an excellent article, too bad the firearm pictures that the article mentioned were not in that pdf file.
Nevertheless, I got the feeling that the importance of the firearms in the victory of Dai Viet and the demise of Champa is a bit overrated in this paper. First, you have to remember that at the late stages of the struggle Champa was probably outnumbered by the Vietnamese, for Champa had to contend with the Cambodian and Siamese neighbors to its west (then again, you can argue that Vietnam had to contend with its Laotian neighbors to its west as well). Also, the economic and agricultural differences between the two states that was mentioned in the beginning probably played a role in the numerical inbalance as well (which begs the question why, with their fertile Mekong Delta farmland, did the Chams not progressed agriculturally?). Second, there was no analysis on the impact of Che Bong Nga's death; perhaps all his successors were of much poorer qualities such that the Cham state and military were allowed to wither in disarray?
There are other questions that I'd like to address as well in regards to this topic, like the naval might of both sides (both sides, with their long coastlines, obviously used naval forces significantly), or the scale of genocide that both sides undertook (perhaps that was what brought Vietnamese victory? A succession of victories followed by mass genocide, thus preventing their enemies from rising again? But then for this argument to work you'd probably have to argue that the Chams did not undertake such a pursuit when they were stronger at earlier times). I'll leave the Cham experts to answer them.
In the meantime, for those who're interested in the Viet/Cham history, here's an article specifically on this topic:
http://www.guidetothailand.com/thailand-hi...viet_champa.htmI thought the last sentence of the article interesting:
"Some Vietnamese believe that the problems their country has suffered in the twentieth century are divine retribution for what their ancestors did to Champa."
Talk about political karma.