Combined with other records, there is good reason to believe that he was, in fact, none other than Mo Jiu.

By his time, the diversity and cosmopolitanism of Cambodia’s foreign population had decreased significantly. In 1672, five years after Xian Biao’s massacre, the VOC closed its factory and left the country. There were still Austronesian traders and the mixed descendants of Japanese and Iberians who formed small but privileged creole communities. However, the vast majority were Minnanese and Cantonese merchants and sojourners.⁶⁹ Besides the shahbandar assigned to these two groups, a new Taiwan shahbandar handled ships and personnel from Zheng and rebel feudatory-held areas. King Ang Chee further elevated the Guangdong shahbandar to the role of general supervisor over all foreign groups. He received the prestigious rank of oknha, as opposed to the customary chaoponhea. The Khmer code that stipulated the appointment called him Oknha Siv. Mikaelian equates him to Mo Jiu. Indeed, one of Siv’s main duties was to collect customs revenues in ports full of foreign traders. The job description fits well with the title of Reachea Setthi mentioned in the historical novel, the Việt Nam khai quốc chí truyện. The genealogical biography of the Mo by Vũ Thế Dinh (d. 1819), a military commander in The Port, provides additional backing, recounting that the Cambodian ruler allowed Jiu to handle “all matters related to trade and merchants.”⁷⁰

These findings constitute the first step toward uncovering and piecing together the early life and career of Mo Jiu, much of which remains wrapped in an enigma. The sources give different and often contradictory dates and narratives of when he arrived in Cambodia, his activities there, and how and at what point he came into possession of The Port. An effort will be made here to construct what I believe to be the most logical sequence of events based, as much as possible, on a comparative reading of Vietnamese, Qing, Cambodian, Siamese, and European accounts. I also consider how they synchronize with the relevant developments elsewhere in maritime East Asia. Of course, given the ambiguity of the records, alternative ways of conceptualizing the events are also conceivable.

Mo Jiu was born on June 11, 1655, in the village of Dongling, Leizhou County (see Figure 1.1). The local Mo genealogy lists his original name as Shaoyuan. He came from one of the most prominent gentry clans on the peninsula, whose members enjoyed consistent success in the civil service examinations, with some becoming high officials in the late Ming. We can assume that Jiu, as a young man, received at least some education and achieved proficiency in Classical Chinese. However, the dynastic transition abruptly and permanently altered his life. The Mo, along with other gentry, supported local resistance leaders such as Deng Yao and helped fence their goods. To cut off these sources of aid, the Qing rigorously enforced the removal of the coastal population when its troops entered western Guangdong. As Li Qingxin highlights, the draconian measures ruined the fortunes of the local elites. Along with the ideological disinclination to shave one’s head in the Manchu style, Mo Jiu, “unable to bear the chaos brought by the invasion of the Manchu barbarians, crossed the seas and went to Cambodia.” He arrived in Phnom Penh in 1671, at the age of sixteen.⁷¹

Figure 1.1 The Mo clan shrine in Dongling Village, in present-day Leizhou, Guangdong.

Photograph by author.

For a teenage boy to make this lengthy journey, he had to work through the existing networks operated by the Dragon Gate contingent and the Zheng organization. Although no direct evidence can yet be located, Jiu most likely served under Xian Biao for some years before his arrival in Cambodia. According to the French traveler and missionary Pierre Poivre (1719–1786), Jiu once traded at Batavia and Manila. Interestingly, Xian also had close business ties with the Dutch to the point that there were unsettled debts. Manila was a major trading partner of the Zheng. Moreover, Jiu gained a prominent position and the title of oknha within three to four years of his arrival in Cambodia. His own charisma may have captured the attention of the king and gained him great royal favor, as Dinh’s genealogical biography points out. However, this meteoric rise must have owed much more to the recommendation of Xian and the Dragon Gate. Jiu was probably Xian’s replacement as Guangdong shahbandar after the latter fled the country.⁷²

Jiu seemed to handle his tasks capably. King Ang Chee placed great trust in him as an adviser and adopted his suggestion to seek Siamese troops, if we are to trust the Việt Nam khai quốc chí truyện, the Cochinchinese historical novel. In 1676, after the withdrawal of the main Cochinchinese forces, Jiu was probably also behind the ruler’s decision to recruit “Chinese from the island of Formosa” in launching a renewed attack on the co-king, Ang Nan. This information, drawn from a firsthand report of a French missionary, shows that the Dragon Gate continued to maintain a presence in Cambodia after Xian Biao’s debacle. Some units likely arrived directly from Taiwan. They manned a total of three ships that joined Ang Chee’s forces.⁷³

However, the alliance failed in its objectives and nearly brought Jiu’s blossoming career to an end. The co-king received renewed Cochinchinese assistance in launching a successful counterattack that forced King Ang Chee to abandon Oudong and flee for Siam. He died along the way in 1677. During this moment of crisis, his younger brother, Ang Sor (1656–1725), succeeded to the throne. Ang Sor turned out to be a vigorous and capable ruler who dominated Cambodian politics for the next fifty years. During this lengthy period, he either reigned directly or abdicated and exercised power from behind the scenes. He would, moreover, flexibly alter the various roles according to prevailing circumstances. In this manner, Ang Sor provided much-needed stability and continuity to the troubled kingdom.⁷⁴

One of Ang Sor’s first acts as new ruler was to send a desperate appeal for help from King Narai (1632–1688, r. 1656–1688) of Siam. Narai promptly responded by sending an expeditionary force. The Siamese troops advanced along two established routes, one on land from the western border and the other by ship on the Gulf of Siam. The second path would naturally bring them to the shores of The Port. Apparently, the Siamese fleet sailed up to Banteay Meas, where they discovered Mo Jiu and carried him off to Ayutthaya. He remained a hostage in the capital for the next decade, where we leave him as he pondered his options.⁷⁵

Great Transitions

Whatever the nature of Mo Jiu’s earlier ties to the Dragon Gate, he largely missed out on a series of events in which this Ming loyalist contingent took center stage and paved the way for his establishment of The Port. Antony, Wheeler, and other scholars have correctly pointed out that the Dragon Gate did not seek asylum under the Nguyễn lord in 1679, as claimed by many Vietnamese sources. At the time, Yang Yandi and Xian Biao were still entrenched in their home base, while their ships alternated among Hainan, Guangzhou, Taiwan, and Cambodia, conducting trade, patrolling, and raiding and plundering in the South China Sea. The area of their activities naturally included the long, winding coastline of Vietnam. It would not be surprising if a large contingent of vessels docked near Đà Nẵng from time to time, whether to escape harsh weather or even to engage in plundering sprees. And, of course, the Nguyễn lord viewed them with a great degree of wariness, as Wheeler has shown. In fact, the Zheng and their affiliates, including the Dragon Gate, had trading relations with Cochinchina through the port of Hội An since at least the 1630s. So, these were an ongoing, familiar menace rather than a sudden intrusion.⁷⁶

Wheeler correctly suspects that the relationship between Cochinchina and the Dragon Gate was initially characterized more by rivalry than any sort of alliance. Indeed, the commanders supported Cambodian kings who had opposed the Nguyễn and leaned toward Siam. However, the situation in China drastically altered the existing configuration. In 1681, the Qing defeated all the rebel feudatories and drove the Zheng from their mainland possessions. In the process, the court secured the surrender of Xian Biao, who, along with his men, received seeds and tools and settled into an agricultural colony in Guangdong. Yang Yandi and Huang Jin now became the leading figures in the contingent. In 1682, the Qing occupied the stronghold of Dragon Gate, forcing them into permanent exile abroad.⁷⁷

According to the report of a Chinese junk captain to the Tokugawa authorities in Nagasaki that year, Yang Yandi evacuated his troops, numbering some 3,000 men, from the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan on seventy ships to Mesar, in Donay. Many scholars have spoken of this exile as a permanent break with the Zheng on Taiwan. They are correct, but to be precise, a severe disagreement broke out among Zheng partisans over whether to surrender to the Qing or relocate to a new colony abroad. In 1683, a Qing naval expedition into the Taiwan Strait forced the issue. The main Zheng leadership chose to surrender and relocate to mainland China, yielding Taiwan to Qing control. However, an influential faction, consisting of Dragon Gate commanders such as Yang Yandi, chose to sail to the water world, where a base had already been established during the 1660s. According to an unofficial or “wild” history (yeshi) sympathetic to the Ming cause, ships from Taiwan carried Zheng Chenggong’s younger brother, Lushe, and his entourage to a place called “Dongboshe Island,” meaning Donay.⁷⁸ There appeared to have truly been an effort to restore the Zheng organization overseas.

Despite the grand intentions, Zheng Lushe evidently lacked the influence and leadership skills to reconstitute the exiles into a cohesive force, and he soon disappeared from the historical records. The Dragon Gate became the instrument of other players in the geopolitics of mainland Southeast Asia. Since Donay came under the control of the Cambodian co-king, Ang Nan, Yang Yandi entered an alliance with him. It lends credence to the claim in the Việt Nam khai quốc chí truyện, the Cochinchinese historical novel, of him becoming sworn brothers with the ruler, except the ruler in question was the co-king and not Ang Sor, the main king. The brotherhood probably had concrete substance, since Ang Nan took a Chinese wife, who may have been a sister or cousin of Yang, or someone drawn from the Dragon Gate community. There is little evidence of direct contact between the Dragon Gate and the Nguyễn at that point. Nonetheless, the Cochinchinese benefited, since they did not have to expend resources of their own to support the co-king in his struggle with the Siamese-backed king, Ang Sor.⁷⁹

Yang and his units joined Ang Nan in a renewed offensive soon after their arrival in 1682. The alliance initially occupied the entire length of the Mekong and its tributaries up to the outskirts of Phnom Penh. In fear, Ang Sor abandoned Oudong and fled westward. The offensive soon ground to a halt, especially after a Siamese force came to the aid of the king. In the wake of another failed attack in 1684, Yang sent envoys to Ang Sor, claiming that the Dragon Gate forces merely wanted to borrow territory as a staging ground to prepare for an imminent return to the Chinese coast. They had no long-term ambitions to occupy Cambodia. Meanwhile, King Narai of Siam, Ang Sor’s protector, dispatched envoys to the Dragon Gate. Narai, claiming that he enjoyed friendly ties with Taiwan, invited Yang and his men to permanently reside in Siam. He promised the Dragon Gate forces a more secure base and the privilege of controlling maritime trade as before. Yang refused the offer, but he eventually grew apart from the Cochinchinese-backed co-king, Ang Nan, and left his patron. The Dragon Gate appeared to have then paid tentative allegiance to Ang Sor.⁸⁰

The fragile equilibrium broke down three years later, in 1687, because of broader developments in maritime East Asia. The Qing victory over the Zheng and annexation of Taiwan in 1683 owed much to the construction of a formidable navy from scratch. Overnight, China once again became the biggest naval power in East Asia, a position that it had not held since the fifteenth century. However, this success depended, in large part, upon the assistance of Zheng defectors, who provided much of the leadership, expertise, and sailors. After the incorporation of Taiwan, they formed an influential maritime faction that the court in Beijing could not entirely control. Its leading figure, Shi Lang (1621–1696), a former Zheng partisan, had commanded the expedition on Taiwan. He had the ambition to dominate the newly occupied island as his personal fiefdom and recreate the maritime hegemony of the Zheng.⁸¹

In 1684, Shi organized an expeditionary fleet under his subordinate, Chen Ang, a merchant from an educated gentry background. In a period of five years, Chen and his ships sailed, off and on, to different ports across the China Seas. The stated purpose was to inform Zheng merchants and military remnants still abroad of the news of Taiwan’s fall and persuade them to lay down their arms and return. A more hidden motive involved spying on the overseas Chinese communities and identifying recalcitrant Ming loyalist groups, with the possible aim of launching a large-scale campaign against them at a later point.⁸²

Chen Ang’s itinerary included Cochinchina and Cambodia. During his journey, he apparently achieved contact with the Dragon Gate leadership and handed over a written demand from the Fujian governor-general to surrender to the Qing and return to Fuzhou, the provincial capital, in exchange for clemency. Yang Yandi must have learned then that the Qing had taken diligent care of his wife and the rest of his family and resettled them from Taiwan to the mainland. Undoubtedly moved by this assurance, Yang hoped to give up and leave Cambodia. His second-in-command, Huang Jin, adamantly insisted upon staying. He wanted to preserve the Dragon Gate’s fighting power overseas and double down on its gains. The disagreement between the two intensified over 1688, when they once again teamed up with Ang Nan to revolt against Ang Sor. They got as far as Phnom Penh, but a Siamese-backed counteroffensive halted their further advance to Oudong and routed them.⁸³

After fleeing back to the Dragon Gate base at Mesar, Huang Jin assassinated Yang Yandi and took command of the entire contingent. With five ships and 500 men, Huang initiated a blockade of the Mekong. They would often raid villages situated along the banks of the waterways and canals, kidnapping Khmer commoners and holding them for ransom. All vessels, even royal Cambodian ships on official business on the domestic routes, were forced to stop and pay prohibitive duties. His actions so upset King Ang Sor that the ruler set up barricades and chains on the Mekong and Bassac near Phnom Penh and planned an offensive to dislodge them.⁸⁴

Amid the chaos, the co-king, Ang Nan, fled to Cochinchina and appealed to Lord Hiền’s successor, Nguyễn Phúc Thái (Lord Nghĩa, 1649–1691, r. 1687–1691) for assistance. This request took place around the time when the Qing fleet under Chen Ang paid a call at Cochinchina. Chen had another letter from the governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi, Guangdong being the Dragon Gate contingent’s home province. In it, the governor-general condemned Huang Jin for his unrighteous deeds, which brought misery and suffering upon foreign countries and endangered the Chinese coastline. The letter requested the Nguyễn lord to launch a punitive expedition against him. Whether the Qing knew it or not, the Nguyễn had long coveted Donay. Occupying it would connect the enclave of Saigon to the Cham rump state of Panduranga, which was already under Cochinchinese domination, and directly tap into part of the resource-rich Mekong Delta. Moreover, the area had seen a huge influx of Viet and Chinese migrants, whose numbers had diluted the original Khmer and Cham populations.⁸⁵

The governor-general’s request provided Lord Nghĩa with the legitimacy and moral right to act. In 1689, a Cochinchinese force of over 6,000 men and seventy ships came to the aid of Ang Nan. The commanders of the expedition pretended to enlist Huang Jin’s support, calling upon him to serve as the vanguard for an upcoming expedition against King Ang Sor, who was already poised to attack the Dragon Gate. In reality, the Cochinchinese prepared an ambush. When their forces met up with Huang, they pounced upon him. Huang fled into the interior, disappearing from the historical records, but his wife and family members were rounded up and killed. With the backing of Ang Nan and the Cochinchinese, Chen Shangchuan emerged as the new commander of the Dragon Gate contingent.⁸⁶

According to Wheeler, Chen “never served the Zheng regime at all and was probably nothing more than a career brigand.” Indeed, Qing documents show that he was never garrison commander of Gao-Lei-Lian, the title given to him in the Vietnamese records. Before the Qing permanently occupied the three prefectures in 1680, the position was held almost continuously by Zu Zeqing (1632–1680), who constantly changed sides among the Qing, the feudatory generals, and the Zheng. Chen may have later appropriated this title to increase his prestige and standing. Moreover, Chen does not get mentioned at all in the Việt Nam khai quốc chí truyện, the eighteenth-century Cochinchinese historical novel. His name first appears in Trịnh Hoài Đức’s gazetteer in the early nineteenth century and then gets picked up in official Nguyễn dynasty compilations. Đức may have wanted to cultivate a legitimate lineage and founding legend for Minh Hương elites such as himself through an association with the Dragon Gate and whitewashing its shadier aspects. Chen proved perfect for the task, since prior to his arrival in Cochinchina, he was relatively unknown compared to Yang and Huang, whose reputations were tarnished. Besides his legacy as a Ming loyalist pioneer, he also acknowledged the dominant position of the Cochinchinese rulers.⁸⁷

However, Chen Shangchuan was not entirely an upstart, even if his credentials were exaggerated. Accounts contemporary to his time confirm that he was a subordinate of Yang Yandi and had connections to Taiwan. Moreover, there may have been a marriage alliance with the top Dragon Gate leaders. According to the clan genealogy from Chen Shangchuan’s native village of Tiantou, in Wuchuan County of western Guangdong, one of his two wives had the surname of Xian, most likely a relative of Xian Biao. However, Chen’s position in the Dragon Gate hierarchy was probably minor compared to Yang and Huang Jin. The troops under Chen’s leadership settled near present-day Biên Hòa, a remote and sparsely populated part of Donay north of Saigon. It must be pointed out that his base was subordinate to Yang Yandi at Mesar farther to the south, and not a separate force, as implied by Đức and the official Nguyễn dynasty narrative.⁸⁸

Despite the massive Cochinchinese intervention, the invasion of Cambodia once again failed, as King Ang Sor, with Siamese assistance, drove out the combined forces. Nonetheless, the Cochinchinese gained much more than they lost from the campaign. In exchange for their support, Chen Shangchuan had ceded to the Nguyễn lord his original area of settlement at Biên Hòa and proceeded to occupy the main Dragon Gate base of Mesar.⁸⁹ Ang Nan, who relied heavily on both men, had no choice but to approve.

In 1699, the Nguyễn set up administrative divisions in the recently acquired territory. Like the rest of Cochinchina, and perhaps more so because of the recent nature of the annexation, the militarized institution of the camp (dinh) administered all affairs, including tax collection, law enforcement, and frontier defense. The lord ordered the transfer of the Frontier Suppression camp, previously located to the north of Champa, to Biên Hòa. Another camp, Border Garrison (Phiên Trấn), operated from Saigon. True to its name, it would serve as the vanguard for future expansion to the south and west. Biên Hòa became the seat of a parallel civilian administration, Gia Định prefecture, which, in turn, oversaw two districts encompassing the scope of both camps. However, these units, based on the Lê model used in the north, appeared to be largely symbolic at the time of their establishment and for some time afterward, with no record of any civil officials serving in these roles.⁹⁰

At this point, after decades of warfare in Cambodia and devastated by the internecine conflict between Yang Yandi and Huang Jin, the ranks of the Dragon Gate had severely diminished. Soldiers were killed off or deserted, with many of them going back to China. According to a report from a captain of a junk from Cambodia to the Nagasaki authorities, Chen’s following had dwindled to 400–500 men and six or seven ships, and there were no longer fresh recruits. Chen was so strapped of revenues to administer his part of Donay that he resorted to periodic blockades of the Mekong and the extortion and plundering of passing vessels.⁹¹ Capitalizing upon his growing weakness, the Nguyễn made him an offer that he could not refuse. In 1699, Chen was appointed the military governor (đô đốc) of the Frontier Garrison camp in Saigon. However, he could maintain his autonomous base at Mesar and center his activities around there. A junk captain from Cochinchina confirmed Chen’s submission to the Nagasaki authorities, saying that Chen had become a “military headman” for the Nguyễn. This dependence was mirrored in the economic realm. Both Saigon and Mesar, the areas under Chen’s oversight, gradually declined as commercial hubs and became subsidiary ports to Biên Hòa, with which a frequent communication was maintained.⁹²

A similar consolidation occurred across the border in Cambodia under Ang Sor. The king’s old archnemesis, Ang Nan, had passed away in 1691. Through skillful negotiations, Ang Sor persuaded the former co-king’s half-Chinese son, Ang Em (1674–1736), to return from exile in Cochinchina. The long-standing political division between maritime and inland Cambodia had temporarily healed. However, the issue of succession continued to plague the king. In 1695, he tried abdicating in favor of another royal relative, but the young man died after sitting on the throne for a mere ten months, and Ang Sor was forced to become king again.⁹³

Ang Sor then faced a conflicted choice between Ang Em, the deceased co-king Ang Nan’s son, who received the backing of Cochinchina, and his own son, the pro-Siamese Ang Tham (1690–1747). Given the heavy involvement of the two outside powers, Ang Sor had to strike a delicate balance, while anticipating where the winds blew in the larger geopolitical environment. In 1699, after defeating a Cochinchinese-backed insurgency, he probably decided to placate the Nguyễn lord by abdicating in favor of Ang Em. The designated heir reigned for only a year before he gave the throne back to Ang Sor. In 1702, Ang Sor signaled a leaning toward the Siamese side when he placed twelve-year-old Ang Tham on the throne. But two years later, Ang Tham followed Ang Em’s example and returned the throne to his father.⁹⁴

While tackling the thorny issue of succession, Ang Sor enacted major institutional and judicial reforms aimed at achieving greater centralization and consolidation, especially in response to external threats. Their most visible and important legacy involved the creation and compilation of a vast corpus of legal codes that meticulously regulated the operations of bureaucracy and society. These laws continue to influence the Cambodian legal system to the present day. Another important measure involved the reassertion of control over the provinces of the water world, whose administration had languished amid the continuous chaos and warfare of the past decade. He ordered the restoration of customs stations at Sacred Pond, Bassac, Black Water, and Kramoun Sar.⁹⁵

Because the Dragon Gate dominated the mouths of the Mekong through blockade and piracy for years, the Gulf of Siam coast became Cambodia’s only reliable means of accessing the trading networks of maritime East Asia. Many merchants had redirected their business to Banteay Meas. Accordingly, a series of tollhouses were established “along the river” and “river promontory of Banteay Meas.” These would correspond to the land route and Fortress River culminating in The Port.⁹⁶

The Return of Mo Jiu

Let us now return to Mo Jiu in Ayutthaya. After years of serving as a hostage, he was able to bribe an influential official at the court into granting him permission to relocate to a Siamese dependency known as Vạn Tuế Sơn in the Vietnamese records. It was most likely C: Wanfosui T: Bang Pla Soi, a busy commercial port and a center of Chinese settlement in present-day Chonburi, situated along the Gulf of Siam coast.⁹⁷ From there, it would be easier for him to make an escape when the opportune conditions arose. An unspecified “internal incident” mentioned in the Vietnamese sources gave Jiu the opening to act. It most likely referred to the palace coup in 1688 in which Phetracha (1632–1703, r. 1688–1703), a royal councillor, took advantage of a popular uprising to usurp the throne from Narai, who died shortly afterward. Jiu took advantage of this chaotic situation to flee Siam, disguised as a commoner.⁹⁸

He took refuge at Ream, an island right across the Cambodian border, around 1690. According to Dinh’s genealogical biography, Jiu sent rich bribes to the “favored consort of the kingdom and her ministers.” The source must be referring to Ang Sor’s wife, whom the ruler elevated to the title of queen the same year. Because of her influence, Jiu recovered his original position as supervisor of foreign merchants. Given the importance of the Gulf of Siam, he and some of the other shahbandar were stationed at Banteay Meas rather than Phnom Penh.⁹⁹ In a manner like the Chinese garrison commanders, or Chen Chong Tok, before his time, he acquired his own mercenary army, consisting of several hundred officers and soldiers.¹⁰⁰ They would probably include his relatives, associates from his Leizhou hometown, and professional warriors recruited locally or from China. Their task was to oversee the defense of the coastline. Apparently, the Dragon Gate’s activities had severely destabilized the Gulf of Siam littoral, exacerbating the preexisting predation from multiethnic piratical bands. In exchange for a promise to combat piracy, Jiu was given a revenue farm in the provinces along the Gulf of Siam coastline.¹⁰¹ Moreover, he could keep Ream as his personal base. He soon transformed the place into a bustling site for trade.¹⁰²

In the entrepreneurial spirit of finding new sources of revenue, Jiu sponsored the opening of the sparsely populated hinterlands of the water world beyond the coastal areas. Tonkin literati Phạm Nguyễn Du (1739–1786) describes these places as “completely uncultivated. Vicious snakes and strange creatures, swampy water and poisonous weeds congregate. Fishermen and woodcutters rarely visit, and there [are] no traces of habitation.”¹⁰³ Mo Jiu’s son, Tianci, when describing the original condition of the Hà Tiên area as a “remote wilderness,” was probably referring to these hinterlands.¹⁰⁴ Jiu drained the swamps, cleared the foliage, and constructed canals. He tried recruiting migrants from other parts of Cambodia but appeared to have little success. On one occasion, he took in a large group of Lao refugees. Fleeing disorder and civil war in their homeland, they had settled in villages south of Phnom Penh. Since they frequently caused trouble and harassed the residents in their new locale, the court arranged for Mo Jiu to settle them on Ream. The newcomers did not stay there for long. They launched a rebellion that Jiu crushed. Some fled into the forests, while others went to Cochinchina.¹⁰⁵

The most sustainable source of labor for exploiting the new land was the land-hungry Viet and Cham migrants, who had streamed into the core of the water world starting from the late seventeenth century. After Phú Quốc and the islands of the Gulf of Siam coast, they established several farming communities in the hilly area west of The Port’s center. The Cambodians collectively called the hills around which they congregated Phnom Yuon (Viet Mountain). Jiu further established seven villages and communes for the Viet in Phú Quốc, Black Water, Kramoun Sar, Kampot, Ream, and Kampong Som.¹⁰⁶ Since the Cochinchinese settlers were entirely dependent on his patronage, they formed a solid base of support separate from the Cambodian court.

He cemented the connection by marrying a Viet woman named Bùi Thị Lẫm, whose native place was a settlement near Biên Hòa. At some point in the first decade of the eighteenth century, on the night of April 7, his new wife conceived their son and heir to his enterprise at their residence in Ream, located next to a lagoon. As local lore would have it, auspicious rays of light suddenly brightened up the dark sky at the moment of his birth. Then, a statue of the Buddha over a meter high emerged from the water close to the shoreline, and its radiance reflected across the lagoon’s surface. Witnessing the miraculous spectacle, some Khmer monks went to Mo Jiu and congratulated him on his immense fortune. It was a sign that his son would become a leader of tremendous wisdom and capability, they told him. Overjoyed, Jiu tried to move the Buddha statue, but could not lift it up no matter how hard he tried. In the end, he ordered the construction of a Theravada temple along the shoreline to house it. The son’s personal name was Cong, and his style name was Shilin, but he was most commonly and popularly known as Tianci, a “gift from Heaven.” The couple would go on to have a daughter named C: Mo Jinding V: Mạc Kim Định, who would play an influential role in the governance of The Port.¹⁰⁷

Jiu’s settlement at Ream continued to prosper. The number of vessels from different lands multiplied to the point that its harbor and markets became highly congested. Needing a more spacious commercial settlement, he again made use of his connections to the Cambodian court. It could be about this time that Mo Jiu formed a close relationship with Ang Em. Later, Jiu would outfit a mission to Japan under his name. Perhaps with Ang Em’s assistance, as well as additional promises of fighting piracy and ensuring maritime security, King Ang Sor granted Jiu administrative control over The Port, separating Seashore as a province from Banteay Meas for the final time. The Port was already becoming a bustling crossroads where merchants could conduct trade directly after disembarking from their ships and without having to travel upriver. Soon after Mo Jiu took over and with his encouragement, the new settlement not only surpassed his former base of Ream, but also Banteay Meas to become the preeminent commercial center along the Gulf of Siam littoral.¹⁰⁸

In 1707, Ang Sor, ailing and in no mood to reign any further, abdicated once again in favor of his son, Ang Tham, this time for good. With Ang Sor gradually fading out of the picture, tensions between Ang Tham and Ang Em rapidly escalated.¹⁰⁹ Mo Jiu sensed renewed danger on the horizon. Since Ang Tham had Siamese protection, he feared a repeat of his earlier experience of captivity in Ayutthaya. He decided to act upon the suggestions of a close adviser and seek protection from Cochinchina.¹¹⁰ He sent two envoys to Huế, where they received the warm reception of Nguyễn Phúc Chu (Lord Minh, 1675–1725, r. 1691–1725). The lord, eager to acquire whatever bargaining chips he could to expand his influence over Cambodia, readily recognized Jiu as the vassal of an independent Hà Tiên Kingdom (C: Hexian guo V: Hà Tiên quốc) (see Figure 1.2).¹¹¹

Figure 1.2 Statue of Mo Jiu, situated at the current Hà Tiên city limits southeast of the city center on National Road 80.

Photograph by author.

The name of Hà Tiên, which Jiu devised for The Port, actually had earlier antecedents. A similar term had appeared in 1682, when French missionaries traveling by cart from Banteay Meas boarded a boat at a coastal hamlet that they called Atiam.¹¹² At the time, Mo Jiu was probably still a hostage in Siam. Moreover, the place was most likely not The Port itself, which already had a fortress, because of its historic role as an established bastion of defense against a Siamese invasion by sea.¹¹³ The term Atiam was probably derived from Peam, the Khmer for “seashore.” The French might be referring to the location of the hamlet within the province of Seashore or, literally, being next to the sea along the Gulf of Siam. What Mo Jiu did was to Sinicize Atiam to C: Hexian V: Hà Tiên, meaning “River of Fairies,” a name laden with mystique, legend, and rich historical allusions. He then applied the name both to his newly acquired realm and its main urban center, the former Seashore provincial seat. So, most likely, the etymology of Hà Tiên came through the mediation of a European language, perhaps Portuguese, who were a sizable community in Cambodia, and in this order: Peam → A Peam → Atiam → Hà Tiên.

Jiu’s Viet wife, Bùi Thị Lẫm, appeared to have played a vital role in initiating contacts with Cochinchina. A brief report transmitted to Frederick Pigou (d. 1792), director of the English East India Company (EIC), in 1771 mentions that she was “a considerable woman … the better to focus his conquest.” She either came from a wealthy family that acquired great fortune from trade or landholdings or had valuable political connections. It may very well have been at least the latter, since the vice-commander of the Frontier Suppression garrison at Biên Hòa, where her family came from, was Nguyễn Cửu Vân. He, in turn, cooperated closely with Chen Shangchuan.¹¹⁴ Bùi Thị Lẫm’s father may have served as an officer under Vân. Vân would play an instrumental role in the events that followed.

In 1713, open warfare broke out between Ang Tham and Ang Em. The Port may have been the key reason for the hostilities. Ang Tham was furious at Mo Jiu for sharing control over a vital and strategic part of the country’s coastline with a foreign power, especially the patron of his bitter rival for the throne. According to Phạm Nguyễn Du, “the Khmer, in anger, attacked Jiu and his troops.” Since Jiu had just acquired The Port, he did not have time to build an adequate defensive infrastructure other than relying upon the antiquated fortress in the heart of the city. Unable to mount an effective resistance, he fled to Huế.¹¹⁵ Narratives of him drawn from nineteenth-century Nguyễn dynasty sources make no mention of the escape. They claim that Jiu traveled to Huế voluntarily to express his gratitude to the Nguyễn lord. But a careful analysis of events occurring in Cochinchina, Siam, and Cambodia at the time lends greater credence to Phạm Nguyễn Du’s version. The Nguyễn dynasty sources probably omitted mention of the exact circumstances of Jiu’s visit as a face-saving measure for the Mo clan.

During his exile, he had a personal audience with Lord Minh. Perhaps anticipating that the ruler would take advantage of his adversity to demand more concessions from him, Jiu preemptively asked to place The Port under direct Cochinchinese rule. Highly pleased, Lord Minh gave Hà Tiên the status of garrison (trấn), and appointed Jiu its commander (tổng binh). He would pay tribute to the lord once every two years. Jiu was also incorporated into the Cochinchinese nobility, receiving the title of Cửu Ngọc marquis (hầu).¹¹⁶ The rank and title roughly corresponded to his Cambodian assignment as a military governor.

Having sealed this deal, the lord arranged for Nguyễn Cửu Vân to escort Jiu and help him recover The Port. He must have been a witness to the Cochinchinese attack on King Ang Tham in 1714 or 1715, led by Vân and Chen Shangchuan, along with mobilized Lao refugees and highlanders who had fled to Saigon. This event had to have occurred first before completing the land journey to The Port. The combined force overwhelmed enemy resistance and surrounded Oudong. Trapped inside for three months, Ang Tham, his son, and his younger brother escaped from the southern gate of the capital to Ayutthaya. Ang Em then ascended the throne.¹¹⁷

It must have been during this journey that Mo Jiu got to know Chen Shangchuan, if the two had not already met. After accompanying him back to The Port, part of the Cochinchinese forces remained behind. There must have also been members of the former Dragon Gate, who would later become incorporated into the militarized hierarchy of The Port. Combined with Jiu’s existing mercenary army of a few hundred, he probably had at most a thousand troops and a handful of war junks at his disposal. Clearly, the cost of Jiu’s exile was the acceptance of closer supervision and greater interference in the internal affairs of his realm to serve the Nguyễn lord’s strategic aims toward Cambodia. But in the more immediate term, they helped Jiu repel a predictable backlash from Siam in 1717, when it launched a full-scale attack on land and sea in an attempt to reinstate Ang Tham.¹¹⁸

The key maritime pathway toward the political and commercial heartland of Cambodia went through The Port. It became the initial target of an invasion force consisting of 5,000 troops led by Phraya Kosa, himself an ethnic Chinese noble. Mo Jiu, his wife, and some of his other family members and followers fled to the safety of his old base in Ream. The Siamese sailed unimpeded into Fortress River and charged into the city. They plundered, set fire, and laid waste to it. They then ran into an ambush from a joint Cochinchinese and Cambodian fleet waiting for them at the mouth of Fortress River. The Siamese were forced to flee. Many of their ships were sunk at sea on the way back because of storms.¹¹⁹

However, the Siamese enjoyed much greater success on land. Together with Ang Tham and two other princes, they advanced as far as the gates of Oudong. The Cochinchinese-backed Ang Em was forced to sue for peace. In exchange for the return of Ang Tham and his retinue to exile in Ayutthaya, he agreed to subject the western part of his kingdom, centered upon the Tonle Sap Great Lake, to Siamese influence. Concurrently, he would defer to Cochinchina in matters related to Phnom Penh and the water world. Since this area was much more integrated with the maritime East Asian trading networks and formed a more vital component of Cambodia’s economy, the Nguyễn lord still had the greatest voice in its affairs. In fact, the Scottish trader and explorer Alexander Hamilton, who visited the area of The Port in 1720, observed that the Cochinchinese court made the major decisions in foreign affairs, including the types of commercial partners that Cambodia could engage with.¹²⁰

In 1722, Ang Em yielded the throne to his son, Satha (1702–1749). Ang Em’s position received a further boost three years later, when Ang Sor, the old king who had been the preeminent figure in Cambodia’s political life since 1675, passed away at the age of sixty-nine. In 1729, Ang Em, confident in his newly acquired power, made his son abdicate in his favor. However, his reign of seven months was not popular, and he was forced to return Satha to the throne and assume the role of co-king instead.¹²¹ Despite the minor turbulence, the situation in Cambodia had stabilized. Ang Em and Satha adopted a largely pro-Cochinchinese stance. Naturally, both rulers also tolerated Mo Jiu, who had come to his own, independent arrangement of vassalage with Cochinchina.

Wheeler, Antony, Li Qingxin, and other scholars have challenged the notion that the arrival of Ming loyalist Chinese in the water world depended upon the patronage of the Nguyễn. Indeed, merchants, sojourners, and immigrants from Fujian had been active across maritime East Asia since at least the sixteenth century, forming networks and colonies in their own right. State actors, such as Cambodia and Cochinchina, and European enterprises such as the VOC recruited them to obtain domestic and regional advantages. As we have seen, the Chinese became mercenaries in Cambodia and, at times, commanded strategic garrisons in the area of The Port. The Ming loyalists were established in Cochinchina since the 1650s and integrated into local society through intermarriage, trade at ports such as Hội An, and serving in the bureaucracy. This was almost thirty years before 1679, when nineteenth-century Vietnamese sources claim that Yang Yandi and Chen Shangchuan requested asylum from the Nguyễn. Moreover, the Dragon Gate’s permanent exile to the water world only occurred in 1682 and independently of Cochinchina.¹²²

Initially, the Chinese networks operated in a multipolar and multiethnic environment. The withdrawal of Japan from the sea-lanes and the Ming–Qing transition were crucial turning points in maritime East Asian history. For Wheeler, the 1683 Qing annexation of Taiwan “signals an unprecedented projection of Chinese sovereignty into the sea” through control over the crucial shipping lanes of the Taiwan Strait.¹²³ However, it must be pointed out that the Qing built upon the foundations of the Zheng organization, whose merchants filled up most of the vacuum once occupied by the Japanese. The Zheng expulsion of the Dutch from Taiwan in 1662 deprived the VOC, their fiercest competitor, of a forward base for penetration into Japan, China, and mainland Southeast Asia. The loss of the island marked the beginning of the company’s gradual divestment from active involvement north of the Malay Peninsula. Macao and Manila remained under the control of Portugal and Spain, respectively. But like Batavia, these isolated outposts could only survive by integrating into the existing intra-Asian trading networks.¹²⁴ The Zheng maritime hegemony halted the first round of European global expansion.

In the process, the Chinese, initially from southern Fujian but later including Cantonese groups, became the preeminent mercantile presence on the seas. States in the region came to see them as an indispensable third force to harness and employ for their own geopolitical objectives. The Dragon Gate commanders tried to leverage their position between Siam, Cambodia, and Cochinchina to obtain a new base in the water world after their withdrawal from the Chinese coast. However, internecine conflicts severely weakened them to the point that Chen Shangchuan, the eventual winner, had no choice but to accept subordination under Cochinchina. Mo Jiu would learn from their lesson, carefully forging ties to both horizontal networks and hierarchically structured state actors to ensure his own legitimate and independent space at The Port.