Nguyen Dynasty

9 Key excerpts on "Nguyen Dynasty"

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  Sources of Vietnamese Tradition

  • George Dutton, Jayne Werner, John K. Whitmore, George Dutton, Jayne Werner, John Whitmore(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  This also was a period of considerable political, intellectual, and economic dynamism throughout the divided Vietnamese territories. This energy stemmed from various sources: tensions between the two ruling families, growing contact with European commerce and religious ideology, ongoing exposure to intellectual trends in China, the Nguyen family’s extension of Vietnamese political and cultural influence southward into the realms of the Cham and Khmer peoples, and the arrival of immigrant refugees from southern China. The Nguyen expansion toward the far south later in the seventeenth century increased its engagement with Cambodia, which continued in the next century, eventually leading to direct conflict with Siam, which lasted into the mid-nineteenth century. This period tested the limits of Vietnamese leaders’ political control: in the north where popular unrest was a prominent feature of the eighteenth-century landscape and in the south where Nguyen authority was tempered by the challenges of governing a geographically and ethnically dispersed realm with relatively few soldiers and officials. But this was not merely a period of inevitable political decay. On the contrary, both realms attempted varying degrees of political transformation in the waning years and aftermath of their drawn-out wars. In the Trinh realm, there was a marked revival of literati influence during the latter half of the seventeenth century, a revival that echoes the Hong Duc period of the late fifteenth century. This transformation reached its high point during the Canh Tri reign era (1663–1672), when a substantial level of bureaucratic control had been extended through northern society. 1 This was in part an attempt by the northern lord Trinh Tac (r. 1657–1682) to counterbalance the power of relatively autonomous military leaders who had gained prestige and influence during the half century of conflict with the Nguyen

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  Postcolonial Vietnam

  New Histories of the National Past

  • Patricia M. Pelley, Rey Chow, Harry Harootunian, Masao Miyoshi, Rey Chow, Harry Harootunian, Masao Miyoshi(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Duke University Press Books

    (Publisher)

  This widely cited chronicle covers the entire pre-Nguyễn span of Vietnamese history, from the prehistoric kingdom of Văn Lang to the collapse of the Lê dynasty. Dur-ing the reign of the Nguyễn emperor Tự Ðức, court historians also com-pleted The Geography of United Ðại Nam. This gazetteer, which devotes one book to each of twenty-eight provinces, is divided into three sections, each of which represents the major regions: North, Center, and South. Because of its description of provincial resources and historical sites, as well as its at-tention to demography, this source is invaluable for research on nineteenth-century topics. 1 Nguyễn scholarship is now considered indispensable, and even during Nguyễn times its importance was clear. And yet, because the Nguyễn emper-ors presided over Vietnam’s loss of independence, postcolonial historians often viewed their accomplishments as compensatory devices that masked a state of disgrace; in other words, there appeared to be no correspondence between the Nguyễn court’s intellectual interest in history and its political resignation vis-à-vis the French. Like the Nguyễn historians, those associated with the occupation forces —including adventurers, administrators, merchants, scholars, and mission-aries—were also enormously productive. Far more than their Nguyễn con-temporaries, however, colonial authors spoke from a position of power. In addition to the scholars Léonard Aurousseau, Gustave Dumoutier, Maurice Durand, Pierre Huard, and Henri Maspero, a number of writers with mis-sionary backgrounds (Léopold Cadière), commercial interests (Alfred Schreiner), or in military positions (Charles Gosselin) also presumed to speak authoritatively about the Vietnamese past. Institutions such as the French School of the Far East (École française d’Extrême-Orient) issued in-numerable works that because of their distinguished imprimateur enjoyed quasi-official status.

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  A Short History of South-East Asia

  • Peter Church(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Whatever the developing differences, the Vietnamese perception of themselves as being fundamentally one people remained unquestioned. This was dramatically demonstrated in the Tay Son Rebellion which broke out in Vietnam in 1771. A vast “revolution from below”, the rebellion swept away the Nguyen and Trinh regimes which had divided Vietnam, and removed what was by that stage a nominal Le imperial dynasty. The rebels also repelled a Chinese invasion, and turned on Chinese merchants in Vietnam. They faltered only when faced with the tasks of practical government. A member of the southern Nguyen clan, Nguyen Anh, raised forces and, by 1802, managed to subdue the rebel forces. He became the emperor Gia Long, first of Vietnam's Nguyen emperors and the first ruler to preside over a united Vietnam for more than two centuries.

  The 19th century Confucian revival

  Emperor from 1802 to 1820, Gia Long recognised what an administrative and defence nightmare Vietnam's geography had become—two fertile deltas, 1,000 kilometres apart, connected by a narrow coastal corridor. Ignoring Hanoi (and thus incurring northerner resentment), he established his capital in the centre of the country, at Hué. There he built a palace complex that was a scaled-down replica of Peking's Forbidden City. The symbolism was appropriate—Gia Long and his son, Minh Mang (emperor from 1820 to 1841), would attempt to establish in Vietnam the most thorough copy yet seen of Chinese administrative concepts and methods. Though honourably intentioned, the attempt would prove a disaster.

  From the 1830s onwards, rebellion flared frequently in protest at the level of bureaucratic intervention in daily life, the rigidities and absurdities of mandarinal decrees and, above all, at the level of taxation demanded by the system. The renewed concern with Confucian models also diminished the ability of Nguyen imperial government to deal realistically with the growing challenges from the West. Some members of the Vietnamese scholar class recognised the need to study the West, but they were in the minority. Disastrously, Emperor Minh Mang and his successors (Thieu Tri, emperor 1841–47, and Tu Duc, emperor 1847–83) chose to confront and repress the religion of the West, Christianity.

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  Dragons Entangled: Indochina and the China-Vietnam War

  Indochina and the China-Vietnam War

  • Steven J. Hood(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, Revised edition. Copyright © 1989 by Houghton Mifflin Co. Used with permission.

  The reason for Vietnam gaining independence by 939 was not because it had overthrown the Chinese, but rather because the Chinese were trying to settle their own internal power struggle. Out of this struggle came the organization of the Sung—a dynasty with little interest in Vietnam. The Vietnamese, therefore, were able to begin their own independent struggle and Ngo Quyen, who had fought the Chinese, became the founder of the first authentic dynasty of Vietnam.17 He proclaimed the valley areas of the Hue and Red rivers to be Vietnamese territory and thus claimed full independence from China.

  But Ngo was unable to maintain control over the people, who quickly lost their allegiance to the emperor and turned their loyalties to Dinh Bo Linh, a peasant who founded the Dinh dynasty. But Dinh was forced to step down after rival landlords had assassinated many of his family members. A period of instability ensued.

  Beginning in 1009, stability came to Vietnam. The Ly dynasty lasted for 215 years. This dynasty was able to consolidate power and subdue the ambitions of the various warlords. The Chinese tried to recapture Vietnam in 1057 and several times afterward, but the Vietnamese were able to repel the invasions.

  Government in Vietnam closely resembled the Chinese model. Vietnam was divided into provinces, prefectures, and departments. Three-year civil service exams were held to recruit trained civil and military officials.

  In 1224, the Tran family began their dynastic rule which lasted until 1400. They proved to be successful in building dikes along the rivers, draining swamps, and continuing to train a powerful military force. This was necessary as not only did they have to worry about the Mongolians who were now conquering China, but they also had to worry about the extreme south (of Vietnam).18

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  Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger

  A History of Vietnam

  • Vu Hong Lien, Peter Sharrock(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Reaktion Books

    (Publisher)

  12 Nguyễn Dynasty (1802–1945) Creates ‘Việt Nam’

  Just 28 years after the Nguyễn were chased out of their capital Phú Xuân, lord Nguyễn Ánh returned in triumph in 1802 and proclaimed himself the first Nguyễn emperor Gia Long. He renamed the now unified country Việt Nam and set up the Nguyễn dynasty.1 The capital around the old citadel Phú Xuân later became known as Huế. Thăng Long in the north was renamed Bắc Thành (citadel of the north) and placed under the military governorship of the trusted general Nguyễn Văn Thành. The north was called Bắc Kỳ and phủ Gia Định was called Nam Kỳ with another general, the eunuch Lê Văn Duyệt, governing from its capital Saigon. This last dynasty is still the subject of hot debate in Vietnam. Did they sell out to France? Could they have helped prevent the devastating colonial and post-colonial wars? This chapter attempts an overview of their successes and failures as they appear in the official documents in Vietnamese and French.

  THE FIRST NGUYỄN EMPEROR GIA LONG (r. 1802–19)

  Gia Long sent envoys to the Qing court seeking recognition which came in 1804. The Qing awarded him the title An Nam Quốc Vương and a royal golden seal. Gia Long undertook to send to the Qing every three years 200 taels of gold, 1,000 taels of silver, 100 bolts of silk, two sets of rhino horns, ivory and cinnamon. The Chinese golden seal was to play a key role in 1884–5 in the delicate triangle of China, France and Vietnam. In the year he was recognized by China, Gia Long began rebuilding his capital in Huế. A high-profile, richly embellished complex of palaces, modelled on nothing less than the Forbidden City in Beijing, was built within a large square citadel surrounded by high walls and deep moats on the north side of the Hương (Perfume) River. The length of the surrounding walls was 10 km, the size of the huge Angkor Thom palace and temple complex in neighbouring Cambodia. Inside the fortress were three layers of housing, one inside the other, with the Forbidden Purple City of the emperor being the innermost. Thái Hòa Palace (Palace of Supreme Harmony) was among the first constructed in order to house the bi-monthly court assemblies. Gia Long was crowned there in 1806. For his first nine years the country followed the Hồng Đức code of the Lê dynasty, with six ministries in charge of civil service recruitment, taxes and finance, courtly protocol, military recruitment, building works, criminal and civil justice. As under the Lê, a censor oversaw the public morality of the court and the emperor. Then in 1811 Gia Long ordered general Nguyễn Văn Thành to create a new code of laws for Vietnam, which was published in 22 books and 398 articles in 1815. Gia Long upheld the teaching of Confucius and established a Confucian Temple (Văn Miếu) in Huế as well as an imperial college for noble children (Quốc Tử Giám). Recruitment exams were held every six years and teachers were sent to remote areas to educate the population. Agriculture was accorded high priority, including the military plantations system (1ồn điền) he set up in the Mekong Delta during the war, and a new atlas was compiled in 1806 with the title Nhất Thống Địa Dư Chí. In the north Gia Long was preoccupied with the upkeep of the dyke system and established a Dyke Department in Bắc Thành with a mandarin in charge.2

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  A History of Southeast Asia

  Critical Crossroads

  • Anthony Reid(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  A new Nguyen Dynasty, Viet Nam’s last and most ambitious, thus began the mammoth task of seeking to integrate its entire S-shaped domains. Its roots were firmly in the south, and its military strength based on the battle-hardened southern warriors. Nguyen Anh ruled the center directly from his new capital of Hue near that of his ancestors in Phu Xuan, with the reign title Gia Long (1802–20). In the south he installed a governor necessarily tolerant of the Chinese, Christian, Cham, and Khmer diversities through which he had come to power. Only after his son succeeded with the reign name Minh Mang (1820–41) did sternly assimilationist policies produce a bitter Khmer rebellion in 1833, even sterner repression, and a legacy of ethnic hostility.

  In the north the new administration had to rely on the literati elite then enjoying its most creative phase. Some of its greatest works had already been written as the Dai Viet state was disintegrating, but a new dynasty presented the challenge of an empty slate. In effect the Nguyen regime undertook a neo-Confucian redefinition of the state, beginning in Tongking where it had little other basis for legitimacy except that which was offered by its literati collaborators. These scholars had educated the second ruler Minh Mang, who sought in Confucian virtue a solution to the many challenges assailing the country. He attempted to impose this orthodoxy as a cure-all even in advancing the frontier of Han civilization at the expense of Cambodia. His neo-traditional reforms had a provisional quality not unlike the equally short-lived French regime that followed. Each was educating its future officials on radically new principles that were nevertheless unable to keep up with the pace of change. The Nguyen attempt at redefinition will be weighed in a broader context in Chapter 11 .

  The Commercial Expansion of a “Chinese Century,” 1740–1840

  The Ming loyalist refugees of the seventeenth century had been exceptional in the long story of Chinese emigration. They consciously sought to use their muscle to build Chinese-style polities outside imperial control. The usual economic factors returned once the new Manchu government vanquished its maritime opponents in the 1680s and reopened its ports for business. There was still official hostility to leaving the Middle Kingdom to live abroad, but only a wealthy trader like Chen Ilao of Batavia would attract sufficient attention to be punished in returning to China. His exemplary trial and banishment in 1749 was the last, and five years later the judgement was effectively reversed by a decree that allowed Chinese males (women were still totally banned) to leave and to return with their foreign wealth. The population of the Manchu Empire as a whole grew from about 150 million in 1700 to 400 million in 1850, increasing its contrast with sparsely settled Southeast Asia, whose population was still below 50 million in 1850. The open frontiers of the south beckoned. The period 1740–1840 has been labeled Southeast Asia’s “Chinese century” in a corrective to Eurocentric histories, because of the dynamic role of southern Chinese traders, miners, craftsmen, shipbuilders, and agriculturalists in opening up its economic frontiers.

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  The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9, The Ch'ing Dynasty to 1800, Part 2

  • Willard J. Peterson(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  134; chapter 4 of Zottoli, “Reconceptualizing southern Vietnamese history from the 15th to the 18th centuries.” the emergence of the state of vietnam 207 territory in the Mekong delta. A thirteenth unit, the center at Ha-Tien in the far southwest, lay in an area once dominated by Portuguese traders. By the eighteenth century, it had come under the influence of Cantonese immigrants (said to have been part of the Ming diaspora) and subsequently joined the Nguyen realm. 21 This realm was ruled through mainly martial regimes, and the extent of civil bureaucratic administration varied. Standing behind the walls at Dong-Hoi on their northern border, a defensive line built across the narrow lowlands between the sea to the east and the mountains on the west, the Nguyen continued to develop their military capabilities. The officer corps was originally composed of men of Thanh-Nghe origin, descended from the border warriors whose ancestors had been fighting for the past two centuries as well as men of eastern Dong-Kinh origin. Other men from the immigrant northern Vietnamese population formed the reserves and were conscripted into the army. Linked to these forces were craftsmen and artisans who provided construction labor and supplies. Elephant troops and artillery units formed significant elements in the military, and naval forces were key to defending against Trinh intrusions down the coast. 22 The economic engine that drove southern Vietnamese society and was a source of power in the new realm was involvement in production for interna- tional trade. From the time that Nguyen forces entered Thuan-Quang in the second half of the sixteenth century and joined surviving Mac forces there, they had participated in the burgeoning seaborne foreign commerce. The expanding Vietnamese presence along the eastern coast of the Southeast Asian mainland coincided with the major growth of regional trade occurring from the middle of the sixteenth century.

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  The Tay Son Uprising

  Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam

  • George E. Dutton(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  Although they were unable to eliminate the structural problems faced by the Tri ˙ nh regime, these two rulers restored some degree of order. There is little question that these men were capable, relatively strong rulers. On the other hand, while they could suppress some of the latent problems that persisted in their respective realms, they could not eliminate them entirely. eighteenth-century social and cultural dynamism The political upheaval in Ða `ng Ngoa `i and Ða `ng Trong helped to shape the environment in which the Ta ˆy S ƒ n uprising emerged, but other areas of dynamism in late-eighteenth-century Vietnamese society also con-tributed greatly to defining the era. Some of these factors will be taken up later, but a few are worth highlighting at this point. In particular, the in-fluence of the West was growing, as increasing numbers of Europeans, in particular missionaries, were arriving in Ða ˙ i Vie ˆ ˙ t. There were also internal social changes related to growing wealth and an increasingly fluid class structure. Furthermore, this was a period of intense intellectual ferment, driven in part by efforts among scholars to find solutions to the troubles of a disturbed society. Perhaps most notably, the influence of Europeans was beginning to be felt more profoundly and directly in this period than ever before. The chief avenues for this growing contact were commerce and religion. Euro-pean traders and European missionaries were competing for the goods, 26 : chapter 1 markets, and souls of the Vietnamese. European missionaries had already been present in Ða ˙ i Vie ˆ ˙ t during the early years of the Nguye ˆ ˜ n-Tri ˙ nh civil war, and the postwar period saw an expansion of their numbers, as well as a concomitant increase in the number of local adherents.

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  Ming China and Vietnam

  Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia

  • Kathlene Baldanza(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  called Dang Trong in Vietnamese – “the inner region.” When Europeans began arriving on Vietnamese shores in the eighteenth century, they recognized two Vietnams: Nguyen-ruled Cochinchina in the South, and Trinh/Le-ruled Tonkin (the Western transliteration of Dong Kinh) in the North. Later, the Nguyen family would unite and rule both realms, under the Gia Long emperor Nguyen Phuc Anh. 8 During the sixteenth century, however, the strained alliance between the Nguyen and Trinh families held. Fighting increased in the 1570s, in part due to instability in the Le realm. When the first Trinh lord Trinh Kiem died in 1570, he passed the position on to his eldest son, Trinh Coi. However, his second son Trinh Tung “was smarter than most” and wanted the position for himself. Fighting between the brothers prompted people to flee northward to join the Mac. Taking advantage of unrest in Tay Kinh, a massive Mac army attacked Thanh Hoa. Trinh Coi surrendered to the Mac, and went to the Mac court with his wife, family, and a thousand followers. 9 Trinh Tung was left in charge of the southern realm of Dai Viet. By 1572, the countryside in the south had been ravaged. The fighting displaced people from the land, and famine soon followed. Nghe An was depopulated. In the midst of this devastation, the Le emperor fled Tay Kinh with his four eldest sons to escape the growing influence of Trinh Tung. Rather than operate without the cover of a Le ruler, Trinh Tung sought out the emperor’s fifth son, the six-year-old Le Duy Dam, and enthroned him. 10 A Great Pronouncements was issued in his name. The preamble claimed the Mandate of Heaven and continued, “I rely on Trinh Tung and the civil and military officials to work together in assist- ing me, to keep the altars of the gods of earth and grain at peace.” The document also promulgated six items that reveal the Le dynasty’s despe- rate need for population: 1.

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