Vietnam Article Reviews

Article 1:

Keith Taylor has provided a much needed and detailed account of Vietnamese history during the first millenium — its formative period — which lasted from the bronze age Dongson period of the third century B.C. to the end of the T'ang dominance in the early tenth century A.D. He has divided this long period into six distinct phases, constructing the main characteristics of each one as the centre-piece of a chapter. The first (Chapter 1, "Lac Lords") covers the emergence of organized society in the plains of the Hong and Ma rivers (near present Hanoi) under feudal lords. Sources for this bronze age period are largely archeological and linguistic, with a heavy reliance upon the interpretation of myths and legends. The second chapter or phase ("The Han-Viet era") charts the invasion of Chinese forces and particularly the southern expedition of Ma Yuan, the great Han general, and the emergence of a mixed Sino-Viet ruling class. The third phase (Chapter 3, "Regionalism and the six dynasties") covers the consolidation of Chinese political and cultural domination. Chapter 4, "Local rule in the sixth century" is the fourth phase, which Taylor calls a "time of self-discovery" for the Vietnamese. It was a time when Chinese control weakened slightly before the consolidation of Sui-T'ang control of the south. And in this weakening the Vietnamese, according to Taylor, began looking to their pre-Chinese roots.

Even that early Buddhism seemed to align itself with village animism and became popular with farmers who saw in it certain advantages for success in the agricultural cycle which governed their lives. Another important theme of the book that tends to demonstrate the strength of Vietnamese against the growing sinicization is "familism", a term much used by other scholars (see for example Alexander Woodside's several works, especially his Vietnam and the Chinese Model, Cambridge, 1970). Relationships within the family were always stronger than the relationship of subject to emperor. And to a great extent society was ruled and held together by the "glue" of family loyalty while the trappings of the imperial court and mandarinate seemed remote, certainly, always, from the village horizons. Familism gave a certain strength and vitality to Vietnamese society which enabled it to cope with the periodic changes in the Chinese overlordship, as for example between the end of the Han and the consolidation of the Sui-T'ang control; and in the post- T'ang period when independence came. In these periods of weakened control by China the "ineffectiveness of court appointed governors in the face of powerful local families" (p. 132) was obvi339 ous. Even at the best of Chinese times local families enjoyed "virtual autonomy from the imperial court" (p. 163).

Rebellion against Chinese rule, indeed, was endemic throughout the later phases whether peasant led or fomented by leading families. The whole confrontation culminated in the major clashes with T'ang officialdom in the ninth century, which also saw an uneasy alliance of some Vietnamese factions with the inland Nan Chao kingdom. For all his development of ...