The Lands Below the Winds: The Mainland
Indochina, Southeast Asia, The Lands Below the Winds, regardless of the name one chooses, it is clear that this is a region of diverse and many terrains, environments, peoples, cultures, and states. Unlike China with its long periods of unification (and many periods of division as well, it must be said) or even India which saw brief periods of near unification at the heights of the Mauryan Empire and Delhi Sultanate, Southeast Asia has never been an Imperial power. The area is certainly no stranger to empire, with Srivijaya, the Cholas, Majapahit, and the Cham, amongst others, building powerful domains, but none, even at the height of their glory, came close to uniting all of the lands below the winds under a single banner.
A major reason for that is that this far-flung area is also a lightly peopled one, with population centers scattered few and far between. From the mountains of northern Burma to the volcanic islands of the Moluccas dwell 25 million people, less than that of Germany. Even Mataram, a demographic powerhouse by Indonesian standards, has 3 million people, comparable to that of the Thrakesian theme alone.
Because of the fragmentation and comparatively low population, western influence is much more broadly and deeply felt in Island Asia. An additional factor is that as a vast archipelago, western naval superiority has much greater influence than it does on the continental landmasses of India and China. Western influence is correspondingly less significant in the territorial kingdoms of mainland Indochina, where sea-power means less.
Not all of the mainland realms are large territorial monarchies. The Buddhist Kingdom of Arakan controls the Arakan coast between the Bay of Bengal and the mountains that shut it off from the polities of the Irrawaddy River valley. A maritime-focused state, the Arakanese are quite proficient pirates, still using native-type vessels but often arming them with the latest cannons, sometimes cooperating with the pirate towns of Madagascar. Arakan is also a center for the eastern slave trade; with the vast lands and smaller populations, control of people matters more than territory.
On the other side of the mountains, the Mon Kingdom of Pegu dominates the lower Irrawaddy. Its territory is small but heavily populated by the region’s standards, with Pegu herself claiming more than 110,000 inhabitants, making it one of the biggest in all of Southeast Asia. Controlling trade at the mouth of the Irrawaddy, with contacts as far away as Pyrgos and Osaka, Pegu is wealthy and prosperous, although that wealth makes its maritime traffic a frequent target of Arakanese pirates. As a result Pegu is allied with Sutanuti as they share a common enemy.
While the Arakanese can be annoying and sometimes painful, they are far from an existential threat. The same cannot be said for Pegu’s neighbor to the north, the Toungoo Kingdom which by 1630 dominates the middle Irrawaddy. The expansionistic aggressive monarchy eyes the wealth of Pegu enviously, although the Toungoo have yet to seriously push an attack.
A key factor in the lack of Toungoo offensives south is that the Toungoo have their own problems to their north. The Upper Irrawaddy lacks a large territorial monarchy on the model of the Toungoo or Pegu, but the newly formed Confederation of Shan States cannot be despised. The Shan States have the weakness of a coalition facing a unified foe but they have enough strength to make the Toungoo Kings hesitate in throwing all their might to the south.
Traveling east, the next great river network of Indochina is the Chao Phraya River, dominated by the Buddhist Siamese Kingdom of Ayutthaya. The capital city, also called Ayutthaya, is another great trading city with over a hundred thousand inhabitants, situated upriver from the coast where ocean-going and riverine craft meet to exchange cargoes.
The prominence of Ayutthaya as a local trading center is nothing new, but its prominence as a major international port is a development of the last generation. Improved rice-growing techniques in the fertile river valley have led to an agricultural explosion, the Thai producing a large rice surplus for export. The farmers have customers from all over Southeast Asia, not only locals but westerners as well.
Ayutthaya is a cosmopolitan center, with Triune visitors comparing it to Paris. [1] Foreigners live in settlements in the outer city, divided by nationality. There are Triune, Roman, Spanish, Lotharingian, Arletian, and even a Japanese community of some 500 merchants and their families and servants. Aside from rice, the Thais export vegetables, deerskins, and tropical woods, especially teak. The teak from Pegu and Ayutthaya is highly valuable as the best shipbuilding material in the region, although they are not the only sources of teak.
While Ayutthaya keeps its ports open to all who care to come and pay, the Spanish are paramount in Ayutthaya, to the extent that the Foreign Minister of King Naresuan is a Spaniard, Bernal Diaz del Castillo. A prosperous merchant with a suspiciously large amount of military experience, Bernal Diaz has no official affiliation with Lisbon but he certainly favors his countrymen in treatment. When King Naresuan expresses a desire for foreign aid to improve the standing army, still largely bow-and-sword infantry, Bernal Diaz promptly arranges the arrival of a Spanish military expedition that arrives in 1635 and punctually begins equipping and training Naresuan’s palace guard with gunpowder weaponry.
Ayutthaya, like the empires of India, is a mixed empire. Many areas of the kingdom are autonomous, owing tribute and military aid but otherwise left alone. The most prominent of these are Tenasserim and Nakhon Sri Thammarat. Some outside observers question whether the latter should really be considered part of Ayutthaya, as the city is exceptionally independently-minded. Far from Ayutthaya, Nakhon Sri Thammarat dominates the Kra Isthmus, the narrowest portion of the Malay Peninsula, where an overland trade route exists for merchants who wish to bypass Roman Pahang/Singapore and Spanish Malacca. Because of the wealth the city gains from this transit trade, the city is staunchly anti-Roman and anti-Spanish, favoring the Lotharingians.
The Roman Katepanate of Pahang, whose foundations date back to the exploits of Andreas Angelos “the Salty Prince”, the piratical illegitimate son of Andreas Niketas, dominates most of the east and south of the Malay Peninsula that lies south of the Kra Isthmus. Tin and gold mines were the main attractions for the Romans, although fisheries and tropical forest products are other important economic outputs.
Pahang rules a domain that looks similar to native states. There is a central core ruled directly by the monarch, in this case the Katepano, but much of the land is ruled by native vassals who provide tribute and military service. The more prominent vassals have Roman advisors though and the children of the elite are encouraged to get a Roman education, typically in Taprobane.
Spanish Malacca controls the western side of the Malay Peninsula south of the Kra Isthmus, in similar style to Roman Pahang. It is not on Pahang’s level when it comes to size, but otherwise the two are well matched. Malacca at 80000 people is twice the size of Pekan, the capital of Roman Pahang, and over five times that of Singapore. Malacca is far better situated than Pekan for maritime trade, being on the Straits of Malacca, while it is far better developed than much younger Singapore.
Returning north to Ayutthaya and then proceeding eastward, the next great river system is that of the Mekong and its tributaries. The political shift here is the sudden collapse of the once mighty Cham Empire which had dominated eastern Indochina since the late 1300s. The Cham had spread their suzerainty far, but the difficulty of projecting power over diverse and rugged lands and over many people meant, like other states, that the Cham devolved local power to vassals. However the exceptional stretch of the Cham Empire meant that the outlying vassals grew increasingly independent even as they paid lip service to the Cham. For many decades these vassals remained as de jure part of the Cham Empire, mainly because such vassalage cost them little. However the outbreak of a massive Vietnamese revolt strained the rotten structure and it collapsed in the late 1620s.
Along the Middle Mekong the city of Vientiane has filled the power vacuum, prospering through rice cultivation and local trade which help to finance the famous Buddhist temples of the area.
East of Vientiane lies the new Kingdom of Dai Viet, ruled over by the Le dynasty responsible for liberating the Vietnamese from their Cham overlords. Their power base is the Red River Delta and the new Vietnamese state has forged close ties with Zeng China, in large part due to Zeng aid in the rebellion. The Chinese had sought to cut the Cham down to size much as they’d done with the Khazars.
That said, the Vietnamese well remember the history of Chinese aggression toward them, so they remain wary. They maintain this wariness to all other foreigners as well, concerned about inviting in a new overlord after having just expelled the old. They are willing to allow some foreign trade but keep the foreigners under tight restrictions and surveillance. Not welcome are the Romans, well remembered for being allies to the Cham.
The Cham, although they have lost their empire, still control a respectable domain and remain a great power of the region. They control the coastline from Da Nang in the north to Kampot in the south, as well as the lower Mekong and Mekong Delta, the latter providing massive amounts of rice and fish, both for feeding the port cities and for export. Some could argue that even now, after the collapse, the Cham could still be considered an empire. There are still many Vietnamese living in the northern reaches of the Cham state while there is a large Khmer minority in the Mekong Delta.
The Cham are somewhat unusual for Indochina. Firstly, they are Hindus whilst all of their neighbors mostly practice variants of Buddhism. Furthermore, they are the one mainland native realm that is a reliable ally of the Romans, a fact of which the Katepanoi of Pahang and Pyrgos are well aware. They were both dismayed at the collapse of Cham power and much Roman effort, including the provision of weaponry, men, and even ships, was spent to prop up Cham power. Vietnamese pressure on the northern border of the Cham has not ceased even after the Cham Kings in Vijaya gave up any pretense of control north of Da Nang. South of that though the Cham are not willing to go. Six hundred years ago those lands were Cham; they were lost to the Viet once, they will not be lost again.
[1] Substitute French for Triune and this is OTL.
