Successful Mongol conquest of Vietnam

Yun-shuno

Banned
One of the most famous Mongol defeats was them being defeated by the Vietnamese. So during the third invasion the Mongols succeed in reaching the bay's interior and completely crush all resistance.

What are the consequences for Mongol dominated Southeast Asia?
 
They'll still lose China but would move south rather than north to the homeland. Southeast Asia will become a major trading hub and Mongol-Vietnam will conquer most of Indochina while making vassals of the Maritime regions.

China will be more open to trade because of the growing Mongol wealth and thus, threat. Southern India might stabilize, and try to expand north. Muslim expansion into the area will be halted.
 

Yun-shuno

Banned
They'll still lose China but would move south rather than north to the homeland. Southeast Asia will become a major trading hub and Mongol-Vietnam will conquer most of Indochina while making vassals of the Maritime regions.

China will be more open to trade because of the growing Mongol wealth and thus, threat. Southern India might stabilize, and try to expand north. Muslim expansion into the area will be halted.
How long could they hold Vietnam as a tributary? How would it impact Vietnam's national identity?
 
How long could they hold Vietnam as a tributary? How would it impact Vietnam's national identity?
No, Vietnam will be their seat of power and if they've learned anything from China they'll allow cultural synthesis to occur naturally.
 
No, Vietnam will be their seat of power and if they've learned anything from China they'll allow cultural synthesis to occur naturally.

Why would Vietnam be the seat of their power? The climate doesn't suit them and I have a hunch Vietnamese will not be any happier than the Chinese about being ruled by the Mongols...
 
Why would Vietnam be the seat of their power? The climate doesn't suit them and I have a hunch Vietnamese will not be any happier than the Chinese about being ruled by the Mongols...
Because they'll be stuck in Vietnam. There's no where else to go. They can't hop on a ship and just leave, they'll need to pacify and manage Vietnam before they can do anything else. Thus it'll be their seat of power.
 
Because they'll be stuck in Vietnam. There's no where else to go. They can't hop on a ship and just leave, they'll need to pacify and manage Vietnam before they can do anything else. Thus it'll be their seat of power.

I don't think the invasions of Vietnam involved anything like a significant portion of the Mongol population.
 

The post-Yuan Mongol states were centered precisely around the original Mongol homeland. Mongol population would not move to Vietnam in any real numbers. If the Yuan crumble, the Mongols won't be "trapped" in Vietnam since most of them don't live there anyway.

You might get a Basalwarmi equivalent in Vietnam of course, fighting against the Red Turbans.
 
The post-Yuan Mongol states were centered precisely around the original Mongol homeland. Mongol population would not move to Vietnam in any real numbers. If the Yuan crumble, the Mongols won't be "trapped" in Vietnam since most of them don't live there anyway.

You might get a Basalwarmi equivalent in Vietnam of course, fighting against the Red Turbans.

No, the OP assumes that Yuan succeeded in Vietnam, I've taken it from there with the assumption that they'll still lose China because they never sinified. Even if they had the periodic Dynastic turnover that plagued Imperial China would have seen them removed from power sooner or later.

So, rather than moving to the rather desolate, resource poor homeland, the yuan Court instead moves South to hold Vietnam.

The Red Turbans wouldn't have been around for over a thousand years by the Yuan era.
 
The Red Turbans wouldn't have been around for over a thousand years by the Yuan era.

Not sure if we're talking about the same thing but when I say Red Turbans I mean the various rebels of the late 14th c. that overthrew the historical Yuan.

And while heavy Mongol settlement in Vietnam seems an interesting idea, it doesn't strike me as especially plausible overall. They never did move into Canton or Sichuan that heavily OTL. Not to mention that a lot of the Yuan army would have been Chinese and was historically so during the invasion of Vietnam.
 
the yuan Court instead moves South to hold Vietnam
This is extremely implausible. First, the very fact that they were Mongols. The source of Yuan power was known by all to be the steppes of Mongolia. The Mongols knew that the rapid mobility of steppe warfare was what had defeated, and could once again defeat, the Chinese, and the Yuan court realized that the Mongols would accept the legitimacy of descent from the "holy genius" Genghis Khan, while the Chinese and Vietnamese would not. Not only would a relocation to Vietnam seriously demoralize the Mongols, it would be paradoxical - it would deprive the Mongols of their greatest asset and abandon a people who accepted the basic authority of the Chinggisids for a little-known, foreign, and presumably disloyal people.

Second, let's think about the Yuan armies of the 1350s. By that time, both the Chinese military households and the Mongol cavalry itself had little discipline and were untrained and generally unfit for battle. The only reliable forces of the Yuan in China proper were around the capital Dadu (Beijing) and in Henan. The Yuan did not have an army that could resist well-supplied and motivated rebels in South China, so it is doubtful that the Yuan could ever have taken the risk of relocating to anywhere south of Kaifeng, never mind Vietnam.

Third, simple chronology. The North China Plain was in chaos once the Red Turban insurrections began en masse in 1351, but the Yuan would not have felt the pressing need to relocate the capital even without the demoralization that would bring, since Chief Councillor Toghto was apparently successfully suppressing the rebellion. It was only by the mid-1350s that the Yuan could have seriously considered moving the capital, but by then the entire Yangzi Basin was in revolt and there was no way south.

The Red Turbans wouldn't have been around for over a thousand years by the Yuan era.
You're confusing the Yellow Turbans, who brought down the Han, with the Red Turbans, who brought down the Yuan.
 
This is extremely implausible. First, the very fact that they were Mongols. The source of Yuan power was known by all to be the steppes of Mongolia. The Mongols knew that the rapid mobility of steppe warfare was what had defeated, and could once again defeat, the Chinese, and the Yuan court realized that the Mongols would accept the legitimacy of descent from the "holy genius" Genghis Khan, while the Chinese and Vietnamese would not. Not only would a relocation to Vietnam seriously demoralize the Mongols, it would be paradoxical - it would deprive the Mongols of their greatest asset and abandon a people who accepted the basic authority of the Chinggisids for a little-known, foreign, and presumably disloyal people.

Second, let's think about the Yuan armies of the 1350s. By that time, both the Chinese military households and the Mongol cavalry itself had little discipline and were untrained and generally unfit for battle. The only reliable forces of the Yuan in China proper were around the capital Dadu (Beijing) and in Henan. The Yuan did not have an army that could resist well-supplied and motivated rebels in South China, so it is doubtful that the Yuan could ever have taken the risk of relocating to anywhere south of Kaifeng, never mind Vietnam.

Third, simple chronology. The North China Plain was in chaos once the Red Turban insurrections began en masse in 1351, but the Yuan would not have felt the pressing need to relocate the capital even without the demoralization that would bring, since Chief Councillor Toghto was apparently successfully suppressing the rebellion. It was only by the mid-1350s that the Yuan could have seriously considered moving the capital, but by then the entire Yangzi Basin was in revolt and there was no way south.


You're confusing the Yellow Turbans, who brought down the Han, with the Red Turbans, who brought down the Yuan.
That's all true!
But the OP wants a Vietnam Influenced by Yuan, and it is clear that Yuan could not hold China.
Hell, yuan succeeding in Vietnam itself is a pipe dream. Chinese since the Han have tried and all failed. Vietnam's densely forested terrain is totally unsuitable to both Mongol and Chinese Warfare.

But the only way to have a Mongolian Vietnam as stipulated by the OP was the yuan Court escaping there.
 
Not sure if we're talking about the same thing but when I say Red Turbans I mean the various rebels of the late 14th c. that overthrew the historical Yuan.

And while heavy Mongol settlement in Vietnam seems an interesting idea, it doesn't strike me as especially plausible overall. They never did move into Canton or Sichuan that heavily OTL. Not to mention that a lot of the Yuan army would have been Chinese and was historically so during the invasion of Vietnam.
Sorry, I mistook it for the yellow Turban.

And no, I don't see Mongol civilians moving south either. they'll be completely out of their depth. Note that I said the Court, not the people.
 
Because they'll be stuck in Vietnam. There's no where else to go. They can't hop on a ship and just leave, they'll need to pacify and manage Vietnam before they can do anything else. Thus it'll be their seat of power.
I'm pretty sure that, as the Mongols in China began to tooter, they'd lose outlying Vietnam before China itself. You can't just have a state lose most of its territory and population and have the surviving areas be unaffected.
 
as the Mongols in China began to tooter, they'd lose outlying Vietnam before China itself
On the other hand, not necessarily. Yunnan - the closest analogue to Vietnam in this scenario - remained in Mongol hands under Prince Balasawarmi until 1382, some 31 years after the first major anti-Yuan revolts in the North China Plain. Similarly, there were Mongol loyalists in the southern fringes of the country even as the rebels gained Central China; the best example is Chen Youding, a valiant farmer's son who was quickly promoted to Yuan governor of Fujian in his mid-thirties and who stayed loyal to the Mongols until his death. He Zhen in Guangdong was also nominally loyal to the Mongols until 1369, while Zhang Shicheng and Fang Guozhen in the lower Yangzi fluctuated between supporting the Yuan and being independent.
 
I'm pretty sure that, as the Mongols in China began to tooter, they'd lose outlying Vietnam before China itself. You can't just have a state lose most of its territory and population and have the surviving areas be unaffected.
But not the point of the OP! It assumes it is thus, otherwise it wouldn't be a what-if.
Also, a greater concentration of Mongol troops not pointlessly thrown away trying to hold onto China will greatly increase their chances to recover later.
 
But not the point of the OP! It assumes it is thus, otherwise it wouldn't be a what-if.
Also, a greater concentration of Mongol troops not pointlessly thrown away trying to hold onto China will greatly increase their chances to recover later.
The OP is specifying only the conquest of Vietnam,not anything about its retention. Most of the other posts were about how Vietnam either would or wouldn't be a sort of Mongol Byzantium where the empire holds out after losing China.
 
The OP is specifying only the conquest of Vietnam,not anything about its retention. Most of the other posts were about how Vietnam either would or wouldn't be a sort of Mongol Byzantium where the empire holds out after losing China.
"What are the consequences for Mongol dominated Southeast Asia?" was the question. I don't feel the need to keep up this pointless debate... see ya!
 
On the other hand, not necessarily. Yunnan - the closest analogue to Vietnam in this scenario - remained in Mongol hands under Prince Balasawarmi until 1382, some 31 years after the first major anti-Yuan revolts in the North China Plain. Similarly, there were Mongol loyalists in the southern fringes of the country even as the rebels gained Central China; the best example is Chen Youding, a valiant farmer's son who was quickly promoted to Yuan governor of Fujian in his mid-thirties and who stayed loyal to the Mongols until his death. He Zhen in Guangdong was also nominally loyal to the Mongols until 1369, while Zhang Shicheng and Fang Guozhen in the lower Yangzi fluctuated between supporting the Yuan and being independent.
Good points, but aren't most of those regions highly mountainous/isolated, i.e, natural areas where loyalists from a large geographical expanse naturally congregate to create holdouts?THe Lower Yangtze thing is, of course, an exception.
 
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