Battle of Tunmen

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The Battle of Tunmen (Chinese: 屯門海戰) was a naval battle in which the Ming dynasty imperial navy defeated a Portuguese fleet led by Simão de Andrade in 1521.

Causes

Simão de Andrade had been kidnapping Chinese children to sell in Malacca.[1] and ignored Chinese sovereign authority at Tãmão, building a fort.[2] The Chinese believed that the Portuguese roasted and ate the Chinese children they had kidnapped.[3] The Chinese responded by blockading the Portuguese. The Portuguese would have starved if they had not run the blockade.

Location

File:Nei Lingding Island 2.jpg
Looking towards Lintin Island from Castle Peak, Tuen Mun

The Portuguese called their settlement Tãmão, which is understood as a corruption of "Tunmen" (屯門, Túnmén), 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 (屯門澳, Túnmén Ào), 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 Tuen Mun, the Cantonese reading of the same Chinese characters. This leads some researchers to link the Tunmen of Ming times to Tuen Mun in the New Territories of Hong Kong. "Tunmen Inlet" would then refer to one of two bays around Tuen Mun: Castle Peak Bay, next to the current Tuen Mun New Town; or Deep Bay between the New Territories and Nantou in present-day Shenzhen, where a Ming coastal defense force was stationed.[4]

Adding to the confusion is the description in Portuguese sources that Tãmão was an island. As Tuen Mun is not an island, researchers have proposed that Tãmão actually refers to one of the nearby islands. Lintin Island, west of Tuen Mun, is commonly accepted in Western academia as one of the more likely possibilities,[5] while the much larger Lantau Island has also been suggested.[6]

The battle

During this period China's navy maintained around 50 ships.[7] Simão de Andrade's fleet was defeated by the Chinese navy, which emboldened the Chinese to take further military action the following year, at the Second Battle of Tamao (1522) against Martim Afonso de Mello.[8][9]

The Chinese were commanded by Wang Hong. The battle started in either April or May, and ended when the Portuguese fled to Malacca in October.[10] Many Portuguese vessels were captured by Chinese forces. The Chinese killed and captured so many Portuguese that only three Portuguese ships survived the battle, out of the many ships and Chinese junks with which they attacked the Chinese. They managed to escape only because a strong wind arose and scattered the pursuing Chinese ships, enabling the Portuguese to escape to the open sea. For many years afterwards, the Chinese would kill every single Portuguese who attempted to land in China.[11]

However, with gradual improvement of relations and aid given against the Japanese Wokou pirates along China's shores, by 1557 Ming China finally agreed to allow the Portuguese to settle at Macau in a new Portuguese trade colony.[12] The Malay Sultanate of Johor also improved relations with the Portuguese and fought alongside them against the Aceh Sultanate.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lau and Liu (2012), p. 39
  7. ↑ 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"
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Hao (2011), pg. 12. Quote: "A Portuguese fleet of several ships came to China again in April or May 1521. The Ming court ordered the Guangdong authorities to expel them. Led by Wang Hong, the Ming naval forces engaged in battles against the Portuguese and won. Many Portuguese were captured and endured horrific execution. More ships came in the following months and attacked the Chinese, but all failed. At the end of October they retreated to Malacca after many casualties. This was the Battle of Tunmen."
  11. ↑ Pires, Cortesão, Rodrigues (1990), p. xi. Quote: "In the meantime, after the departure of Simão de Andrade, the ship Madalena, which belonged to D. Nuno Manuel, came from Lisbon under the command of Diogo Calvo, arriving at Tamão with some other vessels from Malacca, among them the junk of Jorge Álvares, which the year before could not sail with Simão de Andrade's fleet because it had sprung a leak. When the instructions issued from Peking against the Portuguese arrived in Canton, together with the news of the death of the Emperor, the Chinese seized Vasco Calvo, a brother of Diogo Calvo, and other Portuguese who were in Canton trading ashore. On 27 June 1521 Duarte Coelho arrived with two junks at Tamão. Besides capturing some of the Portuguese vessels, the Chinese blockaded Diogo Calvo's ship and four other Portuguese vessels in Tamão with a large fleet of armed junks. A few weeks later Ambrósio do Rego arrived with two other ships. As many of the Portuguese crews had been killed in the fighting, slaughtered afterwards or taken prisoner, by this time there were not enough Portuguese for all the vessels, forcing Calvo, Coelho and Rego to abandon the junks in order to better man the three ships. They set sail on 7 September and were attacked by the Chinese fleet, but managed to escape thanks to a providential gale that scattered the enemy junks, and arrived at Malacca in October 1521. Vieira mentions that other junks that arrived in China with Portuguese aboard were all attacked, their crews either killed in the initial fighting or taken prisoner and slaughtered later.
  12. ↑ Wills, John E., Jr. (1998). "Relations with Maritime Europe, 1514–1662," in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2, 333–375. Edited by Denis Twitchett, John King Fairbank, and Albert Feuerwerker. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-24333-5, 343-344.
  •  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.

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