Returning now to the three sets of Ming policies and practices detailed above, and in the light of the ideas and definitions of Armitage, Osterhammel and Emerson, it appears that there is quite some basis for classifying them as the actions of a colonial state.
1. The eunuch-led voyages at the beginning of the 15th century constituted only a proto maritime colonialism as there was no real rule over a people or territory. There was rule over nodes and networks. The military constituted the force on which the Ming armadas depended and their role was the maintenance of the pax Ming, which provided the Ming state with a capacity to influence polities and, at least in some ways, to achieve some short-term economic advantage.
2. The Ming invasion of Đại Việt is perhaps the most obvious example of a colonial adventure. There was invasion, occupation, the imposition of a military and civil administration, economic exploitation and domination by a court in the capital of the dominating power. The obvious decolonisation which occurred following the failure of this enterprise underlines its colonial nature.
3. The Ming invasion and occupation of the Yun-nan Tai polities during the 15th century was the most successful of the colonial ventures examined, as many of the areas colonised during the Ming still form a part of the People’s Republic of China today. There can be little doubt that these actions by the Ming rulers were colonial in nature. They involved the use of huge military force to invade peoples who were ethnically different from the Chinese, to occupy their territory, to break that territory into smaller administrative units, to appoint pliant rulers and “advisers” and to economically exploit the regions so occupied. The Ming colonial armies, local and Chinese, provided the actual or threatened violence necessary to maintain the Ming colonial administration in the Tai areas of Yun-nan.
Examination of the colonial experience in Southeast Asia has long remained limited to the period subsequent to the arrival of European forces in the region. The discussion above, even if not sufficient to sway all readers to all of its argument, should at least open an avenue for recognising that in investigating colonialism in Southeast Asia, we need to extend the existing temporal limits and include within our considerations the actions of the successive polities we know under the rubric “China”.
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