Battle of Tunmen
Battle of Tunmen | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Ming dynasty | Kingdom of Portugal | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Wang Hong (汪鋐) |
Diogo Calvo Duarte Coelho Ambrósio do Rego | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
50+ Junks |
5 Caravels Siamese and Patani junks | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Unknown |
2 Caravels abandoned all junks abandoned | ||||||
Battle of Tunmen | |
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Chinese name | |
Hanyu Pinyin | Tún Mén hǎizhàn |
Yue: Cantonese | |
Jyutping | tyun4 mun4 hoi2 zin3 |
The Battle of Tunmen or Tamão was a naval battle in which the Ming imperial navy defeated a Portuguese fleet led by Diogo Calvo in 1521.
Background
Portuguese diplomat
Andrade's negotiations with Ming officials were thwarted when his brother Simão de Andrade arrived in August 1519. Simão immediately made a bad impression upon the locals of Tunmen, who had previously been open to all foreigners. Upon arriving with three ships, Simão executed a Portuguese citizen and built a fort on Tunmen, barring other foreigners from conducting trade. When a Ming official arrived to inquire as to the situation, Simão became aggressive and knocked off his hat. Following this, Simão began purchasing as well as kidnapping child slaves along the Chinese coast to sell in Portuguese Malacca.[2] Even children from well-off families were stolen and found years later at Diu in western India. Rumors that Simão and other Portuguese were cannibalizing children for food spread across China.[1][3] Simão's pirating activities greatly angered both the Chinese people and the court, which led Ming officials to order the eviction of the Tunmen Portuguese.[4]
The Portuguese embassy arrived in
Battle
The Portuguese refused to comply with eviction orders from Tunmen that arrived from Beijing. In response, commander Wang Hong assembled a squadron of fifty ships and imposed a blockade on the Portuguese as well as the Siamese and Patani junks they had requisitioned.[7] The battle, which occurred in April or May, began with direct boarding action by the Ming fleet, but the fleet was unable to draw close due to the superior range of the Portuguese guns. The enclosed terrain was also to the Portuguese's advantage; the Ming encirclement proved detrimental to the attackers. Subsequenlty, Wang Hong sent in a screen of fire ships to trap the Portuguese. Although the Portuguese managed to evade the fire attack, they were unsuccessful in evading Ming's boarding attempts and the fighting took a heavy toll on Portuguese manpower. Eventually, the Portuguese realized it was not possible to sail all five ships with their remaining men. They were forced to abandon two ships, as well as the rest of their junks, to make their escape. A strong wind arose at this point and scattered the pursuing Ming fleet, which allowed the Portuguese to retreat and make their way to Malacca in October.[8][9]
Aftermath
Despite hostilities, the Portuguese continued to trade along the Fujian coastline with the aid of corrupt local merchants. Simão de Andrade's activities also continued for decades after he left Guangzhou in 1520, and he sailed to Xiamen and Ningbo where he established settlements.[10] Simão eventually ran afoul of a trade deal and was double crossed by a local in 1545. In response Simão sent a band of armed men into the town, pillaged it, and took their women and young girls as captives.[10][11] This led to a punitive expedition by the locals, however, who banded together and slaughtered the Portuguese under Simão.[10] The Portuguese also accosted other foreigners. In one instance Coelho de Sousa seized the house of a wealthy foreign resident in Jinzhou of Fujian. Ming authorities responded by cutting off supplies to the Portuguese and the Portuguese ransacked a nearby village for supplies. In retaliation, the Ming destroyed 13 of their ships. Thirty Portuguese survivors fled further south to Guangdong in 1549.[11][12]
The new Portuguese trading presence in Guangdong got off to a solid start in 1554 when the merchants Leonel de Sousa and Simão d'Almeida offered bribes to Wang Bo, the vice-commissioner for maritime defense. After a pleasant reception from the Portuguese merchants on their ships, the two sides agreed to a payment of 500 taels per year made personally to Wang Bo in return for allowing the Portuguese to settle in Macau as well as levying the imperial duty of 20 percent on only half their products. Following 1557 the Portuguese were no longer asked to leave Macau during winter.[13] The Portuguese ambassador Diogo Pereira arrived in 1563 to normalize relations. Portuguese presence in Macau was further strengthened in 1568 when they aided the Ming in fighting off a hundred pirate ships. The nature of Wang Bo's business transactions were almost discovered by imperial observers in 1571, but the vice-commissioner obfuscated the payments by identifying them as "ground rent" made to the imperial treasury. Macau's merchant oligarchs continued to bribe their mandarin overseers and in this way the settlement persisted. The most important incident of bribery occurred in 1582 when the viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi summoned Macau's chief officials for a meeting. Remembering the fate of Tomé Pires decades earlier, Macau's leaders chose an elderly judge and Italian Jesuit to go in their place. The viceroy raged at the Macau representatives, accusing them of conducting governance in contravention of Ming law, and threatened to destroy the colony and evict all Portuguese from Macau. His attitude changed dramatically after the two presented him with 4,000 cruzados worth of presents. In his words: "The foreigners, subjects to the laws of the Empire, may continue to inhabit Macao."[14][15]
The Malay
Location
The precise location of the battle has never been established.
The Portuguese called their settlement Tamão, which is understood as a corruption of "Tunmen" (traditional Chinese: 屯門; simplified Chinese: 屯门; Sidney Lau: Tuen4Moon4), the name for the western Hong Kong and Shenzhen area that has existed since the Tang dynasty. Chinese sources state that the Portuguese settled around the Tunmen Inlet (Chinese: 屯門澳; Sidney Lau: Tuen4Moon4O3), but the current whereabouts of the Tunmen Inlet is unknown, so the precise location of the Portuguese settlement and the battlefield remains under debate among historians.
In the present day, "Tunmen" refers to
Adding to the confusion is the description in Portuguese sources that Tamão was an island. As Tuen Mun is not an island, researchers have proposed that Tamão actually refers to one of the nearby islands.
See also
- Battle of Xicaowan
- Wugongchuan
- Cambodian–Spanish War
- Kau Keng Shan
- Fernão Pires de Andrade
References
- ^ a b Wills 2011, p. 28.
- ^ Chang 1978, p. 57.
- ^ Twitchett 1998, p. 338.
- ^ Dutra 1995, p. 426.
- ^ Wills, 338–339.
- ^ Wills 2011, p. 30.
- ^ Ng (1983), p. 65. Quote: "were more than fifty ships in the fleet. These were the heady days when Wang Hong was able to engage and defeat a Portuguese expedition"
- ^ Hao 2010, p. 12.
- ^ Pires 1990, p. xi.
- ^ a b c Douglas, 11.
- ^ a b Williams, 76.
- ^ Douglas, 11–12.
- ^ Wills 2011, p. 38.
- ^ Wills 2011, p. 45.
- ^ Diffie 1977, p. 390.
- ISBN 978-0-313-33538-9.
- ISBN 978-1-56656-439-7.
- ISBN 978-0-8047-4480-5.
- ISBN 9789620431470.
- ^ Braga, J. M. (May 1939). "The "Tamao" of the Portuguese Pioneers". Tien Hsia Monthly. VIII (5): 420–432.
- ^ Lau and Liu (2012), p. 39
- This article incorporates text from Journal of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for the year ..., Volumes 27-28, by Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. China Branch, a publication from 1895, now in the public domain in the United States.
- This article incorporates text from Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volumes 26-27, by Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. North-China Branch, a publication from 1894, now in the public domain in the United States.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-691-13597-7.
- Chang, Tien Tse (1978), Sino Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644: A Synthesis of Portuguese and Chinese Sources, Ams Pr Inc, ISBN 0404569064.
- Chase, Kenneth (2003), Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-82274-2.
- Diffie, Bailey W. (1977), Foundations of the Portuguese Empire: 1415 - 1580, University of Minnesota Press.
- Douglas, Robert Kennaway (2006), Europe and the Far East, Adamant Media Corporation
- Dutra, Francis A. (1995), Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Portuguese and the Pacific, University of California, Santa Barbara, October 1993.
- Hao, Zhidong (2010), Macau History and Society, HKU Press, ISBN 9789888028542.
- Monteiro, Saturnino (1995), Portuguese Sea Battles - Volume II - Christianity, Commerce and Corso 1522-1538, Saturnino Monteiro.
- Pires, Tomé (1990), The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires, Asian Educational Services.
- Twitchett, Denis C. (1998), The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8, The Ming Dynasty, Part 2; Parts 1368-1644, Cambridge University Press.
- Williams, S. Wells (1897), A History of China: Being the History Chapters From "The Middle Kingdom", New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
- Wills, John E. (2011), China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions, Cambridge University Press.