Dutch Queen in Vietnam

From: Vsg <vsg-bounces@mailman11.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Suzanne Lecht

Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2019 10:56 PM

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Info on Dutch Queen in Vietnam, wife of King

Hi Charles and Hue Tam

Thank you so much for your efforts to delve into this mysterious purported Dutch consort of Le Thanh Tong.

It is certainly fascinating and at the very least contributes some good fantasy about who this woman might have been.

I want to wish all of you a wonderful New Year of the Pig. May all things wonderful come to you.

My best regards

Suzanne

Suzanne Lecht

Art Vietnam Salon Gallery

Ngo 66 So Nha 2

Pho Yen Lac

Hanoi Vietnam

T Vietnam: +84 24 3862 3184

Cell Vietnam: +84 (0) 912048018

C: USA: +1 917 319 5991

E: suzanne@artvietnamgallery.com

www.artvietnamgallery.com

On Tue, Feb 5, 2019 at 3:09 AM Charles High <mikebiking@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hue Tam, et al,

That makes sense, about the statues—I don’t know why I was assuming that they were contemporaneous. The provenance of the statues of Lê Thần Tông’s wives in Thanh Hóa is unclear, and they are of a somewhat standard style—not that different from the statues of the court ladies turned nuns at Bút Tháp.

I’ve been parsing some of the sources that are available to me, and am beginning to wonder if the story is something of a confabulation. Since it offers some interesting perspectives on Lê-Trịnh foreign relations, I decided to list out what I know, and invite further comment.

Some online sources say that the Lê Thần Tông’s Dutch consort was named “OurouSan,” probably deriving this from Adrien Launay, who quotes the following VOC instructions to its agent Harsinck upon his 1637 mission to Tonkin: “Mettez vous en relation avec Oursra, concubine du roi, femme née en Corée, vous ferez aux femmes qui sont les plus agréables au roi des présents pour une valeur de 20, 25, à 30 tayils.” (Histoire ancienne et moderne de l'Annam, Tong-King et Cochinchine, Challamal, Paris, 1884, page 157, footnote). However, no reference is made to Oursra being Dutch, and she was already established at court before the Dutch overtures of 1637.

I take it that Orusra is the same as "Ourou-san,” who is described as a Japanese interpreter by W.J. M. Buch in his BEFEO monograph on the VOC in Indochina. “La Compagnie des Indes néerlandaises et l’Indochine”:[Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 36, 1936]

“Dans le village de Giang les Hollandais trouvèrent un interprète japonais nommé Guaudo, qui secharga d'écrire à une interprète japonaise, Ourou-san, demeurant à Kê-cho, pour la prier d'annoncer au roi l'arrivée du navire...Cependant les Portugais s'efforcèrent de noircir le plus possible la réputation des nouveaux venus afin d'empêcher le roi de les autoriser à faire le commerce ; mais l'interprète Ourou-san les défendit avec force et succès auprès du roi de sorte que celui-ci finit par être convaincu que les propos des Portugais avaient pour cause la rivalité commerciale.” [page 153]

“Bientôt Hartsinck et quelques-uns de ses compagnons de voyage, avec plusieurs interprètes japonais au nombre desquels se trouvait la femme Ourou-san, furent reçus en audience par le roi.” [page 163]

From a second-hand paraphrase, I gather that G. Dumoutier also identifies “Ouroussan” as a Japanese woman who had become a “beloved concubine of Le Than Tong” and helped Hartsinck during his 1637 visit. (The paraphrase is from Nguyễn Quang Ngọc’s article in the 1994 compilation of papers on Phố Hiến published by Thế Giới; the original work, which I have not been able to locate, is “Les comptoirs Hollandais de la province de Hung Yen (Tonkin) au XVII siecle,” G. Dumoutier, 1895, publisher unknown.)

So, how did Ourou-san come to the Japanese trading community at Kẻ Chợ? It’s possible that her family had come directly from Japan, or via one of the other Japanese port communities (such as Taiwan or Hội An). The Dutch did not set up shop on Taiwan until 1623-1624, so Dutch parentage would seem unlikely. (Though I suppose there is the remote possibility that her father was one of the Dutch traders who began visiting the tightly-controlled island port of Hirado as early as 1609.)

Even if Ourou-san had a Dutch father, it is unlikely that she was fluent in the language. Given that the Dutch were newcomers to Kẻ Chợ in 1637, it is more likely that she had been interpreting for the Portuguese. Thus, this might have been a two-stage translation, with Portuguese being the intermediate language.

Though not truly Dutch, I think it is possible that Ourou-san may have been identified as such. There was some fuzziness regarding business, familial, and national identities—Buch states that Lê Thần Tông adopted Hartsinck as his son—and Ourou-san may simply have been labeled “Dutch” because she had become identified with them.

On the other hand, could there have been a different consort who was indeed of Dutch origin? If so, I would posit that the marriage was arranged for strategic commercial reasons, and that the “Dutch woman" had an Asian mother. (Given the cultural and racial prejudices of the era, a Dutch family would have been unlikely to send their daughter to a foreign court, in the manner of Huyền Trân.) It is said in some places that the “Dutch queen” came from Taiwan, so we might speculate then her mother came from the Japanese or Chinese communities on the island. In this scenario, she would have been born sometime after the Dutch arrived in 1623 and would have come to Tonkin no earlier than 1637.

With respect to this scenario, Buch supplies another interesting observation: in 1642, the court at Tonkin invited the wife of the visiting Dutch merchant Liesvelt to a small party, being very curious to see a Dutch woman for the first time.

"La veuve de J. van Liesvelt, qui était arrivée au Tonkin à bord du Meerman, fut invitée par les femmes du roi à une partie de plaisir. Elles n'avaient jamais vu de femme hollandaise et désiraient beaucoup faire la connaissance de l'une d'entre elles.” (page 180)

Thus, one might speculate that a woman of Dutch descent entered the court sometime during Lê Thần Tông’s period of abdication or during his second reign. However, it seems unlikely to me that the Dutch records would fail to mention that they had such an important diplomatic asset embedded in the royal court. (As a side note, it appears from Buch’s account that the Trịnh still allowed Lê Thần Tông some role in relations with foreign traders.)

Perhaps others from the list can provide information that is more definitive, but at this point, it seems most likely to me that Lê Thần Tông’s foreign consort was Ourou-San, the Japanese interpreter, rather than a “Dutch" woman.

:: Mike High

Author | Researcher

Great Falls, Virginia

USA

On Jan 28, 2019, at 5:54 PM, Hue Tam Tai <huetamtai@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Suzanne and Mike

I tried to learn more about this woman. She may have been the possibly illegitimate daughter of a Dutch official in Formosa (Taiwan), but not of a governor or vice- governor. As for the Korea connection, it is most unlikely as Korea was closed to all at the time. My Dutch colleagues are quite emphatic on this point. She was meant to stimulate trade between Thang Long and Dutch Formosa, but the Trinh lord was ambivalent.

As for the statue of this consort not exhibiting European features, I would suggest that the sculptor never saw her or the other consorts so carved six similar statues.

Hue Tam

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 28, 2019, at 5:11 PM, Charles High <mikebiking@yahoo.com> wrote:

Suzanne, et al,

The mysterious Dutch woman was one of wives of Lê Thần Tông (1607-1662). Lê Thần Tông took the throne in 1619, serving as a puppet emperor for most of the time that the Trịnh lords were launching expeditions against the Nguyễn lords in the south. His queen was the erudite and pious Trịnh Thị Ngọc Trúc (from the family of the Trịnh lords), but theirs was a political marriage. Interestingly, most of his other wives were not ethnic Vietnamese. Lê Thần Tông seems not to have been altogether comfortable in his ceremonial role—he abdicated in favor of his son in 1643, but was called back to the throne six years later.

I have come across what purports to be the Dutch woman's statue during a visit to one of the Lê-related temples in Thanh Hóa (not the dynastic temple in the city itself). However, my occasional research into the history of this period has turned up surprisingly little about her. According to Hoang Anh Tuan, no reference is made to her in the Dutch records. (See “The Dutch East India Company in Tonkin,” in Lion and Dragon, 2008, edited by John Kleinen, page 58, and his thesis, Silk for Silver, page 198,).

I just took a quick look at the Wikipedia page for Lê Thần Tông and see a citation to G. Dumoutier, stating that she was a daughter of the governor or vice-governor of the trading community on Taiwan (Fort Zeelandia, eradicated by the warlord Koxinga, ca. 1662). Her name is given as OurouSan (possibly Orona). One online blogger says that she was mentioned by Alexandre Rhodes and that her mother may have been Korean. This last detail would help explain that her statue in Thanh Hóa has no particularly Dutch features and why she is not mentioned in Dutch records.

She certainly lived in interesting times. Phan Cẩm Thượng’s book on the Bút Tháp pagoda has some interesting information on how the court ladies turned to Buddhism in this troubled era—contributing to a kind of “Great Awakening” under the peripatetic Chinese Zen master Chuyết Chuyết—with the queen Ngọc Trúc herself becoming a nun.

:: Mike High

Author | Independent Researcher

Great Falls, Virginia

USA

On Jan 27, 2019, at 11:53 PM, Suzanne Lecht <suzanne@artvietnamgallery.com> wrote:

Hello all

I have been the grateful recipient of your wonderful list research comments for some time now and want you to know how much

I appreciate all your writing and research. A treasure of information. A huge thanks to all of you.

I will be doing an exhibition of collages by Astrid Bant, an artist and also the Representative of the UNFPA in Vietnam.

On March 8, to celebrate International Women's Day we will present collages created by Ms. Bant that re imagine the lives of women all over the world who are already notable for their contributions but the works created takes their contributions to a much deeper lever and imagines what more these women could have accomplished with their remarkable lives if left unfettered.

The Power of Possibilities - REimagining Reality.

As we were discussing the work I remembered somehow learning years ago in 1996 or so about a Dutch woman ( consort or Queen of a Vietnamese King in the 16thC that was responsible for bringing the trade of blue and white ceramics to Vietnam...

Is this factual? If someone has info on this can you please enlighten us?

Also if you have any other info that you think pertains to this idea of what could have been the lives of women if unshackled....please feel free to contribute.

Many thanks for your time