Nov
24
Political History of Vietnam and Cambodia
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Political History of Vietnam and Cambodia
* The following was a presentation given on November 8, 2008 for the World Affairs Council of Houston’s Global Issues in Depth - Portrait of Southeast Asia.
Immigration is as old as Southeast Asia’s history
- Human movements and colonizations across land and sea in Southeast Asia
- The early Homo populations settled in Southeast Asia and extended northwards and eastwards to China and Java by perhaps 1.5 million years ago.
- The movement of the anatomically modern humans that crossed the sea gaps of eastern Indonesia to reach Australia, New Guina and possibly the Philippines around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.
- The Americans were reached more recently, perhaps about 14,000 years ago.
Source: A Cultural History of Southeast Asia: From Earliest Times to the Indic Civilizations, edited by P. Bellwood and I. Glover. Routledge Curzon Press, New York (2004).
Southeast Asia from prehistory to history
- Southeast Asia civilization was not a backwater stuck fast in the stone age
- Southeast Asia civilization is not a loan civilization of India or China
- But Southeast Asia is an imagined reality: Is Southeast Asia a jigsaw puzzle or a collage?
- “Glocalization” in Southeast Asia
Source: A Cultural History of Southeast Asia: From Earliest Times to the Indic Civilizations, edited by P. Bellwood and I. Glover. Routledge Curzon Press, New York (2004).
- The Austroasian Migration (3000-1000 B.C.)
- The Ou Yueh/Au Viet Rule
- The Nan Yueh/Nam Viet Rule (207-111 B.C)
- China’s Eastern Han Rule (111 B.C. – 41 A.D.)
- Chinese Colonial Rule (44 A.D. - 939 A.D.)
- Chinese Colonial Rule (1406-1428)
- French Colonial Rule (1862 -1954)
- The Soviet Union as an Empire (1924 -1989)
- Japanese Colonial Rule (1941-1945)
- The U.S. as an Empire (1944-1975)
- China as an Empire (1954-1979)
- the Nguyen family led by Nguyen Kim who fled to Laos after the Mac’s usurpation of the Le Dynasty in 1524;
- the Mac family who fled to northern China when the Le Dynasty was restored in 1592;
- the Nguyen family led by Nguyen Hoang who left northern Vietnam to the Cham territories after breaking official ties with the Trinh family in 1600;
- the Nguyen Lords led by Nguyen Anh who fled to Siam (Thailand) in 1775 after its capital fell to the Tay Son brothers;
- In 1788 when the Tay Son brothers controlled Hanoi, the last Le Emperor, Le Man De, fled to China and appealed to Emperor Qianlong for help;
- Emperor Ham Nghi (the 8th Emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty) and his family were forced into exile in Algeria by the French in 1888;
- Vietnam Modernization Association sent Phan Boi Chau to Japan in 1904 to organize an anti-colonial movement - the Dong Du or Going East movement;
- Ho Chi Minh who left Vietnam for France in 1911 to find solutions regarding independence for Vietnam and later was invited to Moscow in 1924 to work for the Comintern — leading to his “Path to Leninism”;
- During World War I, almost one hundred thousand Vietnamese soldiers and workers were recruited and hired to serve France, and by the end of the war close 2,900 Vietnamese gained permission to remain in France to work, study, or to get married;
- the Vietnam Nationalist Party (or the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang) who fled to China when the Viet Minh in 1946 began to purge non-communist groups and later became a part of a coalition involved with French’s Associated State of Vietnam (1949-1954);
- Vietnamese refugees who fled to Thailand when the French reoccupied Laos in 1946 — the Viet Minh sought to link these refugees (most were from the North) to its revolutionary war since their position along the western Indochinese border could play an important role resistance role;
- and the leaders and members of the former Republic of South Vietnam evacuated and escaped to western countries after the fall of Saigon in 1975 — establishing the “Little Saigon” outposts whose diaspora can be characterized as “stateless.”
- The Le Dynasty’s Colonial Expansion (1428-1524)
- The Nguyen Lords’ Colonial Expansion (1600-1778)
- The Nguyen Dynasty’s Colonial Expansion (1800-1859)
- Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s Education & New Economic Zones Policies (1975-1989)
- Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s Invasion in Cambodia (1979-1989)
Vietnam under Nam Viet Kingdom before its conquest by the Han empire in 111 B.C.
Source: Joseph Buttinger’s Smaller Dragon (1958)
Vietnam’s Southern March or Nam Tien
Source: Nguyen The Anh; Le Nam tien dans les textes Vietnamiens; in P.B. Lafont; Les frontieres du Vietnam; Edition l’Harmattan, Paris 1989
- 500s A.D.: Lower Mekong River society called Funan, a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom. Funan is mentioned in Chinese records. (Funan may be transcription of Khmer word phnom, meaning “hill.”)
- 500s–700s A.D.: the kingdom of Chenla suspended Funan. Chenla was later split into upper Chenla and lower Chenla.
- 800-1400 A.D.: the classical age of the Angkor period emerged. At its height, it held territories that are now part of Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. This period marked the construction of the massive temple complexes known as Angkor Wat and Bayon and the imperial capital of Angkor Thom.
- Immigrations of Tai peoples occurred from the 10th to the 15th century, of Vietnamese beginning in the 17th century, and of Chinese in the 18th and 19th centuries.
- 1863–1940: French intervene militarily and Cambodia becomes French protectorate. The region becomes part of French Indochina along with Vietnam and Laos. French colonial capital located at Phnom Penh.
- 1940–1945: French Indochina was under the control of the Japanese military.
- 1954–1970: Independence from French; Kingdom of Cambodia under Prince Norodom Sihanouk who abdicates throne to become elected President.
- 1970: Coup against Sihanouk establishes General Lon Nol as President of a U.S.-backed regime called the Khmer Republic.
- Between 1975 and 1979 the country was devastated by the reign of the Khmer Rouge, a rural communist guerrilla movement. During the Khmer Rouge’s period of power, at least 1.7 million Cambodians were killed or died.
- The unrest of the 1970s led more than 300,000 Cambodians to emigrate. Of these, more than half (some 179,000) went to the United States, more than 50,000 to France, and 45,000 to Australia.
- In 1979, Vietnamese troops invade and overthrow Pol Pot’s regime. A fragmented coalition government is formed where Vietnamese puppets compete for power. In 1989, Vietnam officially withdraws from Cambodia.
- In 1991 Cambodia was, in a sense, re-created. The international community, and especially the Paris Accords signatories were deeply involved in that re-creation and have special legal obligations to Cambodia. For example, Paragraph 12 of the Final Act states:
“Above all, … the States participating in the Conference commit themselves to promote and encourage respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cambodia. - In 1994. Khmer Rouge outlawed by Cambodian National Assembly
- 1998, Pol Pot, former leader of Khmer Rouge, dies in forest hideout, never brought to trial.
- Sovereignty is a volatile issue in the context of Cambodia’s history of being a victim of colonial diasporas. In June 2008, UNESCO named the Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage Site. A designation that is meant to preserve historical monuments but caused armed conflicts between Cambodia and Thailand
Angkor Kingdom at its Heights in the 12th Century
Source: Britannica
Border Disputes Over Preah Vihear in 2008
Source: New York Times
Contemporary Cambodia politics
- The country has a constitutionally independent judiciary composed of lower courts, an appeals court, and a Supreme Court. The court is responsible in resolving electoral disputes. However, Cambodia’s ruling party has been able to manipulate.
- There are three major political parties in Cambodia are the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), Sam Rainsy Party, the FUNCINPEC Party.
- Previously a party had to secure two-thirds of the seats to form government and no party was able to do so. The Constitution was amended with the support of the opposition to allow any party which obtained more than 50 per cent of the seats to form government.
- Cambodia is nominally a democracy and has democratic mechanisms in place and can enhance it to solve its internal affairs independently and responsibly.
- On 27 July 2008, Cambodia held its fourth parliamentary elections since the 1993. Despite evidence of fraud and voter intimidation, the 2008 parliamentary elections saw less violence than previous elections, better technical organization, and more open campaigning across the country.
- The CPP’s victory is the result of strategic planning to maintain and legitimatize its dominant role.
- “Politics is useless and worthless for me to think and care about. My top priorities are money and work, because that’s what will help me improve my lifestyle,” said a young female Cambodian.
- Approximately half of the total government budget made up of foreign contributions.
- China’s influence in Cambodia has increased substantially.
- The effects of development and progress in Cambodia depend on where one lives in Cambodia.
- This uneven development reflects the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of local officials from foreign aid.
- In the coming years, unbridled economic growth at the expense of the more vulnerable in the population and high levels of uneven development.
- The environment is also suffering, with topsoil erosion and flooding becoming prevalent.
- The spread of HIV/Aids is another threat; however, public health campaigns have reduced the rate of infection.
- Cambodia may reap billions of dollars in new revenues from offshore oil and gas fields in coming years. U.S.-based Chevron found promising oil deposits at offshore test. Preliminary estimates of the recoverable reserves are 400-500 million barrels of oil and 2-3 trillion cubic feet of gas. Cambodia’s total reserves could run as high as 2 billion barrels and 10 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the World Bank.
- A study of Cambodia for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2005 warned that Cambodia might follow the path of Nigeria, where new oil wealth turned into a “resource curse.”
- “Some people are worried about the Nigerian disease, saying that it should not be allowed to reach Cambodia. I have told them that Cambodia is not that stupid,” the prime minister said in remarks reported by the Associated Press.
Source: The Heritage Foundation (2008)
Source: The Heritage Foundation (2008)
- The Communist Party remains the dominant political force. The party is entrenched in state institutions and mass organizations.
- The party selects future leaders and senior officials and gives them extensive mid-career training, some of it highly ideological.
- The politburo, which currently has 14 members, is the party’s executive and sets government policy and vets all major appointments. It is elected by the 160-member Central Committee at national party congresses, which are held roughly every five years.
- The military is influential and ranks in influence only behind the party and the government. The army has always had a political dimension.
- Vietnam was supposed to become the next Asian Tiger. The country’s economyhas grown, on average, 7.5% every year over the past decade. Also, gdp per capita had increased to $833 in 2007 from $100 in 1990.
- Other things being equal, Vietnam’s miraculous growth is based on one-time changes of adopting capitalism as the basis of economic life; in that respect the country started from a very low base. Although these changes were by no means easy or painless, they cannot be replicated.
- The country’s rapid growth was more or less, characterized by inputs, such as mobilizing the rural labor force for industrialization, attracting fdi inflows, and heavy investment.
- Vietnam’s miraculous growth has not been accompanied by appreciable gains in efficiency or productivity growth. A study by the adb found that Vietnam’s growth from 1996 to 2004 was largely the result of capital and labor.
- Meanwhile, total factory productivity-measuring the efficiency with which labor and capital are combined in the output of the economy-decreased to 16.6% from 62.1% over the same period.
- This illustrates Vietnam’s inefficient use of scare public resources, weak governance resulting in higher transaction costs, and lower labor costs that insufficiently compensate for the lower level of productivity.
- At around 23% for the first nine months of 2008, the country’s inflation rate is at its highest level since 1991, when inflation hit 67%. The inflation rate jumped to a high of 28.3% in August from a high of 25.2% in May.
- The prime minister has also taken a contradictory stance-namely fighting inflation in a “flexible way” to achieve high growth rate. For economists, there is a trade-off between inflation and economic growth.
- “If you look at historical lessons of many countries in controlling inflation, stabilizing macro economy, actually you will almost never find any country which has succeeded in controlling inflation and at the same time promoting growth,” warned Ayumi Konishi, the Asian Development Bank’s country director for Vietnam.
- This perspective was echoed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Its forecast projects Vietnam’s gdp growth will slow to 4.9% for 2008 and 4.6% for 2009, and cpi will drop to 15.2% in 2009 from 25%. Meanwhile, the adb believes that Vietnam can exceed the adb’s gdp projection of 6.5% for 2008 and 6% for 2009. However, Vietnam would do so with “the cost of higher inflation and widening trade deficit,” according to Mr. Konishi.
- The financial turmoil on Wall Street is expected to have certain repercussions for Vietnamese market institutions (i.e., local banks and large state corporations seeking partners and foreign capital) and trade activities. Vietnam is vulnerable to a demand-contraction of the United States’ economy and the falling dollar.
- The Harvard report published in January 2008 found that the “organs of the Vietnamese state, political, administrative, and academic are increasingly co-opted by interest groups who use them for self-enrichment and aggrandizement,” so that “the greatest threat to the state is its own failings.” Similarly, the report had warned that “inflation in Vietnam is a problem of the government’s own making, being largely the result of poor macroeconomic management and inefficient investment decisions.”
- The report concluded that for Vietnam to achieve a sustained high rate of economic growth over the next 20-30 years it is mainly about politics, not know-how. That political will is the necessary catalyst for reform, so as to localize “best practices” in state effectiveness, firm competitiveness, financial system, and education.
The report equates the party leadership as being “no different from a soccer coach who starts his weakest players in the championship match.” - Notwithstanding, the Harvard’s report itself is merely echoing what Vietnamese intellectuals have already known. For example, Phan Dinh Dieu, a prestigious professor who wrote about the development of IT and information economy in the 1990s, noted that the country’s ability to build strong and dynamic enterprises could “hardly be coming from the state enterprises management.”
- But at the end of the day, Vietnam’s intellectuals are arguably right that they cannot get to the core problems of the country’s situation: because they are not allowed to. Until they do, it seems Vietnam will continue to field the weakest players with a head coach that can’t be questioned or fired.
Oct
14
Vietnamese Katrina Experiences: Windows to the Past and Present*
* A version of this article was published by the BBC-Vietnamese. Click here for the link.
There has been a growing interest among social science scholars to study Vietnamese Katrina evacuees, who were initially and disproportionately among the first to return and to have rebuilt their ethnic community.
Today, 45 of the 53 Vietnamese American-owned businesses concentrated in a commercial area are back, and over 90 percent of Vietnamese residents have returned to Village de L’Est. In comparison, fewer than 50 percent of the Village de L’Est African Americans have returned.
Although Vietnamese account less than 1.5 percent of New Orleans’ population, it is one of the largest concentrated settlements of Vietnamese Americans in the U.S., about 25,000 in the greater New Orleans metropolitan area.
The Vietnamese Versailles community started to attract media coverage when, within months after Katrina, members and their families associated with the Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic began returning. By the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, more than a majority of the residents and businesses had come back.
However, many of the media reports tended to view the recovery by the Vietnamese Versailles Community through the Asian American model-minority myth. That Vietnamese refugees and immigrants have come to rely on their culture of self-reliance (as associated with Asian Americans in general) to overcome Katrina.
The Role of Historical Narratives and Memories
According to a recent study by academic Karen J. Leong and her colleagues, the rate of return is associated with a number of factors, including socioeconomic class.That is, many of the Vietnamese in Village de L’Est were middle-class homeowners. Their median housing value was in the mid-$80,000 range. By contrast, African Americans in the same neighborhood constituted 78 percent of low-income tenants, renting from government-subsidized apartments. Moreover, most of these apartments were heavily damaged by Katrina and, thus, the incentive to return was very different from those who owned homes.
Beside class, the perception of environmental risk also affected the decision to return. For example, for African Americans, if the government were to fix the levee system and ensure that it would not forsake them to danger again, many would return, according to journalistic accounts.
Meanwhile, for many members of the Vietnamese Versailles Community, the reaction and response to Katrina drew parallels to their migration displacements associated with the Vietnam War.
“My parents fled North Vietnam for South Vietnam in 1954. I fled from Vietnam for America in 1975. Now in 2005, my children fled from the only home they knew, much like I did, except that they fled in a car and I fled on a boat,” Nguyen Ngoc Dung told a Houston Chronicle reporter days after she and her children evacuated from New Orleans to Houston in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“Is this the fate of the Vietnamese people? To always flee?”
What have caught the attention of academics are the disaster behaviors of Vietnamese Katrina victims.
That is, Vietnamese Katrina victims both ‘put to use’ and ‘drew on’ the tales of overcoming “forced” migrations and catastrophic loss that their ethnic group experienced in 1954 when the country was split into “two countries,” and again in 1975, when the country was “reunified” under the communist regime.
This was the case of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church, which has been central to and has spearheaded the rebuilding of the Vietnamese Versailles Community; by some accounts, more than 75 percent of the community is Catholic.
In the path to recovery, the Catholic Church’s leadership drew strength from its historical narrative and collective memory of previous migration displacements. According to its pastor, Nguyen The Vien, the church’s leadership was not a post-migration phenomenon. Rather, it had developed several hundred years ago when Catholicism, a foreign faith, was introduced to certain villages in Vietnam, and over a time it has developed into a form of local leadership.
By the early 1950s, Vietnamese Catholic leaders had publicly condemned the communist government of Ho Chi Minh. This is because the latter had begun to move away from a “united front” against foreign oppression to a socialist revolution which needed to destroy the “old order,” including Catholicism and its followers, who were thought to be associated with colonialism.
When the 1954 Geneva Accord divided the country into two halves, initially some million refugees fled to the “non-communist” south. More than 80 percent of the 1954 in-country refugees were Catholics, according to available statistics. In 1975, when Saigon fell to communist rule, the first wave of 125,000 Vietnamese refugees, of whom 40 percent were Catholics, fled overseas.
In both massive migrations, the local Catholic leadership had played a major role in mobilizing villagers to flee in fear of religious and political persecution.
In fact, many members of Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church can trace their origins to the Catholic villages in the Ba Ria-Vung Tau province (southern Vietnam), while elder members trace their origins to the large Catholic dioceses in the northern provinces of Phat Diem and Bui Chu.
In drawing strength from the past, the parish community, which had been organized into “hamlets,” would assign each team a different task. For example, one would repair and decontaminate houses, another would arrange for tetanus shots to prevent illness, and still another would buy and cook food. Furthermore, church leaders deliberatively selected particular attitudes toward the rationalization in rebuilding after Katrina.
That is, church members were reminded that their families “have been displaced twice in their life prior to this” and during the 21 years of war “we were always having to evacuate and rebuild,” so that “we’re well experienced” as a community,” preached Nguyen The Vien.
Notably, the church’s leadership has been transformed in post-Katrina. Before “what we needed to do we did ourselves” but now we’ve become more active “because we saw the city government as impeding our way of life,” stated Nguyen The Vien.
In the initial months after Katrina, a city’s rebuilding commission had recommended that a moratorium on construction in the heavily damaged neighborhoods be in place, such as the Village de L’Est. In response, the church’s leadership decided to challenge the commission. It began to re-knit the community without permission. This strategy is paying off, demonstrating to the city that Vietnamese have intent to return.
As a result, a city urban planning team is now working with community leaders, looking beyond the rebuilding phase, such as a future plan for a community center, a retirement home, and the area’s history and culture museum. Moreover, the Vietnamese community has shown the ability to build and lead community coalitions – including African Americans and environmental groups – in getting the city to close a landfill that had opened near Village de l’Est after Katrina.
While the church’s leadership still faces issues in rebuilding in a flood-prone area (i.e. the city’s flood-protection system has not shorn up the levees for another Katrina-like hurricane), it demonstrates not only to the larger American public, but also perhaps to Vietnamese today in Vietnam, that an autonomous faith-based community can be a positive force in society.
The “other” Vietnamese Katrina experiences
One of the more obvious shortcomings of media coverage and academic studies is that they either neglect or overlook the issue of class and other religious faiths within the Vietnamese Katrina victims.
That is, in and around the Vietnamese Versailles Community, there is a smaller but vibrant Buddhist community anchored by a number of temples and religious organizations. There are also many Vietnamese who either live below or are hovering just above the poverty line, and who are tenants in the government-subsidized apartments.
Moreover, about five percent of the first-wave of Vietnamese refugees were fishermen, and many of them continued their trade. Before Katrina, they, along with the more recent Vietnamese immigrants, made up a large portion of the shrimping industry in southeast Louisiana, running large steel-hulled shrimp boats along the Gulf Coast.
Yet, we don’t know much about their Katrina experiences.
In early March 2006, a number of my students and I did field research, surveying Vietnamese who had remained in or returned to New Orleans. We interviewed 48 individuals in two locations: Chua Bo De (a Buddhist temple) located in New Orleans West, which served as a shelter of displaced Vietnamese Katrina and a fishing dock in Empire in southeast Louisiana.
However, my research was not originally designed to study the experiences of non-Catholic or Buddhist Vietnamese Katrina evacuees. Rather, the survey was designed to measure how Vietnamese have adjusted psychologically and economically in post-Katrina. The survey was a non-random survey and, thus, caution is used in interpreting the results.
Mostly because of the location of the field study, 88 percent of the survey’s respondents were non-Catholic – 60 percent Buddhists, 28 percent Cao Dai. In regard to the respondents’ socioeconomic status, 29 percent had a high school diploma or less, 17 percent had some college, and 20 percent had a college degree or higher.
While further investigation is needed, the survey provides some new insights and findings.
First, 92 percent of the survey’s respondents reported that they thought Katrina brought out the worst in people, and 88 percent thought that things didn’t turn out well for them. However, at the same time, only 25 percent thought that it is safer to trust nobody. In fact, in our informal discussions with and observations of respondents at both locations, my students and I were privately in awe of the displaced Vietnamese Katrina victims. They were down on their luck, but they did not dwell too long on the negatives or became withdrawn from the outside world.
Instead, they kept busy in finding resources in order to move on. This was true among Vietnamese fishermen, who were initially and disproportionately among the first to return to Empire. Their focus was literally on the creative process of “patchworking,” drawing on kinship relations, resources from the larger Vietnamese American community, and government assistance to rebuild their boats, which for many were also their home.
An interesting finding is that all of the survey’s respondents reported that they had no insurance to cover their losses. But most had a banking savings/checking account, usable credit cards and a workable cell phone. And no one reported that they had a relative or a friend who was killed or injured as a result of Katrina.
Moreover, all agree that relatives and their connectedness to the Vietnamese community are important for mutual assistance. However, 48 percent of respondents disagreed that they would be more comfortable living in a neighborhood which has at least some Vietnamese than in one which has none.
Perhaps, the most interesting finding is that more than 80 percent reported “satisfactory” in response how American and Vietnamese religious and community groups, as well as families and friends, assisted the victims of Katrina. Meanwhile, 85 percent thought that the Red Cross was excellent and 92 percent thought that the government was good.
The above finding suggests that while support from Vietnamese religious and community groups as well as families and friends was substantial, the survey’s respondents needed government assistance in order to get a new start. For example, a cash federal grant program, Road Home, has provided many underinsured homeowners on average about $59,000.
On the ground, it appeared that the help of Boat People SOS – a Vietnamese American non-profit organization who coordinated with and worked along aside with federal government agencies – hurricane grants have started to reach Vietnamese victims of Katrina.
Conclusion
In the wake of Katrina, I wanted to research on whether Vietnamese Katrina victims were psychologically and culturally prepared to start all over again. This was the same question that American scholars had asked in 1975 when Vietnamese refugees first arrived to the US. In fact, some predicted that Vietnamese refugees would be unprepared to start a new life because of their experiences of traumas from war and escape, although in hindsight most evidence does not support this view.
My field survey does reveal that then as now Vietnamese Americans when faced with catastrophes seem to take the attitude of “nowhere to go but up.”
However, the actual road to recovery will no doubt be influenced by class and religion. For example, more than the majority of the survey’s respondents do not think they will fully recover from Katrina. And while they may not have a strong cohesive social network as those associated with the Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church, they are connected to variety of both community and government resources. These resources, particularly the latter, may be quite effective in making “nowhere to go but up” a reality.
Leong, Karen, et al. 2007. “
Resilient History and the Rebuilding of a Community: The Vietnamese American Community in New Orleans East, The Journal of American History 94 (3): 770-779.
- How does history play a role in the rebuilding of the Vietnamese American community in
- How does memory play a role in the rebuilding of the Vietnamese American community in
Jun
17
Vietnamese Americans: Place Making in the American Mosaic.
This PowerPoint presentation was given at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi on May 20, 2008. The PowerPoint presentation can be found by clicking
here or on the picture.
For more information please go to http://vietnam.usembassy.gov/
Apr
17
The Making of the Western Version of Being Vietnamese
For American observers of the Vietnam War, many are quite drawn to the question of how a third world country defeated the most technologically advanced country in the world. Some explanations focused on the communist North Vietnam’s coercion and terrorist tactics against the non-communist South Vietnam in which the former was encouraged on and supported by the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Others argue that the non-communist South Vietnam was plagued by polarization and smoldering rivalries and that its main ally, the United States, began to negotiate itself out of the war in order to save its honor, discounting the non-communist South Vietnam’s interests.
In another opinion, U.S. policies in Vietnam totally disregarding the realities of Vietnam doomed the U.S. intervention from the start. According to Joseph Buttinger, it was bad enough that US policymakers did not consider the two thousand year Vietnamese struggle against being absorbed by China and that:
Much worse still was not to know, or knowingly to disregard, the fact that as a result of French colonial policies in Indochina the whole Vietnam had become Communist by the end of the of War World II. I say the whole of Vietnam, not only the North – something which, in spite of thirty years of French and American propaganda, remains an undeniable fact. [1]
Yet, it is probably more accurate that French form of colonialism had greatly impeded and ridiculed the non-communist, nationalist road to power, while its exploitative colonial policy resulting in the ‘loss of the country,’ ‘economic exploitation,’ and ‘cultural and racial genocide’ “indirectly made the communist party into an awesome and formidable revolutionary organization.” [2]
French colonial policy never seriously sought to grant national independence to non-communist, nationalist Vietnamese until French power was confronted with widespread nationalist opposition and the possibility of a communist takeover. [3] Even more so, the proposals to make Vietnam an independent state under a non-communist government “were watered down with so many compromises, mental reservations, and double entendres.” As a result, such proposals were easily ridiculed by and could not rival the communist North Vietnam’s “simple creed of total independence even at the price of long and bloody war.” [4]
Nevertheless, non-communist Vietnamese were fully aware of the failures of the French colonists to give their country full benefits of a modern civilization on the one hand, but also recognized their dependency on the West to revitalize the country’s traditions and institutions on the other. That is, non-communist Vietnamese found a refuge through western culture where a balance between the individual’s ambitions and that of state authority was possible, and where it was possible to create a cultural hybrid between the East and West.
In essence, a modern Vietnamese integration tradition emerged in which individuals could adopt and adapt foreign values and ideas, blending them with indigenous beliefs without viewing them as contradictory. In contrast, the communist nationalist movement wanted to neutralize, recast or destroy western cultural elements that “reproduced” the old order and replace them with new ideas and values to produce a new socialist culture for Vietnam. [5]
According to Vu Ngu Chieu, during the first Indochina war (1945-1954), the cultural synthesis between the East and West “was wishful thinking, too vague for any purpose at the time.” [6] What was proven to win the day was “charismatic leadership and powerful theories as well as administrative and military strength,” which the non-communist movement did not possess or lacked. [7]
In reaction to the expansion of communist rule, vast non-communist refugee movements took flight – first toward southern Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Accord partitioned the country into two zones and later, the mass exodus to the western world after the fall of Saigon regime in 1975.
Migrating and emigrating from communist expansion appeared to have solidified a western version of being Vietnamese.
The partition of the country in 1954 provided the conditions in which westernization in Vietnamese society could continue to develop in southern Vietnam. Southern Vietnam’s urban centers – which were being subsidized by American ambition’s to “win the hearts and minds of the people” from 1954 to 1975 – provided millions of migrants from the north as well as from the rural areas of the south the opportunity to synthesize Vietnamese culture and western culture.
As a result, southern Vietnamese urbanites were far more likely than anyone else in the country to have attended or had children attending newly built schools with trained teachers and printed textbooks on mathematics, chemistry and engineering. They were also far more likely to be affected by the information and communication explosion, such as owning a television set, a radio, a telephone, and a car. They were more likely to have seen English TV programs such as “Dragnet,” “Batman,” “I Love Lucy,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “Gunsmoke,” “Mission Impossible,” and “Combat.” Moreover, Vietnamese urbanites were far more likely to have been an “entrepreneur” by way of the “American consumer economy” in southern Vietnam.
With the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, these southern Vietnamese urbanites disproportionately made up the numbers of refugees who evacuated and escaped Vietnam.
According to one opinion, it was thought that the initial waves of Vietnamese refugees (1975-1978) were likely to achieve a more rapid process of assimilation than the pre-1965 Chinese and Japanese immigrants. [8] This was very possible given South Vietnam’s unique socio-historical familiarity with Western language, employment, customs, and traditions which were more likely to be the case among Vietnamese who participated in the emigration. [9] From this perspective, Vietnamese refugees had a distinct kind of “anticipatory socialization” to American society, giving them a distinct advantage over earlier Asian immigrants (pre-1965) to the U.S.
In fact, refugee studies have, in part, contributed to the relatively robust social mobility of the first generation of Vietnamese refugees to this cohort’s ability to retain aspects of Vietnamese culture. These include cultural ideals of the family such as “hieu” (filial piety) and “on” (moral debt to parents) and of the community such as welfare mechanisms of “giap” (organization with mutual aid functions) and “nghia” (the obligation to participate rather than withdraw from in societal affairs), which have been powerful forces of virtue, solidarity, self-correction, and achievement. [10] Importantly, these culture ideals could exist “with views that the American way of life was more modern, scientific, and progressive, and that many Vietnamese customs and traditions were no longer appropriate.” [11]
Ironically, such ability to negotiate and integrate a new culture both in the Vietnamese context and Western context has caught the attention of the current Vietnamese communist-led government, who once referred the Vietnamese refugees as “traitors” or those who left “illegally” (and, thus, when they return to the homeland are no longer entitled to the “privileges” of Vietnamese citizens). As noted by Nguyen Ngoc Bich:
the overseas Vietnamese can now take a certain ironic comfort if not pride in the fact that the Hanoi rulers had to revise their opinion, twist their tongue and call them in recent years “the extension of Vietnam’s innards thousands of miles away” (“khuc ruot xa ngan dam” as the expression goes in Vietnamese). But the overseas Vietnamese are not dupe, they are not about to fall into the trap because they are mindful of the The Red Riding Hood story when the wolf, imitating the grandmother, pipes lavish praise into the ears of Little Red Riding Hood as to how wonderful she is or looks. [12]
French Mission Civilisatrice: Creating Irreconcilable Vietnamese Political Communities
Facing fierce local opposition, French hegemony in Vietnam was not ensured until the turn of the twentieth century when “the cornerstone of French colonial policy was to dismantle pre-colonial form that potentially threatened French rule.” [13] This included the division of the country into three regions in which each region had different policies.
The southern region (Cochinchina) was declared a colony of France and, thus, placed under the direct and sole authority of the French. The central region (Annam) was initially to be subjected to the direct rule of the Nguyen dynasty with a French special envoy, although by the early 1900s the Nguyen dynasty was forced to sign an ordinance recognizing the right of French citizens to own land as well as the right of the colonial government to collect taxes. [14] Meanwhile, Tonkin was a protectorate and was to be fully dependent upon the monarchy of Hue, but the French removed it from imperial control to a Vietnamese viceroy that conferred its prerogatives on the French resident superior of Tonkin. [15]
In essence, French colonial policy had served to exacerbate or create regional and class tensions, undermining the Nguyen dynasty’s attempts to create both horizontal and vertical national unity.
For instance, according to Gail Kelly, Franco-Vietnamese educational institutions were created to serve different social strata of whom the French depended to aid in extending colonial hegemony. [16] Moreover, under such policy, all pretence of meritocracy was dropped as well as the pretence that schooling as a route social mobility. [17]
In Cochinchina, the education system was responsive to the demands of the monied and urban strata, who most wanted to gain access to French education but did not prevent the expansion of Franco-Vietnamese education. [18] Meanwhile in Annam, the schooling system was designed to bolster a new class of aspiring salaried workers and the low echelons of the traditional elite in order to discrediting the monarch and its retainers. [19] This class, however, did want to limit access to other groups who threatened their status. In Tonkin, the elite also wanted access to metropolitan schooling. However, French administrators in Tonkin restricted the opportunity for schooling because they feared that educated Vietnamese might qualify for their jobs or that Vietnamese elites were either revolutionaries or malcontents. [20]
The “strategy of divide and rule” was to safeguard French colonial rule in Vietnam. However, at the same time, such strategy created a fragmented Vietnamese political community in which each faction had different local responses to French colonial power, such as those who favored an evolutionary change in society by combining a ‘modern’ mind with ‘traditional’ virtue, expressing cultural hybrid between the East and the West.” [21] Meanwhile, others saw the virtue of overthrowing French colonization of which they equated with slavery; thus there was an urgent need to dismantle and “reeducate” those who were associated with the ‘old order’ and replace that order with new ideas and values as to create a new socialist order. [22] By extension, the differentiated local responses resulted in an ideological struggle that eventually divided the country into “two Viet-Nams” – that of communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam.
By contrast, American colonial policy in the Philippines differed sharply from French approaches to colonialism or French mission civilisatrice. That is, American form of colonial rule, which embraced the idea of an efficient transfer of sovereignty to the Philippines, had prepared and transferred sovereignty to the Philippines. This was done via new political institutions modeled on the American constitutional system and, because central issue was about the timing of national independence the Philippine, nationalist movement was never suppressed. In fact, the passage of Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934 provided a timetable for Philippine independence.
American “association” policy was also to maintain ‘native individuality’ and ‘native development.’ As a result, American social policy consisted of a dual purpose program of secular education to promote democratic norms and values to a mass electorate and to train indigenous elite to maintain a democratic society. In particular, the more than one million Filipino students who attended public school by 1922 were unprecedented by any Western colonial standard. [23] While the Philippine economy was largely dependent on the U.S. (American economy consumed 75 percent of the Philippine exports and providing 85 percent of its imports), American economic policy did not uproot the Philippine agrarian economy. [24]
A qualitative study by Frank Darling strongly suggests a correlation between association policy and the high-transferable political and administrative structures to transfer sovereignty back to Asian colonized societies. In other words, Darling’s study found that association models as used in the Philippines, Thailand, the Dutch East Indies, and British Malaya did provide, to a considerable degree, protection and the strengthening of the native society as well as the preparation for self-colonization. [25]
Meanwhile, assimilation models such as those used by France in Vietnam, and Cambodia were means to draw the colonized to the modern world in which they “could become Frenchmen and…aim at their integration into the homogeneous society of a single Great France revolving around Paris.”href=”#w14m26″ mce_href=”#w14m26″>[26] Outside observers thought that French policies, without any major modifications for local conditions, would result in ‘a clean sweep of all native traditions’ and bring into ‘existence a group of social half-breeds’ who had ‘lost the feeling of kinship to their old past yet [were] not completely at home in their new present.’href=”#w14m27″ mce_href=”#w14m27″>[27] In the framework of French mission civilisatrice, the colonized country was the student whose role is to study hard and follow the instructions of his French teacher, so that one day he would be ready for graduation.
While French social policy promoting French culture in Vietnam was relatively higher compared to its social policy in Cambodia and Laos, its colonial school system was designed to detach the Vietnamese from the Chinese influences in order for Vietnamese to readily accept the idea that French was unique and indispensable to Vietnam. [28] In addition, French education policy was closely interlinked with the Roman Catholic Church and was politicized to discourage the spread of nationalist movements. Compared to the U.S. in the Philippines or the British colonies, the French educational system in Vietnam was meager in size with only 14 secondary schools and one university, which were overly sympathetic to French colonial rule, located largely in urban centers, and whose admission was largely based on high proficiency in the French language. [29]
Regarding economics, French policy was relatively high in terms of industrialization. However, French economic policy was not “liberal” by comparison to other colonial powers in Asia at the time, exploiting Vietnam’s raw materials and markets more or less exclusively for France domestic economic development. For example, French Tariff Law of 1891 and the Doumer program of 1895 had the effect of “producing a kind of specialization in which farming along traditional lines was reserved to the Vietnamese, while industry, trade, transport, banking, and modern farming were all in French hands.” [30] As such, the French controlled commercial monopolies which enhanced the wealth of public and private groups in France as well as for a large number of permanent French residents in Vietnam. [31] For Vietnamese laborers in these French commercial monopolies, if they:
could have left, for example, after their contracts, which were usually for three to five years, had expired they would have saved enough to return to their native village decently loaded with some ‘capital,’ they may have accepted this situation. But as it was, the owners of the plantations had designed their economics in such a way that workers could never accumulate savings. [32]
Although the idea of association and cooperation within Indochina predated World War II which was espoused by some noted governors-general such as Alber Sarraut (1911-13 and 1917-1919) and Pierre Pasquier (1928-1934), Vietnam was ruled from Paris where the tenure of the governors-general was relatively short. During 1900-1930, eleven governors – not counting the interim ones – shared the responsibility of managing the affairs of the colony.[33] It wasn’t until France was under the Vichy regime in 1940 that assimilation policy was rejected, though France never believed in full assimilation to begin with since it was too expensive. The Vichy government opted to promote a multi-tiered patriotism which included:
the love of a people for its colonial country, for the colonial federation of Indochina (the colonies and protectorates of Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Laos, and Cambodia), and for the French empire and the metropole – without stimulating an indigenous nationalist political program that pursued independence from external control. [34]
On the one hand, the French concepts of association and cooperation embraced the “blooming of sovereignties and local personalities” but such evolution had to operate within the French imperial community with proper guidance on the other. In practice, France’s solution to grant the non-communist nationalist’s call for an independent state as an alternative to the communist North Vietnam was, perhaps, best formulated by Francois Mitterand:
We have granted Viet-Nam ‘full independence’ eighteen times since 1949. Isn’t it about time we did it just once, but for good? [35]
Thus, the non-communist Vietnamese alliance with France appeared to be more of “a matter of sheer accident than design.” [36] This reality played into the communist nationalist leaders’ call for national liberation against France or any other foreigner rulers at any cost, since it was evident that negotiations with colonizers resulted only in myths of independence which “did not change the situation in the slightest.” [37]
Bao Dai’s National Solutions: Breaking Away from Monarchy and Communism
The fact that Vietnam’s national spirit and action of the past had disappeared and national sovereignty was never effectively or efficiently transferred back to the Vietnamese strengthened the communist road to power.
According to Bernard Fall, “the French had no one but themselves to blame, and most thoughtful Frenchmen recognize this.” [38]
French scholar Paul Isoart also argued that the Indochina War was made into a type of French internal political football, and that “having inherited from our Gallic ancestors their taste for anarchy and from our Latin culture for drawn-out palavers, we found [in Viet-Nam] the occasion to wallow in both” where “the fate of France or Viet-Nam had long been lost in all this.” [39]
The “lost in all this” includes the attempt of Vietnamese to create and develop a western version of being “a good Vietnamese,” while, at the same time having to play the foreign “political football” that stopped short of allowing them to actually regain complete national independence.
Perhaps, no other person than Bao Dai best represented this version and peculiar predicament.
Because Bao Dai presided during “the lost decade” from 1945 to 1954, the focus has been on his failures, such as his penchant to perfect a lavish western style, “mandarinal mentality,” or willingness to be a “prop” for the Western world’s anti-communist policies.
To be sure, Bao Dai was very astute of the country’s traditional nationalist past as well as the contemporary intellectual and evolutionary nationalists, such as Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh. In undated proclamation to Governor-General Jean Decoux during the Japanese occupation of Vietnam (1941-1945), Bao Dai issued:
Ten and a half centuries under the yoke of China could not stifle the conscience of our race, which, after many travails, crystallized to such a point that a signal by Ngo Quyen, avenging his father, sufficed to rally an entire people and to liberate the homeland…Our people can claim proudly before their neighbors that they are the descendants of those who stopped the Mongol invasion. [40]
As for the governor-general, he may have welcomed Bao Dai’s nationalist conscience in order to possibly resist a Japanese annexation of Vietnam, but the French had apparently missed the point that Bao Dai saw himself as the “keeper of [Vietnam’s] greatness.” In fact, when he ascended the throne in 1932 at the age of nineteen, he dropped the name Vinh-Thuy and assumed the dynastic name Bao Dai, meaning “keeper of greatness.”
Well aware that his father, Emperor Khai Dinh, was ridiculed by Vietnamese nationalists as the worse of Nguyen emperor-puppets, Bao Dai “tried zealously to reform Vietnam along modern lines, away from the sterile intrigues of a decadent court.” [41] The reforms included transforming the judicial and educational systems as well as ending the practice mandarin custom requiring aides to touch their foreheads to the ground when addressing their emperor; [42] and in defiance of court ceremonial, he married a southern Catholic girl of humble origin, Nam Phuong (southern beauty).
The principle that had run through his various government posts was the principle of “dan vi qui” (the most precious thing is the people), and he always attempted to recruit “men of virtue” in rebuilding the country. For example, he selected Ngo Dinh Diem as the Minister of the Interior in 1933, who as a young governor of Phan Thiet Province was known for his honesty and energy; [43] and just before the 1954 partition, Bao Dai had chosen Ngo Dinh Diem again to head the South Vietnamese government, independently of the United States. [44]
His commitment to the nationalist interest was evident in his impassioned appeal to General Charles de Gaulle (the then President of the French Provisional Government) about France’s reassertion of its colonial rights of Vietnam after being “liberated” from the Japanese in September 1945. Bao Dai forewarned that:
Even if you come to reestablish a French administration here, it will no longer be obeyed: each village will be a nest of resistance, each former collaborator an enemy, and your officials and colonist will themselves ask to leave this atmosphere which they will be unable to breathe…I beg you to understand that the only way to safeguard French interests and the spiritual influence of French in Indochina is to recognize frankly the independence of Vietnam and to renounce all thoughts of re-establishing French sovereignty or administration under any form of whatsoever. We could easily be able to understand each other and become friends if you would cease to pretend that you want to again to become our masters. [45]
In late August of 1945, recognizing both that the international scene was changing and that the increased pressure to abdicate from the growing power of Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, Bao Dai declared that: “I would prefer to be a citizen of an independent country rather than Emperor of an enslaved one.” [46]
In abdicating to the Viet Minh, Bao Dai’s government had achieved territory unification of Vietnam, sustained administrative capabilities, and reclaimed the country’s name, flag, and language. His government saw the need of political unity, since the enemy was looking for divisions in which “union means life and division means death.” [47] When Bao Dai was offered the protection against a possible Viet Minh coup by the Allied force, he dismissed the protection reaffirming “I do not wish a foreign army to spill the blood of my people.” [48]
In one opinion, Bao Dai, who had “collaborated” with both the French and the Japanese and who should have exited history after the August Revolution, was still perceived as a psychological value to the Viet Minh. [49] In fact, Ho Chi Minh had immediately made Bao Dai the “Supreme Adviser of the Republican Government” under the title and name of “Citizen Prince Nguyen Vinh-Thuy.” Such a tactic may have been to add “prestige with both the Vietnamese and foreigners” and because “the ex-emperor’s presence seemed to guarantee that the Viet-Minh were not communists.” [50]
Yet, in his imperial abdication on August 25, 1945, Bao Dai directly requested the need for Vietnamese political unity with key prerequisites:
We request the new Government to deal fraternally with all the parties and groups [including non-communist, nationalist groups] which have fought for the independence of our country even though they have not closely followed the popular movement [Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh]; to do this in order to give the opportunity to participate in the reconstruction of the country and to demonstrate the new regime is built upon the absolute union of the entire population…we shall allow no one to abuse our name [Vietnam] or the name of the royal family [the Nguyen dynasty] in order to sow dissent among our compatriots. [51]
Going West: Different Version of Being a Good Vietnamese
The importance of Bao Dai’s imperial abdication is the request that “all parties and groups” should be recognized as a part of a Vietnamese fraternal order and should be given the opportunity to participate in the rebuilding of the country. Both of these conditions would test whether Ho Chi Minh’s new regime “is built upon the union of the entire population.”
Inexplicitly, if these prerequisites were not fulfilled by Ho Chi Minh’s government, then it would be within the rights of those who had earlier abdicated their power to the new regime to retract their abdication.
In other words, Bao Dai’s imperial abdication allowed for him and others to “break” with Ho Chi Minh’s new regime, if Ho Chi Minh’s nationalism:
were to free the people from the former mother country only to place them at the mercy of a handful of their own fellow-countrymen…[and who may] champion the rights of peoples while neglecting to protect the rights of man. [52]
Because the new government never shared power with non-communist groups and began to assassinate key members of non-communist Viet Minh, Bao Dai left Hanoi on March 18, 1946 and, instead of going on a mission to China to obtain economic and military aid for the government of Ho Chi Minh, he went to Hong Kong. [53]
His departure coincided with that of the non-communist groups within the Viet Minh who fled to China and later regrouped with other non-communist groups in southern Vietnam, forming the National Union Front.
Meanwhile, in March 1946, Ho Chi Minh signed an agreement that allowed a limited number of French troops to return to northern Vietnam and to replace the Chinese non-communist troops. In exchange, the French would recognize Ho Chi Minh’s government as a “free state having its own government, its own parliament and its own finances, and forming part of the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.” [54]
However, having no desire to give up its colonial rights – perhaps due, in part, to its reluctance to eventually relinquish power to Ho Chi Minh’s communist government – France reneged on the agreement and demanded that Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh lay down their arms. By December 1946, military conflicts broke out between the Viet Minh and the French, signaling the First Indochina War (1946-1954). In confronting a formidable adversary on a number of fronts, the French opportunely and immediately started to negotiate with Bao Dai as the figure head, along with the National Union Front, to create an alternative to Ho Chi Minh’s government in the north, which became known as the “Bao Dai solution.” [55] In response, in December 1947, a Ho Chi Minh’s court allegedly sentenced Bao Dai to death and stripped him of Vietnamese citizenship. [56]
To be sure, the “Bao Dai solution” could equally be called the Bao Dai’s solution, since any French solution was equally dependent on Bao Dai’s agreement which took more than two years before both sides authorized it.
Regardless, this solution led to the creation of the Associated State of Viet-Nam in April of 1949 in which “France solemnly recognizes the independence of Viet-Nam…[Viet-Nam now proclaimed] its adherence to the French Union as a state associated with France.” [57]
France, of course, was not about to grant full independence. However, according to one opinion, “the essential point had been gained” in which “Bao Dai had obtained from the French in two years of negotiating what Ho had not been able to obtain in two years of fighting: the word ‘independence.’”
Importantly, in Bao Dai’s going west or allied again with the French, the right of the Vietnamese non-communist, nationalists to speak for itself was born.
For many, however, Bao Dai’s road to a non-communist identity was tainted. For example, Francois Mitterrand charged that:
In 1932, [Bao Dai] ascends to the throne…and France pays him…On March 11, 1945…Bao Dai…collaborates with the Japanese. Japan pays and Bao Dai obeys. On August 25, 1945 he abdicates…Ho Chi Minh appears the stronger [and] Bao Dai hopes that, on that side, too, pay will be forthcoming… But what can such a young republic offer?…This does not suit Bao Dai…[and now] we find him in Hong Kong, surrounded by emissaries of the United States and of the Bank of Indochina, and by the Reverend Father Vicondelet, Procurator General of the Missions Strangeres. [58]
But the depiction of Bao Dai as a ‘willing servant’ for the right price cannot explain all his actions and policies. In fact, Bao Dai never went back on his imperial abdication or any previous agreements that the he had signed. His new government styled itself as a “quoc gia” (state) embraced the principle of “dan vi qui” (the most precious thing is the people). As such, his new government deliberately left the character of the regime in doubt until the Vietnamese people were in a position “to freely decide upon their own institutions.”
When the Vietnamese had an opportunity to vote on October of 1955, they voted against Bao Dai and for a republican regime under Ngo Dinh Diem by a “reported” 63,017 votes to 5.7 million, respectively. [59]
In comparison to Bao Dai, Ngo Dinh Diem, at the time, had the “right” persona to lead a new republican government that could counter against Ho Chi Minh. Ngo Dinh Diem’s record as anti-communist and as anti-French nationalist was unquestionable and unrivaled. In fact, in his memoir, Le Dragon d’Annam, he admits that during the 1954 Geneva Accord, he was worried that France would hand Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh. As a result, he sought to counter this by replacing his current premier Buu Loc with Ngo Dinh Diem who showed the ability to govern a new and a free Vietnam against the communist government in the north.
Perhaps not unlike Nguyen Hoang’s going south in 1600 (who was the founding father of the Nguyen state in the 17th and 18th century and a forebearer of the Nguyen dynasty), a possible reading of Bao Dai’s going west or breaking away from Ho Chi Minh’s government in 1946 could be that of a metaphor for all the decisions that going west would make possible. That is, the creation of a non-communist state which was no longer possible to ignore the differences between communist and non-communist.
To be sure, the birth of a free Vietnam was “not in a flurry of lowering French flags and rising Vietnamese flags, but in an endless shuffle of transfer agreements, protocols, and registers that excited the imagination of no one and frittered away the psychological impact of the achievement.” [60] Moreover, Bao Dai’s proneness to serve colonial powers made it difficult for him to persuade Vietnamese to accept the terms of a free Vietnam under the French Union as a state associated with France, particularly among the non-communist and anti-French nationalists.
One the one hand, Bao Dai represented the young and westernized while retaining the “mandarinal mentality” (such as rigidity, unresponsiveness, aloofness, arrogance, and pomposity) as well as perfecting a western ego (as an adventurer who single-handedly bagged a large percentage of country’s tigers, and as a playboy that had many mistresses at his hunting lodge in the cool highlands of central Vietnam).
However, at the same time, Bao Dai had been a bridge for a number of nationalist governments to emerge and to attain the right to speak for itself, at least to some degree, including the Tran Trong Kim government, the Ho Chi Minh government, the Associated State of Vietnam, and the Republic of Vietnam.
Perhaps the most importance bridge was one that allowed for a western version of being Vietnamese to emerge and to develop. Any shortcomings of Bao Dai’s independent government of Vietnam (1949-1954) have to be balanced with the fact that it was strong enough that the decision of the Geneva Accord of 1954 led to a kind of partition that allowed for a non-communist state to exist.
Unlike Ho Chi Minh, during his transformation from being the last Nguyen’s Emperor to being a westernized Vietnamese statesman, Bao Dai’s life was always under a public microscope and who was accountable to the dissatisfactions of his national constituency. Nevertheless, he was committed and attempted to integrate and personify the Vietnamese concept of “dan vi qui” (the most precious thing is the people) and the democratic principle that national independence should be “a step in the direction of the liberation of man.”
This bridge, in many ways than not, fell in April of 1975, but such a bridge maybe the “right” one to be reconstructed as Vietnam, under a one-party communist government, is opening up and integrating with the global community.
- For a concise analysis of the impact of losing a million in-country refugees in northern Vietnam, see Louis Wiesner, “Chapter 12: North Vietnam,” in his Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Vietnam (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988).
- For a concise analysis of the 1954 in-country refugee movement, see Louis Wiesner, “Vietnam: Exodus from the North and movement to the North,” The Vietnam Forum, Vol.11 (1988), p.214-243.
- Describe the background of the new wave of students and explain why the students already had “clear anti-French attitudes.”
- What were the perils of loving France?
- What was the spirit of separateness?
- Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural”?
- How successful was the settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam?
- According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?——————————————————————————–
[1]Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: The Unforgettable Tragedy (New York: Horizon Press, 1977), p.17.
[2] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia: A Comparative Political Analysis (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979), p.336.
[3] Ibid., p.124.
[4] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967), p.210-211.
[5] Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam (Honolulu, HA: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), p.52.
[6] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” Pacific Affairs 25:3 (September 1952), p.305.
[7] Ibid., p.304.
[8] Darrell Montero, “Vietnamese Refugees in America: Toward a Theory of Spontaneous International Migration.” International Migration Review 13:4 (1979).
[9] Ibid, p.641.
[10] Zhou and Carl Bankston, Straddling Two Social Worlds, pp.40-51; Nathan Caplan, John Whitmore, and Marcella Choy, The Boat People and Achievement in America: A Study of Family Life, Hard Work, and Cultural Values (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1989); [10] Steven Gold, Refugee Communities: A Comparative Field Study (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992); Rutledge, The Vietnamese in America; James Rutledge, The Vietnamese American in America (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1992), pp.143-144; Nazli Kibria, Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993)
[11] Dunning, “Vietnamese in America: The Adaptation of the 1975-1979 Arrivals,” p.79.
[12] Nguyen Ngoc Bich, “Immigration and Integration: The Vietnamese Experience.” The paper was presented at the University of Metropolitan London on March 22, 2006. Available at: http://www.ncvaonline.org/archive/analysis_ImmigrationIntegration_032206.shtml.
[13] Gail Kelley, “Schooling and National Integration: The Case of Interwar Vietnam,” Comparative Education, Vol.18(2), 1982, p.178.
[14] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2003),p.16-17.
[15] Ibid., p.16.
[16] Gail Kelley, “Schooling and National Integration, p.179.
[17] Ibid., p.178.
[18] Ibid., p.189.
[19] Ibid., p.189.
[20] Ibid., p.190.
[21] Vu Ngu Chieu, “The Other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution,” p.305.
[22] Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2002), p.52.
[23] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.134.
[24] Ibid., p.138.
[25] Ibid., Chapter 5.
[26] Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p.69-70
[27] Mark Bradley, Imagining Vietnam & America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p.64.
[28] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.179.
[29] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.141.
[30] Ton That Thien, “A Vietnamese Looks at His Country” in Richard Linhdhol, ed., Viet-Nam: The First Five Years (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1959), p.34.
[31] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.137.
[32] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.42.
[33] Ibid., p.10.
[34] Anne Raffin, “The Integration of Difference in French Indochina during World War II,” Theory and Society, Vol.31(3), 2002, p.378.
[35] Cited in Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.
[36] Ibid., p.212.
[37] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam: A Long History (Ha Noi: The Gioi Publishers, 2004), p.345.
[38] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.211.
[39] Cited in Ibid., p.211.
[40] Cited in Erica Jennings, “Conservative Confluences, ‘Nativist’ Synergy: Reinscribing Vichy’s National Revolution in Indochina, 1940-1945,” French Historical Studies, Vol.27(3), 2004, p.622.
[41] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.206.
[42] Philip Shenon, “Bao Dai, 83, of Vietnam; Emperor and Bon Vivant,” New York Times, August, 2, 1997.
[43] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.206.
[44] D.R. SarDesai, Vietnam: Past and Present (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2005), p.70.
[45] Cited in Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.207.
[46] Cited in David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p.439.
[47] Ibid., p.439.
[48] Cited in Ibid, p.444.
[49] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.207.
[50] Ibid., p.207.
[51] Cited in Marvin Gettleman and et al., Vietnam and America, (New York: Grove Press, 1995), p.25.
[52] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” p.245-246.
[53] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.208.
[54] D.R. SarDesai, Vietnam: Past and Present, p.60.
[55] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.209.
[56] Ibid., p.209.
[57] Ibid., p.212.
[58] Cited in Ibid., p.208.
[59] Ibid., p.209.
[60] Ibid., p.216.
Mar
24
French Colonial Diaspora (1862-1954)
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French Colonial Diaspora (1862-1954)
Before French expansion, “disasters that come flying on the wind” have been the common denominator among Vietnamese, peasants and scholars alike. That is, a chord that reverberates the Vietnamese collective psyche is one of a people being “wronged,” punished “for crimes or sins they are not aware they have committed.”[1]
By way of the Anglo-French rivalry in the 19th century, French aggrandizement in Vietnam was an attempt to preserve her prestige and to prevent another decline of French national power, after France’s defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. For Vietnamese, French colonization of Vietnam was an accident of history - another misfortunate that they had to endure and eventually overcome.
Yet, it has been said that the French territorial conquest of Vietnam in the 1860s alone “may well have been less significant than the schisms in Vietnamese society that preceded it and developed along with it.”[2]
The Fragile Unity under the Early Nguyen Emperors (1800-1859)
When the country was reunified in 1802 after centuries of disunity, its new ruler, Nguyen Anh, sought to refashion the concept of unity by changing his name to Gia Long. This was to emphasize geographical unity – “Gia” represents the newly established territory of Gia Dinh (Saigon), while ‘Long” represents Thang Long (Hanoi), which was the capital of Dai Viet under the Le dynasty (1428-1524) both before the separation of “two Dai Viets” under the overlordships of Trinh and Nguyen (1600-1788) as well as the short-lived territorial unification under the Tay Son brothers (1788-1801).
Nguyen Anh also sought to rename the newly unified country as Nam Viet (Nan Yueh), which was the name of a kingdom under Emperor Chao T’o who had defied the Han rulers and, therefore, had come to symbolize the antiquity and political equality of the Vietnamese state with that of China. Not surprisingly, the Chinese emperor rejected Nguyen Anh’s request of the name change, because it could conjecture territorial ambitions since Chao T’o’s Nam Viet had included two Chinese provinces. It was, nevertheless, resolved by simply reversing the order of the two words into: Viet Nam.
These symbolic measures were needed to combat the centrifugal trends, including the various provincial socioeconomic discontents of the peasantry and the separate geopolitical entities, though in practice Nguyen Anh sought to address the above situation through ruling the country as three different regions. On the one hand, “regionalism” was probably very real, but it did not necessarily connote or amount to “separatism” on the other.
As noted by Michael Cotter, it cannot be assumed that “Vietnamese from one region could easily move into another region, for differences in psychological disposition, religious beliefs, and dietary habits cause tensions and problems of adjustment.”[3] However, at the same time, this fact should not be overemphasized since there were key characteristics from north to south that have been maintained through the village-oriented society, a common family system, and a common memory of folk tales and folk heroes.[4] Also of significance is the Vietnamese language, of which is fairly standard. So that there was no significant obstacle to the rapid growth and strength of “quoc ngu” (the Vietnamese writing system based on the roman alphabet) and its popularization throughout Vietnam by the turn of the 20th century.[5]
Perhaps, more accurately, the period preceding the Nguyen dynasty lacked significant “technically advanced, culturally unifying forces.”[6] However, under the early Nguyen rulers, the central government in Hue strived to integrate the region more closely to the center and implemented policies in attempts at peacefully horizontal integration.[7] Indeed, the Nguyen dynasty tried to bridge the distance between regions and among social strata “through revitalization of a national school system that appeared to reward merit, regardless of class origins (this rarely was the case),” promoting both horizontal and vertical dimensions of national integration, although less than entirely successful.[8]
On the one hand, the power of the Nguyen court in Hue was enhanced, in part by Gia Long’s alliance with the western individuals who served for a time as political advisors, engineers, and soldiers of fortune. Artistic achievements of the imperial city of Hue were admired by foreign visitors, expressing great admiration of the beauty and splendor of the new capital as well as new provincial towns.[9] In addition, the Nguyen bureaucracy was probably superior to any found in neighboring societies. Its effectiveness, in part, was due to the newly established communication system. For example, in the early 1800s, the officially specified rates of travel were 13 days between Saigon and Hue and five days between Hanoi and Hue.[10]
Despite these achievements, there were “sighs and grievances” and compulsory labor services that weighed heavily upon the peasants, who were conscripted to construct irrigation canals, city walls, roads, bridges, walls, and new palaces.[11] That is, such achievements were not accompanied by an adequate standard of living or security for its villagers.[12] By some accounts, there had been more than 100 or so peasant uprisings during Gia Long’s rule.
But, at least for particularly groups such as the old northern scholarly class, Gia Long depended on them to staff the bureaucracy and its clients. By 1807, Gia Long had revived the civil service examination system, which permitted many families to ride above the political storms of the period and to maintain a continuity of influence and power.[13] Moreover, under emperor Minh Mang (1820-1840), “cultivation,” while included eradicating “contaminated ethics” and “lazy literati,” was most seriously focused on persuading southerners to accept the central government and royal authority.[14]
This was done through the expansion of education in the villages and provincial schools throughout the southern region.[15] As a result, a newly southern scholar class emerged, consisting of those who took the state examination, and who later rose to become local opinion leaders that enabled them “to mobilize their people under the banner of loyalty to the king when the French later advanced on southern Vietnam.”[16]
The “unity,” though indeed fragile, was created during the reign of the independent Nguyen rulers (1802-1862). Importantly, the “fragile unity” was to become “an important symbol and force in Vietnamese politics after French colonialists had administratively dismembered the country.”[17]
Yet, while in restoring and reunifying the “dismembered country” from French colonial rule and becoming masters of their fate, Vietnamese also had to grapple with the “old but new” schisms in Vietnamese society that developed as a result of French rule. So much so that Vietnamese had to wrestle among themselves about “what kind of life are they going to seek, what type of society are they capable of creating?[18]
Vietnamese Approaches to Salvation: The Heritage of The Tale of Kieu
Without question, no other literary work speaks more resoundingly of the Vietnamese human conditions across time and space than that of Nguyen Du’s The Tale of Kieu. As translated by Huynh Sanh Thong, the themes in The Tale of Kieu of injustice and wronged innocence that have “come flying on the wind” on the Vietnamese people refer to “misfortunates wreaked on men by more powerful men, who impose their arbitrary will.”[19]
There is strong assumption that Nguyen Du “saw himself as a political Kieu,” or as a parable to the main character, Vuong Thuy Kieu. Nguyen Du, whose family was impeccably associated with the Le dynasty (1427-1788), was forced in becoming an “impoverished backwoods scholar” when the Le dynasty was destroyed by and was replaced with a whirlpool of unstable, promiscuous political affiliations of Tay Son brothers.[20]
Nguyen Du refused to serve the Tay Son, demonstrating his faithfulness to the concepts of Confucius – be loyal to your king no matter what. However, in the last two decades of his life (1800-1820), Nguyen Du considered, entered into, and practiced an unenthusiastic collaboration with the new Nguyen dynasty. Nguyen Du, along with others of the northern scholar class, decided to serve the new dynasty, since the Nguyen dynasty had not directly caused the downfall of their deeply mourned Le monarchy.[21] As speculated by Alexander Woodside, their cooperation with the new dynasty, in fact, concealed “an inner havoc of melancholy self-discrimination, resentment of the misfortunes of the past, and doubts about the future.”[22] By one account, Emperor Minh Mang was reported to have said to Nguyen Du:
The Government employs men selected solely for their ability, without discriminating between Northerners and Southerners. You know that I am well-disposed of you: but a man who has reached the rank of Deputy Minister, if he is to do his job properly, should express his views, and not by perpetually hesitant and say nothing but ‘Quite so.’[23]
As surmised, if Nguyen Du’s reluctant service to the Nguyen was of convenience and one that was superimposed upon his memory of a true loyalty buried in the past, the reports that he was “obsequious to his superiors and seemed downcast and unhappy”[24] were the result of his personal agonies who had to come to terms with a cankered world of compromises.[25]
That is, his loyalty to shield his family from harm and poverty forced him to venture into a “foreign” court that attempted his loyalty of and conviction for his beloved Le emperors. Like many of his generation of northern/upper-class scholars, Nguyen Du probably felt that his personal morality, political obligation, personal conduct as a scholar official were comprised, which may properly called “prostitution.” And, perhaps, because of ruthlessness of the young and insecure Nguyen dynasty to crush any sign of insubordination, he could not change his world and had to find comfort from a mixture of the popular belief in Heaven’s will and the Buddhist concept of fate:
Heaven appoints each human to a place.
If doomed to roll in dust, we’ll roll in dust;
we’ll sit on high when destined for high seats.
Does Heaven ever favor anyone,
bestowing both rare talent and good luck?
In talent and disaster form a pair.
Our karma we must carry as out lot—
let’s stop decrying Heaven’s whims and quirks.
Inside ourselves there lies the root of good:
the heart outweighs all talents on this earth.[26]
Indeed, his agonies, secret wishes, and dreams were channeled through the poetic story of Kieu in which they could be expressed, tested, and resolved. Wherein, various characters in the story depict the weaknesses as well as the strengths in the questing for salvation or atonement:
- Vuong Thuy Kieu: personifies a true daughter who chooses filial piety over love, which forces her to be a whore but who attains personal salvation because of her golden heart, passively but consistently resisting and reconciling injustice and oppression.
- Ma Giam Sinh: the scholar turned pimp who would “make his wife a whore,” and who, when caught between profit and lust, cheats and lies to have both.
- Thuc Ky Tam, a bright young, well-intended gentleman who lacks a strong will and whose “wait-and-see attitude” causes the one who loves him to suffer.
- Ms. Hoan: a jealous and ferocious wife who is able to present a friendly front, but when it comes time to defend her home she would give hell to any rival.
- Tu Hai: embodies the hero who takes the law into his own hands to break the evil system, righting the wrongs and rewarding virtues.
- Kim Trong: a noble who is Kieu’s first love but who had to temporarily leave far away, swearing to stay heart to heart and later accepting that a man can make a whore his wife in which, as fate would have it, he reunites with Kieu in (unconsummated) wedlock.
Ultimately, the legacy of Nguyen Du’s poetic story of Kieu is its ability to transcend, by accidents of history, the personal morality and political obligation to that of the national morality and political obligation.
That is, after 1858, when the Nguyen dynasty was politically and militarily forced to cede three southern provinces (including Saigon) to the colonial French empire, The Tale of Kieu became a political reality for all Vietnamese, particularly the scholars and intellectuals.
So that, like Nguyen Du, the loyalties and convictions of scholars and intellectuals of the 19th century were expressed and tested.
For example, in the first phase of French colonial rule (1858-1898), a senior official, Phan Thanh Gian, was charged in negotiation on Hue court’s behalf both in Vietnam and in France, starting in 1862. Phan Thanh Gian, the first southern Vietnamese to compete successfully in the state examination, had demonstrated both filial piety (as a youth he accompanied his father into exile) and loyalty to his emperor (when he was demoted to menial positions by Ming Mang for not going against his emperor’s advice but never complaining).[27] However, by 1867, Phan Thanh Gian concluded that resistance through force would be futile against the French power and acquiesced in French’s occupation of Vietnam’s southern provinces. After acknowledging that he had failed his emperor (Tu Duc), he followed the traditional practice and committed suicide.
Was Phan Than Gian the Thuc Ky Tam of The Tale of Kieu because he demonstrated the wait-and-see attitude and “possessed the spirit and attitude of surrender of the court of Hue”? Or was he the Thuy Kieu because he weighed the option between being loyal to his emperor and the concern for the well-being of those who were under his jurisdiction?
Another complex case of historical assessment is Nguyen Truong To (1827-1871), a provincial official who was acquainted with a French missionary priest, who taught him French and took him to Europe to see Pope Pius IX in the 1850s.[28] Between 1863 and 1871, Nguyen Truong To sent a stream of memorandums to Emperor Tu Duc, proposing the emperor to lead a range of progressive westernized reforms. These included the separation between administrative and judicial powers in conformity with the “separation of powers” theory, creation of military schools directed by foreign specialists, and the development of a western education system and the expansion of Vietnamese commerce.[29]
Was Nguyen Truong To the Ma Giam Sinh who served two masters and who would open the door for France to make Vietnam into a whore? Or was he the Tu Hai who would have been the hero that takes the law into his own hands to right the backward Confucius court into a modernized Vietnamese state?
As to be expected, historical assessment of how Vietnamese scholars and intellectuals dealt with French occupation of Vietnam depends, at least in part, on the values used to measure the local responses, as well as the sociopolitical contexts of the time when the assessments were rendered.
One could strongly argue, using Nguyen Du’s literary framework, that Phan Than Gian was the Thuy Kieu because he weighed different options but chose to passively resist, since he could not change the reality of the irresistible nature of French superior power in Vietnam. His passive resistance was to seek personal salvation by being moral and carrying out redemptive obligation through the act of suicide. In many ways, Phan Than Gian’s decision appears to be in line with Nguyen Du’s emphasis that decision making should account for the inner and outer affairs of man and of society. For Nguyen Du, military resistance, as embodied by the beloved and popular Tu Hai was not the preferred choice for personal salvation, though this may be because rebellion is the cardinal sin in the Confucian society and would be considered sedition by the Hue court at the time. As such, because Tu Hai’s rebellion was indigenous and was not a rebellion against foreign rulers, using Nguyen Du’s framework to assess military resistance to French occupation does have its limitations.
In regard to Nguyen Truong To, he was no scholar Ma, since his recommendations were for his king to lead the necessary institutional reforms. He was no apologist or absolutist for French colonization. In addition, it appears that, for Nguyen Truong To, imitating the West was in the matter of utility; there were no indications from his existing writings that western influences were to transform the Vietnamese cultural core. As noted by some scholars, Nguyen Truong To’s call for institutional revolution was “already more ambitious than any of the feeble modernizing policies the French colonialists would pursue in Vietnam,” and therefore, “the French colonial regime, in a sense, was out of date before it was created.” However, it would be difficult to argue that Nguyen Truong To was the Tu Hai, since Nguyen Du’s conception of political decision making did not equate “passive” reforms with the ability to “revolutionize” the Vietnamese traditional institutions.
In both cases, there appear to be key limitations in utilizing Nguyen Du’s literary framework for assessing Vietnamese responses to “misfortunates wreaked on men by more powerful men” after the arrival of French colonial power in Vietnam.
That is, the traditional Vietnamese view of the world had rendered a Vietnamese concept of its place in the world, rather than one state amongst many which are ordered by the concept of anarchic structure of world politics. This is very relevant in light of the fact that French colonial rule presented an unprecedented problem to the Hue court: “the problem of confronting not merely superior military forces, but also a profound challenge to the whole intellectual and philosophic basis of the state.”[30] Wherein, military resistance of the Can Vuong (Aid the King) movement and the scholar-peasant rebellions were no match against the French military power. Moreover, the increasing perception of ‘the loss of the country’ and ‘the loss of the nation’s soul’ due to French exploitation began to challenge the traditional sense of time and political ideology.
Notwithstanding, the legacy of The Tale of Kieu is its ability to survive and gain new strength from hundreds of different contexts.
For example, in 1954, two “Tu Hais” or “two Viet-Nams” emerged from the Geneva Agreement. One based in the North, which sought to change Vietnam through Marxist-Leninist ideas and means, while the other in the South sought change through Western mode of modernization and progress. Some saw the North as Ms. Hoan who, despite her friendly front, was ferocious in defending the integrity her home by ”silencing” and “dismembering” Vietnamese who were her rivals. While some believe the South had lost the war because there were too many Thuc Ky Tam who took a ‘wait-and-see attitude’ and too many scholar Ma essentially turned pimp who sold out their fellow countrymen by selling their government offices for money.
Furthermore, when Saigon fell on April 30, 1975 to the communist force, thousands of Vietnamese refugees saw themselves as the Thuy Kieu. As victims of “misfortunates wreaked on men by more powerful men,” they had to become survivors, and with time, many of them have achieved, to some degree, personal salvation in their new host country. Even today, a Vietnam in transition to greater integration with the global economy has created dissension among communist party loyalists. These party loyalists have turned “dissidents” because they criticized the number of government officials and their families who have enriched themselves as “red capitalists” who have sold out the revolutionary goals of Ho Chi Minh.
It is likely that The Tale of Kieu will be able to speak to the Vietnamese human conditions for time to come as well. That is, if one agrees with Nguyen Du’s depiction of Vietnam as a place where “talent and disaster form a pair,” and thus, “our karma we must carry as our lot” in which there are inescapable relationships between present existences and past and future existences.
Nationalist Assessment of Local Responses to French Conquest
In many respects, French colonial power brought an end to the dynastic period in which “it was meaningful to talk of the possible ‘self-strengthening’ of Vietnam within a traditional monarchical framework.”[31] So much so that the Vietnamese elite began to believe that, in order to regain national independence and to recover from French exploitation, they had to rely on (and in some ways depend on) new ideologies, institutions, and national outlooks.
From the above realities emerged two distinct schools of thought that represented the “two Viet-Nams” after the French returned to Vietnam in 1946: non-communist, nationalist reformers and Marxist-Leninist nationalists. Each of the schools of thought emphasized different ideological values and national outlooks in which both had earlier descendents. As such, each had different values in assessing the other’s responses to French occupation.
Although the non-communist, nationalist reformers did not claim direct descent from earlier Vietnamese reformers, they shared with the latter the unwillingness to have “political subservience” to any foreign powers but acknowledged that some form of dependence was a reality which was, indeed, an opportunity to develop the country’s potential for progress.[32] To be sure, the nationalist reformers grew out of the earlier reform movements of late 1890s led by Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh.
Phan Boi Chau, born into a Confucian scholar family, had organized an “aid the king” military company in 1885 and, in a sense, was a bridge to the later nationalist period.[33] In fact, he was one of the first to express the nationalistic idea that all Vietnamese were fellow countrymen who needed to unite in love of country.[34] For Phan Boi Chau, the unifier was the French exploitation that had cultural and racial genocide elements, undermining the country’s human rights, the nation’s soul, and economic and political modernization.[35] His responses included the creation of a Vietnamese army, drawing military cadres from Vietnamese graduates of cadet schools in China and Japan in order to liberate Vietnam, although such military actions were badly defeated by the French in 1915.[36]
Returning to Vietnam in 1925, Phan Boi Chau diagnosed that the problem in colonial Vietnam was that the national spirit of the past had disappeared and the colonial regime had not provided the country with all the requisite institutions of ‘government by law,’ so that Vietnam was but an eccentric half-way house between two civilizations.[37] He therefore advocated the concept of “modernization association” in which Vietnamese reformers could critique and advise the French policy of association so that Vietnam would regain her independence. In addition, Vietnam would have the rights to learn from the West and from the East in order to modernize and revitalize Vietnamese culture and institutions. Such modernization would be based on a desire for progress and adventure, love and trust, virtue and heroism, no obnoxious mandarins, no dissatisfied citizens, no imperfect educational system, no neglected industry, no losing commercial activities, and no protecting power.[38] This included a modernized military force to protect and serve the country, but never to exploit or harm Vietnamese citizens, as did the French.
Meanwhile, Phan Chau Trinh recognized dependency as a reality. “From East to West, from North to South, wherever one goes, everything points to dependence,” but “if there must be independence, then to talk about glory of depending on X or the shame of depending on Y, all that is sheer nonsense.”[39] Thus, like Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chau Trinh differentiated himself with other Vietnamese elites, who glorified French assimilation policy in which France would civilize Vietnam were they given a chance and Vietnamese in the meantime would be expected to study hard and follow the examples of their French teacher, so that one day they would be ready for graduation. Moreover, both men separated themselves from Confucian/communist patriots who refused to acknowledge that French colonial rule had its positive externalities and who would revile anyone who associated with colonialism.
There were, however, some key differences between the two men. For example, Phan Chau Trinh was a more straightforward advocate of constitutional, republican form of government in which the president could be impeached. He was more of a “populist,” who was in “touch” with the peasant protests and who rigorously attacked the Vietnamese mandarins for taking advantage of the segregation policy to maltreat their own citizens.[40] His attack was more focused on the Vietnamese “mandarins” than the colonial administration, since he believed the former severely caused the Vietnamese people to abandon the national spirit and action of the past. For Phan Chau Trinh, the unifier was “socialism” to create mass mobilization for collective action. He had thought that the French Socialist Party would play a key role in negotiating Vietnam’s independence. However, he was no radical socialist who would advocate that ‘blood must be shed,’ discarding any idea of armed struggle.[41]
Many of the non-communist, nationalist reformers came from or supported the national movements led by Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh, as well as the Quoc Dan Dang (Vietnamese Nationalist Party) which was formed in 1927 to create a Vietnamese revolution but was to avoid rather than fulfill the class war and the internal tensions caused by French segregation policy. Some were militant in their approach to national independence but refused to link their movements to the international apparatus controlled by the Soviet Union.[42]
Thus these nationalist reformers inherited the above tradition of “modernization association” and would seek cooperation when possible, but they also saw the need for military actions to regain national independence. For these reformers, the unifier was to refashion the spirit of community and love of country among all Vietnamese, not based on socioeconomic class or creation of a new socialist society. Moreover, these reformers embraced an international world view and differentiated themselves among the Vietnamese elites who relied solely on France as a teacher and as a liberator, as well as the communist-Confucian patriots who viewed resistance as its sole measure of virtue.
Nevertheless, when the nationalist reformers assessed Vietnamese elites (such as Nguyen Van Vinh and Pham Quynh) who gloried France’s assimilation policy, they were able to reconcile by acknowledging the latter contribution to the growth and vitality of “quoc ngu” (Vietnamese romanized script) as a literary language, the development of Vietnamese literature, and academic and intellectual studies. However, the national reformers found it most difficult to reconcile with the Confucian/communist patriots. While some of the national reformers had cooperated with the communist forces to regain national dependence (i.e. the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh), they were anguished at the extreme doctrine of communism which was willing to shed blood to any rivals, including Vietnamese. Furthermore, the Confucian/communist patriots’ emphasis of independence above all else was the anti-thesis of the nationalist reformers who saw that national independence and the need to modernize the country’s agriculture, commerce and trade, and education went hand-in-hand. They were also hostile to the communist’s campaign to “uproot” and “re-channel” traditional loyalties to that of the communist party; for the nationalist reformers, modernization required the need to restore particular traditional institutions and values.
In April 1945, Bao Dai was emplaced by the Japanese overlords who were occupying Vietnam from 1941-1945 and who wanted to salvage Japan’s prestige and prolong the return of Western powers in Asia as it was becoming clear that it was losing its war. Bao Dai’s role was to declare Vietnamese independence from France, abrogating only the 1884 treaty regarding the French “protection” of Annam and Tonkin, and to form a “conditional independent” government to direct state affairs.[43] Notwithstanding the short-lived government led by Tran Trong Kim (April 17 – August 25, 1945), this event provides general views about non-communist nationalist reformers (some of whom later served in later non-communist regimes), particularly how they would have “Vietnamized” French colonial policies or “de-Franchified” Vietnam.[44]
Corresponding to the ideals of Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh, Tran Trong Kim’s government espoused an evolutionary change in society, so as to prevent breakdown of social and moral order and to bind its factions and social strata together.[45] Importantly, it saw “the ideal citizen as a man who combined a ‘scientific’ mind with ‘traditional’ virtue, expressing cultural hybrid between the East and the West.[46] Still, at the same time, it promulgated decrees to reclaim the country’s cultural and intellectual rights, including changing the national name to Viet-Nam (former Annam that connotes the humiliation as the “Pacified South”) and renaming the three regions of the country as Bac Bo (former Tonkin), Trung Bo (former Annam), and Nam Bo (former Cochinchina). These symbolic measures were to restore national culture, integration, and unity. Moreover, the government adopted the Vietnamese romanized script as the official language, abolished the forced sale of rice and capitation tax, and sponsored mass political participation.[47] Not surprisingly, Tran Trong Kim – a reputable scholar who believed leaders must possess talent and virtue and if they lacked such virtues and tried to maintain their rule, “the more people will feel it is unreasonable and intolerable”[48] – refused proposals advanced by several Japanese overseers to crush the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh.[49] But, in part, this allowed the Viet Minh, who were militarily far more superior to overrun the Tran Trong Kim’s government in late August.
However, by 1946, the non-communist groups within the Viet Minh were angst about the communist’s assassinations of non-communist leaders in order to create a communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam. They fled to China and later regrouped with other non-communist groups in southern Vietnam with the former Nguyen emperor, Bao Dai, as the head figure of the National Union Front; however, there were non-communist nationalists who still stayed on with Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, if by so doing it could dethrone French militarily. This diverse coalition negotiated with France for the southern half of the country as an Associated State of Vietnam with the (vague) condition that in due time, it would gain complete independence (1949-1954).
This Associated State was the precursor of the Republic of Vietnam (1954-1975) and represented a struggle to secure for Vietnam a nationalist, noncommunist, and democratic nation-state.
For example, in 1952, Buu Loc of the Bao Dai government argued that nationalism by itself to throw off French colonialism is not enough. “As soon as independence has been won,” nationalism does not “indicate how, after that burden has been unshouldered, a new national society is to be created.”[50] Thus, nationalism could be a force of injustice “if nationalism were to free the people from the former mother country only to place them at the mercy of a handful of their own fellow-countrymen,” who may “champion the rights of peoples while neglecting to protect the rights of man.”[51] On the question of whether Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist, a communist, or both, Buc Loc argued that “the important thing is to know how he acted and whether his actions” had served the nationalist interests.[52] For Buu Loc, Ho Chi Minh’s greatest strength was his ability to symbolize “hope for a better future.” However, Buu Loc predicted that such “revolutionary hope” would only lead to despair and would need another kind of hope: “hope for social and economic reforms undertaken within a truly democratic society.”[53]
The Road to Socialist Revolution and Back
The Marxist-Leninist nationalists grew out of the Confucian patriot movements of the 1860s and of the peasant protest movements, populist and social realist movements before and after World War I.
One of the Confucian patriots held in high regard by the communist nationalists was Phan Van Tri (1825-1877), who symbolizes the patriot that rejects colonialism and collaboration with a foreign power and who supports the use of force to expel the French. Phan Van Tri argued that “Confucianism, properly learnt and properly practiced can be completely effective and aware of time, its immediacy and its duration from the perspective of success.”[54] But his popularity with the communist nationalists was from his observation that Vietnamese collaborators’ search for wealth and honors is “age-old” and will inevitably lead to corruption and “prostitution.” By contrast, Phan Van Tri asserted that with proper spirit of resistance and a keen sense of time to bring back the opportunity to unify, peace and national independence would be restored.[55] As such, the communist nationalists were very ready to accept Phan Van Tri’s conclusion that: “The nation, one tomorrow, will change its destiny to one of peace. The South in common will enjoy reunion in peaceful equilibrium.”[56] Likewise, Confucian intellectuals could accept Marxist’s universal dogma that history “was optimistic, scientific, impregnated with moral fervor, and staunchly anti-imperialist…without great difficulty as a modern equivalent of Confucianism.”[57]
Communist nationalists’ overall assessment of the nationalist movements by Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh was that their promises and their expectations of the French colonial administration to grant Vietnamese independence “were never fulfilled.”[58] This was the weakness of earlier nationalist movements, and those who carried on after, such as the social realists who were “new and still embryonic social forces” and who represented the initial stage of communism. Not until these forces came to rely on self reliance, self righteousness, and radical solutions (i.e. the overthrow of imperialist capitalist system) will the nationalist movement bring about “happier effects than the so-called policy of association, which notwithstanding all the eloquent speeches, remains a bloodless reality!”[59]
Simply, what was needed was for the nationalist movement to be revitalized on a new basis. Enter the father of the communist nationalist movement: Ho Chi Minh. In 1921, Ho Chi Minh argued that colonization did carry a special king of civilization to its colonies, that being the “bourgeois, civilization of the scaffold, the prison, and exile” which was exploited by French capitalists and only benefited a few sharks and where ordinary citizens played the role of buffaloes in order to feed their exploiters.[60] Therefore, the communist nationalists declared, “let no one be permitted to oppress us and to deprive us of daily rice while advising us to work hard in order to regain our independence…No, no, and no…Before all else, we want our independence!”[61]
But to fulfill these tasks, there was a need for new ideas and innovations. This was supplied by way of the Soviet Union starting after 1918 in which Lenin, much more than Marx, justified the use of violence against the declining imperialist order as well as a call for world-wide communist movement.[62] Through the Cominterm in the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese communist revolution, along with that of China and Korea, had gained practical benefits in the form of ideological training, political tutelage, and new clandestine skills.[63] Central elements of the Marxist-Leninist ideology included the dual concept of nationalism-communism. Nationalism is defined as national liberation from foreign rule and communism as the people’s power to establish a worker-peasant government but must be led by a Marxist-Leninist party.[64] Importantly, this dual concept contrasted with other Western colonial concepts in the sense that the Soviet Union did not perceive the immediate physical control over distant colonial territories and peoples.[65]
Another imported concept was the “democratic revolution” that was to be the first stage of the communist revolution in which non-communist parties and groups were necessary at various times to form the “united fronts.”[66] These “fronts” were a necessary expedient to oppose new forms of foreign oppression. As noted by Nguyen Khac Vien, given the semi-feudal society in colonial Vietnam, the Vietnamese revolution had to start as a “bourgeois democratic revolution” and when the conditions were ripe an armed uprising would be launched to establish a worker-peasant state, forwarding the path of socialist revolution.[67] Furthermore, the political culture of the communist revolutions had to take on tentative conciliation, persuasion, and intrigue when confronting obstacles from a position of weakness.[68] But when confronting obstacles from a position of strength, its political behavior must act with aggression and maintain a winner-take-all attitude.[69] In fact, the communist nationalists were very successful in creating the “united fronts” when confronting from a position of weakness (i.e. Viet Minh in 1941) and exerted military assertiveness in a creating a socialist revolution when confronting from a position of strength (i.e. dismembering the non-communist Viet Minh in late 1945 and the confiscation of all land into the right of ownership by the worker-peasant government beginning in 1954).
However, at the same time, because these concepts and their communist-oriented responses were deficient in terms of having direct and deep historical roots, Ho Chi Minh and his cadres had to “localize” them in order for these concepts to become benchmark for the movement. As a result, a cultural and ideological revolution was launched to redefine, purify existing cultural elements, and/or create new ones.
For example, in Ho Chi Minh’s “Correcting the Way We Work,” he enumerated five cardinal virtues of revolutionary ethics: benevolence (nhan), righteousness (nghia), knowledge (tri), courage (dung) and incorruptibility (liem).[70] The first three were the classical Confucian virtues but all were recast to have a different meaning. Benevolence meant compassion for one’s comrades, righteousness meant an unwavering commitment to carry out one’s orders, and knowledge involved the ability to carry out one’s work.[71] Similarly, the communist nationalists also had to “localize” culture, literature, and arts with Marxist-Leninist concepts in order to rally the mass to the revolution, such as “art for life sake.” For instance, communist scholars, on the one hand, acknowledged the cultural contribution of The Tale of Kieu, but recast its meaning on the other. That is, the Tale of Kieu was said to have criticized the feudal society of the 18th century, Kieu’s misfortunates sprang directly from the greedy mandarins, and that Nguyen Du was a realist who turned away from Confucianism because it no longer offered sufficient explanation and had little faith in Buddhist ideas, suggesting that he would have supported the socialist revolution.[72]
Perhaps what compensated for the lack of communist concepts’ direct link to Vietnamese past were that they inspired self-confidence, hope, morality, and a future-orient vision of reunion and peaceful equilibrium for thousands of Vietnamese working class and peasants that had been exploited and maltreated in the factories, mines, towns, and in the villages. In one opinion, “it is safe to say that if the French had chosen a less disastrous approach to the land question and employed all available means for eliminating rural poverty, the Communist movement of Vietnam would never have gained its extraordinary strength.”[73] That is, the brutalities of foreign rulers, including the Japanese overlords, “indirectly made the communist party into an awesome and formidable revolutionary organization.”[74] Also indirectly, the communist nationalists were assisted by many unplanned international events over which they had no control, including the relentless suppression of non-communist militants by French colonial authorities in the early 1930s and the decision of the Japanese overlords not to suppress any strong Vietnamese nationalist groups in order to prevent the return of western powers in Asia.[75]
Notwithstanding, the communist nationalists had some clear advantage over their counterparts. Following Lenin’s principle of democratic centralism, the political culture of the communist nationalists was further enhanced by their skillful ability of “coalition building.” In pursuit of power, organizations such as the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party in northern Vietnam and later the National Liberation Front in southern Vietnam were permitted to exist, but their political role was controlled and monitored by the communist party and were eventually dismantled when national independence was completely attained.[76] Moreover, since the communist party formation, it was made up of different coalitions, which had enabled them to accommodate and co-opt new ideas to their revolutionary core or to serve the revolutionary movement in conditions of duress. This essentially made the revolution dynamic, being able to exhibit coercion, the art of compromise or co-option – depending on what the conditions call for.
The self-reliance and self-righteousness of the communist nationalists were the values that were used to assess the non-communist reformers. That is, the former detested the latter dependency on, as well as negotiation for independence with, colonial or foreign powers. The communist nationalists deemed the above as masks for the mere agents of colonial powers and myths of independence that “did not change the situation in the slightest,”[77] only to produce opportunities for men who seek wealth and honors. From this perspective:
From 1954 onwards tens of thousands of Sai Gon officers were trained and indoctrinated by the Americans. Most of them were adventurers hungry for dollars, who amassed fortunes and influence thanks to American aid and the war. They had grown enormously rich through plunder in the course of military operations…and had placed in the hands of their parents and relatives the most lucrative businesses such as import-export, hotels and prostitution. It was to this military, bureaucratic and trafficking oligarchy that Washington entrusted the management of the Sai Gon regime and its neo-colonial society.[78]
Interestingly, in one opinion, while the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989 questioned the very foundation of the Vietnamese state socialist system, the communist party “appears to have been successful, at least for the moment, in coping with the crisis and in renewing its legitimacy at both the leadership and society levels.”[79]
In many respects, the communist leaders today – while acknowledging their errors of assuming the socioeconomic backwardness could be corrected by “large-scale socialist production,” by skipping the state of capitalist development, and by liquidating as quickly as possible all forms of private, family, and capitalist economic activity – have reverted back to their revolutionary strategies to cope with crises.
That is, in confronting conditions from a position of weakness (1978-1985), communist leaders saw “international economic fronts” as necessary to address the socioeconomic crises, as well as securing new foreign relations “in the immediate future to firmly maintain peace, expand relations of friendship and cooperation.”[80] This is done in a way that would “legitimize” the party’s ability to “ask questions and recognize one’s mistakes,” and not in a way to undermine the perception that the party’s lack inexperience in economic managements or the party’s social leadership. The party does this by staying “silent about errors and mistakes” until it is in a position of strength “which would be clearly recognized some years later.”[81]
With the needed installation of a market economy, communist leaders launched a reform program to redefine, purify and/or create new elements of Vietnamese socialism in order to continue on the socialist path to development. Redefining concepts include greater internationalization, rather than following faithfully the Soviet model or the Chinese model of development. New concepts include the acceptance of various forms of ownership and private economic development. Purifying concepts include Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts as “the country’s ideological foundation and guiding point for its actions” and that “democratic centralism as its basic organization principle.”[82]
The “doi moi” economic reform program was, in fact, pressured by the reformist party members of southern Vietnam, who would be able to “co-opt” the southern economic historical processes and economic resources in order to accommodate with non-state market relations; and, by doing so, southern members “have it both ways,” tapping “northern concentrations of power and southern economic resources in a wealth-creating equation unrivalled by any others within or beyond the region.”[83]
Like the past, in pursuing economic development, communist leaders will permit numerous organizations to minimize the negative externalities or maximize the positive externalities of the socialist-oriented economy managed by the communist party. For example, there have been state-run anti-corruption campaigns to oust government officials that lacked Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ethics. At the opposite end, there is a desire to maximize the remittances and investments from the Vietnamese diaspora communities, but with the understanding that “we should counter the arguments and plots made by hostile forces and opportunists to attack, negate and distort the Marxism-Leninism.”[84]
Yet unlike the two resistance wars, the communist party’s socialist path of the future lacks the inspiration of self-confidence, hope, morality, and a future-orient vision of peaceful equilibrium. Instead, the current socialist path is seen a necessity and one that will have “unexpected and unpredictable events.”[85] That is, communist leaders will have to make further adjustments and re-interpretations because economic liberalization has led to the birth of “wild capitalism.” According to one of the country’s reputable socialist historians, Nguyen Khac Vien:
‘Wild’ capitalism has mobilized in its own interests important areas of the State apparatus, transforming it into a veritable mafia, inimical to all forms of democracy, of social justice and ecological protection. Can the Vietnamese people, if not able to prevent the rise of this will capitalism, at least limit its destructive nature? The battle will certainly be fierce and prolonged. Does it bring the risk of armed confrontations?[86]
- For a concise historical and literary background of The Tale of Kieu, see Huynh Sanh Thong, “An Introduction” in his translation of Nguyen Du’s The Tale of Kieu (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983) to the Tale of Kieu.
- For a detailed description of how the West transforms the traditional Vietnamese view of the world, see Neil Jamieson, “Confrontation with the West” in his Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
- Compare and contrast the meaning of colonialism as a form of slavery and colonialism as a necessary evil.
- Compare and contrast the concepts of assimilation and association. How do Vietnamese communists view these concepts?
- Under French colonial rule, what does “loss of the country” entail?
Buu Loc, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” Pacific Affairs 25:3 (September 1952).
- How does the author respond to the argument that Ho Chi Minh is and has been a nationalist and the champion of Vietnamese independence?
- How does the author define nationalism?
- Why does the author believe that the Bao Dai government has better solutions for Vietnam than Ho Chi Minh?
——————————————————————————–
[1] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu. A Bilingual Edition. Translated by Huynh Sanh Tong (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p.xxxii
[2] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p.129.
[3] Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 9:1 (1968), p. 256.
[4] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.125; Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History,” p.256.
[5] Maurice Durand and Nguyen Tran Huan, An Introduction to Vietnamese Literature (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1985), p.111.
[6] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.125.
[7] Gail Kelley, “Schooling and National Integration: The Case of Interwar Vietnam,” Comparative Education, Vol.18(2), 1982, p.176.
[8] Ibid., p.177.
[9] Gabriele Fahr-Becker, The Art of East Asia (Cologne: Koenemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne, 2006), p.445.
[10] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.124.
[11] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.124.
[12] Ibid., 124.
[13] Ibid., 123.
[14] Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mang (1820-1841): Central Policies and Local Response (New York: Cornell University, 2004), p.194.
[15] Ibid., p.127.
[16] Ibid., p.128.
[17] Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p.3.
[18] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” Pacific Affairs 25:3 (September 1952), p.245.
[19] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu, p. xxxii.
[20] Ibid., p. xiv.
[21] Ibid., p. xiv.
[22] Ibid., p. xiv.
[23] Maurice Durand and Nguyen Tran Huan, An Introduction to Vietnamese Literature, p.92.
[24] Ibid., p.92.
[25] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu, p. xvi.
[26] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu, lines 3241-3251.
[27] Milton Osborne, “Truong Vinh Ky and Phan Thanh Gian: The Problem of a Nationalist Interpretation of 19th Century Vietnamese History,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.30(1), 1970, p.88.
[28] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.131.
[29] Ibid., p.132.
[30] Milton Osborne, “Truong Vinh Ky and Phan Thanh Gian,” p.92.
[31] Ralph Smith, Viet-Nam and the West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), p.29.
[32] Ibid., p.29.
[33] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.303.
[34] Ibid., p.303-304.
[35] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2003), p.75-87.
[36] Ibid., p.306.
[37] Ibid., p.306.
[38] Chau Boi Phan, “The New Vietnam (1907),” in Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.105-123.
[39] Phan Chau Trinh, “Letter to Governor-General Paul Beau (1907), in Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.139.
[40] Ibid., p.126.
[41] Ibid., p.126.
[42] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia: A Comparative Political Analysis (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979), p.360.
[43] Vu Ngu Chieu, “The Other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution: The Empire of Viet-Nam (March-August 1945), The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.45(2), 1986, p.296.
[44] Ibid., p.303.
[45] Ibid., p.316, 304.
[46] Ibid., p.305.
[47] Ibid., p.315.
[48] Neil Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p.95.
[49] Vu Ngu Chieu, “The Other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution,” p.315.
[50] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” p.245.
[51] Ibid., p.245-246.
[52] Ibid., p.239.
[53] Ibid., p.247
[54] Jeremy Davidson, “Collaborateur versus Abstentioniste (Tuong versus Tri),” in Vladimir Braginksy, ed., Classical Civilization of Southeast Asia (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), p.233.
[55] Ibid., p.233.
[56] Ibid., p.235.
[57] William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p.290.
[58] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam: A Long History (Ha Noi: The Gioi Publishers, 2004), p.174.
[59] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.98.
[60] Ibid., p.72, 78.
[61] Ibid., p.97.
[62] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.335
[63] Ibid., p.335.
[64] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.197, 189.
[65] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.124-125.
[66] Ibid., p.335.
[67] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.195-196.
[68] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.336.
[69] Ibib., p.335-336.
[70] Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2002), p.54.
[71] Ibid., p.54.
[72] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.128.
[73] Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Political History (New York: Praeger, 1968), p.174-175.
[74] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.336.
[75] Ibid., p.324, 345.
[76] Ibid., p.341.
[77] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.345.
[78] Ibid., p.345.
[79] Thaveeporn Vasavakul, “The Changing Models of Legitimation,” in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest for Moral Authority (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p.289.
[80] Report of the Central Committee of the Documents of the 7th National Congress. Cited in Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.441.
[81] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.383-384.
[82] Report of the Central Committee of the Documents of the 7th National Congress, p.440.
[83] Philip Taylor, Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam’s South (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), p.88.
[84] Report of the Central Committee of the Documents of the 7th National Congress, p.440.
[85] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.407.
[86] Ibid., p.407.
Feb
22
Vietnam’s External Expansion and Colonial Diasporas (1471 -1859)
In Vietnamese history, a theme that transcends across time and space is the advance or the march to the south (“nam tien”). The southern advancement, as noted by Michael Cotter, is unique in that “it transcends the different periods of Vietnamese history – pre-Chinese, Chinese, independent, colonial, and contemporary” in which each has “its own theme.” [1]
As discussed in earlier blogs, Chinese colonial diasporas had both indirect and direct effects on the southern advancement.
For Vietnamese, they have been “victims” of Chinese colonial diasporas – being physically, psychologically, culturally, and intellectually displaced. However, as noted by other scholars, the “Vietnamese will to dependence was too strong,” there must have been “a special Vietnamese collective identity of some sort,” [2] and the “harmony between the Vietnamese . . . and their environmental conditions has proved to be so deep that no race has been able to resist their advance.” [3]
Simply, Vietnamese have always maintained their relationships with the collective memory and myth about their birth place and never more passionately than when displacement and disunity was imposed by foreign rule.
However, Vietnamese collective will to resist had to be modified because of Chinese military power in which resistance had to include strategic form of borrowing and localizing ideas of foreign powers in order to make and strengthen local cultural statements about its “Vietnamese cultural core.”
Cultural borrowing came from both north and south. And until late in the 14th century, Buddhism had acted as a common ground between Vietnam and southern states of the Cham and Khmer, during times of both peace and war; for instance, Vietnamese prince who married Cham princess and the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who practiced Indian asceticism. [4]
Vietnamese, on the one hand, were successful in localizing external influences in which what were borrowed were considered essential and integral to the culture at that particular time. But such situation sometimes was inevitably imperfect and had led to tension and stress within the society on the other. [5]
This was the case, when after repelling the Ming invasion (1407-1427), the Le emperors began to adapt the Ming Chinese model and began to transform ideologically, bureaucratically, and militarily.
This transformation enabled the Vietnamese state (Dai Viet) under the Le dynasty (1428-1524) to stabilize its southern and western frontiers. But in doing so, the conviction in the essential unity of their territory and people and cultural relativity began to take dual form or multiple forms (or even change character).
The External Expansion of Dai Viet
The transformation of Dai Viet was, in part, the result of its population becoming a specialist in wet-rice cultivation, which fostered “the trade, population growth, and resource concentration that promote state power and societal expansion.” [6]
Importantly, the state began to adapt the Ming Chinese model.
For example, it took on the Chinese ideals of bringing ‘civilization’ to the ‘uncivilized,’ which were applied to its relations with Champa and the Khmers. It also adapted Chinese meritocratic civil service examinations as the method of recruiting educated talent to service the government. [7] Moreover, Dai Viet had acquired gunpowder technology from China, although Vietnamese also had contributed to Chinese gunpowder technology by locally producing better techniques such as the wooden wad and possibly a new ignition, which was then exported to China. [8] Arming itself with new gunpowder technology, Dai Viet’s large and well-organized military force was able to achieve its military ends more easily than before. [9]
Indeed, under the Le dynasty, the Vietnamese state began to transcend its displacement and, according to one opinion, gradually developed into “a bigger hegemonist,” conceiving themselves as superior to all other peoples in Southeast Asia. [10]
But probably more accurate is that the transformation of Dai Viet changed the balance of power in mainland Southeast Asia. Yet, that balance was tenuous and was hampered by the eventual rise of two separate entities with two different representations of “what was a good Vietnamese.”
Notwithstanding, as a result of the above transformation, Dai Viet, on the one hand, were able for the first time, since independence, to stabilize its southern and western frontiers. But Dai Viet also took advantage of its new capabilities to end its conflicts with Champa over areas (that of Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien) where the two mingled since the fifth century.
Between 1361 and 1390, Champa, under Che Bong Nga’s rule, conducted an interrupted series of victories against Vietnam, including the sacking of Vietnam’s capital of Thang Long several times and were able to retrieve Champa’s old northern provinces that it lost earlier in 1301 through a marriage alliance that did not endure. But after Che Bong Nga’s assassination in 1390, Champa had to hand back the provinces to Vietnam, yet these areas were still contested until the fifteenth century. However, in 1471, the Dai Viet’s military force appeared to have overwhelmed the Chams. One thousand Dai Viet warships and 70,000 troops captured Champa’s capital of Vijaya. According to Vietnamese source, more than 30,000 Chams were captured and over 40,000 were killed. In part, the fall of Champa in 1471 was due to the fact that it did not have access to firearms. [11] Thus, the year 1471 marked the rise of Dai Viet.
Vietnamese had by then conquered the northern part of Cham country, as far as the southern border of today’s Binh Dinh province. However, Cham kings continued to rule from this region, although less autonomous then earlier Cham kings. In addition, however, there were southern Champ polities, including a fourth Cham region (Kauthara) located near present day Nha Trang, which had been a part of Cham country since the beginning of Cham history.
On Vietnam’s western borders, Tai peoples were actively crossing Vietnam’s western borders, causing a series of conflicts between the two. But by the late 1470s, Dai Viet was able to claim Tai hill territories, bringing the Tai ethnic groups in modern Vietnam. [12] Taking advantage of its military technology, Dai Viet also pursued aggressive actions against Thai and Laos principalities. Its armies marched as far as the Irawaddy River in modern Burma. [13] As a result, by the early 1480s, kingdoms of northwestern mainland Southeast Asia, such as the Laotian kingdom of Lan Ch’ang and Thai principality of Ai Lao sent tributes to the Vietnamese capital.
In sum, the purpose and scope of Dai Viet’s external expansion was initially to stabilize its southern and western frontiers, of which had been militarily contested throughout the centuries without a clear winner, at least until 1471. Its external expansion was dynastic in nature, which was clearly reflected by the reign of Le Thang Tong (1460-1497) who sought to stabilize his state by securing its borders to prevent any repeat of foreign invasions, such as the Ming invasion of 1407-1427. The degree of success in stabilizing its borders, as well as going beyond its borders, was, in large part, due to the unilateral-monopolistic timing, as put forward by Frank Darling. [14] That is, Dai Viet’s external expansion occurred because of a “power vacuum” in which Dai Viet with the new gunpowder technology and under a more bureaucratic state were able to exert power in the region, limited by the available resources and the stability of the Le court.
Vietnam, however, did not develop a permanent colonial phase or colonial diaspora until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Even though Vietnam was active in acquisitioning Cham lands, it occurred at long intervals. In occupying Cham lands, the Le emperors would appoint frontier military governors with the rank of viceroy (kinh-luoc), but would also retained Cham officials in the administration in some regions. The purpose and scope of Vietnamese military and penal colonies were to consolidate their gains, to provide support for expeditions, and to relieve population pressures. [15]
During this period, Vietnamese rulers did not pay much attention to the specific matter of expansion into Champa, until the arrival of the Nguyen lords who eventually sought a southern autonomous state, separate from the northern state under the Trinh lords.
The Nguyen’s Colonial Diaspora
Vietnamese southern expansion or colonial diaspora under the Nguyen family can be described as a frontier movement, originating because of political and military unrest and conflicts at home; and expanding through military conquests, treaties, and “most difficult to document, colonization by transfrontiersmen.” [16]
In 1524, when the Le emperors were usurped by the Mac family, the Trinh family and Nguyen family both professed their loyalty to and attempted to restore the Le emperors. However, after the restoration of Le in 1592, the Trinh family gradually acquired all the important posts at the Le court so that the Le emperors were reduced to being “nominal” rulers. [17] Meanwhile, the Nguyen family saw the Trinh as usurpers and decided to officially break with the Trinh in 1600 and return to Thuan Hoa (modern Hue), where years earlier they were emplaced by the Trinh to establish control over the southernmost frontiers. Between 1627 and 1672, the Nguyen lords were able to defend Trinh’s expeditions, as well as defending Cham’s reacquisition of its former territories. By 1672, Trinh lords, whose militarily failures to defeat the Nguyen left them weakened, agreed to a division of the two states at the boundary of the Linh River. This resulted in a relatively stable coexistence of “two Dai Viets” for a little more than one hundred years.
The Nguyen, despite having a smaller population with a smaller number of trained officials, accordingly adjusted their organizational structure and localized themselves to their new geographical terrains and frontier influences, including redeveloping trading centers, absorbing local populations, and interacting with foreign merchants.
For example, in the former Cham territories, one of the key characteristics of the Nguyen administration was the use of Chams and of lower-class Vietnamese. It also redeveloped the commercially oriented society center in Hoi An, which had been pioneered by the local Cham population who still constituted a key component in the labor and basic patterns of the region’s trading center after the Vietnamese takeover. [18] Unlike the traditional northern economy, the Nguyen’s economy had a “fundamental basis in foreign trade.” [19] This attracted Vietnamese immigrants, as well as Chinese refugees who fled from the Manchu dynasty, arriving at various times in present day areas of Hue after 1636, further transforming the Hoi An region “into its now recognizably Vietnamese form.” [20] Moreover, from its contacts with foreign merchants, the Nguyen state was able to arm itself with modern weapons provided by Portuguese merchants, which assisted them to defend the Trinh expeditions as well as to continue the expansion of its control farther south.
As noted by recent works in Vietnamese historiography, in the Nguyen, we see a new version of being Vietnamese. Although these works tend to describe the Nguyen as breaking or escaping from the past and from the ancestors in order to create ways of being Vietnamese, [21] it is probably more accurate to say that the Nguyen was not rigid in conforming with the traditional culture in the north, which led to a more open, multiethnic society with emphasis on foreign trade.
This was true for both the central areas and the Mekong Delta areas. In the latter, Vietnamese had moved into southern plains by the early 1620s, due the political and military vacuum left by the declining Khmer kings. By this time, the Khmer court based in Phnom Penh was faction ridden and was subservient to Siamese (Tai) influence. This allowed the Nguyen to exert its influence in the Khmer court, including the marriage of a Vietnamese princess to a Khmer king in 1620. Three years later, the Khmer king granted permission for Vietnamese immigrants and traders to move into the areas, culminating in 1689 the establishment of a viceroyalty over the provinces around Saigon (Cotter254). [22]
Compared to the central areas, the Nguyen saw the Mekong Delta as more extensive and fertile for growing rice. It also used this area to utilize captured Trinh soldiers and lower class immigrants from the north to settle and develop this area. Chinese immigrants also had important role in redeveloping this region’s trading center. As a result, this region was ethnically pluralistic. From one perspective, these individuals and groups found southern Vietnam as a land of promise, where they could make a fresh start. [23] For instance, captured soldiers were expected to clear the land in which they were given farm implements and food to eat. So in several years “they could produce enough for their own needs,” and after twenty years after “their children can be soldiers of the country.” [24]
To be sure, however, the Nguyen’s colonial did displace the local populations of the Chams and the Khmers, whose “displacement but not replacement” is still today not assured.
A common perception is that the institutional weakness of Cham society, “a weakly institutionalized state system that depended upon personal alliance networks to integrate a fragmented population,” had sealed its fate. [25] Yet, the Chams were never easily conquered. In fact, it may be the same decentralized system that allowed the Chams for centuries to contest and stir rebellion against the Vietnamese. Despite the Nguyen’s presence in the Cham territories since the 1550s, it was until 1611 that Cham territory of Kauthara (modern Nha Trang) disintegrated and not until 1771 that Panduranga-Champa (modern Phan Rang) fell. However, over the centuries Cham society could not withstand the Vietnamese advancement, sometimes in “massive convulsions or in fits and starts.” [26]
It is thought that the majority of Chams were killed, driven off, or assimilated by the Vietnamese. [27] Chams still exist today as an ethnic minority in Vietnam – though its number is relatively small (about 40,000) in comparison to the 30,000 Cham families in the eleventh century. To some degree, because the Nguyen’s purpose and scope of its colonial diaspora were of political and economic domination “with less concern about Cham social and religious life,” Chams were able to retain some of their culture, including their language, religious beliefs, matrilineal kinship patterns, and the practice of non-intensive rice growing. [28] And often overlooked or discredited is the contribution of Chams in the Hoi An region as international trade center. It is very likely that “Vietnamese immigrants encountered the well-established patterns of behavior of the peoples who preceded them and very likely continued to live alongside them.” [29] For instance, Vietnamese had been shaped by the Cham maritime logic in rebuilding Hoi An, learned to grow rice in terraced land, adopted local Cham deities such as Po Nagar, took up a form of Siva worship, lived in Malayic-style stilt houses, traveled in Cham-style boats, tilled with Cham plows, buried their dead in Cham-style graves, and practiced piracy and barter in slaves. [30]
Similarly, since the early 1620s Khmers were gradually displaced and were pushed out of their villages into Cambodia or into marginal lands near the sea; [31] and by 1780, the Vietnamese controlled most of the southern territories that comprise present Vietnam. During the 18th century, military colonies were used to expand in this region, which settled disputes between Khmers and encroaching Vietnamese, although in the favor of Vietnamese settlers. [32] In the 1978 border war with Cambodia, the new socialist government of Vietnam used the Khmers as an advance column in their invasion into Cambodia. Like the Chams, the Khmers were also “discredited” of their role in developing the commercial areas near Saigon. Their contribution to the Vietnamese vocabulary and phrases is often overlooked. This is also true regarding their religious practices, which the Vietnamese have adopted, including elements of Theravada Buddhism. Other cultural borrowing from the Khmers includes agricultural implements and foods, medicines, and different areas of arts. [33]
Also to be sure, there were a number of schisms that developed over the course of the Nguyen’s colonial diaspora – those between the various socioeconomic groups and the separate geopolitical entities. This culminated in the Tay Son rebellion (1772-1801), uprising against both the Trinh and Nguyen forces and unifying the country for the first time in 1788. Although the events of the Tay Son defy easy classification, peasant grievances were central and, yet, the “momentum that had carried the [Tay Son] brothers to a series of military triumphs disappeared as their respective regimes could not resolve the troubles facing them.” [34]
The equally multiethnic alliance that Nguyen Anh created in the Mekong Delta, who also got support from French mercenaries, defeated the Tay Son brothers and reunified the country in 1802. According to George Dutton, the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945) did little to resolve the conflicts that had been stirred up by the Tay Son wars. These conflicts “even accelerated” under the new regime that was able to tax more effectively than their predecessors, which peasants complained loudly about these further exactions and hundreds of peasant and other uprisings challenged the new emperor in the early decades of his reign. [35]
Perhaps, because of the fact that the reunified Vietnam was sill a highly divided territory, emperor Gia Long (formerly Nguyen Anh) sought to address this situation through “expedient of effectively ruling the country as three different regions” in which his dynasty controlled more directly at the center and his governor generals governed the northern and southern parts of Vietnam. [36] But by the reign of Ming Mang (1820-1840), the governor general and his associates (including Christians, Chinese settlers, and ex-convicts) in the south were seen “as a force that threatened to undermine the unity of Vietnam.” [37] He, thus, initiated a program to “cultivate” and “assimilate” southerners, particularly the latter disregard of the central government and royal authority (Choi, 194); but Ming Mang respected private land ownership and offered incentives for southern landlords to become part of the government hierarchy. [38] While the southern Vietnamese state was much more “Southeast Asian” than its northern rival, Vietnamese and Confucian manners did gain ground but “only very slowly over the variety of cultures which had existed in the southern regions for centuries.” [39]
Such process, on the one hand, sparked widespread insurrections by ethnic groups, but in the longer run led “southerners to stand with the Hue’s authority.” [40] For example, in 1833 a revolt of southerners, popularly called the Le Van Khoi revolt, broke out, declaring independent rule for southern Vietnam and lasting for two years before being crushed. But later in 1859, when the French landed in this region, the strong loyalist sentiments toward the Hue court fueled the southerner’s anti-French movement.
Importantly, the above ruptures which, nonetheless, coincided with unification/reunification shaped the political and social contours of a Vietnam that ultimately and unavoidably confronted the French colonial power in the mid-19th century. This confrontation again ruptured but also reunified Vietnam. But again a reunified Vietnam also sparked another wave of the country’s historical roots in refugee-exile circumstances beginning with:
- the Nguyen family under Nguyen Kim fled to Laos after the Mac’s usurpation of the Le dynasty in 1524;
- the Mac family fled to northern China when the Le dynasty was restored in 1592;
- the Nguyen family under Nguyen Hoang left northern Vietnam to the Cham territories after breaking official ties with the Trinh in 1600;
- the Nguyen family under Nguyen Anh fled to Siam (Thailand) in 1775 after its capital fell to the Tay Son brothers;
- the Vietnam Nationalist Party (or the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang) fled to China when the Viet Minh in 1946 began to purge non-communist groups in order to create a communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
- and the leaders and members of the former Republic of South Vietnam evacuated and escaped to western countries after the fall of Saigon to communist rule in 1975.
Different Versions of Being Vietnamese: A Southern, Nationalist/Anti-Communist Perspective
As noted by Keith Taylor, there are different alternatives in reading the Nguyen’s southward expansion.
That is, for the non-experts, it is unclear whether the division between the Trinh lords and Nguyen lords was either the result of hatred and envy of Trinh towards the Nguyen’s military merit, or that, because the Trinh was appointed by the Le court to preside over a regency in the north, the Nguyen decided to return south and created its own autonomy. [41]
Utilizing two Vietnamese dynastic annals, one from the perspective of the Le court written in the second half of the 17th century and the other from the perspective of the Nguyen court written in the early 19th century, Keith Taylor provides a binary reading of Vietnam’s southward expansion: that of the northern and southern points of view.
Wherein the regional differences center on Nguyen Hoang, who was the second son of Nguyen Kim, the leader of a movement to restore the Le emperors in the 1520s. When Nguyen Kim was poisoned in 1545 by the Mac associates, the movement was then led by Nguyen Hoang’s brother-in-law, Trinh Kiem. Eventually, there was a split between Nguyen Hoang and Trinh Kiem.
From the northern perspective, Nguyen Hoang was more “clever than loyal, a capable man who can no longer be governed by appeals to his ancestors, a man grown arrogant by his familiarity with wealth and the power it confers.” [42] From the southern perspective, Nguyen Hoang was “a hero who against all odds survives the bloody affairs of a cramped, impoverished polity and leads his people into a land of peace and plenty, a man who understands foreign merchants.” [43]
Keith Taylor’s regional binary, however, is a deliberate choice, imaginatively employed so that in Nguyen Hoang “we see the beginning of a southern version of being Vietnamese, and because Vietnamese today are no longer able to ignore the differences between north and south.” [44]
A possible reading of Nguyen Hoang’s going south is that it is a metaphor for all the decisions that going south would make possible. According to Keith Taylor:
[S]imply, because, in rejecting the traditional definition of a “good Vietnamese,” options for being another kind of “good Vietnamese” could be explored…[in which]…Talent and ability began to count more than birth and position. This was, in effect, an escape from ancestors, an escape from the past. For Nguyen Hoang, the result was a greater alliance on his own abilities, a shifting of the burden of moral choice from the past to the present. [45]
Essentially, the fact that the Nguyen Hoang “opted to turn his back on the world in which he was raised” and “risked being pronounced a rebel meant that he was not restricted by the northern ways (Taylor, 42, 64). [46] This allows him to freely explore options “without a coercive model of how things out to be.” [47]
Interestingly, behind Keith Taylor’s Nguyen Hoang has been his effort, along with his former students, to demarcate what is imagined as local or regional is “political neutral since it has both potential for both oppression and resistance” (Taylor). [48] This revisionist agenda avoids “the authority of what is thought to have happened in the past” by a master, national, or regional narrative that justifies the violence of dominance and resistance. Thus, it attempts to deconstruct Vietnamese history, so as to feature histories that go beyond nation and region. Moverover, this revision offers an alternative of representing (and strongly rejecting?) the Vietnamese history and culture as continuity and change, since the latter tends to constrain “independent histories.” Instead, revisionists, like Keith Taylor and his former students, argue for an interpretive framework that leaves “more open ends, widows, and adjoining corridors than previous works.” [49]
But the above may assume prematurely that a national or regional narrative necessarily needs to be rescued by academics who believe that their imaginative or revisionist schema is politically more responsible and one without (or has acknowledged) any shortcomings or contradictions.
In fact, while national or regional narrative is necessarily political, it is not necessarily coercive or intolerant.
This is may be the case of the Vietnamese southern, anti-communist historiography. Unlike the Vietnamese Marxist-nationalist historians, the Vietnamese nationalist/anti-anticommunist historians writting during the Vietnam War had a lot to say about Nguyen Hoang; the former, in general, has ignored Nguyen Hoang because he did not confirm or exemplify the theme of national unity or social cohesion necessary for a building a modern socialist state.
For the Vietnamese nationalist/anti-communist historians, Nguyen Hoang was loyal and who left his post in the southern frontiers to aid the Trinh against the Mac, despite his mistrust of the Trinh. From this perspective, the origin of the Nguyen state was due to the:
[W]ars and intrigues under the tyrannical rule of the Trinh; an abortive plot by the Le King and one of the Trinh Tung’s sons against the Trinh ended in Trinh Tung’s killing his disloyal son as well as the Le king. Power than passed to Trinh Tung’s eldest son, who ruled on behalf of the figurehead Le King who was subsequently installed. [50]
This perspective further views that the military conflicts between the Trinh and Nguyen to have weakened the former.
During this time, the Trinh reorganized their administration to promote honesty and efficiency, requiring all officials to take periodic examinations and weeding out incompetents. Unhappily, this well-intentioned program ended when money was needed to quell revolts, and the practice of selling administrative posts was instituted…The cruel reign of Trinh Giang (1729-1740)…resulted in the outbreak of more riots and revolts, thus preventing the continuation of earlier progressive policies. [51]
By contrast, the nationalist/anti-communist perspective saw the Nguyen state as more capable in terms of administration and economics, due to its foreign trade, agricultural colonies, and the settlement’s vast rich lands, which provided a solution to the Nguyen’s problems of population pressure. In addition, the Nguyen did not accommodate itself to the rigidity of the past. The Nguyen “readily absorbed, too, the influx of refugees who left the insecurity and tyranny of the Trinh…as well Chinese immigrants” who contributed to the well-established commercial trading centers. [52]
However, the Vietnamese nationalist/anti-communist historians did not hesitate to critique the fact that the enormous expansion of territory by the Nguyen was not matched by the economy, which remained static and village oriented. As a result, the lot of the peasant grew increasingly worse in which rebellions from the peasants erupted with increasing frequency.
These historians also appeared to be neutral in terms of mass politics, describing the Tay Son brothers as those:
[Who] came up from the masses, and profited by the occasion of internal disorders to raise the colors of liberation. They routed both the lords of the Nguyen and Trinh by 1777…One of the brothers, Nguyen Hue, became the Emperor under the title of Quang Trung, and thanks to him, the national unity as finally restored for a brief time. Unfortunately, he died in 1972 without being able to assure the continuation of his dynasty. [53]
But in regard to French colonial rule, nationalist/anti-communist historians agrued that the Minh Mang was hostile to Western influence because “it had undermined the traditional Confucian order,” but that Minh Mang was no fanatic. [54]
Nguyen emperors issued stronger and stronger edicts against the incursion of foreigners, and especially against Christian missionaries; but all of these injunctions went unheeded. Any actions taken to enforce the edicts served only to incite the West. [55]
Yet, the nationalist/anti-communist view also claims a Vietnamese identity that is open to the influences of the West.
The Vietnamese mind is not disposed to accommodate itself to the rigidity of a monolithic dogma. The subtlety and tolerance which this people manifests at all times could only be compatible with diversity. That no one should be surprised that Confucian pragmatism, Buddhist self-denial and Christian charity liver together in harmony and recruit so many adherents. Mostly, however, the existence of this mosaic of religions is a living tribute to the tolerance and generous spirit of the Vietnamese people. [56]
In sum, the Vietnamese southern, nationalist/anti-communist historiography in many ways avoids an essentialized version of a unified Vietnam, a village Vietnam, a Confucian Vietnam, a revolutionary Viet Nam, and the idea that of Vietnam as composed of two rice baskets held together by a pole. This historiography to a considerable degree appears to allow for restoration of the voices that have been ignored or marginalized. However, at the same time, it does not deny that Vietnam is “an ancient culture with its own rivers and mountains, ways and customs” in which the internal divisions of Vietnam have been the results of politics and not because Nguyen Hoang turned his back against or rejected the place of his birth.
So the option to shape the continunity in the longer trajectory of Vietnamese history leaves “more open ends, widows, and adjoining corridors,” and one that can entail ”taking responsibility for acting at the surface of our own time and place.”
- For a concise dynastic history of the Ly, Tran, Ho, and Le (as well as the Cham and early Khmer kingdoms), see Keith Taylor, “Early Kingdoms,” in Nicholas Tarling, ed., The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- For a concise social history of “nam tien,” see Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 9:1 (1968).
- For historical account of Champa as recorded by Chinese classical texts, see George Wade, “The Ming shi Account of Champa,” Working Paper Series (No.3), Asia Research Institute, the National University of Singapore, 2003.
- What are the key differences between the northern “annal” and the “southern annal” regarding the appraisal of Nguyen Hoang? Is there any similarities?
- Why in Nguyen Hoang do we see a beginning of a southern version of being Vietnamese?
- Do you think there is such thing as a Western version of being Vietnamese as a result of the current Vietnamese diaspora?
- Why did Minh Mang change the country name from “Viet Nam” to “Dai Nam” in 1838?
- What are some of the methods used to assimilate the Khmer minority and other ethnic minority communities?
- What are the results of Minh Mang’s assimilation policy?
——————————————————————————–
[1] Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 9:1 (1968), p.251.
[2] Alexander Woodside, “Vietnamese History: Confucianism, Colonialism, and Independence,” Vietnam Forum, Vol.11, 1988, p.27.
[3] John McAlister and Paul Mus, The Vietnamese and Their Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p.47.
[4] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” in D.R. SarDesai, Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings (Los Angeles: Westview Press, 2006), p.29.
[5] Ibid, p. 25.
[6] Richard O’Connor, “Agricultural Change and Ethnic Succession in Southeast Asian States: A Case for Regional Anthropology,” Journal of Asian Studies, 54:4, p.986
[7] John Whitmore, “Chung-hsing and Chang-t’ung in Texts of and on Sixteenth Century Viet Nam,” in Keith Taylor and John Whitmore, ed., Essays into Vietnamese Pasts (New York: Cornell University, 1995) p.135.
[8] Sun Laichen, “Chinese Gunpowder Technology and Dai Viet, ca.1390-1497,” in Nhung TuyetTran and Anthony Reid, ed., Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p.109.
[9] Ibid, 110.
[10] Lucian Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p.59.
[11] Sun Laichen, “Chinese Gunpowder Technology, p.101.
[12] John Whitmore, “Colliding Peoples: Tai/Viet Interactions in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Association of Asian Studies, San Diego, California, 2000.
[13] Sun Laichen, “Chinese Gunpowder Technology, p.109.
[14] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia: A Comparative Political Analysis (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979), p.63-71.
[15] Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History,’ p.252.
[16] Ibid, p.256.
[17] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia. Translated by H.M. Wright (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p.209.
[18] Charles Wheeler, “One Region, Two Histories: Cham Precedents in the History of the Hoi An Region,” in Nhung TuyetTran and Anthony Reid, ed., Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p.168-170, 173.
[19] Keith Taylor, “Nguyen Hoang and the Beginning of Vietnam’s Southward Expansion,” in Anthony Reid, ed., Trade, Power, and Belief (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993), p.49.
[20] Charles Wheeler, “One Region, Two Histories,” p.169.
[21] Keith Taylor, “Nguyen Hoang,” p.64.
[22] Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History,” p.254.
[23] Ibid., p.254.
[24] Tana Li and Andy Reid, Southern Vietnam Under the Nguyen (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993, p.128.
[25] Kenneth Hall, “Economic History of Early Southeast Asia,” in Nicholas Tarling, ed., Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p.178-193.
[26] Charles Wheeler, “One Region, Two Histories,” p.185.
[27] Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History,” p.253.
[28] Ibid., p.253-254.
[29] Charles Wheeler, “One Region, Two Histories,” p.186.
[30] Ibid., p.175, 186.
[31] Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History,” p.254.
[32] Ibid., p.254.
[33] Ibid., p.254-256.
[34] George Dutton, The Tay Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), p.230.
[35] Ibid., p.231.
[36] Ibid., p.233.
[37] Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mang (1820-1841): Central Policies and Local Response (New York: Cornell University, 2004),p.193.
[38] Ibid., p.195.
[39] Tana Li and Andy Reid, Southern Vietnam, p.4.
[40] Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam, p.195.
[41] Keith Taylor, “Nguyen Hoang,” p.55-58.
[42] Ibid., p.45.
[43] Ibid., p.45
[44] Ibid., p.45.
[45] Ibid., p.64.
[46] Ibid., p.64
[47] Ibid., 42.
[48] Keith Taylor, “Surface Orientations in Vietnam: Beyond Histories of Nation and Region,” Journal of Asian Studies, 57:4, (Nov. 1998), p.976.
[49] Nhung TuyetTran and Anthony Reid, Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p.17.
[50] Vietnamese Realities: The Land, the People, A Glimpse of Vietnam’s History, Written and Spoken Language, Literature, Arts. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Vietnam, 1967, p.69-70
[51] Ibid., p.71.
[52] Ibid., p.72.
[53] Ibid., p.73.
[54] Ibid.,p.75.
[55] Ibid., p.75.
[56] Ibid., p.172.
Feb
8
Chinese Colonial Diasporas (207 B.C.-939 A.D.)
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The Colonial Diasporas and their Effects on Vietnamese Displacement (207 B.C.-939 A.D.)
The Nan Yueh Period (207-111 B.C.)
In 222 B.C., Ch’in Shih Huang Ti triumphed over his rivals and brought an end to the anarchic period of the Warring States, forming the first fully centralized empire in Chinese history. He then established the Ch’in dynasty. Even before his triumph, Shih Huang Ti in 221 B.C. had already planned an expedition and three years later, ordered half a million soldiers to invade the southern Yueh lands. Ch’in’s aggrandizement appeared to be economic; its linkages of the Yueh lands (at that time still far more being completely sinicized) were through the then-existing commercial exchanges between northern China and the southern Yueh realm. [1] The earliest description of this campaign revealed that “Ch’in Shih Huang Ti was interested in rhinoceros horn, the elephant tusks, the kingfisher plumes, and the pearls of Yueh; he therefore sent Commissioner T’u Sui at the head of five hundred thousand men divided into five armies.” [2]
By 207 B.C., a Ch’in general Chao T’o (Trieu Da in Vietnamese and who was among the above campaign), was able to establish a Chinese southern state (from 207-111 B.C.) that commanded both the Kwantung and Kwangsi Provinces, and the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. Chao T’o proclaimed himself King of Nan Yueh in 207 B.C., established his capital near modern Canton, and later assumed the title of emperor in 183 B.C. It is not certain whether the Au Lac kingdom was incorporated in 207 B.C. into Nan Yueh, whether Nan Yueh gained the vassalage of Au Lac in 180 B.C. by means of “rich gifts,” or if sometime after the conquest and before 180 B.C., Au Lac gained its independence (of which there is no evidence). [3]
Notwithstanding, for the first time, northern Vietnam was part of a kingdom encompassing all of southern China, which was stamped with the personality of its founder, Chao T’o. [4] That is, with the eminent collapse of Ch’in state as a new Han dynasty competed for power after the death of Ch’in Shih Huang Ti in 209 B.C., Chao T’o had the means to establish an independent kingdom because of the remoteness of the southern Yueh lands. To do so, he sealed “the mountain passes leading north and eliminated all the officials not personally loyal to him.” [5]
Thus, the purpose and scope of Chao T’o’s dynastic aggrandizement of Nan Yueh was to create an independent dynasty ‘divorced’ from the newly established Han dynasty, but also one that needed a new basis for political and economic power. This may explain why Chao T’o sought to build popularity and loyalty among the non-Chinese population by adapting the manner of the local peoples and resisting Han aggression. [6] However, Chao T’o was interested in developing commercial centers in order to support his newly independent kingdom in which he had also introduced the Chinese language. But overall, the effects of Chao T’o’s dynastic aggrandizement on Nan Yueh appeared not to have directly forced Chinese influence on the local cultures, and, at some level, Chinese immigrants were required under his reign to adopt the local customs and to intermarry with the local peoples. [7]
Chao T’o divided the conquered lands of Au Lac into two prefectures: Giao Chi (located in Hong River plain) and Cuu Chan (located in the smaller plain of the Ma River to the south). According to Keith Taylor, the traditional Lac order in which a royal Lac court and lords continued to exist at Co Loa remained intact, although as a vassal, two legates were assigned to oversee this commercial center. [8] But, at the same time, some degree of mixture of foreign elements, such as a greater reinforcement of Yueh element and Chinese influence probably took place at Co Loa. [9]
Worthy of note is that later Vietnamese remembered Chao T’o as one who defended their land against Chinese aggression. In 544, when Ly Bi of a mixed Sino-Vietnamese class rose against a tyrant Chinese governor, he proclaimed himself emperor of Nan Yueh, evoking the precedent of Chao T’o who had earlier defied the Han dynasty. [10] After 939 B.C., when Ngo Quyen held off southern Han attacks (which proved to be a milestone to the path of national independence), he took on a title of a Vietnamese king, rather taking on Chinese-style political titles, and “once more gave the country its former name of [Nan Yueh].” [11] In 966, when Bo Linh proclaimed himself emperor to assert his political equality between Vietnam and China, he also assigned his son Lien the title “King of Nan Yueh.” [12]
In Vietnamese the word Nan Yueh is Nam Viet. In 1802, Emperor Gia Long of the Nguyen dynasty wanted to rename the newly unified country as “Nam Viet,” although it is not certain whether Gia Long sought “Nam Viet” as a way to indicate the newly gained southern territories of the former Cham and Khmer states or to indicate equality with China. Nevertheless, in 1803 he sought the Chinese emperor’s approval of the name. The Chinese emperor rejected this name because it would conjecture territorial ambitions since Chao T’o’s Nam Viet had included two Chinese provinces. [13] The Chinese emperor resolved this issue by simply reversing the order of the two words into: Viet Nam.
Early Han Period (111 B.C. – 43 A.D.)
In 112 B.C., when Nan Yueh dynasty broke its ties of vassalage to China, the Han Emperor Wu Ti proceeded to occupy the country. A year later, Nan Yueh was incorporated into the empire and formed the province of Giao. In northern Vietnam, an additional province of Nhat Nam (stretching from Hoanh Son to Hai Van Pass) was added to the two previous commanderies of Giao Chi and Cuu Chan.
Northern Vietnam under the Han overlords, according to Keith Taylor, “left no mark on the legendary traditions of the Vietnamese people; unlike the fall of Au Lac, the fall of Nan Yueh did not loom in the collective memory of the Vietnamese.” [14] Similarly, Georges Coedes noted that Han overlords did not bring provinces of Nan Yueh “under the imperial administration, and did not alter the institutions they found there,” since purpose and scope of Han’s conquest was to secure and control “the opening between the ports Kwantung and of northern Viet-Nam” and other existing commercial centers. [15] However, there was a recorded accident in which a certain “General of the Left Old Au Lac” received a title from Han as a reward for his having killed the “King of Tay Vu [a name derived from the region where Co Loa was built].” [16] But it appeared that after submitting to the Han overlords, the Lac lords ruled in their accustomed manner, except that “the principle of prefectural and district administration was established as an official policy.” [17]
It was not until the beginning of the first century A.D. that the Chinese governs began changing “the people through [marriage] rites and justice [prefectural and district administration],” sinicizing, or spreading the Chinese language, ideographs, ethics, and customs more thoroughly than before through new schools and enforced administration decrees. [18] Chinese influence became stronger with the arrival of Chinese political refugees (and their scholar-official families), who refused to recognize the Wang Mang who usurped the Han throne (9-25 A.D.).
Because of a growing awareness of Vietnam’s agricultural potential, Chinese policy in northern Vietnam during the early decades of the first century focused on developing an agrarian economy as a stable government source of tax revenue. [19] It is conjectured that in order for Chinese administrative policy to be effective, the Vietnamese family unit had to be “remade,” because the Chinese concept of political authority rested on a tightly controlled patriarchal family system. [20] Thus, there was an administrative agenda in establishing a patriarchal society in northern Vietnam based on monogamous marriage that would respond to Han-style government. [21]
And because the Lac lords were responsible to implement these new Han policies, cultural supports for the traditional authority of the Lac lords began to crumble. Inevitably, “as discrepancies between the old principle of aristocratic hierarchy and the new principle of prefectural and district administration became increasingly evident, the Lac lords were faced with the choice of becoming subordinate officials in Han government or of taking their case to the battlefield.” [22]
This is the backdrop of the Trung sisters’ rebellion in 40 A.D. From Chinese accounts, Trung Trac was a daughter of a Lac lord of Me Linh (northwest of Hanoi) and was married to a Lac lord of Chu Dien (near the Hong River plain); Trung Trac had a constant companion in her younger sister, Trung Nhi. In reacting to the reportedly greedy and inept prefect of Giao Chih (Su Ting), Trung Trac “of a brave and fearless disposition” stirred her husband to action and mobilized the Lac lords against the Chinese. [23] In 40 A.D., the Chinese settlements were overrun and the provinces of Cuu Chan and Nhat Nam joined the sisters’ uprising. Trung Trac had “established a royal court at Me Linh and was recognized as queen by sixty-five strongholds [fiefs],” and “it is recorded that for two years she ‘adjusted the taxes’ of Giao Chi and Cuu Chan.” [24]
By 42 A.D. an expedition led by Ma Yuan, one of the best Chinese generals at the time, arrived in the delta area with 20,000 men to quell the sisters’ rebellion, though when he initially approached the sisters’ armies, the size of the latter compelled him to retreat into the hills. But by May 43 A.D. Ma Yuan won a bloody but decisive victory at Lang Bac in which several thousand Vietnamese were captured and beheaded. [25]
The cultural significance of this short-lived uprising is that it illustrates the indigenous ability to resist Chinese aggression. Trung sisters in later centuries were incorporated to the pantheon of national spirits able to give supernatural spirits aid in time of need; [26] according to a noted fifteenth century literary scholar and military hero, Nguyen Trai, the Trung sisters renamed the recover state as Hung Lac. [27] While Ma Yuan’s suppression of revolt cast the country into the stream of Chinese civilization, Trung sisters’ resistance “effectively ‘froze’ the Dong Son heritage in a moment of heroic courage” and eventually and spiritually called “the Vietnamese back to ancient inheritance.” [28]
Interestingly, later Vietnamese Confucius scholars favored the idea that the Trung sisters’ revolt was provoked by, and rightfully acted to revenge, the death of Trung Trac’s husband, Thi Sach, at the hands of Han officials. But the Chinese sources revealed that Thi Sach followed his wife’s leadership, and that there is no evidence of this death; [29] so that Trung Trac’s reign as a queen may have taken place while her husband was still alive. Also, a large percentage of the more than fifty recorded names and biographies that followed Trung Trac’s uprising were women. The matriarchal element is further tested that Trung Trac’s mother’s tomb and spirit temple survived, although nothing remains of her father. Moreover, according to reliable source, the two siblings’ surname was Hung, which conjectured the possibility that the Trung sisters were associated with the mythical Hung dynasty and that such dynasty could have allowed a female ruler? [30]
Displacement Effects under Chinese Direct Rule (After 43 A.D.)
Notwithstanding, the defeat of the Trung sisters saw the end of the pre-Chinese popular leaders and the traditional ruling class (that of the Lac), as Ma Yuan followed up his victory by organizing a permanent administration and direct rule in the delta. [31] In effect, after the defeat of the Trung sisters, the “placement” of Vietnamese identity within the “middle kingdom” consisted of physical, psychological, cultural, and intellectual displacements.
For example, in terms of physical displacement, historical sources implied that after Ma Yuan’s victory, three to five thousand were captured and headed in Cuu Chan and several hundred families were deported to China. [32] In northern Vietnam, Han soldiers were settled to protect and implemented Han administrative and its agenda, including the idea that the conquered were now “to bind” to a formal promise or oath to obey the “old regulations.” [33] In addition, Han soldiers took the rice fields away from the Lac lords and were the direct means for building Han-style patterns of land ownership and revenue collection. [34]
In regard to psychological displacement (where the behavioral impulse is redirected from a more threatening activity or person(s) to a less threatening one), Vietnamese shifted their identity to take account of their new position. That is, for the Vietnamese, their name Lac was no longer of account, whereas the Yueh/Viet identity was forced but also carried some social status with it. From the Chinese view, Yueh/Viet was to express the conquered people’s place within the “middle kingdom” but it was to be temporary since these people would eventually be civilized and become Chinese.
Cultural displacement had also occurred. The Trung sisters’ revolt demonstrated the greater role of women in the traditional Vietnamese societies, the individualistic tendencies and its bilateral character. As noted earlier, according to Chinese sources, Trung Trac’s husband, Thi Sach, followed his wife’s leadership, and that Trung Trac’s reign may have taken place while her husband was still alive. [35] Thus, for Han officials, the Vietnamese family had to conform to the Chinese family system so as to make the former more hospitable to Chinese concept of government. This included decrees encouraging stable, monogamous marriage, discouraging the practice of levirate (that is, a man must marry the widow of his childless brother in order to maintain the brother’s line), and reforming women to be more trustworthy and less promiscuous. [36] Thus, such modifications restrained the matriarchal elements and trends of the Vietnamese traditional society.
Finally, intellectual displacement is also evident. According to the conventional view of Chinese scholars and French sinologists, when the Chinese conquered the Hong River plain, “they met ‘barbarians’ whose beliefs and social organization had something in common with those of their own Chinese…early ancestors…and this goes some way toward explaining why they were so rapidly and so easily able to impose their own civilization…[for the Vietnamese] they were simply a later [Chinese], more advanced stage of a common cultural basis.” [37] And once direct Chinese colonial rule had been enforced, Chinese influence “left indelible traces on [Vietnamese] language, literature, and institutions, and indeed the whole of its intellectual life.” [38]
While the conventional view acknowledged that Chinese occupation was confronted with “members of the native population who were attached to their traditional institutions and hostile to foreign rule,” [39] it does not directly acknowledge that Vietnamese were victims and were displaced by Chinese colonial diasporas. Rather, it focuses on the perception that because the traditional Vietnamese society in prehistoric times lacked the inventiveness, its history is linked to the arrival of Chinese civilization, but one that has been “receptive rather than creative when brought into contact.” [40] The defining theme in this view is that “the Vietnamese borrowed so many cultural traits from China that even when it achieved political independence, it still remained an offshoot of Chinese civilization.” [41]
However, as discussed earlier, the traditional Vietnamese society both in prehistoric and early history was by its own account rich and vibrant and demonstrated that it was not simply displaced by Chinese colonial diasporas, but also ‘localizers’ and ‘resisters’ of those diasporas.
A Prolonged Re-independence Process (44-939 A.D.)
As noted by Keith Taylor, when strong Chinese dynasties asserted their power in Vietnam, it drew the Vietnamese closer to China and cut them off from their non-Chinese neighbors. [42] This was the case from 44-544 A.D. and from 603-909 A.D. In these periods, Vietnamese had to learned to articulate their non-Chinese identity, as well as having their resistance to colonial rule (including their alliance with non-Chinese neighbors) modified, in terms of strong Chinese civilizing governors and their military power. [43] When Chinese power was weak at the center or temporarily withdrew from Vietnam, local heroes attempted to initiate and enforce a new concept of frontiers that set the Vietnamese off from China and their southern neighbors. [44] This was the case from 541-603 A.D. and from 909-980.
Therefore, the proximity and intensity of Chinese civilizing mission and military power were important determinants of Vietnam’s re-independence process. Overall, the patterns of Chinese immigration and settlement in northern Vietnam reflected Chinese commercial interests, including wanting a port on South China Sea, tax revenues from the agricultural fields and households, and precious rarities. In order to realize these commercial interests, the people of northern Vietnam had to be militarily conquered because they demographically dominated this area. And, because the traditional Vietnamese society and its institutions and infrastructure of communal thought and action proved to be deep and its defenses could not easily be forced by outsiders, they needed to be transformed and be incorporated into the Chinese civilization and empire. As noted by other scholars, the spread and implementation of Chinese civilization into the northeast of the peninsula and southeast of the south sea is the direct result of its assimilation policy put into practice of which was unlikely without military conquest and annexation of territory.
After Ma Yuan’s victory over the Trung sisters, a new ruling class emerged from the marriage between Han Chinese soldiers/immigrants and local Vietnamese families. While this Han-Viet ruling class formally accepted Han culture with few or no reservations, overtime they developed their own perspective on Chinese civilization by taking a regional point of view that owed much to the indigenous heritage. That is, as conjectured by Keith Taylor, because the Vietnamese language survived, “it is reasonable to assume that after the first or second generation, Han immigrants spoke Vietnamese” and more “were effectively ‘Vietnamized’ than the Vietnamese were sinicized.” [45] By 136 A.D., the middle and low level Han officials “may have had three grandparents of indigenous stock and only one grandfather of northern origin”; then the Han character may have been “seriously compromised by marriage.” [46]
In 231 A.D., a Chinese prefect acknowledged that there were local customs that have proven to be impervious to Chinese influence. He then pondered why the Chinese were interested in such a place:
They easily become rebellious and are difficult to pacify; district officials act dignified but are careful not to provoke them. What can be obtained from field and household taxes is meager. On the other hand, this place is famous for precious rarities from afar: pearls, incense, drugs, elephant tusks, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell, coral, lapis lazuli, parrots, kingfishers, peacocks, rare and abundant treasures enough to satisfy all desires. So it is not necessary to depend on what is received from taxes in order to profit the Central Kingdom. [47]
In regard to Han’s actual implementation of administrative governance, it appeared, from Han historiography, that a Chinese official who “governed with benevolence and was tolerant of strange customs” was promoted, while officials who “used the law to extort bribes [too excessive]” were eventually executed. [48] In fact, when the Han government began to decline in 202 and later in periods of political crises in the Central Kingdom, it was the Han-Viet families such as Shih family and Do family, who both were loyal imperialists, who were able to maintain stability and prevent the slide toward separatism in northern Vietnam while, at the same time, did not go against indigenous sensibilities and allowed the local way of life to prosper. [49] Families like the Shih and the Do, while having roots in Vietnamese society, through education and imperial ambitions were linked to and worked effectively to enforce the Chinese imperial connection in northern Vietnam.
During the reign of the Shih family, Buddhism (which captured the imagination of the local people), Confucianism (predominately embraced by the ruling class people by virtue of their education), and Taoism (many public Confucianists were private Taoists and many Taosists found Buddhism but a short step away) all flourished in varying degrees. [50] It is of note that the Shih family allowed the Vietnamese culture to localize Buddhism; as late as the T’ang rule, Buddhist influence from the southeast India (Mahayana orthodoxy) by sea, rather than overland from northern India (Theravada orthodoxy) dominated Cham and Khmer civilizations. The popular Buddhist culture in northern Vietnam gave rise to native son resistance leader, Trieu Quang Phuc, who took on an indigenous title of king and was remembered as the protector of the Buddhist religion. [51]
The importance of families like the Shih and Do were that they were able to achieve a working consensus with the regional ruling class, specifically with the Ly family, dissuaded any effort of separatism or independence as championed by the Ly family. [52]
However, alienated families, such as the Ly, “because of an aversion to the claims of Han civilization or because of personal taste,” they eagerly embraced the local way of life. [53] The Ly had continued to pose a threat of separatism that eventually produced a sixth century Vietnamese independence leader, Ly Bi and his Ly’s predecessors. In 541 A.D., Ly Bi rose up against a corrupted Chinese governor and by 544 proclaimed himself emperor of Nan Yueh, evoking the precedent of Chao T’o who had earlier defied the Han dynasty. [54] Ly Bi emulated Chinese imperial ideals by establishing a reign title and organized an imperial court.
But it also appeared that Ly Bi used Buddhism to buttress his reign, such as publishing the name of his realm as Van Xuan (Ten Thousand Spring-times), and may have patronized the Buddhist religion. [55] According to a temple document, he also invoked the memory of a popular heroine, Lady Trieu, who was a leader of a 248 A.D. uprising by honoring her with a posthumous title. [56] Another Ly member, Ly Phat Tu, was able to reoccupy Ly Bi’s realm in 590 until 603 A.D.; his original name may have been Ly Huu Vinh but his personal name was changed to Phat Tu (“Son of Buddha”). [57] This indicated his support and patronization, which assisted a Vietnamized form of Buddhism that later played an important role in the early independence period, as exemplified by the Ly and Tran dynasties. The promise of the Ly’s was cut short by a resurgence of Chinese power. However, in the long run, the promise of the sixth century was kept. [58]
In 622 A.D., a new great dynasty emerged: that of the T’ang, who reorganized the administrative boundaries of northern Vietnam and created the general government of Giao, which in 679 became the general protectorate of An Nam (“The Pacified South”). [59] T’ang domination was firm and efficient. The noted regional ruling class “was neutralized and swallowed up by T’ang administration. [60] Unlike the great families under Han rule who controlled vast estates and maintained private armies, T’ang reconstructed them into the “equal-field” system, so as to counter the greater families and to shore up regional authority. However, in the early eighth century, Tang administration broke down and popular leadership appeared such as Mai Thuc Loan in 722 A.D. who captured the capital and proclaimed himself emperor (in alliance with Chams and Khmers). But, as a result, an army of some one hundred thousand men migrated to northern Vietnam to quell the “alien” marauders. [61] Though even then, in 791 A.D., another individual with a non-Chinese cultural outlook, Phung Hung, was able to seize control of the capital but soon died. However, his son succeeded him and ruled well for a few years until forced to surrender by a new Chinese Protector. [62]
The legacy of T’ang’s firm and relatively stable rule in northern Vietnam appeared to have a considerable degree of “sinicization” on the local culture, or that that Vietnamese culture and society were to some degree modified by nearly three centuries of T’ang rule. [63] The greatest number of Chinese loan words in literary character is dated from the T’ang period. These words, unlike the Han administrative terms, were adapted to the Vietnamese tongue; [64] in addition, during this time, the Vietnamese began to experiment with using Chinese characters to write their own language, which later Vietnamese character (Chu Nom) was eventually developed for literary purposes from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Thus, by many accounts, during the T’ang epoch, the local people experienced significant knowledge of classical learning and an ability to apply it to popular forms of expression, as well as certain legal and administrative habits which later were integrated by the Vietnamese dynastic courts. [65]
For instance, the law codes of later Vietnamese dynasties were strongly influenced by T’ang law, although the significant portions retained were chiefly about court etiquette, loyalty to the ruler, the behavior of officials, public order, and such administrative procedures as census registration and taxation. Meanwhile, the portions of T’ang law dealing with criminal justice, marriage, inheritance, and other aspects of family organization and customary usage were replaced or significantly altered by distinctive Vietnamese provisions. [66]
Notwithstanding, when T’ang fell in 931 A.D. (superseded in 907 by the Later Liang dynasty but with a royal T’ang family able to hold northern Vietnam intact for another half century), the Vietnamese national consciousness, inspired by Buddhism and reinforced by the dozen or so anti-Chinese uprisings between 39 and 939, asserted its independence. By the fall of T’ang, Canton as a port for commercial trade had been sufficiently built up by the Chinese expansion in that area, so that the necessity for controlling northern Vietnam to have access to South China became less urgent for subsequent Chinese dynasties. This also implied that the patterns of Chinese immigration and settlement were negligible, as Vietnam increasingly lay beyond the absorbing powers of Chinese society.
In 931 A.D., a new Southern Han dynasty emerged in Canton and invaded northern Vietnam. Duong Dinh Nghe and his family were members of the T’ang civilization but were willing to enter the reality of regional power politics and built an indigenous power base to resist Southern Han rather than to join forces with northern rulers. He forced the Southern Han army out of northern Vietnam and named himself military governor.
The importance of Duong Dinh Nghe was that he presided over the first wakening of “Vietnamese power” in the tenth century. This included an affirmation that: “We are not Chinese; we are Viet.” As a ruling elite, Duong Dinh Nghe’s willingness to accept this choice may explain his ability to cast himself to the Vietnamese kingship, which grew out of peasant life and village politics and whose members later became the “rustic” kings in the second half of the tenth century. [67]
Duong Dinh Nghe’s alignment with the Vietnamese village life is further conjectured by Joseph Buttinger’s statement about class politics during Chinese colonization:
The peasant, in particular, must have wanted to rid himself of a foreign rule under which he suffered greatly, profited little, and could expect nothing, relative to its relation with the local upper classes. If for centuries he did not engage in active resistance, it was mainly because he lacked the self-awareness as well as the possibility for organized action of the ruling class. Though passive resistance of the peasant had contributed more to the survival of the Vietnamese people and to national consolidation than all the upper class revolts…Not until the ninth century did these conflicting trends begin to converge. The village emerged as the source from which the national spirit drew its strength, but it was the ranks of the upper class that this spirit had come to life…The upper-class rebels ceased to see the peasant merely as an object of exploitation and began to look at him as an indispensable ally in their fight for independence. They began to speak the language of the villagers and to honor the peasant’s pre-Chinese customs. In preaching the national gospel, they transformed themselves into something more genuinely Vietnamese than they had ever been before. [68]
Although Duong Dinh Nghe was killed by one of his officers in order to steer a pro-Chinese court in 937, another of Duong Dinh Nghe’s generals, Ngo Quyen, avenged the death of his patron. This led to unavoidable conflict with the Southern Han, who sent an expedition by sea to northern Vietnam in 938. Ngo Quyen anticipated this plan and lured the Chinese boats into areas where barriers of large poles with iron points were planted in the bed of the river; the ships of the Chinese fleet were all caught on the poles. This allowed Ngo Quyen’s soldiers to attack vigorously and defend the point of entry at Bach Dang River. After this battle, Southern Han never attacked Vietnamese again. [69]
Ngo Quyen’s victory had proved to be a milestone to the path of national independence. In 939, he took on a title of a Vietnamese king, rather taking on Chinese-style political titles, and “once more gave the country its former name of [Nan Yueh]” and made the ancient city of Co Loa his capital. [70] This pays tribute to, but also further strengthens, the imagination of a Vietnamese kingdom rooted in ancient times.
Retaining the Cultural Core and Making Local Cultural Statements
Today, a more acceptable assessment of the impacts of the Chinese colonial diasporas on the Vietnamese traditional society is that: China for Vietnam was an administrative tutor but was also a colonist aggressor, a promoter in economics but also an exploiter, and a cultural mentor but also an indoctrinator. [71]
However, for the Vietnamese, at least historically, China always poses a danger, and “that is how things are.” In fact, after Vietnamese independence, China has tried several times to reincorporate Viet Nam into its empire, including in 981, 1075-1077, 1250s, 1280s, 1406-1427, and 1788. That view is embodied in a Chinese document of 1882 which saw Viet Nam as a “barrier of the Middle Empire, a small nation which serves to protect the provinces of Yunnan and Kwangsi…although situated outside the Empire, we cannot abandon it.” [72]
Thus, living in the shadow of a powerful empire, Vietnamese must necessarily become expert survival artists, including utilizing “the ideas of a large country with the warriors of a small country,” as advised by court historian Ngo Si Lien. The necessity to absorb Chinese influence is also expressed by the legend of Lac Long Quan and Au Co, which exemplifies the theme of Vietnam’s neutralizing the threat of northern legitimacy. In fact, the newly independent Vietnamese state did not journey inwardly or isolate itself from China, so that borrowing from China did not diminish. Indeed, learning and borrowing enabled the Vietnamese to issue its own paper money by 1396 A.D., and to domesticate wood-block printing techniques in the 1400s. [73] But the Vietnamese also learned and borrowed from their southern and western neighbors and later, western missionaries and colonizers. As noted by Alexander Woodside, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, “Vietnamese elites had been influenced culturally almost as much as by the Chams as by the Chinese, including the former military strategies, music and operas, newer matriarchal trends, and cultural motifs such as the elephants. [74]
Although not entirely and not without elaborations, the borrowing of foreign ideas can be considered that of strategic calculations. That is, Vietnamese dynastic scholars did not necessarily see Sinic institutions and inventions as ‘Chinese,’ that Vietnam was merely imitating. Vietnamese scholars equated the Sinic devices and inventions as universal or a sort of technology. As such, learning and borrowing did not imply that they wanted to become Chinese or to place their institutions within the Chinese civilization and empire. [75] Rather, the Vietnamese did not want to deprive of themselves of Chinese innovations which represented the most advanced technology for nation building, including acquiring and maintaining technical, administrative, and cultural skills.
And they did not hesitate to use Sinic devices for diplomatic weaponry against the Chinese themselves. [76] For example, dynastic historian, Ly Quy Don used the study of history, which Chinese classical values, to produce an inventory of lost Vietnamese books and archives, (going back to 1026 A.D.), which had been destroyed or carried away by Chinese invaders, indicating memory of a lost, or stolen, cultural patrimony. [77] Nor did other Vietnamese scholars hesitate to use the Chinese concept of the “Book of Heaven” and deliberately alter it to enable Vietnamese “Sons of Heaven” to determine who is good and who is evil in the world. [78] “Book of Heaven” was also rewrote so that Vietnam has its own place in the sun (with its own foreign relations to the south and west), and that anyone who violates its boundaries will be cut to pieces, according to Ly Thuong Kiet’s declaration (in Chinese) in the eleventh century. [79]
The conventional view of Vietnamese borrowing after independence is that because it retained repeated contact with China, the reconquest of the country by the Ming at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and the tendency to imitate the Court of Peking at the beginning of the nineteenth century “have all contributed towards keeping Viet-nam within the Chinese cultural zone.” While Vietnamese are receptive and attracted to Chinese culture when not politically force upon them, they have always see their nation, though perhaps more intensely because of constant Chinese aggression, as “an ancient culture with its own rivers and mountains, ways and customs, different from those in the north [China],” as penned by literary scholar and military hero, Nguyen Trai. Indeed, Vietnam is not a smaller dragon in terms of origin and identity in the fact that:
China, after losing its Vietnamese protectorate during the political storms of the 10th century, tried many times to reincorporate Vietnam into its empire, and failed on every occasion. The Vietnamese will to dependence was too strong to permit it; and that will to dependence could never have existed without some intuition, reaching through all the social classes right down to the seemingly crustacean politics if the bamboo-walled villages, that there was a special Vietnamese collective identity of some sort. The Vietnamese nation is, to put it bluntly, one of the longest enduring acts of in human history. [80]
It is more illustrative that the reason why Vietnamese were displaced by Chinese colonial diasporas but were never replaced was because they strategically borrowed, elaborated, and localized foreign influences in order to negotiate and assert their cultural and intellectual rights. Such method allowed them to reclaim their re-independence, “else there would be no such thing as a Vietnamese nation today,” although they were modified and their articulation was constrained by the degree and nature of Chinese power felt in Vietnam. [81]
Vietnamese dynastic historians did take upon themselves to use the study of history “to define the notion of an absolutely distinct Vietnamese kingdom, and of real as well as mythical frontiers intended to ward off forever China’s wish to resuscitate any legitimate pretension to interference.” [82] Vietnamese dynastic historiography, while relying heavily on Chinese historical sources, “Vietnamized” them but also preserved their traditions (which were not accounted by the Chinese sources) in order to reflect the cultural favor of different eras during Chinese rule. Doing so, it gave their national history the legal, historical, and cultural basis of their independence.
For example, in the thirteenth century, to ward off any wish of Yuan China to recapture its former colony, historian Le Van Huu sought to demonstrate the antiquity of the Vietnamese state as well as to illustrate that the current Vietnam’s tributary relationship with China was a fiction by demarcating the starting point of Vietnamese history to Chao To’s Nan Yueh. [83] As noted by Yu Insun, Le Van Huu “would have known about the other legendary Vietnamese leaders who ruled long before Chao T’o” but who would have appeared pale to Chao T’o’s defiance of China, since “early Vietnamese rulers were content with the title of king and did not pursue the rank of emperor.” [84] Similarly, in the independence period, Le Van Huu saw Dinh Bo Linh (not Ngo Quyen in 939 A.D.) as the person who completely restored Vietnam’s legitimacy because, in 968 A.D., Dinh Bo Linh was able ousted all rivals and rose to the rank of emperor, restoring the legitimate tradition of Chao T’o.
Perhaps, the most important aspect of borrowing, as noted by John Whitmore, is that “the manner in which the Vietnamese received external influences helps us acquire a sense of the culture itself.” [85] In the prolonged process of re-dependence, a period of gradual spread of Chinese influence combined with the rise and fall of local attempts at regional and political overlordship, it seems to have produced a spiritual call for Vietnamese to go back to its ancient inheritance. However, at the same time, the “Vietnamese cultural core” has taken on Chinese influences and ideals. Generally speaking, Chinese contributions to Vietnam cover all aspects of culture, society, and government. These influences penetrated Vietnamese society, but only as ideals, although they were to some a degree realized among upper- or middle-class Vietnamese who aspired to prominent roles in government or society. [86] Yet, especially among the upper- or middle-class, cultural borrowing from the Chinese was not to erode the “Vietnamese cultural core” but was more or less deliberate in order to address the physical, psychological, cultural, and intellectual displacements caused by the constant Chinese aggression. Such cultural borrowing has allowed the Vietnamese elite to make and strengthen local cultural statements about its “cultural core.”
In many ways, centuries of Vietnamese borrowing has made the “Vietnamese culture core” a shifting entity and “what would count within it would be that which was considered essential and integral to the culture at any give time.” [87] Although such situation is inevitably imperfect and may lead to tension and stress within society, it has created an enduring historical agency, whose indigenous language, village religion, kinship reckoning, sex roles, residence and inheritance tactics were never replaced of which today are still distinct and persistent but, at the same time, able to continuously take on (and off) external influences.
- For a historical narrative on how Vietnam moved away from their former colonial ruler and evolved to an independent monarchy based on indigenous traditions from the 8th century to the 11th century, see Taylor, Keith, “The rise of Dai Viet and the establishment of Thang-long,” Explorations in early Southeast Asian history: the origins of Southeast Asian statecraft, ed. Kenneth R. Hall and John K. Whitmore, (Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 1976).
- For further insights on how Vietnam, who much more than its Asian neighbors, had always had to take China into account in their nation building past and present, see Nguyen The Anh, “Attraction and Repulsion as the Two Contrasting Aspects of the Relations Between China and Vietnam,” China and Southeast Asia: Historical Interacitons. An International Symposium. University of Hong Kong, 19-21 July 2001.
- Pick one person from the sovereign or ministers category and briefly describe why that person was bestowed an honorific title.
- Pick one spirit from the spirits from nature and briefly describe how this spirit relates to the understanding of a ruler or an event.
- Are there Vietnamese individuals or spirits in the diasporic community that you think are instrumental to the Vietnamese Diasporic Experience?
- In general, what explain the differences in the commentaries on the same historical incident (i.e. Chao T’o/Trieu Da, Ngo Quyen, Le Hoan, etc) between Le Van Huu of the 13th century and Ngo Si Lien of the 15th century?
- Although there were more differences, what was a key similarity between the two scholars’ historical perspectives?
- Both Le Van Huu and Ngo Si Lien sought a point of origin for the Vietnamese state before Chinese colonial rule. In the case of Vietnamese American Experience, what would be your point of origin in regard to Vietnamese American History or Vietnamese American Cultural Heritage (a date or an historical event)?
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[1] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia. Translated by H.M. Wright (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p.39.
[2] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p.17.
[3] Ibid., footnote 113, 114.
[4] Ibid., p.23.
[5] Ibid., p.26.
[6] Ibid., p.23-24.
[7] Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Political History (New York: Praeger, 1968), p.20-23; D.G.E. Hall, A History of Southeast Asia, 4th ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p.212.
[8] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.26.
[9] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.46.
[10] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.138.
[11] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.80.
[12] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.281.
[13] Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p.120-121.
[14] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.30.
[15] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.43.
[16] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.29-30.
[17] Ibid., p.33.
[18] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.43.
[19] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.36-37.
[20] Ibid., p.36.
[21] Ibid., p.36
[22] Ibid., p.37.
[23] Ibid., p.38.
[24] Ibid., p.39
[25] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.46.
[26] Ibid., p.336.
[27] Nguyen Van Ky, “Rethinking the Status of Women in Folklore and Oral History,” in Gisele Bousquet and Pierre Brocheux, eds., Viet Nam Expose: French Scholarship on Twentieth-Century Vietnamese Society (Ann Harbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005), p.89.
[28] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.339.
[29] Ibid., p.39.
[30] Nguyen Van Ky, “Rethinking the Status of Women,” p.89.
[31] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.45.
[32] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.46-47.
[33] Ibid., p.46-47.
[34] Ibid., p.49
[35] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.39.
[36] Ibid., p.36, 75,77.
[37] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.45.
[38] Ibid., p.46
[39] Ibid., p.47
[40] Ibid., 230.
[41] Ibid.,218.
[42] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.xx.
[43] Ibid., p.xx-xxi.
[44] Ibid., p.xix-xx.
[45] Ibid., p.53.
[46] Ibid., p.64.
[47] Ibid., p.78
[48] Ibid., p.59
[49] Ibid.,p.80.
[50] Ibid., p.83.
[51] Ibid., p.151-155
[52] Ibid., p.115.
[53] Ibid., p.79.
[54] Ibid, p.138.
[55] Ibid., p.140.
[56] Ibid., p.140.
[57] Ibid., 157.
[58] Ibid., 165
[59] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.48.
[60] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.209.
[61] Ibid., p.216.
[62] D.G.E. Hall, History of South-East Asia, p.197-198.
[63] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.1201-121.
[64] Ibid., p.120.
[65] Ibid., p.221.
[66] Ibid., p.21.
[67] Ibid., p.264.
[68] Joseph Buttinger, The Smaller Dragon: A Political History of Vietnam (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958), p.35-36.
[69] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.268-269.
[70] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia, p.80.
[71] King Chen, Vietnam and China, 1938-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1969, p.12.
[72] Jean Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam, (Chicago, IL: Cowles Books, 1972), p.72.
[73] Alexander Woodside, “Vietnamese History: Confucianism, Colonialism, and Independence,” Vietnam Forum, Vol.11, 1988, p.25.
[74] Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, p. 23, 25-26, 29,45.
[75] Nguyen The Anh, “Attraction and Repulsion as the Two Contrasting Aspects of the Relations Between China and Vietnam,” China and Southeast Asia: Historical Interacitons. An International Symposium. University of Hong Kong, 19-21 July 2001. See http://www.vninfos.com/selection/histoire/attraction_et_repulsion.html.
[76] O.W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, 1982), p.63.
[77] Alexander Woodside, “Vietnamese History,” p.30.
[78] David Marr, “Sino-Vietnamese Relations,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No.6, 1981, p.48.
[79] Ibid., p.48
[80] Alexander Woodside, “Vietnamese History,” p.27
[81] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.307, xix.
[82] Nguyen The Anh, “Attraction and Repulsion.”
[83] O.W. Wolters, “Historians and Emperors in Vietnam and China,” in C.D. Cowan and O.W. Wolters, eds., Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University of Press, 1976) p.73-74.
[84] Yu Insun, “Le Van Huu and Ngo Si Lien: A Comparison of Their Perception of Vietnamese History,” in Nhung TuyetTran and Anthony Reid, ed., Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p.49.
[85] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” in D.R. SarDesai, Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings (Los Angeles: Westview Press, 2006), p.40.
[86] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.298.
[87] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences,” p.40.
Jan
30
The Colonial Diasporas and their Displacing Effects on the Traditional Vietnamese Society
What is the essence of the Vietnamese cultural history?
In National Geographic Traveler: Vietnam (2006) by James Sullivan, the motif used for the non-experts to understand Vietnamese history and culture is that of “the smaller dragon.” For more than a thousand years:
China controlled Vietnam as a vassal state, setting the stage for a cultural reorientation that goes right down to the marrow of what it means to be Vietnamese…[to] have absorbed the politics, religion, sociology, and arts of China to refine their own…There are, of course, cultural differences. But after more than 2,000 years of shared history, the similarities, especially to the traveler, remain obvious. [1]
Such perspective is not indicative of the current scholarship on Vietnamese history and culture. However, Sinologists, Indologists, pre-historians, and geographers writing before the mid-1960s did see Vietnam as “the smaller dragon.” These scholars regarded Vietnamese society, along with other Southeast Asian societies, in prehistoric time as having no roots and stuck fast in the stone-age. Such societies, according to French scholar Georges Coedes, “seem to have been lacking in creative genius and showed little aptitude for making progress without stimulus from outside.” [2]
Vietnam was fortunate, however, according to this view. Because it was a meeting ground of cultural influences from China, northern Vietnam became a receiver or a loan culture of a unidirectional diffusion and migration from an advanced agricultural economy, technology and mercantile activities of China. [3] From such contact, Vietnam entered history and established a centralized state which began to flourish in the early Christian era, whereas the “tribes” of Southeast Asian prehistory did not know how to rule. [4]
From 111 B.C. to 939 Vietnam was annexed to China, but “far from having worn down that invincibility, seems instead to have strengthened it.” It is this spirit of resistance through cohesion and formal structure that has been “the key answer to her historic problems.” [5] Yet, these same observers believed that Vietnamese invincibility has been the result of Chinese influence through a spirit that “combines amazing powers of assimilation.” Illustrative is Henri Maspero’s conclusion on early Vietnamese history:
[If Vietnamese] was able for centuries to resist Chinese aggression…it is indebted to Ma Yuan for this advantage [who defeated the Trung Sisters’ Rebellion in 43 A.D.]..for it was the Chinese conquerer who, in destroying the old political institutions of Tonkin [northern Vietnam], cast this country for good into the stream of Chinese civilization, thereby giving it that strong Chinese reinforcement which allowed it to play the primary role in the history of eastern Indochina since the tenth century. [6]
Thus, areas of northern Vietnam were considered “Sincized” or little China; while areas of southern Vietnam were considered as “Indianized” or little India. At best, historians writing before the mid-1960s like John Cady and Joseph Buttinger held that Southeast Asian civilizations were imported but evolved as individual adaptations. In some cases, the modifications illustrate local genius of the more advanced culture of China and/or India and that is precisely what makes them Indochinese and why the territory may properly be called Indochina. [7]
On the one hand, migration through colonial diasporas have in many ways transformed Vietnam cultural history both in prehistoric and historic times. (For a theoretical discussion about the two types of diasporas in Vietnamese history – that of colonial diaspora and victim diaspora – see Conceptualizing Displacement). On the other hand, the effects of colonial diasporas – the imposition of foreign culture – will depend on the types of aggrandizement that colonists engaged in expanding their control, and of which will be interrelated with the colonized society’s physical size and the durability of its indigenous institutions prior to the external linkages between the colonizers and the colonized. (For a theoretical discussion of the above, see Types of Colonial Rules).
According to recent works by archaeologists, linguists, and geneticists, the colonial diasporas that had direct transformative effects on the traditional Vietnamese society is that of the Austroasiatic agricultural colonists, starting about 3000 to 1000 B.C. The migration of Austroasiatic “agricultural colonists” transformed the semi-/shifting agricultural societies of Australo-Melanesian, cumulating into two periods of Neolithic/Bronze and Iron Ages in northern Vietnam. The cultural significance of this is the solid evidence of a rich and vibrant Vietnamese civilization before Chinese arrival, as well as a proto-Vietnamese language along with cultural traditions that survived, though later they took on external influences through intimate contact with foreign colonial powers.
By the time “the first major imposition of northern influence” arrived, that of Thuc Phan and his Ou Yueh (Au Viet) military personnel, [8] the indigenous Lac society was well established whose physical size must have been considerable and whose language, cultural traditions, and class structures were effectively durable and stable. That is, while Thuc Phan’s army had displaced the Lac society, his reign did not mark any large scale movement of people in sufficient magnitude to account for the origin of a people, [9] or had left any mark on the Vietnamese language. [10]
In fact, the earliest spirit of an indigenous invincibility to resist foreign rule was the Lac lords. Their ability to ‘localize’ and ‘resist’ the colonial imposition of Thuc Phan in 257 B.C. and until the arrival of Ma Yuan in 43 A.D., illustrates more accurately the essence of Vietnamese culture: “displacement but never replacement.” While the earliest name of the Vietnamese people (that of Lac) had been replaced by Viet, the Vietnamese language and particular cultural traditions (such as the belief that the Vietnamese people originated from Lac Long Quan and Au Co) owe its heritage to the ancient Lac society.
The following is a brief outline of the colonial diasporas in and their displacing effects on Vietnamese history: that of Austroasiatic colonial diasporas and Ou Yueh (Au Viet) colonial diaspora; the next online classroom will discuss the Chinese colonial diaporas, French diaspora, and the Japanese diaspora.
Austroasiatic Colonial Diasporas (3000-1000 B.C.)
Native speakers of Vietnamese today can claim descent from “the foundation movements of the major agriculturalist language families of Southeast Asia,” specifically that of Austroasiatic. [11] That is, the Vietnamese language, a Mon-Khmer language of the Austroasiastic family, at least by one reputable opinion, is believed to “derive from the earliest agricultural colonization of mainland Southeast Asia, a process possibly commencing out of southern China about 3000 B.C.” [12] Another reputable opinion is that “it is also possible that Austroasiatic languages were widely dispersed on the mainland of Southeast Asia before the Neolithic Period (also referred to as “the primitive agricultural stage”) and that rice farming was taken up by some of these groups in appropriate habitats from earlier rice cultivators in the north, who may have belonged to the Hmong-Mien language family.” [13]
Notwithstanding, from 11000 B.C. to 3000 B.C., the area of northern Vietnam was settled by societies of Australo-Melanesian hunters and gatherers (also termed the Hoabinhians) and later, by those who practiced simple plant cultivation (also termed the Basconians). Archaeological evidence from these sites suggests that these societies before 3000 B.C. made pottery, grew crops and kept animals. Bone materials from a wide range of mammal species were found, including pig, deer, dog, elephant, rhinoceros and cattle. Perhaps with the exception of pigs and dogs, none of these species appear to have been domesticated. [14] When heavy core tools appeared starting around 8000 B.C., it clearly demonstrated the Australo-Melanesian’s innovation rather than inertia, as the transition from hunting to a greater dependence on plant food began in this region. [15]
There is little doubt, however, that starting about 3000 B.C., the semi-agricultural societies in northern Vietnam were confronted by a major agriculturalist language family of Austroasiatic who were also known for their advancement in rice cultivation, [16] while Australo-Melanesian societies in central/southern Vietnam were confronted by agriculturalist/seafaring language family of Austronesian. The arrival of this agriculturalist language group “displaced” the Austro-Melanesian societies, as is evident by a complete shift to agriculture at least in northern (lowland) Vietnam.
In regard to the purpose and scope of the Austroasiatic migrants’ aggrandizement, evidence supports the theory that demographic conditions in southern China (possibly due to increasingly large and sedentary populations which arise from advancement in agricultural productivity) facilitated their migration. [17] Perhaps because the Australo-Melanesian societies lacked hierarchal or centralized social structures due to the ‘slash and burn’ of their shifting agriculture, they were not able to resist the arrival of the Austroasiatic migrants. If we presume that there were earlier waves of Austroasiatic migrants, then these may have served as linkages that facilitated the spread of Austroasiatic “agricultural colonists into a world peopled by fairly sparse groups of hunters and gatherers.” [18]
This migration process possibly commences out of southern China where, in prehistoric times, the Austroasiatic language family – along with other language groups such the Hmong-Mien, Tai, and Asutonesian – were the early ancestors of this territory before the arrival of Sinitic language family, such as the Sino-Tibetan. [19] The migration of these agriculturalist language families, especially the Austroasiatic and Austonesian, basically carried the proto-languages that gradually and eventually became the major languages of Southeast Asia through the mainland and the islands. [20] Thus, archaeologists and linguists have described southern China in prehistory and early history as geographically and culturally Southeast Asian, although eventually these “southern cultures” underwent “Sinicization.” [21]
From 3000-1000, the area of northern Vietnam experienced the passage of new cultures – that of the more settled agricultural societies with advanced agricultural techniques and of proto-Austroasiatic language. If we presume that the concept of migrations in ancient times “involved a relatively small group of ruling class people, whose mastery of political and military affairs was felt throughout the linguistic and cultural scene,” then we may speculate that there was a longer, slower process of intermarriage and adaptation between Austroasiatic migrants and the Australo-Melanesians (some may have retreated to highlands of northern Vietnam), rather than a total displacement and a wholesale overrunning of the latter. Recent studies support this view in which genetic data in Southeast Asia does not point clearly to the total replacement of the Australo-Melanesians, and that the proto-Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages were doubtlessly localized, by semi-agricultural peoples; [22] moreover, the region’s shared cultural symbols such as betel chewing has been established well before 3000 B.C. [23]
Nevertheless, the migration of Austroasiatic “agricultural colonists” cumulated into two periods of Neolithic/Bronze (as late as 1500, known as the Phung Nguyen culture) and Iron Ages (starting as late as 500 B.C., known as the Dong Son culture) [24] in northern Vietnam. In the former, there is solid evidence for cultivation of rice, along with a broader range of cultural material, such as stone arrowheads and knives, baked clay spindle whorls and bow pellets, and pottery with incised and comb-stamped decoration. [25] Pottery in this period has been considered to be directly ancestral to the pottery of the archaeological Dong-Son society of the first millennium B.C, [26] which gives further support of a cultural continuity throughout the prehistoric occupation of the Red River valley. [27]
The Dong Son culture may have played a large role in the dissemination of bronze-working technology. [28] While is likely that there was constant interaction between southern China region and northern Vietnam (as well as stimulus from the former to the latter) after about 300 B.C., the classical Dong Son drums (also termed Heger I drums) that exemplified the cultural period were likely to have been manufactured in northern Vietnam. [29] The “roots” of the Dong Son culture, whose indigenous development of the bronze style is little beyond doubt, [30] may well extend back to at least 1000 B.C., antedating any significant northern influence. In regard to the social and historical evidence for the Dong-Son period, evidence suggests the existence of a stratified society, perhaps under the rule of a single center, as attested by the textual inference of Van Lang (Kingdom), Hung (field/king/lords), and Lac [field/king/lords] in Chinese historical records, [31] which may have commenced as early as the seventh century B.C. [32]
The cultural significance of Neolithic/Bronze and Iron Ages in northern Vietnam is that the solid consensus that there was a rich and vibrant Vietnamese civilization before Chinese arrival, as well as a proto-Vietnamese language along with cultural traditions that survived, though later they took on external influences through intimate contact with foreign colonial powers both in classical and modern times. The migration of the Austroasiatic “agricultural colonists” could be considered a classic case of cultural diffusion of as well as a direct stimulus to the Australo-Melanesian semi-/shifting agricultural societies in which such diffusion gradually developed into indigenous Vietnamese civilization.
From Chinese historical records (existing only in quotations in later Chinese works between the third and fifth centuries A.D.):
In Kau-tsi [Chiao Chih, northern Vietnam]…when there were neither commanderies nor prefectures [that is prior to Chinese rule], the land was in lak [lac] fields. In these fields the [level of the] water used to rise and fall in accordancewith the [rise and fall of the] tides. The folk who brought these fields into cultivation were called Lak [Lac]. Subsequently, a Lak [Lac] king was instituted and Lak [Lac] lords appointed to govern commanderies and prefectures, [as well as] prefectural officials entitled to bronze zeals and green ribbons [which were symbols of investiture used by Ch’in and Han dynasties]. [33]
Another quotation which appeared later in Chinese sources – though somewhat at variance to the above – described northern Vietnam before Chinese rule as:
Its soil is black and rich…so that these fields are called jiung [hung] fields, and the people [who cultivate them] jiung [hung] folk. There is a chief similarly styled the Jiung [Hung] King, whose aides are also called Jiung [Hung] lords. The territory is apportioned among jiung [hung] officials. [34]
These two different traditions have been conjectured. For example, Henri Maspero has claimed that Hung was an error for Lac and concluded that there never were Hung kings. [35] Others, however, have found occurrences of Hung as a family name and that it is well attested in southwest China that it derives from a Mon-Khmer title of chieftainship. [36] If we were to accept the first tradition, then even a conservation conjecture would be that the “lac field were…the creations of an indigenous folk and consequently shared their ethnic attribution” whose chieftains commanded some form of social power. [37]
Notwithstanding, the word Lac is the earliest recorded name for the Vietnamese people and we can conjecture that Lac existed before 257 B.C. and with the arrival of Thuc Phan (King An Duong), who may have some association with the Ou Yueh/Viet lords, was able to survive by forming the political union of Au Lac (Au is simply the Vietnamese pronunciation of Ou). While the word Lac disappeared when the Trung sisters and more than five thousand of their supporters were beheaded in their revolt against Han rule in 43 A.D., it was the factor that united the legendary Hung kings and the early “northern” influences and domination of Thuc Phan, Chao T’o, and early Han governors.
Meanwhile in central Vietnam, the semi-agricultural peoples and earlier Austroasiatic migrants were confronted by the migration of the Austronesian agricultural/seafaring colonists. Thus, central Vietnam starting by 2000 B.C. was being populated by the Austronesian language family. In particular, the Austronesian Chamic languages probably displaced earlier Austroasiatic languages and have been displaced in turn by Vietnamese expansion down the coast after the release of the latter from Chinese domination in the tenth century A.D. (Bellwood, 1979, 112-113). Though it should not be taken for granted, the amount of connections, contacts, and loosely knit multiethnic confederations among the various cultures located in northern Vietnam, northeastern coastal and central Vietnam. In fact, this would explain why Vietnamese language, a Mon-Khmer language of the Austroasiastic family, has clearly recognizable loans from Austronesian and later developed into a tonal language (likely borrowed from the Tai language group who spread into the region at a later date). Such contact is given visual form in the in the art of the Dong Son bronze drums, where sea birds and amphibians surround boats bearing warriors, revealing a ruling class perspective heavily influenced by Astronesian culture.
Ou Yueh (Au Viet) Colonial Diaspora (258-207 B.C.)
According to the traditional Chinese historiography, the “birth” of Vietnam originated from the refugee population of Yueh, was an ethnical branch of the Chinese race, located along the coast where the Yangtze River enters the sea. In 333 B.C., the state of Yueh was conquered by Ch’u, which was founded by a noble house closely linked with the Chou court (1027-256 B.C.) and was supposedly dispatched from central Yangtze to “colonize” the South. [38] Consequently, the Yueh ruling class migrated southward, to an area which included the lower valley of the Hong River in northern Vietnam, and established small kingdoms and principalities that Chinese historians referred to as the “Hundred Yueh.”
The above Chinese expansion, as noted by John Whitmore, set off disturbances throughout the south in which “one consequence appears to have been the Shu/Thuc [Thuc is Vietnamese for Shu] invasion of the Red River Delta in the third century B.C.” [39] Thuc Phan is the first figure in Vietnamese history documented by historical sources, although much of what we know about his origin and his reign as King An Duong has survived in legendary forms. [40] According to Keith Taylor, Thuc Phan and his family were pushed southward by Chinese expansion, which “surely forced upon them some association with the Ou Yueh lords,” who were located on the frontier of northwestern Vietnam.
The linkage between the Ou Yueh and the Lac society in northern Vietnam was one of military invasion. It is thought that the growing number of dispossessed Ou Lords caused by Chinese expansion created a context in which there was a call to recoup their fortunes by invading their southern neighbor. [41] This call was led by Thuc Phan. According to reliable sources, Thuc Phan invaded northern Vietnam with his army of thirty thousand, where the timing of the military invasion was probably opportunistic; that is, when Lac society was weak.
The arrival of Thuc Phan in the Hong River plain became “the first major imposition of northern influence in historic times” [42] and was “the opening wedge for ‘Yueh’ influence in Hong River Plain.” [43]
In regard to the purpose and scope of Ou Yueh’s aggrandizement, we can speculate that it is dynastic in nature – that is, it probably reflected the personality and was conducted in the name of Thuc Phan. Yet, most of what we know about Thuc Phan is mostly from legendary tales. For example, from the legend of the golden turtle, a golden turtle assisted Thuc Phan in subduing the local spirits so that Thuc Phan could finish his citadel at Co Loa. Before departing, the turtle gave Thuc Phan one of his claws to be used as the trigger of the king’s crossbow, assuring that he could destroy any enemy. By some accounts, this turtle claw symbolizes the military nature of Thuc Phan’s conquest and reign, suggesting his rule was based on force or the threat of force. [44]
However, unlike the Austroasiatic colonial diasporas, the Ou Yueh’s aggrandizement was not a classic case of cultural diffusion and appeared in general not to have direct and stimulus effects on Lac society. That is, the arrival of Ou Yueh lords and military personnel did not mark any large scale of sufficient magnitude to account for the origin of a people. [45] In addition, there is no evidence the Thuc Phan’s arrival left any mark on the Vietnamese language or caused any demographic change. [46] However, Thuc Phan did built a great citadel at Co Loa which was his capital and may contributed to the development of the canal-irrigated rice fields that were present in northern Vietnam before 111 B.C.; as well as a centralized state in which, according to a Chinese census of 2 A.D., over a million people populated northern Vietnam. [47]
Yet, the key reason why Thuc Phan’s arrival did not transform the Lac society was merely the fact that the latter was a well established civilization whose physical size must have been considerable and whose language, cultural traditions, and class structures were effectively durable and stable. This is in the sense that Thuc Phan’s reign was not able to disinherit the Lac society’s language, the Lac lords, or cultural motifs such as tattooing, betel chewing, and oral tradition.
For instance, recent research shows that the initial settlement of Co Loa started about 2000 B.C. Starting about 500 B.C., [48] “there was a move in some lowland river locales, from village autonomy towards centralized chiefdoms, occurring approximately at the same time when the knowledge of iron-working was being established in Southeast Asia and slightly earlier than initial direct contact with Chinese and Indian civilization. [49] The evidence that more than 200 Dong Son style drums have been found throughout the Southeast Asia region suggests that the Lac society was engaging in sophisticated intraregional trade, prior to the infusion of Chinese modes of authority and trading techniques.
Notwithstanding, Thuc Phan’s ensuing conquest produced a fusion of the invading Ou (Au) Yueh lords and the resident Lac lords, thereby forming the kingdom of Au Lac. [50] Thuc Phan was apparently absorbed in the legendary traditions as King An Duong who came from the north and built a great capital but eventually fell prey to stronger forces coming from central China. [51]
But probably the lasting effect of Thuc Phan’s reign is that his arrival, that of the Ou Yueh, in northern Vietnam was utilized by the Chinese traditional historiography to demarcate the origin of the Vietnamese people, and perhaps because of the above simplicity of this, such perspective “still continued to attract attention.” [52]
Although Vietnamese are believed to have originated from the migration of the Yueh, as caused by the growing Chinese expansion in the third century A.D., it is more or less reflective of the ever present reality that the traditional Vietnamese society was displaced by Chinese colonial diasporas starting after the fall of Thuc Phan in 207 B.C.
For example, the word “Viet” is the Vietnamese pronunciation of the Chinese term Yueh, which is employed by Chinese scholars as synonyms of “barbarian.” When the Ch’in dynasty came to power in 222 B.C., it deployed a general, Chao T’o (Trieu Da in Vietnamese) to invade the southern Yueh lands and to establish a Chinese southern state, including conquering Thuc Phan and his Ou Yueh lords. By 207 B.C., Chao T’o created a capital near modern Canton, commanding the Kwantung and Kwangsi Provinces, and the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam, and proclaiming himself King of Nan Yueh (Nam Viet).
During Chinese direct conquest of northern Vietnam in 43 A.D., the word Yueh/Viet increasingly came to express the conquered people’s place within the “middle kingdom.” For the Chinese rulers, Yueh/Viet was to be temporary since these people would eventually be civilized and become Chinese. For the Vietnamese, after the beheading of more than five thousand Lac lords who were associates of the Trung Sisters’ rebellion against the Han dynasty in 41 A.D., their name Lac was no longer of account, whereas the name Yueh/Viet carried some weight. [53]
On the one hand, the word Viet connotes displacement and a permanent identity within the Chinese world view, but Viet also is rooted in a conviction not to be Chinese. [54] This conviction will later indicate that, while Vietnamese were displaced, they were never replaced. However, such displacement does require the reconstruction of cultural identity in order to first survive and later, to put back the “place” into displacement.
Although the original Lac society eventually disappeared, there are still traces of their traditions. According to Gerald Hickey, characteristics of the Lac society can still be found today among Vietnam’s highlanders, particularly those speaking Mon Khmer languages. [55]These include the practice of levirate (that is, a man must marry the widow of his childless brother in order to maintain the brother’s line); having special deities associated with agriculture; and having a “dinh” or communal house temple for the guardian sprite of the village. [56]
It has been speculated that the Mon Khmer speakers are linguistically related to the Lac people, but the former chose to retreat to the country’s highlands when the northern forces came to the country. So, if we want to examine the degree that “an indigenous core of ‘Vietnameseness’ survived unscathed through the fire of Chinese domination,” we may look to the Mon Khmer highlanders.
1. Nguyen Dinh Hoa, “An Outline of Vietnamese,” Vietnam Forum, Vol.11, 1988, (p.1-20).
- Is the Vietnamese language genetically related to Chinese?
- What has enabled the Vietnamese language to be “displaced but never replaced”?
- Do you think the Vietnamese language in the Vietnamese diasporic community could be maintained?
- What do Vietnamese legends and early history say about women status?
- What do Confucian values say about women status?
- What does the oral tradition say about women status?
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[1] John Sullivan, National Geographic Traveler: Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2006), p.28.
[2] Georges Coedes, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Translated by S.B. Cowing, ed. W.F. Vella (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1968), p.13
[3] Such a prevailing view appeared to have disregarded postulations that Southeast Asia could have been a “maker” of history rather than a receiver or a victim. For example, in the early 1950s geographer Carl Sauer hypothesizes that the region should have been a center of plant domestication. See his Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (New York: George Grady Press, 1952).
[4] Georges Coedes, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, p.268, 403.
[5] John McAlister and Paul Mus, The Vietnamese and Their Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p.50.
[6] Keith Taylor, “An Evaluation of the Chinese Period in Vietnamese History,” The Journal of Asiatic Studies (Korea University), 23 (1980), p.139.
[7] John Cady, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p.4; Joseph Buttinger, The Smaller Dragon: A Political History of Vietnam (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958), p.19.
[8] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” p.25.
[9] Ibid., p.17.
[10] Ibid., p.17.
[11] Peter Bellwood, “The Origins and Dispersals of Agricultural Communities in Southeast Asia,” in Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood, ed., Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p.22.
[12] Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood, Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p.11.
[13] Ibid., p.11.
[14] Peter Bellwood, Man’s Conquest of the Pacific (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p.87.
[15] Miksic, 1995, p.49.
[16] Peter Bellwood, “The Origins and Dispersals of Agricultural Communities,” p.22.
[17] Ibid., p.23.
[18] Ibid., 24.
[19] Ibid., p.21-23.
[20] Ibid., p.22.
[21] Though some still include south China (but not Burma), as a part of mainland Southeast Asia. See Peter Bellwood’s Man’s Conquest of the Pacific.
[22] Peter Bellwood, “The Origins and Dispersals of Agricultural Communities,” p.22.
[23] Peter Bellwood, Man’s Conquest of the Pacific, p.71
[24] Charles Higham, “Mainland Southeast Asia from the Neolithic to the Iron Age,” in in Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood, ed., Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History,p.41.
[25] Peter Bellwood, Man’s Conquest of the Pacific, p.96.
[26] Ibid., p.96
[27] Charles Higham, The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia: From 10,000 B.C. to the Fall of Angkor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p.193.
[28] Peter Bellwood, Man’s Conquest of the Pacific, p.129.
[29] Ibid., p.122.
[30] Bayard, 1980, 106
[31] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), Appendix B; Paul Wheatley, Nagara and Commandery (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983), p.67-69.
[32] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, Appendix D.
[33] Paul Wheatley, Nagara and Commandery, p.67
[34] Ibid., p.69
[35] Henri Maspero also concluded that Van Lang was an error for Yeh-Lang, the name of ancient kingdom in Kuei-Chou. Thus, there never was a kingdom of Van Lang.
[36] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, Appendix B.
[37] Paul Wheatley, Nagara and Commandery, p.68.
[38] Blakeley, Barry “The Geography of Chu” in Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China, Ed. By constance A. Cook and John S. Major, Honolulu: Hawaii Press, 1999, 10
[39] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” in D.R. SarDesai, Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings (Los Angeles: Westview Press, 2006), p.25.
[40] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, p.21.
[41] Ibid., p.20.
[42] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” p.25.
[43] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, p.17.
[44] Ibid., p.21.
[45] Ibid., p.17.
[46] Ibid., p.17.
[47] Peter Bellwood, Man’s Conquest of the Pacific, p.125.
[48] Charles Higham, “Mainland Southeast Asia,” p.46.
[49] Charles Higham, The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia, p.30
[50] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, p.20.
[51] Ibid., p.23.
[52] Ibid., Appendix E.
[53] Ibid., p.43.
[54] Ibid., p. xviii.
[55] Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to 1954 (New Haven: Yale University of Press, 1982), p.62-63.
[56] Georges Coedes, The Making of South East Asia. Translated by H.M. Wright (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p.218.
Jan
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Theorizing and Conceptualizing Displacement
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2.1 Theorizing and Conceptualizing Displacement in the Vietnamese Context
As noted in the Introduction, we will utilize the motif of displacement to theorize and conceptualize how the current Vietnamese diaspora relates to and/or transcends Vietnam’s migration history and experiences. The advantage of displacement is its numerous operative paradigms – that of a theoretical signifier, a textual strategy, and a lived experience – which will help us to contextualize and to characterize the various forms of diaspora across time and space. For example, displacement as a theoretical signifier will allow us to recognize the historical and political conditions that produce periods in which Vietnamese were displaced both internally and externally from their native culture and society; displacement as a textual strategy will provide us the opportunity to understand why Vietnamese may be “displaced but never replaced” though it remains a source of estrangement; and displacement as a lived experience will help us to conceptualize the relationship between displacement and the reconstruction of identity which is necessary for cultural survival and later, to assert and negotiate cultural and intellectual rights to put back the “place” into displacement.
We will begin with a necessary but brief survey of the concept of displacement and its relation to diaspora. This will ensure that our interpretation of displacement is not based on constructing the shape of the past to shape the present, but rather based on “following directions and messages provided” by the sources. [1] In addition, we will examine different “types of aggrandizement” that colonist powers engaged in expanding their control over colonized societies. This will allow us to outline the historical, political, and international conditions that have produced different types of colonial diasporas of which have had displacing effects on Vietnamese traditional society. Such outline will essentially draw our attention to a central theme in Vietnamese history: that is, Vietnamese as ‘victims,’ ‘localizers,’ and ‘resisters’ of the Chinese, French, and Japanese colonial diasporas; in later a blog, we will outline and analyze the Vietnamese colonial diaporas that had displaced other peoples, cultures, and states, including that of the Cham, Khmer, the former Republic of South Vietnam, and Cambodia.
Defining Displacement and its Relations with Diasporas
In defining displacement, we are fortunate to have Angelika Bammer’s succinct analytical definition: “The separation of people from their native culture either through physical dislocation (as refugees, immigrants, migrants, exiles or expatriates) or the colonizing imposition of a foreign culture.” [2] Bammer’s displacement signifies one of the most formative experiences – that of the human condition and conditions of knowledge – in the twentieth century, where over 30 million people were uprooted and forcibly moved as a result of Nazi policies and World War II; [3] overlapping with this is another 60-80 million refugees worldwide who have been cut off from their homelands since the end of the second war. Bammer also draws attention to “people who are not expelled from but displaced within their native culture by processes of external and internal colonization” but of which “no comparable counts or estimates exist.” [4] Though not all those under colonial rule can be said to be displaced. There is more certainty, however, that the cumulative effect of colonial policies in general:
the expropriation of land that often left indigenous peoples with merely a small, and mostly poorer, portion of their own land; the pass laws that controlled and regulated their physical movement; the economic shifts that forced them into the new centers of imperial employment thus creating new patterns of migratory labor; the presence of a foreign ruling power that disappropriated local cultures. [5]
In utilizing displacement as a theoretical signifier, we take liberty in further deconstructing (while remaining within the framework of) Bammer’s definition in two broad categories. The first is emigrants who are physically dislocated either “voluntary” or who are “forced;” that is not due to “colonizing imposition of a foreign culture” per se, but rather by the country’s own internal socioeconomic and political factors. [6] The second is those who are physically dislocated by the “colonizing imposition of a foreign culture,” which results in either their displacement from their native land/culture or their displacement within their native land/culture. [7]
For us, the importance of the above categories is that they assist in defining the concept of diaspora, providing a background in recognizing specifically the victim tradition and the colonial tradition of diaspora.
In the former, the displaced person can be considered a victim if he/she is forcibly and politically removed from (or he/she emigrates in the fear of being politically persecuted if he/she stays in) the native land/culture either by the country’s government or by colonial rule. When this occurs at “noticeable” human scale, such movement entails “the catastrophic origin, the forcible dispersal and the estrangement” of a people, which we term ‘victim diaspora.’ [8] Here, the victim diaspora is a subset of displacement, [9] or separate from the paragon of transnationalism, transmigration, or global capitalism. [10]
In the latter, the “colonizing imposition of a foreign culture” provides us a background to the tradition of the colonial diaspora in which the colonizers are dispersed widely in order to sow their seeds, to expand for and to further their imperial plans. Here, colonial diaspora allows us to recognize the effects of colonial rule on a society where a population is colonized and internally displaced, in which degrees of assimilation to the colonists’ culture, localization, and “creolization,” or resistantance to the colonists’ culture can occur, separate from the external displacement caused by colonial rule. [11]
Epistemologically, the colonial diaspora, or diaspora of active colonization, derives from Greek term diasperien, from dia-, “across” and –sperien, “to sow or scatter seeds.” It was a predominate feature of the Greek diaspora, describing its colonization of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean from 800-600 B.C. For the Greeks, establishing their own diasporas abroad in general connotes a positive experience – expansion through plunder, military conquest, and migration. [12] Such diaspora of active colonization tradition was later followed by the British, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and French. [13]
By contrast, the origin of diaspora Jewish experience was marked by the destruction of Jerusalem in 568 B.C., which “created the central folk memory of the negative, victim diaspora tradition, emphasizing in particular the experience of enslavement, exile and displacement.” [14] This victim tradition later experienced by Africans, Armenians, Irish, and Palestinians – connotes afflictions of being isolated, insecure of living in a foreign place, adrift from their roots, and oppressed by an alien ruling class. [15] But we should also note that some groups can take dual or multiple forms, or even change their character over time. [16] As argued by Robert Cohen, victim diaspora, such as the Jews, whose origin can be regarded as such, can have an imperial phase, as is evident in the Zionist colonization of Palestine. [17]
The above, of course, indicates the opposing notions of victim diaspora and colonial diaspora. But rather than trying to resolve the opposing notions, [18] we may gain more by understanding the historical and political conditions that produce the colonial diaspora and victim diaspora, as well as by analyzing the dynamics and tension within and between them. For now, however, let us focus first on the impacts and effects of the colonial diasporas on their colonized societies.
This approach, or textual strategy, will allow us to later see displacement caused by colonial diasporas as one of the central themes in Vietnamese history in both classical and modern periods; in addition, it will also allow us to see Vietnamese as the “aggressors,” having their own colonial diasporas and having displaced other peoples, cultures, and states.
Types of Colonial Rule and their Effects on Displacement
Given that displacement caused by the “colonizing imposition of a foreign culture” by Western powers (hereinafter referred to as western colonial diasporas) had been one of the underlying themes in the twentieth century, we will focus on expansionist factors that help explain, in part, the impacts and effects of western colonial diasporas on their colonized societies, focusing on Asian countries.
We will briefly analyze these expansionist factors and postulate their displacing effects on Asian traditional societies. Our purpose, of course, is to utilize such analysis to detect and outline the various types of colonial rule (hereinafter referred to as colonial diaspora) that have taken form in Vietnam in both the classical and modern periods, as well as the colonial diaspora phases that Vietnam itself has taken on.
Again, we are fortunate to have Frank Darling’s study on the “westernization” or colonization of Asia. [19] His work identifies four “types of aggrandizement” in which western colonial diasporas have engaged in expanding their control to Asian traditional societies: 1) dynastic, 2) economic, 3) ideological, and 4) tutelary.
In short, dynastic aggrandizement is characterized as intensely personal and conducted in the name of the sovereign ruler, although such colonizations have been precarious and uncertain. [20] Economic aggrandizement took place when propensity to expand and acquire overseas colonies was motivated primarily by the desire to promote rapid economic development, which tended to result in a more stable colonial rule than the dynastic. [21] Ideological aggrandizement consisted of the extension of national power into colonial territories by an expansionist regime pursuing the goals of an abstract messianic doctrine but, like the dynastic, it was affected by the shifting political forces within the ruling expansionist regime; [22]and tutelary aggrandizement is characterized as the acquisition of colonial territories for the primary purpose of instructing the indigenous people in selected elements of the culture of the colonial power, which tended to result a relatively moderate and, once established, sought no additional territory. [23] There are, of course, various forms in each of the four types, and that each type is not exclusive; that is, a colonist can pursue numerous types of aggrandizement.
However, of course, the impacts of the purpose and scope in the above types of aggrandizement are interrelated with the geographical factors of the traditional society, such as the strategic location, physical size, and the duration of years of the traditional society. [24] “Where settlement for colonial or military purposes by one power occurred, an ‘imperial [colonial] diaspora’ can be said to have resulted,” as noted by Robert Cohen. [25] However, before any colonial diaspora can take place, there are usually linkages between the colonizer and the colonized. These linkages include military invasions, foreign missionaries, foreign traders, tribute missions, indigenous returnees, political exiles, and foreign communities. [26]
It is important to note that the recognized types of aggrandizement and their linkages have tended to operate within the context of time: unilateral-monopolistic timing (that is, the expansion occurred because of a “power vacuum” that essentially allowed a colonial power to monopolize a particular region and only limited by the available resources and voluntary restraints of that colonial power); and multilateral-competitive timing (that is, when the expansion of a new colonial power is confronted with opposition from one or more competing colonial powers). Of course, some countries were strong enough to prevent these foreign linkages to take full form and, thus, were able to confine a full-blown colonization. [27] But when colonial diasporas do take place, the indigenous population will produce a response, consisting of the reaction and replication of the indigenous people to the colonial impact. Of importance are the cultural, religious, and political systems of the traditional society; these are of significance in terms of its ability to resist or assimilate to the various colonist values and institutions. [28]
Although it will be very limited, the above analytical framework will come to light when we apply it to an actual case: the American colonization of the Philippines.
According to Frank Darling, American colonial policy in the Philippines consisted of tutelary aggrandizement goals, instructing the indigenous people on (but confining them) the formation of indigenous democratic political institutions modeled after those in the United States, which, in turn, involved the establishment of a supplementary American-oriented educational system. [29] The American colonization process tended to be erratic and constrained due to American domestic politics at the time regarding whether the nation should pursue expansionism or isolationism, but, nevertheless, it was the only Western power whose avowed purpose at the outset was its own liquidation. [30] In part, American tutelary aggrandizement was affected by multilateral-competitive timing. That is, the U.S. was pressured to rationalize its acquisition, rather than seeking a territorial extension of its power. [31] This form of timing contributed to the training of indigenous political leaders suitable for democratization in the Philippines. In part, Filipino leaders who took early consultative roles in the exercise of executive authority had produced a profound confidence and intensified the local desire for national independence, which “was one of the most important elements in the entire indigenous response.” [32]
As is evident, the passage of Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934 provided a timetable for Philippine independence; in 1936, when the Philippine Commonwealth was created only a few American administrators were employed in educational and technical posts. [33] The idea of an efficient transfer of sovereignty to the Philippines could be traced to the Wilsonian concept of national self-determination promulgated at the end of WWI. In contrast to French rule in Indochina, the American form of colonial rule did prepare and transfer sovereignty to the Philippines via new political institutions modeled on the American constitutional system, and because the central issue was about the timing of national independence the Philippine nationalist movement was never suppressed. [34] Similarly, American social policy consisted of a dual purpose program of secular education to promote democratic norms and values to a mass electorate and to train indigenous elite to maintain a democratic society. In particular, the number of Filipino students who attended public school by 1922 (more than one million) was unprecedented by any Western colonial standard. [35] While the Philippine economy was largely dependent on the U.S. (the American economy consumed 75 percent of the Philippine exports while providing 85 percent of its imports), American economic policy did not uproot the Philippine agrarian economy.
However, at the same time, as argued by Mark Philip Bradley, the American “exceptionalist” colonial approach in the Philippines still “echoed the fundamental beliefs in racialized cultural hierarchies that underlay the broader American encounter with nonwhite peoples at home and abroad.” [36] And, as argued by Glenn May, American colonialism in the Philippines failed to “bring about fundamental change.” [37]
On the one hand, Darling’s comparative analysis may marginalize particular historical inputs as well as long-term displacing effects in order to invent a systematic framework that is able to compare and contrast the highly and multifaceted impacts of, and the indigenous response to, western colonial powers in Asian colonized societies. But for our purposes, such systematic framework will provide us a textual construct to outline the historical, political, and international conditions that have produced different types of colonial diasporas of which have had different displacing effects in Vietnamese history.
Outlining the Colonial Diasporas in Vietnamese History
As we noted earlier, there are two historical traditions of diaspora: that of victim diaspora and colonial diaspora. Here, we will focus on colonial diasporas and their effects on Vietnamese traditional society, the internal displacement of Vietnamese native culture. In the later blogs, we will discuss specific dimensions of displacement caused by colonial diasporas; outline and analyze the Vietnamese colonial diasporas that had displaced other peoples, cultures, and states, including that of the Cham, Khmer, the former Republic of South Vietnam, and Cambodia; and theorize and conceptualize the victim diaspora in Vietnamese history.
For now, we will briefly discuss the colonial diasporas in Vietnamese history, which will essentially draw our attention to a central theme in Vietnamese cultural identity. That is, Vietnamese as ‘victims,’ ‘localizers,’ and ‘resisters’ of the Chinese, French, and Japanese colonial diasporas.
There is today a consensus among Vietnam scholars that the ancestors of the Vietnamese had their own kings and cultural symbols long before the arrival of Chinese colonial powers (or what we will refer to as Chinese colonial diasporas), although when the ancient Vietnamese civilization originated and the degree of indigenous innovation and evolution are not known with certainty; and presumably, according to Keith Taylor, the continued existence of the Vietnamese indigenous civilization “would have been assured even if they had never heard of China.” [38]
Notwithstanding, from the beginning of recorded history in the third century B.C. (when Vietnamese culture and society for the first time were part of a kingdom, Nam Viet, encompassing all of southern China in 207 B.C.), to 939 A.D., Vietnamese culture and society had been thought of as a branch of Chinese civilization and empire who had been blessed with China’s “civilizing” influence. [39] It has even been thought that the reason Vietnamese society “was able for centuries to resist Chinese aggression” while all the neighboring states had become Chinese “was because it was the only one to have been subjected to government by a permanent Chinese administration…[which] gave [Vietnamese] a cohesion and formal structure which its neighbors lacked.” [40]
Conveniently, French intellectual support for its ‘mission civiliatrice’ drew on the observation that Vietnam was once relatively progressive and intelligent due to Chinese cultural influence, but of which had relapsed. Vietnam’s “imitativeness” became nothing more than a somewhat eccentric and stunted extension of China, according to this view. For French historians, after separating from China in 939, the Vietnamese made no progress on Chinese civilization throughout the centuries. Adrien Launay suggested that “the complete absence of progress that the Annamites [Vietnamese] had on Chinese civilization and the neglible development in the arts and sciences, far inferior to that of the Chinese” illustrated that without Chinese domination, “Giao-chi [northern Vietnam] of old times would have rested in savage tribal communities, just like the Muong who live on the frontiers of their country.” [41] By implication, Vietnamese, like other peoples, will “progress only when provided with the necessary stimulus: they require contact with people of a more refined culture.” [42]
However, the Vietnamese, as a result of their experience under Chinese rule, necessarily became expert survival artists. This is illustrated in Ngo Si Lien’s statement of how Vietnamese should respond to constant Chinese aggression:
South [Vietnam] and North [China], when strong or when weak, each has its time. When the North is weak, then we are strong, and when the North is strong, then we become weak; that is how things are. This being so, those who lead the country must train soldiers, repair transport, be prepared for surprise attacks, set up obstacles to defend the borders, use the ideas of a large country with the warriors of a small country…If an invasion is imminent, take words and negotiate, or offer gems and silk as tribute; if this does not succeed, then, though danger flood from every side, man the walls and fight the battles, vowing to resist until death and to die with the fatherland; in that case one need be ashamed of nothing. [43]
In fact, the “rebirth” of Vietnam after its independence was the birth of a spirit of resistance to the universal claims of Chinese power. Keith Talyor summarizes very well the advice of Ngo Si Lien to his fellow countrymen:
Vietnamese independence [will be] the result of commitments made by successive generations…It [will need] the collective decision of a society to risk danger for the sake of preserving its heritage. [44]
Also worthy of note is Ngo Si Lien’s advice on using “the ideas of a large country with the warriors of a small country.” Vietnamese were quite receptive to the intellectual trends in China and though imperfect have been able to reconcile their attraction to Chinese political ideas, social practices, literary fashions and technology with a truly passionate determination to preserve Vietnam’s independence. [45] Moreover, as noted by John Whitmore, there is a “Vietnamese cultural core” that is constant thought shifting entity, where foreign elements and ideologies would be able to graft onto it, but “the important fact is the Vietnamese ability to make any such ‘foreign-ness’ Vietnamese;” [46] thus, Vietnam is not the smaller, eccentric or stunted dragon.
Not unlike the dynastic scholars, Vietnamese intellectuals in the early twentieth century also saw it as their responsibility to fight against French imperialism. In fact, many of these intellectuals began to ask what they could learn from Europe and America. According to many of these scholars, to survive and to modernize, Vietnamese had to produce the talents, skills, and ideas of a Watt, Edison, Kant, and Rousseau, whose ideas were the sources of Western civilization, wealth and power. Some were also conscious and sought the example of Tagore and Ganhdi in overthrowing a western power while still achieving a fusion of eastern and western thoughts. Like Ngo Si Lien, Phan Boi Chau, a prominent scholar at the time, saw the necessity for Vietnamese, particularly women and soldiers, to be trained professionally and vocationally in the western ways in order to achieve modernization and independence from the French, bringing about a desire for progress and adventure, love and trust, virtue and heroism, no obnoxious mandarins, no dissatisfied citizens, no imperfect educational system, no neglected industry and no losing commercial activities. [47] After that, the West “will learn from us,” and that we “shall keep our own way of life,” declared Phan Boi Chau. [48]
However, as observed by John Whitmore, when new foreign elements are integrated to the indigenous’ own context and its own understanding of itself, this “will inevitably be imperfect and may lead to tension and stress within the society.” [49] That is, such fusion – such as Phan Boi Chau’s embrace of the West modernity but not its colonial rule – was completely incompatible to the Vietnamese communist intellectuals’ borrowing of the Marxist-Leninist thoughts, which was initially “set out to replace everything in the Vietnamese tradition” [50] with a significant degree of single-mindedness on rechanneling “people’s loyalties and obligations away from their own parochial interests to the party, revolution, and the collective” via institutional structures, civic rituals, and literacy. [51] This foreshadowed “the two Viet-Nams” of the Vietnam War.
Perhaps, the question for Vietnam, today under a communist regime, is “to ask now and in the future the contribution of Marxist ideology to Vietnamese culture in the same way that we ask it of Buddhism and Confucianism.” [52]
For a brief outline of particular colonial diasporas in and their displacing effects in Vietnamese history, see 3.1 Online Classroom which includes the Austroasiatic Colonial Diasporas (3000-1000 B.C.); Ou Yueh (Au Viet) Colonial Diaspora (257-207 B.C.); Chinese Diasporas (207 B.C. - 939 A.D.); French Colonial Diaspora (1862 -1954); and Japanese Diaspora (1941-1945).
- For a concise sketch of Vietnamese history before French colonization, read: John Whitmore, An Outline of Vietnamese History Before French Conquest, Vietnam Forum, Vol.8, 1986 (p.1-8).
- On the theme that Vietnamese could benefit from Chinese culture without themselves becoming Chinese, and of which also appeared to underlie later experiences with western colonial powers though such adaptation inevitably be imperfect and may lead to tension within the society, read: Alexander Woodside, Vietnamese History: Confucianism, Colonialism, and Independence, Vietnam Forum, Vol.11, 1988, (p.21-48).
- For a comparsion regarding the survival capacity (i.e. adatability/resistance, cohesiveness of societal structures, physical size and geographic location, and the duration of years of the traditional society) of Asian traditional societies in response to western colonist powers, read Frank Darling’s Chapter 4 in his The Westernization of Asia: A Comparative Political Analysis (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979).
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[1] O.W. Wolters, Two Essays on Dai Viet in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven: Yale Council on Southeast Asia Studies, 1988), p. ix.
[2] Angelika Bammer, Displacement: Cultural Identities in Question (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. xi.
[3] Ibid, p. xi.
[4] Ibid, p.xi.
[5] Ibid, p. xi-xii.
[6] It should be noted that the task of separating voluntary and involuntary migration is much more difficult in practice. There has also been a growing effort by scholars to differentiate migration cause by man-made disasters and migration cause by natural disasters.
[7] Today, the displaced person in either category who has crossed an international border and who falls under relevant international refugee law instruments maybe considered a refugee, whereas an internal displaced person in the second category is subjected to more tenuous international refugee law protection.
[8] Robert Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p.177.
[9] According to Wanni Anderson and Robert Lee, “the relationship between the tropes of diaspora and transnational social practice can be understood bet as two related but often contradictory aspects or subsets of displacements.” See their Displacement and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), p.10.
[10] Other scholars, however, argues diasporas are connected to and frequently marked by the flows of transnationalism, transmigration, and even global capitalism. Therefore, economic migrants or transmigrants can be considered diasporic and can inflect diasporic formulations. For example, many Asia sex workers travel to Japan on tourist visas and never return to their homeland for socioeconomic reasons. These workers become trapped by the pressures of family, nation, and economic necessity. Therefore, they are tied to their homeland via debt, family obligation, and statelessness. See Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (Mass.: Blackwell, 2003), p.11, 13.
[11] Robert Cohen, Global Diasporas, p.66.
[12] Ibid, p.66.
[13] Ibid, p.178.
[14] Robert Cohen, “Diasporas and the Nation-state: From Victims to Challengers,” International Affairs, Vol.72, No.3 (July, 1996), p.508.
[15] Ibid, 508.
[16] We are also fortunate to have Robert Cohen’s fluid typology of diaspora which consists of victim, labor, trade, imperial and cultural diasporas. We will later analyze this typology in more detail. See Cohen’s Global Diasporas: An Introduction.
[17] Robert Cohen, Global Diasporas, p.179.
[18] In general, this has been resolved by over centuries of advocacy by the victim diaspora’s experiences in which the heart of diaspora’s definition has become to mean a collective trauma of banishment, exile, and the longing to return home. However, Robin Cohen has argued the victim tradition is more complex and diverse. For example, diaspora’s experiences in modern nation-states have resulted in considerable intellectual and economic achievements. By implication, there is a need to transcend the victim tradition. See his Diasporas and the Nation-state: From Victims to Challengers, International Affairs, Vol.72, No.3 (July, 1996), 513.
[19] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia: A Comparative Political Analysis (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979).
[20] Ibid, p.105-106.
[21] Ibid, p.106-109.
[22] Ibid, p.109-110.
[23] Ibid, p.110-112.
[24] Ibid., p.79-87.
[25] Robert Cohen, Global Diasporas, p.66.
[26] Frank Darling, Westernization of Asia, p.63-71.
[27] Robert Cohen, Global Diasporas, p.65.
[28] Frank Darling, Westernization of Asia, p.3.
[29] Ibid., p.111.
[30] Ibid., p.111.
[31] Ibid., p.116.
[32] Ibid., p.286.
[33] Ibid., p.287.
[34] Ibid, p.121, 127.
[35] Ibid., p.143.
[36] Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p.6.
[37] Glenn May, Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900-1913 (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980).
[38] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. xviii.
[39] Ibid., p. xvii.
[40] Keith Taylor, “An Evaluation of the Chinese Period in Vietnamese History,” The Journal of Asiatic Studies (Korea University), 23 (1980), p.139
[41] Cited in Nhung TuyetTran and Anthony Reid, Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p.6.
[42] Cited in Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.8.
[43] Keith Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p.301.
[44] Ibid., p.301.
[45] Alexander Woodside, “Vietnamese History: Confucianism, Colonialism and the Struggle for Independence,” The Vietnam Forum, Vol.11 (1986), p.23.
[46] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” in D.R. SarDesai, Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings (Los Angeles: Westview Press, 2006), p.40.
[47] Chau Boi Phan, “The New Vietnam (1907),” in Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2003), pp.105-123.
[48] Ibid, p.109, 121.
[49] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences,” p.125.
[50] Smith, Viet-Nam and the West, 152, 145.
[51] Malarney, Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam, p.55.
[52] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences,” p.40.
Jan
13
Introduction
Filed Under 2008 | 7 Comments
Introduction
The Global Vietnamese Diaspora Blog
This blog is designed to study the Vietnamese diaspora(s) around the globe, theorizing and conceptualizing the dimensions, the characterizations, and the trajectories of the diasporic Vietnamese community.
To effectively and efficiently theorize and conceptualize the lived experiences of diasporic Vietnamese, the thematic motifs of “displacement” and “memory” are employed.
First, the motif of “displacement” will allow us to compare and contrast the Vietnamese diaspora to other and earlier forms of movement and migration (caused by military conquest, colonization, and territorial expansion) that have long been a part of Vietnam history. And because “displacement” empathically draws attention to the physical, psychological, cultural, and intellectual afflictions, [1] we opportunely have an analytical construct to cross-examine how the Vietnamese diaspora relates to and/or transcends Vietnam’s migration history and experiences.
Meanwhile, the motif of “memory” will provide us the opportunity to read how displaced Vietnamese, both past and present, have maintained their relationships with the collective memory and myth about their birth place. And because the collective Vietnamese memory directs us to a “cultural core” that is a constant though shifting entity, [2] we will be able to characterize in some manner what would count within and which would be considered integral to the “Vietnamese cultural core” across time and space. The Vietnamese “displacement” of its native culture and society – caused by colonization (that of Chinese and French rule) and internal regional division (that of the “two Dai Viets” and the “two Viet-Nams”) – is a consistent theme in the country’s history. Here, “memory” will illustrate how Vietnamese have attempted to preserve but also have elaborated its “culture core” by putting back the “place” into displacement. Yet, at the same time, putting back the “place” has also been underscored by internal debates and conflicts about what that “place” should be. In fact, it is these decolonization and unification/reunification moments that have produced the various forms of exile, including the current diaspora. Meanwhile in the Vietnamese diaspora context, “memory” will be used to conceptualize and delineate the “heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity” in the diaspora. Emphasis will also be given on how the Vietnamese diaspora’s ideological sense of “returning” to and “re-sowing” its seeds in the homeland will play out, given the increased capacity to do so, such as the new international conditions and communication technologies.
Like earlier displaced Vietnamese, today’s diasporic Vietnamese have a “culture core” which is, in part, still unified via “a collective memory and myth about the homeland, including its location, history and achievements”; [3] and who still trace their common identity, language, cultural and religious beliefs and practices to a common ancestry. Yet, because communism is blamed for the separation from the native land and culture, the Vietnamese diaspora has put the “us” and “them” in tension with regard to the current communist regime’s “culture core,” specifically the way it exemplifies and personifies foreign influences and political ideology. Also in tension though more implicit is the diaspora’s construction of its identity in the host country. This has been about the diaspora’s assertions and negotiations of its right to place and space, as well as its cultural and intellectual rights to counter against the host country’s “his-story” that has tended to marginalize the discourse of who can speak and teach what about the Vietnam War and its aftermath.
In both cases, however, there are internal differences and debates within the diasporic Vietnamese community about how to engage Vietnam and how to define its cultural heritage.
In general, the blog will explore and attempt to examine questions including but not limited to:
- How does the current Vietnamese diaspora relate to and/or transcend the country’s migration history and experiences?
- What are the dimensions of the Vietnamese diaspora and are these dimensions “diasporic moments” since diasporic Vietnamese are products of different migration vintages and whose ethnicity is always in a state of flux?
- What are the ways in which Vietnamese construct/reconstruct its “culture core” including home, family, youth, gender roles, and community and anti-communist identities in the diaspora?
- How do problems, practices, realities, voices and visions of Vietnamese community development compare and contrast across and within the various diasporic Vietnamese communities around the world?
- What are the existing links among the various Vietnamese diasporic communities around the globe and do the diasporic Vietnamese media enable or disable these links?
- What are the impacts of the diaspora on the homeland and what are the impacts of opening the homeland to the diaspora?
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[1] Wanni Anderson and Robert Lee, Displacement and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), p.11.
[2] John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” in D.R. SarDesai, Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings (Los Angeles: Westview Press, 2006), p.40.
[3] “A collective memory and myth about the homeland” is one of the common features of a diaspora, as conceptualized by Robert Cohen. See his’s Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p.26.
Jan
2
Reading the Legend of Lac Long Quan and Au Co
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Reading the Legend of Lac Long Quan and Au Co
As noted by Indigo Williams Willing, Vietnamese history and culture are deeply entrenched with stories of forced migration and kinship separation associated with numerous global diasporas, from legendary tales, to tales of refugees evacuating and escaping their homeland at the end of the Vietnam War. [1]
Indeed, one of the most well-known myths – that of Lac Long Quan and Au Co – is a story of origin and of displacement. The mystical story of Lac Long Quan (“Lord of the Sea”) and Au Co (“Queen of the Mountain”) was recorded in the Linh Nam Chich Quai (“Wonders Plucked from the Dust of Linh-Nam”), an accumulation of lore edited in the fifteenth century. As penned by Vu Quynh who wrote the preface to Linh Nam Chich Quai in 1492:
In ancient times there were not yet books of history to record the facts; therefore nearly all the old affairs have been forgotten and lost. Fortunately, there still exists some items that were not neglected, having been passed down from mouth to ear among the persons of special ability…[and] have been kept in the hearts of the people and inscribed on the tongues of men. [2]
According to this tradition, the Vietnamese people are associated with the Hung kings who ruled the kingdom of Van Lang. The Hung kings claimed descent from Lac Long Quan, a hero who came to the Hong River Plain in what is now northern Vietnam, whose race is of the dragons and who is chief of the watery breed. Lac Long Quan assisted the people of the Hong River Plain by subduing all evil demons in the land and civilizing the people, teaching them to cultivate rice and to wear clothes. Before returning to his home in the sea, he instructed the people to call on him if they were ever in distress.
Eventually, the people of the plain called on Long Quan when a monarch from the north, China, entered the land, and finding it without a king, claimed it for himself. [3] To force this foreign ruler out of the plain, Long Quan outwitted the northern monarch by capturing the king’s wife and taking her on the top of Mount Tan Vien. Not able to retrieve his wife, the northern king departed in despair.
Long Quan lived with Au Co, where a year later, the latter gave birth to one hundred sons. But not long after this, Long Quan returned to the sea. Au Co and her children also wanted to return to the northern kingdom but were not allowed to return by the northern emperor and were left abandoned in the wilderness. Long Quan came quickly after hearing Au Co and the children had been left stranded.
But their differences could not be solved, since Long Quan was a water creature and Au Co was an immortal sprung from the earth. Thus, they separated. Long Quan bade fifty of his sons to follow their mother back to the mountain, while the other half would follow him back to the sea. Before departing, he bade all his sons that: “Whether you go up to the mountains or down to the sea, you shall let one another know if you are in difficulties, and you shall no means desert one another.” [4] The hundred sons agreed.
This legend is remembered by the Vietnamese because they express their earliest identity as a people in which the hundred sons are the ancestors of the Hundred Yueh (Viets). Of whom the bravest and most courageous (who followed Au Co) were selected to become the first of the Hung kings, succeeding Long Quan and ruling over the kingdom, known as Van Lang. And while the hundred sons were physically separated, they were not necessarily divided, according to this tradition.
Myth: Remembering and Elaborating the Past
At best, myths can provide historians insight into what might have happened in prehistoric time. At worst, beliefs about the past based on myths may bear little resemblance to the events that, nevertheless, take on a life and reality of their own. That is, myths can become “facts” which helps to shape the future’s history.
By some accounts, Vietnamese myths were not written down until about the 13th century A.D., a few centuries after Vietnamese independence from Chinese colonial rule (939 A.D.). As noted by Keith Taylor, when Lac Long Quan’s legend was incorporated into Ngo Si Lien’s court history, Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu, in the fifteenth century, this legend was encrusted with elaborations stemming from the cultural currents and public morality of the period. [5] For example, in contrast to Linh Nam Chich Quai, the Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu mentioned Au Co as the northern king’s daughter, simply for moralistic reasons so that Long Quan would not be guilty of taking another man’s wife. In addition, the first of the Hung kings was noted to be one of the sons who followed the father, thus stressing patriarchal values. These elaborations were shaped by Ngo Si Lien’s focus on Confucian ethics in order to stabilize internal conflicts and to encourage court officials to be loyal to the new Le emperor and dynasty (1428-1776), so as to prevent another Chinese invasion; [6] whereas during the Ly (1010-1225 A.D.) and Tran (1225-1400 A.D.) dynasties, the concept of government was based on “the idea of restoring harmonious relationships between rulers and ruled, and between rulers and the supernatural powers” as well as calling on “the pantheon of Vietnamese spirits thought capable of turning their supernatural power against invaders.” [7]
Like other cultures, Vietnamese history and myth have been interdependent. [8] In the fifteenth century, when Tran dynasty was crumbling and the country was experiencing humiliation at the hands of Cham aggressors and Ming invaders, “educated men were searching for new source of national vitality,” searching for “treasures that had been previously ignored and perhaps scorned but that now gave a renewed sense of identity to a people adrift in a stormy sea.” [9]
Thus, a renewed sense of identity may be the underlying value of such myths. Vu Quynh’s preface in Linh Nam Chich Quai makes this clear:
This material, although wonderful, does not reach the point of extravagance, and this literature, although unorthodox, does not reach the point of fantasy; although passed down through an unverified tradition, not being found in the classics, it still has something than can be relied on, namely to warn against evil and to exhort the people to reform, to discard the false and follow the true, thereby encourage public morality. [10]
The above, as noted by other scholars, does not mean that such myths were without historical background. The Vietnamese oral tradition was probably well rooted in prehistoric culture of the people in the Hong River plain and was surely transmitted during the Chinese colonial period, though such tradition perhaps was poorly articulated, and was later elaborated by a Vietnamese ruling class to propagate the prevailing ideas of proper behavior, sometime too zealously. [11] Illustrative of this is Ngo Si Lien’s predating the origin of Vietnamese civilization (via the Hung kings) to 2879 B.C., in order to construct an identity of Vietnamese that was equal if not superior to the mythical emperors of China. [12] This was done by employing a royal genealogy with a northern (China) and a southern branch (Vietnamese), tracing Lac Long Quan’s heredity to the northern imperial branch so as to claim a more ancient lineage for the Hung kings than that of China’s first emperor, Huang Ti. [13] While the northern branch was designed for cultural and political purposes, Keith Taylor notes that the southern branch displays enough geographical and cultural detail to make more plausible the idea that it is based on ancient traditions.
In fact, Hung as the title of a line of kings and the Van Lang kingdom are attested in Chinese (Ch’in and T’ang dynastic) sources. [14] Meanwhile, the word Lac described the paddy fields that were irrigated by taking advantage of the change in the level of the rivers in accordance with the tides, according to the oldest Chinese descriptions of ancient Vietnamese economy and society. [15] Lac then became the earliest recorded name for the Vietnamese people, and of which is the factor that united the legendary Hung kings and the early historical period down to the Trung sisters (43 A.D.) whose father was a Lac lord in the Me Linh area (northwest of Hanoi).
The Displacement in the Lac Long Quan’s Legend
It appears that when direct colonial rule was enforced in northern Vietnam, after the Han dynasty succeeded in putting down the Trung sisters’ rebellion in 43 A.D., Vietnamese and their traditions had to come to terms with their colonial masters. That is, without their traditional ruling class (the Lac) of which more than five thousands were captured and beheaded during and after the rebellion, [16] Vietnamese, those who “collaborated” with the Han rule, most probably shifted their identity to take account of their new position. [17]This means that their oral tradition had to be revised in order for it to culturally survive. An example of such revision is the hundred sons as the ancestors of the Hundred Yueh, as mentioned in the Lac Long Quan’s legend. The word “Viet” is the Vietnamese pronunciation of the Chinese term Yueh, which is employed by Chinese scholars as synonyms of “barbarian.” The Chinese character of Yueh (Viet) when analyzed ideographically means a migratory, hunting people. According to the traditional Chinese historiography, the “birth” of Vietnam originated from the refugee population of Yueh (Viet), located along the coast where the Yangtze River enters the sea and was an ethnical branch of the Chinese race.
The migratory Viet established small kingdoms and principalities that Chinese historians referred to as the “Hundred Yueh” (Viets) in which Nan Yueh (Nam Viet) was at the center. When Ch’in dynasty came to power in 222 B.C., it deployed a general, Chao T’o (Trieu Da in Vietnamese) to invade the southern Yueh lands and to establish a Chinese southern state. In 207 B.C., Chao T’o created a capital near modern Canton, commanding the Kwantung and Kwangsi Provinces, and the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam, and proclaiming himself King of Nan Yueh (Nam Viet). In 1802, when Emperor Gia Long of the Nguyen dynasty wanted to rename the newly unified country as Nam Viet, he sought the Chinese emperor’s approval of the name. The Chinese emperor rejected this name because it could conjecture territorial ambitions since Chao T’o’s Nam Viet had included two Chinese provinces. [18] Instead, it was resolved by simply reversing the order of the two words into: Viet Nam.
During Chinese conquest of the south, the word Yueh/Viet became to express the conquered people’s place within the “middle kingdom” but it was to be temporary since these people would eventually be civilized and become Chinese. For the Vietnamese, their name Lac was no longer of account, whereas the name Yueh/Viet carried some weight. [19] Thus, Vietnamese, because of their unceasing displacement, may have shifted some of their traditions to fit within the conceptual world of the Chinese empire and civilization.
This included abandoning the formal use of the name Lac and the use of dragon as the water god instead of the frog (which was found in the ancient Vietnamese Don Son drums). While under Chinese rule for one thousand years, the Vietnamese never abandoned their indigenous traditions and gradually developed a spirit and intelligence capable of resisting Chinese rule. Notwithstanding, the word Viet does connote displacement. That is, Viet expresses a permanent identity within the Chinese world view and one that was not indigenous to the original Lac civilization, and yet, at the same, it is rooted in a conviction not to be Chinese. [20] This implies that Vietnamese were displaced but not replaced and suggests that being displaced is associated with the reconstruction of cultural identity in order to first survive and later, to put back the “place” into displacement.
Rediscovering the “Place” in Displacement
One of the consequences of being displaced within the Chinese empire and civilization is that in most cases the Chinese dynastic histories and related writings are the only sources of information on Vietnam up to the tenth century. Until recently, Chinese historiography still regards the Yueh/Viet peoples, including those occupying northern Vietnam, as branches or ‘brotherly ethnic groups’ of the Chinese race who were civilized solely by the expansion of Ch’in Shih-Huang-Ti and his Han successors. [21] Some still claim that the Yueh inhabitants of prehistoric Vietnam can be literally traced to origins in northern China. [22]
However, by the early 1980s, a new prehistory of northern Vietnam has become increasingly undeniable. Prehistoric northern Vietnam’s culture is now found more or less parallel to rather than a derivative of cultures of northern China, and the former, as an area from 11000-1000 B.C., is of largely independent regional development. [23]For example, around 11000 B.C., northern Vietnam was a key site of the late Hoabinhian cultures, of which most of the cultural evolution was internal rather than a replacement of one culture by a new cultural group.. [24] Evidence suggests that Hoabinhians were hunters. Bone materials from a wide range of mammal species were found, including pig, deer, dog, elephant, rhinoceros and cattle. Perhaps with the exception of pigs and dogs, none of these species appear to have been domesticated.. [25] When heavy core tools appeared starting 8000 B.C., it clearly demonstrated the Hoabinhian’s innovation rather than inertia, as the transition from hunting to a greater dependence on plant food began in this region. [26]
By late third or early second millennium B.C., (a period known as Phung Nguyen culture), northern Vietnam saw evidence for cultivation of rice, along with a broader range of cultural material, such as stone arrowheads and knives, baked clay spindle whorls and bow pellets, and pottery with incised and comb-stamped decoration. [27] Pottery in this period has been considered to be directly ancestral to the pottery of the Dong-Son culture of the first millennium B.C., [28] which gives further support of a cultural continuity throughout the prehistoric occupation of the Red River valley. [29] The roots of the Dong Son culture, whose indigenous development of the bronze style is little beyond doubt, may well extend back to at least 1000 B.C., antedating any significant Chou influence. [30] While the archaeological Phung Nguyen and Dong Son periods may provide the cultural context of the existence of the Hung Kings and its Van Lang kingdom as far back as the second millennium B.C., “there is no doubt that the Chinese encountered a society controlled through paramount chiefs of high status,” according to Charles Higham. [31]
In regard to the people of the Hong River Plain, by 3000-1000 B.C., Vietnamese sites suggest a complex regional division of labor and the existence of loosely knit multiethnic confederations long before Chinese influence was felt in the region. [32] During this period, “a time traveling linguist would have noted a network of languages and dialects of tribal size” such as the Austroasiatic, Austronesian, and Tai (and later, the Chinese). [33] In fact, this would explain why Vietnamese language, a Mon-Khmer language of the Austroasiastic family, has clearly recognizable loans from Austronesian and later developed into a tonal language that is likely borrowed from the Tai language group.
Interestingly, the movement and changing cultures as noted in the legend of Lac Long Quan can be matched with recent archaeological discoveries. For example, when Lac Long came to Hong River Plain and assisted and civilized the people (before the arrival of the northern king), this probably indicates the contact between Austroasiatic and Austronesian peoples. Lac Long’s chief of the watery breed seems to resemble what is known about Austronesian’s seafaring populations, such as their advanced ship building and navigational techniques. Such contact is given visual form in the in the art of the Dong Son bronze drums, where sea birds and amphibians surround boats bearing warriors, revealing a ruling class perspective heavily influenced by Astronesian culture. Although a tribal size, Astronesian elite may have been a part of the ruling class in the Hong River Plain, it did not disinherit the Austroasiastic culture, which are known to be rice cultivator populations.
Furthermore, when the people of the plain called on Long Quan when a monarch from the north entered their land, this probably indicates the arrival of a non-Chinese Mongolian army of the Western Ou. Keith Taylor suggested that the name Au Co was probably introduced into Lac mythology to symbolize the political union of Au and Lac. That is, the Au Lac kingdom that was established in 257 B.C. by Thuc Phan (King An Duong), which may have some association with the Ou Yueh/Viet lords. This may indicate the first arrival of the Yueh/Viet in northern Vietnam, but there is no evidence the King An Duong’s arrival left any mark on the Vietnamese language or caused any demographic change. [34]
While Vietnamese experience unceasing displacements and reconstructions of their identity by taking on layers of external influences throughout their history, such experiences never supplanted the Vietnamese historical agency, or was able to completely sinicize the indigenous language, village religion, kinship reckoning, sex roles, residence and inheritance tactics, which are still distinct and persistent to this day. [35]
One key reason why Vietnamese have never been disinherited is the ability of the local culture to neutralize a northern threat by appropriating its source of legitimacy, as did Lac Long Quan’s seizing his fore’s wife and making her the mother of his heirs. [36]
As mentioned earlier, the value of the legend of Lac Long Quan and Au Co may not lie in its details, but rather may lie in the understanding the very core of the Vietnamese experience, being displaced but not replaced and the need to reconstruct the cultural identity in order to survive and to put back the “place” in the displacement.
But can both “displacement but not replacement” and “putting back the ‘place’” function across ethnicity and space?
- Why is the author so acknowledgeable about Vietnamese legends and history?
- How did the generation of the author’s father deal with being displaced by French colonial rule?
- How does the author define his “place” during the division between North and South Vietnam in the early days of the Vietnam War
- What is the effect of the Lac Long Quan’s legend on the adopted Vietnamese community?
- Do the adopted Vietnamese post-adoption narratives read like the tale of “rags to riches”?
- What does reclaiming and returning mean to adopted Vietnamese?
[1] Indigo Williams Willing, “The Adopted Vietnamese Community: From Fairy Tales to the Diaspora, Michigan QuarterlyReview 43,4 (Fall 2004), p.649.[2] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p.355.[3] Ibid., p.1.[4] Maurice Durand and Nguyen Tran Huan, An Introduction to Vietnamese Literature (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1985), p.5.[5] Keith Talyor, The Birth of Vietnam, Appendix 0.[6] Yu Insun, “Le Van Huu and Ngo Si Lien: A Comparison of Their Perception of Vietnamese History,” in Nhung TuyetTran and Anthony Reid, ed., Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p.62[7] Keith Taylor, “Chapter 3: The Early Kingdoms,” p.140, 149.[8] However, this is not necessarily appreciated in traditional Western historiography. See Wang Gungwu, Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), p.62.[9] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, p. 357.[10] Ibid., p.357.[11] Ibid., p.311.[12] Yu Insun, “Le Van Huu and Ngo Si Lien,” p.62.[13] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, Appendix A.[14] Ibid., Appendix B and C.[15] Ibid., Appendix B.
[18] Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p.120-121.
[19] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, p.43.
[21] See Xiaorong Han, 2004, 24-25; K.C. Chang’s Archaeology and Chinese Historiography, World Archaeology, 13, 1981; W. Watson, The progress of archaeology in China. In Antiquity and Man (eds) J.D. Evans et al., London: Thames& Hudson, 1981; Chang, 1977; Ho, 1975.
[22] Charles Holcome’s The Genesis of East Asia 221 B.C. – A.D. 907, Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2001, 55.
[23] Meacham, 1977, 155; Chang, 2002
[29] Charles Higham’s The Archaeology of Mainland SEA, 193
[31] Charles Higham’s The Archaeology of Mainland SEA, 193
[32] Bayard, 1984; Higham, 1982; and Davidson, 1979.
[34] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, p.17
[35] See John Whitmore, “Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core,” in D.R. SarDesai, Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings (Los Angeles: Westview Press, 2006).
[36] Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, p.1.
