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Politics and Society in Viet-Nam during the Early Nguyen Period (1802–62)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

R. B. Smith
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Professor A. B. Woodside's recent study of Vietnamese government and society in the first half of the nineteenth century is likely to become immediately a standard work for the teaching of South-East Asian history, as well as a point of departure for further research. It is the first attempt by a Western scholar to analyse the institutional developments of a period in which Viêt-Nam attained its greatest measure of “Confucianization” and also its greatest territorial extent as a unified country. The “Đại-Nam” of the later years of Minh-Mang (1820–41) included not only the whole of present-day Viêt-Nam, united for the first time in 1802, but also (after 1836) a large part of Cambodia as well as a portion of eastern Laos. The institutional changes of his reign included the reinvigoration of the examination system, the creation of new organs of central government, and a thorough overhaul of the machinery of provincial administration. In terms of its own previous history, it was by no means a weak or declining Viêt-Nam which found itself face to face with European power in the 1850's and 1860's. By offering a study of government and society in this period, Professor Woodside has gone some of the way towards filling a major gap in Western-language literature on Vietnamese history.

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Articles
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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 106 , Issue 2 , July 1974 , pp. 153 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1974

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References

1 Woodside, A. B., Vietnam and the Chinese model: a comparative study of Nguyen and Ch’ing government in the first half of the nineteenth century, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Whitmore, J. K., The development of Lê government in fifteenth century Vietnam, Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 1968Google Scholar.

2 E.g. Nguyên Huyên Anh, Việt-Nam danh-nhân tụ’-điēn, Saigon, 1960; Trân Van Giap et al., Luọ'c-truyện các tác-gia Việt-Nam, Vol. I, Hanoi, 1962; new edn. 1972; Thai Van Kiêm and Hô Dao Ham, Việt-Nam Nhân-Vật-Chí, Saigon, 1962.

4 Woodside, op. cit., 102; Lê Van Phuc, “La vie et la mort du Maréchal Nguyên Van Thiêng”, Bull. Soc. Et. Indo-chinoises, n.s., XVI, 1941, 38 ff.

5 Bui Quang Tung: “La succession de Thiêu-Tri,” Bull. Soc. Et. Indo-chinoises, n.s., XLII, 1967.

6 All five are included in Nguyên Huyên Anh, op. cit.; Nguyên Van Thanh, Lê Quang Dinh, and Trinh Hoai Duo are also included in Trân Van Giap et al., op. cit., nos. 367, 402, 409. Trinh Hoai Duc is well known as the author of the Gia-Đinh Thông-Chí, a gazetteer of the South.

7 P. Daudin, “Un grand lettré de Cochinchine au XVIIIe siècle, Vo Truong Toan”, Bull. Soc. Et. Indo-chinoises, n.s., XVI, 1941, 9–31. Toan, a minh-huo'ng born of Chinese ancestors, set up a school at Gia-Dinh in the 1780's: although he refused to take office under Nguyên Anh, when the latter estaḅlished his capital there in 1780, he recommended a number of his pupils to the prince.

8 Nguyên Huyên Anh, op. cit., 283 ff.; Thai Van Kiêm and Hô Dac Ham, op. cit, 184.

9 Figures calculated from Cao Xuân Duc, Quôc-Triêu Đǎng-khoa-lục, translated into quôc-ngũ’, Saigon, 1962.

10 Ibid., 28. Cf. Woodside, op. cit., 289 ff.

11 For a text and translation of the official biography of Lâm Duy Nghia, see Daudin, P. and Van Phuc, Lê, “Phan Thanh Gian et sa famille, d'après quelques documents annamites”, Bull. Soc. Et. Indochinoises, n.s., XVI, 1941Google Scholar. The Lâm family was related to the Phan by at least one marriage, that between Phan Thanh Gian's own father and mother.

12 See footnote 9, supra.

13 I.e. the Đại-Nam Liệt-Truyện: the section dealing with the years 1779–1820 was compiled in the years after 1852 but not printed until 1889; that dealing with the reigns between 1820 and 1883 was printed in 1909. The source has not been thoroughly studied, and has still not yet been translated into quôc-ngữ, but a small amount of information from it has found its way into biographical accounts and other secondary works.

14 Professor Woodside (op. cit., 324) mentions him merely as chief compiler of the Veritable records of the Nguyên dynasty.

15 The details which follow are mainly from the account of his life in Nguyên Huyên Anh, op. cit., 358–9, and from that in the Đại-Nam Nhat-thong-chí, quyēn 6: Qung-Ngāi (trans, into quoc-ngũ', Saigon, 1964), 95–6.

16 The five grades of nobility in Viêt-Nam are the same as those in China; that of nam is sometimes translated as “baron”, and that of t ' as “count”; the title also included the name of a place, but there is no suggestion that by this period the individual had any connexion with the place of his title.

17 Professor Woodside suggests (p. 88) that the title dại-học-sī (“grand secretary”) was held by men with no political power; this is clearly not the case.

18 Aubaret, G. (trans.), Histoire et description de la Basse Cochinchine, Paris,, 1863, Appendix, 340Google Scholar. The notes printed with this translation of a work by Trinh Hoai Duc are said to have been acquired by Aubaret on a visit to Huê, presumably in 1863. Quê also appears as sponsor of an anti-French edict in 1861; Hanb, Vo Due, La place du Catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le Viet-Nam de 1851 à 1870, Leiden, 1969, II, 326–7Google Scholar.

19 For his biography, see Nguyên Huyên Anh, op. cit., 228–30.

20 Ibid., 165–7. Professor Woodside refers to several of his memorials to the throne, which reveal him as a deeply orthodox Confucian.

21 Nguyên Huyên Anh, op. cit., 282–6; P. Daudin and Lê Van Phuc, in Bull. Soc. Et. Indo-chinoises, n.s., XVI, 1941, 31–11, give the text and French translation of his career according to the Đại-Nam Liệt-truyện.

22 It is not impossible that he spent some time on leave in the years after 1842, following the death of his faṭher; but the memorial of 1843 seems to belie the possibility that officials of the Nguyên period were obliged to spend three years away from the court in order to mourn a deceased parent.

23 Durand, M. (trans.), Texte et commentaire du Miroir Complet de l'histoire du Viêt, Hanoi, 1950, I, 2Google Scholar.

24 Mục-Lục Châu-Bàn Triêu Nguy n, I, Huê, 1960: “Introduction” by Chen Ching-ho, xxvii-xxxv.

25 Bull. Soc. Et. Indo-chinoises, n.s., XVI; 1941, 31–8.

26 The analysis which follows is based. maiuly on a recent Ph.D. thesis of the University of Saigon: Nguyên Si Hai, Tõ-chú'c chính-quyên trung-u'o'ng thò'i Nguyēn-so; 1802–47, Saigon, n.d.

27 J. Crawford to G. Swinton, April 1823, in the India Office Records, now printed in Lamb, A. (ed.), The Mandarin Road to Old Hue, London, 1970, 267Google Scholar.

28 Đại-Nam Thục-lục chính-biên II (trans. into quôc-ngũ, Hanoi, 1969), 105. Son-Tây was probably a more important garrison tḥan Hanoi in the 19th century, as the French discovered in the 1880's.

29 There is a short biography of him in Đại-Nam Nhāt-thông-chí, quyēn 6: Tinh Quāng-Ngãi (trans, into quôc-nqũ, Saigon 1964), 97.

30 Nguyên Huyên Anh, op. cit., 360–1.

31 Woodside, op. cit, 276–80.

32 Deloustal, R., “Ressources financières et économiques de l'État dans l'ancien Annam: Traduction annotée des livres XXIX–XXXII du Lįch Chiêu Hiên Chu'o'ng Loại Chí,” Revue Indochinoise, XLIII, 1925, 70–71Google Scholar.

33 Nguyên Thanh Nha, Tableau économique du Viêt-Nam aux XVIIe et XVIIIesiècles, Paris, 1965, 103–6, 109–113. This is also based ultimately on information given in the Hien-chuong of Phan Huy Chu, Book XVIII.

34 Woodside, op. cit., 80.

35 Deloustal, B., Revue Indochinoise, XLII, 1924, 215–8, 398–409Google Scholar.

36 Woodside, op. cit., 278, 277.

37 Ibid., 162–3.

38 Lâu, Nguyên Thiêu, “La reforme agraire de 1839 dans le Binh-Dinh”, BEFEO, XLV, 1951, 119–129Google Scholar.

39 Deschaseaux, E., “Note sur les anciens dôn-diên annamites dans la Basse-Cochinchine,” Excursions et Reconnaissances, XIV, No. 31, 1889, 133–140Google Scholar.

40 Woodside, op. cit., 32–3.

41 Ibid., 103.

42 Launay, A., Mgr. Retord et le Tonkin catholique, 1831–1858, Lyon, 1893, 77–79Google Scholar. The village dispute was well known from missionary sources (e.g. the account given in Gaultier, M.; Minh Mang, Paris, 1935, 95 ff.)Google Scholar; Woodside (op, cit., 155) now gives a brief account based on Vietnamese records.

43 Woodside, op. cit., 88, 96 ff. The account of how the Secret Council was created is one of the most valuable portions of Prof. Woodside's book; but we still do not have a detailed knowledge of how the Council worked, or was related to the Six Boards.

44 Launay, op. cit., 183, 191. For an account of the mission to Paris, see Delvaux, M.: “L'ambassade de Minh-Mang à Louis Philippe,” Bull. des Amis du Vieux Huê, 1928, 4, 257–264Google Scholar.

45 Cf. McAleavy, H., The modern history of China, London, 1967, 46 ffGoogle Scholar.

46 Bui Quang Tung, art. cit., Bull. Soc. Et. Indo-chinoises, n.s., XLII, 1967.