China as a sea power

Lo's greatest strength is his familiarity with Chinese sources; his greatest weaknesses are the ways in which he occasionally uses those sources: uncritically and without discussion of conflicting accounts in other sources. His strengths and failures are both evident in his brief discussion of Khubilai's campaign to Java. Lo draws upon sources that I have never seen cited in any other publication about that campaign, and his account offers some surprises. His discussion of the spread of anti-Mongol sentiment throughout Southeast Asia by Chinese who fled before the Mongols--including remnants of the Southern Song army and navy--combined with his note about the Cham king Indravarman's request for aid from Java add much to the complexity of the story of the Yuan campaign to Java. On the other hand--and this is partly Elleman's fault--it is sometimes impossible to know from whence Lo took his material. We are told a story, with an occasional footnote, but the story is not simply taken from the Chinese sources: it is interpreted and re-presented, and where the sources disagree, those disagreements are not mentioned. Even when he cites a source, the citation is sometimes difficult to decipher. For example, footnote 55 on page 221 offers "GCWL, ch. 41, p. 16" and  nothing else. Since the book contains no list of abbreviations and that abbreviation is nowhere spelled out, the reader is left wondering. There are earlier references to Su Tianzhuo, Guochao Wenlei (1342), (SBCK) and to Su Tianzhuo, Guochao Wenlei (SBBY), and I have assumed that these all refer to the 1342 compilation Guochao Wenlei (國朝文類) also known as the Yuan wenlei (元文類), but neither Lo nor Ellemann offer more definite bibliographical information, and the "Selected bibliography" includes neither Su Tianzhuo nor any reference to a GCWL, SBBY, SBCK or Guochao Wenlei. Yet in spite of the irritating absence of clear and complete references and more footnotes to indicate exactly what are the sources of his Lo's narrative, just learning that the Guochao Wenlei includes material that has not appeared in any previous discussion of the Java campaign was an important find for this reader.

While Lo's utilization of previously undiscussed sources for Song-Yuan maritime history is a strong point, his underutilization of non-Chinese sources is a problem, especially when it comes to interpretation of the Chinese discussion of foreign lands and peoples. It may be that he did not have access to Niwa Tomosaburo's monograph on Yuan relations with Java (中国・ジャバ交涉史 - Chūgoku Jyaba kōshōshi)as it had only been published in 1953, but Lo used no non-Chinese sources for that campaign when there had been a spate of publications in Dutch between 1894 and 1957 as well as discussions in more general histories written in Dutch, English and French. It is also more than surprising that a monograph on Yuan China should rely so completely on Chinese sources: of the immense literature in European languages on the Mongols and Yuan China, Lo cites a single biography of Chinggis Khan (Martin, 1950) and Howorth's History of the Mongols from 1876--nothing else. In his accounts of the campaigns to Japan and Korea, Lo does refer to both Japanese and Korean works, though they are few, but in his accounts of the campaigns to Annam and Champa, he relies almost entirely on Chinese sources, citing Vietnamese sources only as they are cited or quoted in secondary literature in Japanese.

This sino-centric approach to the history of China is not that surprising in a work written in the 1950's, but it is no less problematic for that. In the many passages detailing the composition of soldiers, sailors, commanders and crew, we repeatedly find a multi-ethnic navy drawn from all over the Yuan territory, yet Lo comes very close to stating that the Yuan conquest of the Southern Song was a civil war rather than a conquest by a non-Han people:

“This merely emphasizes the fact that the Yuan navy was patterned after the Song navy, used captured Song ships and crew, and exploited Song maritime experience and technology. Its guiding geniuses were Han Chinese, from Zhang Song who built boats for Chinggis Qan in 1218, ... to Zhang Hongfan, whose victory at Yaishan climaxed the rise of the Yuan navy. Without the assistance of the Han Chinese, the Mongols would have had a difficult task in building a navy and in their conquest of South China. In retrospect, the Yuan navy was essentially the Song navy.” (p. 246)

The impression that Lo's narrative gives--at least to a Mongolist--is that he proceeds from Song to Ming as though the Mongols were simply incorporated into Chinese history rather than radically altering it. He takes great pains to argue that it was the threat from the Jin and the Yuan from the north that turned the Song leadership southward towards the sea and the development of its navy, but his maritime history of the Yuan is set out as a history of the Han navy. We are informed that the "guiding geniuses" of the Yuan navy were "Han Chinese" and the entire narrative of the Yuan conquest of the Southern Song is a narrative of a civil war. Far from understanding the Yuan adoption of the Song navy as consistent with their practice elsewhere of incorporating enemy soldiers and technologies into their military strategy, Lo would apparently like us to believe that Han Chinese defeated the Southern Song and the Mongols were actually -- subservient? -- to Han military--or at least naval--superiority. In Lo's interpretation, the Mongols could not have conquered China: only the Song navy could do that.

Perhaps this reviewer's interest in Mongolian affairs reads too much into Lo's conclusions, but passing from the Song navy to the Ming navy as though the Mongols were involved only peripherally is a bit much. It is especially jarring when the main thesis Lo wishes to develop is that Chinese naval power waxed and waned according to "cycles of cohesion and division, strength and weakness, prosperity and impoverishment, and expansion and contraction" (p. 343). In his conclusion Lo states clearly that it was the Mongols who "reunited China by force" (p. 342), but you would hardly get that understanding from the narrative that precedes the conclusion.

In spite of my rather serious reservations about Lo's attitude towards sources and his use (and non-use) of them, the book is a wonderful addition to an all too sparse literature. I truly regret not having had the opportunity to read it many years ago, and expect to turn to it again as I turn my own attention to the Mongol campaigns in mainland Southeast Asia. For anyone interested in the Yuan campaigns from Korea to Java, it is a very good book to begin with, and for anyone interested in the history of overseas communities of Chinese, the book also has much to offer. 

Reviewed by David Bade, University of Chicago (retired) (dwbade1958@outlook.com)