As early as the reign of Emperor Jiajing, the Portuguese had already begun their infiltration of Burma.

At that time, the merchant ships of the Portuguese between the East and the West were basically armed merchant ships, and the trade they engaged in was also a monopoly trade that was half plundering and half coercing.

They first occupied the western coast of the southern Mughal Empire, establishing trading posts, then building citadels, monopolizing local foreign trade, and finally establishing governorships and garrisoning troops to turn the region into colonies.

A few decades later, they then went east, from the west coast of India to the east coast, and then began to enter Burma, and set up Portuguese trading houses in several important places in the later Burma region, such as Sareem, Beja, Bago, Mawlamyine and other port areas, taking advantage of the war between different political forces in Myanmar at that time, pulling one side and fighting the other, and slowly gaining a foothold.

It stands to reason that during the reign of Emperor Jiajing, the national strength of the Ming Dynasty was quite good, and if he realized the problem of Westerners infiltrating Burma, he intervened at that time, and there would be nothing to do with the Portuguese.

But at that time, the entire eastern coast of the Ming Dynasty, from north to south, was enduring the torment of the Japanese plague, and the military and financial resources of the Ming Dynasty, as well as the energy and attention of the Ming court, from the emperor to the ministers, were also focused on the problem of eliminating the plague.

He didn't even do such a thing, let alone send someone to inquire about the Portuguese entering Burma.

For Burma, a vassal state, for a long time not to pay tribute, the Manchu ministers did not bother to pay attention, after all, the act of tribute, for the Ming Dynasty, is a money-losing business.

So no one realizes that there may be signs or crises hidden in this.

The first sign of this crisis was that the Portuguese, after decades of infiltration into Burma, supported the Burmese in the Taungoo region of southern Burma to establish a state, first destroying the Bago Dynasty in southern Burma through war, and then supporting the Burmese to continue to move north.

In 1555 AD, that is, in the 34th year of Jiajing, Mang Yinglong, with the support of the Portuguese, led the army to destroy the Burmese Ava Dynasty, which was located in the north of Myanmar and had been paying tribute to the Ming Dynasty, unified Burma, and established the Taungoo Dynasty.

At the beginning of the Donghu Dynasty, he met two more eloquent monarchs one after another, namely Mang Ruiti and Mang Yinglong.

Mang Rui Ti and Mang Yinglong sold Burmese interests in exchange for the support of the Portuguese, from whom they exchanged Western firearms, and also hired a large number of Portuguese mercenaries.

This is also the reason why Mang Ruiti and Mang Yinglong, father and son, were able to quickly become powerful and successively destroy the Bago Kingdom of the Mon people and the Ava Dynasty of the Shan people.

However, it is precisely because of the rise of the Taungoo Dynasty that the Portuguese played an extremely important role in it, and after the establishment of the Taungoo Dynasty, the Portuguese enjoyed many privileges in Burma.

Many coastal land cities were assigned to the Portuguese as special zones, which not only allowed the Portuguese to monopolize Burma's foreign trade, but also allowed the Portuguese to buy land and build castles along the coast of Myanmar and even in many parts of the interior.

Moreover, these castles, which were not allowed to be entered by the Burmese, were completely a state of China, and although the Taungoo Dynasty seemed to be powerful, it was actually a semi-colony of Portugal.

Donghu City, the thriving place of the Donghu Dynasty, was canonized by the Ming Dynasty when the Ming Dynasty was at its strongest in the early Ming Dynasty.

During the Yongle period, the ancestor of Mang Yinglong was just a Donghu Xuanxuan envoy canonized by the Ming Dynasty, also known as Dongwu Xuanxuan, whose status was much lower than that of Bagu and Ava.

However, after the unification of Burma, the Taungoo Dynasty grew in strength through trade with the Portuguese, equipped with a large number of Western weapons, and conquered many small neighboring countries.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty was busy dealing with the Japanese who were constantly encroaching on the southeast coast, and had no time to take care of the expansion of the Taungoo Dynasty in Burma.

In a way, this is, of course, sending the wrong signal to Myanmar.

In the tenth year of Wanli, Mang Yinglong fell ill and died, and his son Mang Yingli succeeded to the throne, feeling that his wings were stiff, not only did he not want to be a vassal to his powerful neighbor in the north, but also wanted to start a war and continue to expand his territory to the north.

In the second year of Mang Yinglong's death, Mang Yingli, the new monarch of the Donghu Dynasty, began to lead a large army to "Northern Expedition", which was invincible at the beginning, and many Tusi families in Yunnan were attached to the wind, allowing the Donghu Dynasty to occupy a large amount of land that originally belonged to the Ming Dynasty.

However, after the Ming Dynasty fought back, the seemingly powerful Donghu Dynasty was immediately defeated.

In the eleventh year of Wanli, in 1583 AD, the troops of Liu Wei and Deng Zilong of the Ming army went south, not only annihilating all the main forces of Mang Yingli invading Yunnan, but also all the way south, occupying the city of Ava, an important town in northern Burma, and eliminating tens of thousands of Burmese troops of the Donghu Dynasty.

It's just that the monarchs and ministers of the Ming Dynasty at that time didn't look down on that kind of place in Myanmar and thought that Myanmar was not worth occupying at all.

On the one hand, the northern part of Myanmar is full of alpine jungles, and every year from March and April, the weather is unbearably hot, and often heavy rain pours, the air is very humid, mosquitoes are rampant, and the problem of smoke and rain, that is, the so-called smoke miasma problem, is much more serious than that of Shuixi.

The northern army led by Liu Wei and Deng Zilong had no problem fighting, but the garrison could not, because it could not adapt to the climate there.

On the other hand, the civil and military ministers of the Manchu Dynasty also felt that the gains outweighed the losses, and they were unwilling to work hard anymore.

So the Ming army, which won the battle, chose to withdraw after dividing a few local Tusi.

At the same time, with the privileges of the Portuguese and the oppressive rule of the Taungoo Dynasty in Burma, the Burma under the Taungoo Dynasty also began to have continuous uprisings and riots, and Laos and Siam also became independent from the rule of the Taungoo Dynasty.

After the failure of the Northern Expedition, the internal affairs were in a mess, but he also recognized the reality and knew that the Ming Dynasty was by no means easy to invade, so he also gave up the policy of external expansion and began to govern the internal affairs.

It was also at this time that he discovered that the Portuguese had almost controlled the economic lifeblood of the Taungoo Dynasty, and that the privileges of the Portuguese had even threatened his rule over Burma.

So, recklessly, he put the blame for the chaos in Burma on the Portuguese, and with the support of his own group of courtiers, he began to collect taxes from the Portuguese, and prepared to expel the Portuguese who were entrenched in several ports in Burma.

As you can imagine, before these measures could be fully implemented, the Portuguese supported the Arakan people (the destroyed Rakhine Kingdom) on the west coast of Burma, and united with the Mon people in the Burmese capital Bago (also known as Baigu) to launch a rebellion.

In the twenty-seventh year of Wanli, in 1599 AD, Mang Yingli was captured by the Arakanese with the support of the Portuguese, and then beheaded in public.

One of Mang Yingli's younger brothers, who was also the youngest son of Mang Yinglong, fled to the city of Ava in northern Burma and re-established the Taungoo Dynasty in Awa, where he was later known as King Liangyuan in Burma.

Next, the son of the king of Liangyuan, Anabillon, was another great hero, and after Ava had accumulated strength for more than ten years, in the 41st year of Wanli, he led his army south to occupy Bago again, and moved the power of the Taungoo Dynasty back to Bago, once again realizing the formal unification of Burma.

And the reason why this Anabilon was able to fight back from the north to the south was not because he really had the strength to defeat the Portuguese, but because he found a new ally in addition to the Portuguese.

This ally was the Dutch, who saw the needle, and the British, who followed in the footsteps of the Dutch and marched into the East.

By the 17th century, the division between the Spaniards and the Portuguese of the world outside Europe had been broken.

Neither Spain nor Portugal is a first-class power in Europe.

Moreover, at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, Portugal was invaded by Spain and was in a constant war, its national strength was declining, and it no longer had the strength to expand its colonies in the East.

And many of the trading posts, ports, and colonies belonging to the Portuguese were seized by the rising Dutch and English.

The same is true in Myanmar.

It was precisely because of the intervention of the Dutch and the English that Anabilon once again won their support by betraying the interests of Burma, that is, by transferring the privileges and benefits already given to the Portuguese to the Dutch and the English.

In this way, the Dutch and the English continued to make trouble for the Portuguese in Southeast Asia, causing the Portuguese, who were already overstretched, to lose ground and begin to shrink their power in Burma.

In the forty-first year of Wanli, the time was finally ripe, and Anabilon took the opportunity to fight back Bago and create the so-called generation of heroes in the history of Myanmar.

In the first year of Chongzhen, Anabillon, who rejected the Portuguese, fell ill and died, and his son Talon succeeded him.

At this time, a war broke out between the British and the Dutch over the colonies in the East, especially in India.

The Dutch founded the East India Company in 1602, while the British established the East India Company as early as 1600.

The two East India Companies were allies in breaking the Portuguese blockade of the Eastern Route.

But after breaking the blockade of the Portuguese, the two East India Companies became natural rivals and fought happily.

Unlike Anabillon, who always kept a certain distance from the Portuguese, Anabillon's son, the current Taloon king of Taungoo, finally chose the Portuguese, who had deeper ties with the Taungoo dynasty and had stronger influence in Burma, between the British, the Dutch, and the Portuguese.

Thus, when Thalung succeeded to the throne of the Taungoo dynasty in the first year of Chongzhen, that is, in 1628 AD, the Portuguese made a comeback and once again brought Burma under their protection.