14th Enemy Encounters Webinar “Chinese merchants and settlers in mainland Southeast Asia”27.6.2025 {en}
Please see below for information about the fourteenth session of the 2025-2026 Enemy Encounters in East Asia webinar series of the Research Training Group „Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East” at Heidelberg University and the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies, Germany.
“Chinese Merchants and Settlers: The Third Force in the Contest for Supremacy in Mainland Southeast Asia, 1550-1850”
Xing Hang
(Professor, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
- March 26, 2026, 3 pm (Heidelberg, CET) via ZOOM.
- The webinar will be recorded, but not the question time.
- If you would like to attend the webinars, please contact barend.noordam[at]hcts.uni-heidelberg.de.
In this session, Xing Hang (Professor, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) will share his thoughts on the role of Chinese merchants and settlers in conflicts in mainland Southeast Asia:
Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia have traditionally been regarded as stateless and primarily economic in their motivations. Although this narrative is true to a certain extent, their level of political organization and military capability became greatly enhanced over the sixteenth century, as they competed with Europeans and Japanese armed organizations for markets and product sources. In the water world of the Mekong Delta and Gulf of Siam, their power grew to the point that they eventually founded independent polities. These were not states in the traditional sense of the term but rather entities specializing in economic access and profit maximization, not too different from the Dutch East India Company. However, they played a crucial role as a third force that provided balance between Cochinchina (southern Vietnam), Siam, and Cambodia. Ironically, the expansion of Chinese commercial interests in all three states intensified their conflict and competition, ultimately resulting in a full-scale conflict in mainland Southeast Asia during the 1770s that dragged on for around a century until the Europeans asserted dominance in the region. In the process, Chinese autonomy and military power were subordinated and harnessed in the service of state-building.
BACKGROUND
For more information about the Research Training Group „Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East”, please go to our website https://www.ambivalentenmity.uni-heidelberg.de/en.
The RTG also produces the podcast series Enemy Encounters which features interviews and in-depth discussions conducted by members of the RTG with scholars, researchers and journalists about various cases of ambivalent enmity in Eurasia as a whole. It can be accessed here and here.
Previous recorded webinar sessions can be watched on the YouTube channel of Heidelberg University here.
This project has received funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).
Source: ANN: 14th Enemy Encounters Webinar “Chinese merchants and settlers in mainland Southeast Asia”, Heidelberg University and the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies, Germany., H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US.
