page_title: Military conquests of the Ming dynasty
section_title: Invasion of Vietnam
hierarchical_section_title: Military conquests of the Ming dynasty / Yongle reign (1403-1424) / Invasion of Vietnam
context_page_description: The military conquests of the Ming dynasty were instrumental to the dynasty's hold on power during the early Ming.
context_section_description: A number of major military expeditions into Southeast Asia occurred during the Yongle reign. In 1406, in an effort to increase Ming influence and power in Đại Ngu (Vietnam), the country that was known to the Ming as Annam (the "Pacified South"), it had appeared that Hồ Quý Ly, a powerful noble of Vietnam had seized power in Vietnam and attempted to murder all members of the current Trần ruling family. The Yongle emperor attempted to solve the problem peacefully, dispatching envoys and the self-claimed surviving member of the House of Trần, Trần Thiên Bính (陳添平) to Vietnam. He was assassinated and in that same year, two huge Chinese armies were sent along two routes, via Yunnan and Guangxi, into Đại Ngu. Chinese forces claimed that seven million Vietnamese were killed in this initial campaign to take the polity. In 1407, Đại Ngu became Ming China's 14th province, and remained so until 1428, when the Ming were forced to withdraw by a Vietnamese independence movement led by Lê Lợi. In contrast to the name Annam ("Pacified South"), this 21-year period was one of almost incessant fighting.
  As soon as the Ming forces took control of the polity, changes were instituted. In the first year, 7,600 tradesmen and artisans (including gun founders) captured in Đại Ngu were sent to the Ming capital at today's Nanjing. This stripping of some of the most skilled members of society extensively affected Vietnamese society. Subsequently, more Chinese and non-Chinese troops were brought into the region to maintain some semblance of control, and a wide range of new organs of civil administration were re-established. By 1408, Annam had 41 subprefectures, and 208 counties, all administered in a Chinese mode but often staffed by Vietnamese. Regardless of the extent to which political hegemony was thrown off in the late 1420s, when the Ming were driven out, the administrative legacy of the Chinese occupation must have had a major and wide-ranging impact on the society of the country. In a claimed effort to further inculcate Chinese ways, Confucian schools, which existed already from several hundred years before, were re-established in Chinese style, and Chinese were appointed to teach in them. In an attempt to assimilate the country into the Chinese cultural sphere, this period saw an invaluable part of Vietnamese academic and historical works destroyed by the Ming authorities.
  In 1407 a new Maritime Trade Supervisorate was established at Yuntun, while two new such offices were established at Xinping (新平) and Shunhua (順化) in 1408. Thus, within two years, three maritime trade supervisors had been created in this new province, the same number as existed in the rest of China. This was a clear indication of the desire of the Ming to control maritime trade to the south and exploit the economic advantage of such control.
  Other economic exploitation involved grain taxes, annual levies of lacquer, sappanwood, kingfisher feathers, fans and aromatics, and the imposition of monopolies on gold, silver, salt, iron, and fish. In addition, eunuchs were sent to Jiaozhi with the task of collecting treasure for the Emperor, but an equal amount of treasure collection appears to have been done for themselves. The rapaciousness of the eunuchs, at least as depicted in Ming accounts, was such that even the emperors intervened in appointments. The Hongxi Emperor objected to the re-sending of the eunuch Ma Qi to Annam, when he attempted to have himself reappointed to control the gold, silver, aromatics and pearls of the region in 1424.
  By 1414, the Ming was sufficiently well-entrenched in the northern Annam to allow it to push further, establishing four further subprefectures in a region south of Annam, which had formerly been administered by the Hồ dynasty and still free from Chinese influence, as well as some parts of the northern border of Champa. There are authors who believe that the Chinese occupation of Ðại Việt in this period played some role in the later southward expansion of the Vietnamese state. However, the Vietnamese southward expansion had begun in the Lý 
caption: Ming-era matchlock firearms used in the 15th to 17th centuries.
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