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- Mythorelics
- Author of many self-published books, including several about Thailand and Chiang Rai, Joel Barlow lived in Bangkok 1964-65, attending 6th grade with the International School of Bangkok's only Thai teacher. He first visited ChiangRai in 1988, and moved there in 1998.
Well, Vietnam (Champa) DID accept Mongol supremacy and a tributary relationship as vassal to the Mongols, but Trần Hưng Đạo remains one of Vietnam’s national heros for “keeping the independence of Vietnam” (which was NOT a country until much later).
ReplyDeleteAs the Mongols tried to conquer south of China, they encountered war elephants, malaria, stubborn guerilla resistance, extreme heat and unfamiliar jungle fighting conditions. The further south they got the more fatigue and tropical diseases hindered them, but perhaps the worst thing for them was the marshy conditions where great rivers divided into many streams, as they approached estuaries (what we often think of as river deltas, although in Burma and lower Vietnam there wasn’t extension out into the waters, just extensive soft ground, Mangrove swamps and ground that made the Mongol pony cavalry useless). Still, they were able to extract tribute from Burmese and Vietnamese, but not from Mangrai or T’ai and Khom/Khmer south of him.
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