Hoa Lu

During the forty years that Dinh Bo Linh and Le Hoan ruled from Hoa Lu (965–1005), possibilities for rustic leaders from the southern provinces to govern the more populous Red River plain with its temples, schools, and heritage of imperial culture were fully explored and ultimately reached their limit. However, before this line of events had run its course, Le Hoan’s reliance upon a new class of leaders from Giao opened the way for an exit from this impasse. Le Hoan’s quarter-century reign reveals both his astuteness in solving immediate problems and his failure to establish a basis for long-term political stability.

Events of the tenth century were narrated in the previous chapter in the context of a progressive disengagement from the imperial world. When viewed from the perspective of local politics, these events become a story about relations between the population of the Red River plain and the population of the southern provinces. These provinces have been differently organized and named through the centuries. They comprise the modern provinces of Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, and Ha Tinh. Ha Tinh was separated from Nghe An only in recent times. For centuries, the basin of the Ma and Chu Rivers was Thanh Hoa and the basin of the Ca River was Nghe An. The uplands of Thanh Hoa communicate with the region of Sam Neua in the modern Laotian province of Houaphan. The uplands of Nghe An communicate with the modern Laotian province of Xieng Khouang, a region known in Western languages as the Plain of Jars and which the Vietnamese call the Tran Ninh plateau. These uplands were a borderland between Tai and Vietic peoples.