Contrary to the claims of Vietnamese historiography, Chinese settlers had arrived in the water world well before the Viet. Their presence owed much to Cambodia’s focus on maritime trade, its encouragement of multiethnic trading communities, and conflict with Siam over the crucial Gulf of Siam passageway. Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong became the largest demographic group in the kingdom, overseeing foreign trade and forming their own mercenary armies. Their numbers and influence grew further as a result of the dynastic transition from Ming to Qing, competition among armed mercantile organizations for control over the East Asian sea-lanes, and the scramble between Cochinchina and Siam for influence over Cambodia. The enterprising Mo Jiu embodied and exploited these trends in forging his own polity at The Port.

The Port and its Mo leaders have been portrayed within the context of Vietnamese historiography as the facilitators of the final round of Vietnam’s Southern Advance from its homeland in the Red River Valley. However, the Mo had other overlords, such as Cambodia and Siam, and enjoyed close ties to horizontal networks, including the Chinese and Austronesians. The Port’s ultimate incorporation into Vietnam was highly contingent. At the same time, The Port became a mediator and protector of the frontiers of the southern Vietnamese regime of Cochinchina, as well as its main source for the flow of Chinese influence.

The Mo never attempted to forge a state themselves but chose to utilize the territoriality of their realm to expand their economic interests. The Port became a transshipment point for goods and a provider of natural resources. It played a crucial role in the Chinese century in maritime East Asia by facilitating the offshoring of China’s economy. Its example demonstrates the convergence of similar trends and developments across the early modern world and highlights the importance of state-building and institutions in the rise and ultimate triumph of European maritime power.

Under Mo Tianci, The Port continued to thrive as a resource exporter, emporium, and monetary center. In fact, it expanded beyond its immediate surroundings of the water world and Cochinchina, stimulated by commercial growth, social change, and official policies within the regional powers of China, Japan, and the VOC. As a result, The Port played an essential role in the offshoring of the Chinese economy, attracting surplus laborers from China to Southeast Asia and supplying them with goods from Guangzhou. The Port’s expanded jurisdiction after the late 1750s also allowed for a greater specialization of functions. Bassac and other minor ports handled trade with maritime East Asia and received support from the Hong merchants of Guangzhou. The urban center focused more on finance, influencing the money supply of Cochinchina and becoming a center for copper and silver in Southeast Asia. The Port’s fortunes got a further boost when the fall of Ayutthaya to the Myanmar forces removed a major competitor along the Gulf of Siam littoral.

Although Mo Tianci maintained the ties of vassalage that his father had forged with the Nguyễn, Cochinchina only constituted one important foundation of his rule. He continued The Port’s traditional subordination to Cambodia and actually increased his involvement in the kingdom. He backed a ruler that leaned toward Cochinchina’s rival, Siam. After a succession struggle during the mid-1750s, Tianci emerged as the real power behind the throne. He forged a partnership with Batavia, presenting himself as an Austronesian principality within the sphere of influence of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He also integrated The Port with the Chinese community of Batavia. The grandson of the city’s Chinese kapitan took charge of the Qing merchants at The Port, and a translocal justice system ensured the smooth conduct of trade across maritime East Asia The secret to Tianci’s ability to juggle simultaneous identities and allegiances lay in his understanding and manipulation of the conventions of the Sinosphere and the Southeast Asia mandala system. As a result, he achieved outside recognition of the autonomous status of his realm without the need to declare a formally independent state.

Although Chinese creoles formed the core of The Port’s identity, Mo Tianci came to preside over a tremendously diverse population additionally consisting of Qing sojourners and immigrants, Viet, Khmer, Siamese, Austronesians, and Europeans. They were multiconfessional, practicing Confucianism, Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. He preserved the Cambodian noble hierarchy and official positions, while selectively adopting and adapting Sino-Viet institutions. In addition, he utilized religions and ethical systems, and devised some of his own practices for specific situations and depending on his constituency. Ultimately, he aimed to achieve two interrelated objectives: territorial expansion into the resource-rich hinterlands and the recruitment and retention of the population necessary to open up the new acquisitions.

After Mo Jiu’s death in 1735, his son Mo Tianci succeeded him as head of The Port. He established the Pavilion for Summoning Worthies to serve as an informal advisory body and literary society. Besides his trusted inner circle, he built upon his father’s earlier connections with Cochinchina and Qing gentry to jointly produce and publish anthologies of poetry and prose. The collaborations largely took place remotely, relying upon the same junks that circulated goods and labor throughout maritime East Asia. Tianci’s main goal was to build consensus among these translocal elites as being part of the same world order, while spreading word of his realm across the Sinosphere. Besides facilitating cultural exchange, anthologies such as “Idle Fishing at Sea Perch Creek” and the “Ten Verses of Hà Tiên” could lower transaction costs and enhance The Port’s importance as a commercial hub. Tianci’s focus on literature also conformed to the Heart-Mind school of Wang Yangming. This variant of neo-Confucanism promoted business and individual initiative.

The Port, which had thrived off of its ambiguity and the smooth functioning of translocal networks, faced threats from growing nativism among its multiethnic constituency and the emergence of territorially focused regimes in its neighborhood. However, Mo Tianci was presented with several contingent opportunities to dominate the thrones of Siam and Cochinchina and forge his own state. But he lost on both occasions and ended up an exile in Siam, where he took refuge with his former rival, the half-Chaozhou Taksin. Suspecting him of trying to seize the throne, Taksin imprisoned him and his retinue, eventually resulting in his suicide. However, his descendants managed to play on the continued rivalry between Siam and Vietnam to ensure the survival of The Port as a distinct entity well into the nineteenth century, beyond its prime.

The Nguyễn lords initially sought to control Mo Jiu and his descendants by means of stationing troops, marriage alliances, and symbolism and ritual. Jiu managed to secure autonomy for his realm by forging ties with horizontal translocal networks. Buddhist monks connected him to other Chinese communities while serving as intermediaries to the Cochinchinese state. The remnants of the Dragon Gate under Chen Shangchuan’s descendants bolstered Jiu’s military capabilities while helping him forge ties with the Qing Guangdong gentry. He further sought to provide a welcoming climate for Chinese merchants, sojourners, and immigrants by manipulating allusions in Chinese history, especially the Tang, in labeling and categorizing the major landscapes and features of The Port. The Austronesian networks helped him forge ties with island Southeast Asian ports, while the Portuguese creoles set up a mint. The brief Qing maritime ban in 1717, which exempted Vietnam, cemented The Port’s role as an emerging transshipment point, natural resource exporter, and financial center able to interact and compete in its own right with more established emporia, such as Guangzhou, Batavia, and Ayutthaya.

The rise of The Port and the Mo clan coincided with the “Chinese century” in maritime East Asia and the peak of the Qing dynasty’s power. Their story also demonstrates a world whose core areas were not only at rough parity but also converging with both ends of Eurasia meeting, trading, and learning from each other in Southeast Asia. At the same time, this period implanted the seeds for an eventual divergence. European mercantile organizations and, later, states came to dominate the sea-lanes and control the flow of silver and finance. They were able to shape and set the rules for an emerging new order. Chinese merchants and immigrants eventually lost their military and political agency and were absorbed into the expanding European empires. Meanwhile, more firmly bounded states and nativist sentiments emerged in mainland Southeast Asia. Both factors deprived The Port of relatively unhindered access to the maritime trade routes and translocal networks. Nonetheless, the Mo continued to enjoy significant autonomy until the French colonization of the water world in 1867, taking advantage of the hazy and ill-defined borders in the water world.

During the eighteenth century, ethnic Chinese emerged as the pre-eminent diasporic community in maritime East Asia. From the East China Sea to the Strait of Melaka, Chinese junks dominated the trading lanes, carrying silk, porcelain, and tea from China, copper from Japan, and Southeast Asian natural resources to ports across the region, from Guangzhou to Banjarmasin. Immigrants flooded into the sparsely populated interior of Southeast Asia, where they opened up land for cash crops and engaged in mining. Leonard Blussé, Carl Trocki, and other scholars have spoken of the eighteenth century as a ‘Chinese century’ in maritime East Asia.1 Their activities in the region would presage an even greater influx of Chinese capital and labour after 1850. However, the underlying factors behind this pre-eminence have not yet been systematically studied. Although Chinese merchants and immigrants have long had an established presence in maritime East Asia, at least since the thirteenth century, their actual numbers and degree of influence, as Anthony Reid has shown, varied over time.2 In fact, their communities often had to coexist and contend in a multipolar environment with other diasporic groups that enjoyed greater strength in numbers and prestige.