ARI Working Paper Series

Pre-European Asian gunpowder technology has received insufficient attention and the transfers of firearms from Ming China to Dai Viet (modern northern Vietnam) and their implications are a case in point. On the one hand, this paper demonstrates how the Vietnamese acquired gunpowder technology from the Ming from the late fourteenth to early fifteenth centuries. It thus solves an old issue regarding the invention and borrowing of gunpowder technology between the Chinese and Vietnamese. On the other hand, it shows the Vietnamese also contributed some superior techniques to Chinese military technology.

The paper argues that the utilization of Chinese gunpowder technology by the Vietnamese had profound implications for the history of mainland Southeast Asia. This technology empowered Dai Viet to defeat its age-old foe Champa (modern central and southern Vietnam) in 1471 and as a result the political geography of eastern mainland Southeast Asia changed permanently.