Indigenous Chiefdoms in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands
From: Alex Ong <ansel1974@gmail.com>
Date: 2008/10/14
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Dear all,
I have a query about frontier management within the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands from the 'Vietnamese' end between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. While indigenous chiefdoms were essentially known as tusi from the 'Chinese' side, by what names were they known to the rulers of Thang-long? I have obtained a bit of related information from Charles Keyes' Presidential Address in issue 61, no. 4 (November 2002) of The Journal of Asian Studies, "The Peoples of Asia: Science and Politics in the Classification of Ethnic Groups in Thailand, China, and Vietnam" (pp. 1163-1203), in which he notes, "[t]he chiefs of some other upland-dwelling peoples, such as those known by the Sino- Vietnamese names Tho, Nung, Man, and Meo in the northern highlands, were treated much like the tusi in the Chinese system" (p. 1172) (Keyes provides references to pages within Alexander Woodside's Vietnam and the Chinese Model and Maurice Abadie's work Minorities of the Sino-Vietnamese Borderland (translated by Walter J. Tips and republished in Bangkok by White Lotus Press in 2001).
I would be grateful if someone could share further insights about this.
Best regards,
Alex Ong
Ph.D. student
University of British Columbia
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/10/15
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
They were known by the same term. In Sino-Viet pronounciation, it was tho ty: tho (circumflex, dau hoi) ty.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai.
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From: Jean Michaud <michaudjean@yahoo.com>
Date: 2008/10/15
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Alex,
In my 2000 article "The Montagnards in Northern Vietnam from 1802 to 1975. A Historical Overview >From Exogenous Sources." (Ethnohistory. 47(2) : 333-68), I discuss the situation in the 19th century and I state in particular, p.337:
"Dang Phuong-Nghi (1969) offers additional evidence. In his study of
eighteenth-century Vietnamese public institutions, he stresses that at the
time the northern frontier and the peoples inhabiting it were—at least nominally—
under the responsibility of the Vietnamese Ministry of the Armies
(Binh Bô). The peripheral and mountainous districts they inhabited bore
a specific name (châu) to differentiate them from the standard districts
(huyên). In theory, both were administered by Kinh mandarins sent to live
on location, called tri-huyên and tri-châu. In the northern region therewere
44 such châu and 163 huyên, which indicates that a fairly large proportion
of the territory was actually classified as remote. This administrative
network became only marginally operational as one moved away from the
lowlands, and because of the larger proportion of Kinh population in the
huyên, it can be assumed that the system worked more smoothly in these
districts than in the more distant châu. Ultimately, at its maximum extension
its only remaining purpose was to locate existing villages, install
a representative, administer the census, and try to tax the population accordingly.
Consequently, the more stable groups closer to the delta, like
the Tai —particularly the Tho and the Nung—and theMuong, were quite
heavily burdened. All the more remote and more mobile groups in the
mountains largely escaped direct control."
You can also find additional details in the article.
Best
Jean Michaud
Université Laval
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From: Tai VanTa <taivanta@yahoo.com>
Date: 2008/10/15
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Alex Ong,
There are pages 132-141 in Chapter 2 ("Equality of Discrimination?") in my book THE VIETNAMESE TRADITION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ( written at Harvard Law School bu published at Univ California-Berkeley, 1988), which treat the subject of ethnic minorities under the Vietnamese dynasties prior to the French colonial regime (not only Tho, Muong, Man in Northern Vietnam but also Khmer people in the South and Minh Huong, or Chinese people). These pages have three sections, dealing with aspects of human rights, but also dealing with the management of minorities people in the frontier or highland areas (from the perspective of your interest): a) equal treatment in the legal process of the court, b) administrative autonomy and economic-cultural rights, c) civil and political rights, and then d) a conclusion seciton.
Sincerely,
Tai Van Ta
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From: James A Anderson JAANDER2 <jamie_anderson@uncg.edu>
Date: 2008/10/15
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Alex,
As Professor Tai notes, ThôÒ ty (read as tusi in Chinese) is also the general title Vietnamese officials used for local chieftains in this region. You can look back into the archive of past VSG posts for further discussion of this matter.
My recent book on Sino-Vietnamese frontier management (Anderson, James. The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao: Loyalty and Identity Along the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007) focuses on the period prior to the fourteenth century, but Chapter 7 contains references to sources that you may find useful in your study of nineteenth-century conditions.
Best wishes,
Jamie
James A. Anderson, Associate Professor
Department of History
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
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From: Oscar Salemink <OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl>
Date: 2008/10/15
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
You may want to check out the following publications:
Pierre Bernard Lafont (ed.), Les frontières du Vietnam : histoire des frontieres du peninsule indochinoise. Paris 1999 : L’harmattan
Bui Quang Tung & Nguyen Huong (translation), Le Dai viet et ses voisins : D’apres le Dai Viet su ky toan thu (annotated by Nguyen the Anh). Paris 1990 : L’Harmattan
Emmanuel Poisson will publish the following paper: “Unhealthy air of the mountains: Kinh and ethnic minority rule on the sino-vietnamese frontier from the fifteenth to the twentieth century” in Martin Gainsborough (ed), On the Borders of State Power: Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, London/New-
York : Routledge (forthcoming)..
For the contemporary period, the following book contains some chapters on the Sino-Vietnamese border: Grant Evans, Christopher Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng (eds.), Where China Meets Southeast Asia, Social and Cultural Changes in the Border Regions. Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000.
Oscar Salemink