299 PDFsam 25nam Vnamhoc theodinhhuong liennganh (bong3)

299 PDFsam 25nam Vnamhoc theodinhhuong liennganh (bong3) tài liệu, giáo án, bài giảng , luận văn, luận án, đồ án, bài tậ...

KINH AND ETHNIC MINORITY RULE ON THE SINO- VIETNAMESE FRONTIER FROM THE FIFTEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Emmanuel Poisson

In this chapter, I explore Vietnamese and French rule on the border with China, covering the period from the fifteenth to the twentieth century What comes across clearly from the sources is that whether it is the Vietnamese

court or the French colonial authorities, both struggled to find enough Vietnamese (kinh) officials to work on the border and consequently relied heavily on a number of local hereditary chiefs (thổ ty) for the border’s defence

and administration The evidence represents a healthy corrective to the usual

argument of assimilation of ethnic minority people by the kinh, suggesting

that in fact the opposite process may have occurred In the chapter, I present material on three ethnic Tày lineages, the Nông, the Ma Doãn, and the Vi, showing how their influence on the border persisted despite an assault on their power during the reign of Nguyễn Emperor Minh Mạng (1820-40) and, some years later, the onset of French colonial rule1

The ecology of the bureaucracy

From the fifteenth to the twentieth century, parts of present-day

Vietnam were often referred to as lam chướng Lam 嵐 translates as ‘air of the mountains’ and chướng 瘴 means ‘unhealthy air’ so lam chướng is best translated as ‘unhealthy air of the mountains’ Chướng is also the word for

1 The Nguyễn monarchs were on the throne in Vietnam from 1802 until 1945, although from the 1850s they had to contend with the expansion of French colonial rule in what later became French Indochina, covering present-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

malaria which - more often than not - was very prevalent1 As a result, it is possible to talk in terms of an ‘ecology of the bureaucracy’ with particular provinces or districts classified according to their climate Nguyễn Trãi, for

example, highlighted 29 ‘unhealthy’ districts in his Dư địa chí [Geography] in

1435 (Nguyễn Trãi 1976: 240-1) In the nineteenth century, the mountainous districts of Hưng Hóa, Thái Nguyên, Tuyên Quang, Lạng Sơn, Cao Bằng, Quảng Yên and Ninh Bình provinces were categorised according to their climate and their degree of isolation (TL, t 25: 124-7)

Map 2.1 Northern Đại Việt (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries)

Given the health risks associated with living in mountainous or border

areas, working there was not for the faint-hearted Moreover, for kinh

officials operating in culturally and linguistically distinct areas on the Sino-Vietnamese frontier inhabited by ethnic minorities, the work was difficult too Not surprisingly, many officials were reluctant to be stationed there and absenteeism was rife Sources in the early eighteenth century show the

military governors (trấn thủ) of Tuyên Quang, Thái Nguyên, Hưng Hóa and

Lạng Sơn provinces were themselves frequently exhorted not to leave their

1 Note that this is a lowland or kinh perspective on the environment Highlanders

of-ten associate ill-health with the lowlands Thus, while for Vietnamese administrators ill-health was associated with the hills, for hill people the opposite may be true I am grateful to Holly High for this insight.

posts (HC, t 1: 454, Ngô Cao Lãng 1995: 181) According to Minh Mạng in

1823, civil servants waiting for an appointment (hậu bổ) sometimes feigned

sickness in order to avoid being appointed to a difficult or unhealthy district (HD, t 5: 177) During Emperor Thiệu Trị’s reign (1841-7), the governor of Sơn Hưng Tuyên, Nguyễn Đăng Giai, noted that it was commonplace for some district and prefecture heads to abandon their posts to go and live for nearly ten months of the year in the provincial capital (TL, t 25: 122)

Map 2.2 Northern Đại Nam (nineteenth century)

Such problems are also clearly evident in the 1850s and 1860s In 1850, Nguyễn Đăng Giai, who by now had left his post as provincial governor to

be imperial inspector (kinh lược), proposed that the number of officials in

the unhealthiest districts of Nghệ An and Thanh Hóa provinces should be reduced in light of chronic absenteeism (TL, t 27: 237) Meanwhile, Đặng Xuân Bảng, prefect of Yên Bình in Tuyên Quang province, wrote in 1861 that among prefecture and sub-prefecture officials, only those of Hàm Yên and Yên Binh occupied their posts Bảng also tells us that the prefect of Tương Yên, the mandarin chief of Chiêm Hóa district, and the sub-prefects

of Vĩnh Điện, Để Định, Vĩnh Tụy and Vị Xuyên, all resided in the provincial capital with security of the main public buildings left in the hands of low-level staff and soldiers (Đặng Xuân Bảng 1923: 173)

In some ways the court only had itself to blame for the fact that appointments in border areas were so unpopular since there is evidence that it sometimes used them as a form of punishment, with civil servants regarded as incompetent, corrupt or simply awkward appointed to posts

on the border A rule dating from 1498, for example, said that officers who had been condemned to a military post, but subsequently let off, must be appointed to an office outside the capital Those regarded as guilty of less serious offences were appointed closer to the capital, or in districts considered easier to manage However, the most troublesome or incompetent officials were sent to the border areas (TT, q 14, f°: 4a) There is also evidence that officials who pretended to be sick in order to get out of their administrative responsibilities or performed poorly, such as failing to collect taxes, were sometimes reassigned to the same post for another six years (TT, q 12, f°: 47a)

Strengthening border administration

Against the backdrop of persistent absenteeism and a tendency to use the border as a way of getting rid of troublesome or incompetent officials, administration of the border was naturally rather poor However, this worried the court for whom stability and a degree of control on the border was important There were a number of reasons for this First, there was always a danger that instability on the border would spill over into conflict with China, not least by making Vietnam more vulnerable to attack Second, disorder ran the risk of disrupting trade with China as well as preventing the court from accessing important minerals and other raw materials which were located on,

or close to, the border As a result, successive Vietnamese monarchs also sought

to address some of the weaknesses associated with their administration on the

border, notably by trying to encourage kinh officials to work there.

One approach they tried was to increase civil servants’wages Cao Bằng province took such a step in 1842 Emperor Thiệu Trị specifically justified the move on the grounds that it was a good way of compensating officials posted to remote areas (TL, t 24: 239-40) Other measures included following hardship posts with a less testing position, and reducing the amount of time an official was required to serve in a difficult area before he could be considered for a less arduous appointment In the mid-fifteenth

century, an official serving in a difficult area could expect to transfer to a position closer to the capital after nine years However, this was reduced to six years in 1468 if an official performed well (TT, q 12, f°: 47a)

A similar hierarchy of appointments is evident during the period of Nguyễn rule Civil servants waiting for an appointment and officials who had previously only held a low-level post tended to be given positions in isolated or unhealthy areas Less punishing appointments were made to

kinh officials who had passed the regional exams, or who had studied at the College of the Sons of the State (Quốc tử giám) in Huế (TL, t 25: 124-7).

While often the tendency seems to have been to reduce the amount

of time officials were required to serve in difficult positions, the court sometimes favoured keeping officials in posts for longer than was usual in the Red River Delta, where the norm was to rotate officials regularly The rationale appears to have been that officials would be better placed to learn the skills needed for a difficult appointment if they remained in the post for longer In 1844, Emperor Thiệu Trị (1841-7) praised the sub-prefect of Để Định, Nguyễn Doãn Vũ, who has been in the same post for six years, as a model official Thiệu Trị said continuity of service was a good way to ensure stability and to meet the needs of the people (TL, t 25: 124)

From provincial monographs written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we know that some officials did spend significant periods in

a single location The monograph, ‘Brief Notes on Hưng Hóa’ [Hưng Hóa

ký lược] compiled in 1855-6 by the chief of Tuần Giao district, Phạm Thận

Duật, contains a wealth of insights about Hưng Hóa province, which only someone with extensive experience of the province would know It includes information about language, fauna and flora, ethnology and administration Its table of taxation is very complete, including details of taxation on textiles, mining and customs (Phạm Thận Duật 2000: 121-238 and 619-88) Given the monograph’s comprehensive nature, one suspects it would have become an essential guide for officials newly posted to the province

The Minh Mạng effect?

Under the Nguyễn, there was a shift towards a more interventionist policy on the border with China Under Minh Mạng, the policy was taken

a stage further

The key pillars of Minh Mạng’s approach relevant to the administration

of the border with China included trying to increase the number of kinh officials (lưu quan) over local ones (thổ quan); an assault on the power of the local hereditary chiefs (thổ tv); and greater emphasis on assimilating

minority groups However, it is far from clear that he was very successful

in any of these areas

Minh Mạng’s position on assimilating ethnic minorities comes across clearly from his response to a report from a provincial judge in the Mekong Delta The emperor’s comments provide a clue to the approach likely to have been pursued across the Vietnamese state, including on the frontier with China In 1838, the Vĩnh Long provincial judge, Hà Thúc Giao, proposed

that kinh civil servants sent to border provinces should learn ethnic minority

languages in order to reduce the incidence of misunderstandings due to

language Giao also suggested that ethnic minority children be sent to kinh schools to learn chữ Hán (classical Chinese) from teachers at the prefecture

and sub-prefecture level While not unsympathetic to Giao’s suggestions, Minh Mạng put the emphasis differently, arguing that in keeping with the court’s policy of assimilation, the priority ought to be sending minority

children to kinh schools Minh Mạng accepted that officials could learn

minority languages if this improved communication but this was not the mainstay of his policy (TL, t 20: 197-8)

In keeping with his approach, Minh Mạng also invited border provinces

to select their best ethnic minority children to study at the College of the Sons of the State in Huế Meanwhile, minority youth who showed an aptitude for combat were sent for military training in the imperial capital

In reality, however, recruitment was slow with too few candidates to satisfy demand (TL, t 20: 197-8)

Minh Mạng’s attack on the power of local chiefs on the border occurred

in 1829 when he moved to abolish the hereditary nature of thổ ty titles in

Tuyên Quang, Thái Nguyên, Cao Bằng, Lạng Sơn and Hưng Hóa The move was unprecedented Most of the families, who were big landowners, had links to the court going back centuries In 1418, for example, a number of these families provided troops to Emperor Lê Thái Tổ (1428-42) during the Lam Sơn insurrection Around this time, they also coordinated military operations in Lạng Sơn and Cao Bằng It was during Lê Thái Tổ’s reign that

thổ ty titles were made hereditary in the form of a reward by the Emperor for loyal service Moreover, some of the thổ ty had links going back to the Trần

dynasty (1226-1400) Not surprisingly, given this pedigree, Minh Mạng’s attack on the pre-eminence of the local chiefs on the border with China did

not pass without a response In 1833, the thổ ty launched an uprising against

the monarch Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, it by no means marked the end of local power on the border with China (NCBL)

To illustrate this, I will now present evidence on three Tày lineages - the Nông, the Ma Doãn, and the Vi - which taken together illustrate clearly that despite the assault on their power under Minh Mạng, their influence on the border remained

Table 2.1 Prominent lineages in Lang Son provinc

Lineages Province nf orìgin Sub-prefecture Village

-Source: NCBL.

The persistence of local hereditary power

The Nông

The Nông family was influential in Thái Nguyên and Tuyên Quang provinces Its roots can be traced right back to the eleventh century The economic basis of their political power is not entirely clear but given an early Nông association with a district in Tuyên Quang, which is mentioned

in a number of historical accounts, it may have been silver mining and musk (Marini 1666: 44, Baron 1811: 18) At the end of the Lê dynasty (1428-1527), the Nông were reliable allies of the monarchy In 1787, the lord Nông Văn Bật, provided support to Prince Duy Kỳ in Thái Nguyên province Prince Duy Kỳ was the younger brother of Emperor Lê Chiêu Thống (1787-8) However, another Nông, Nông Văn Vân, led the resistance against Minh

Mạng’s assault on thổ ty power in 1833, with the result that the Nông family

star dimmed Nevertheless, the family’s fortunes soon recovered as Nông Văn Vân’s son, Nông Hùng Thác, later rose to prominence with the title of

protective lord (ông phòng).

In the 1860s, Emperor Tự Đức (1848-83) appointed Nông Hùng Ơn,

son of Nông Hùng Thác, prefect of Tương Yên to replace the kinh mandarin

and try to assert order on the frontier The need to assert order followed fallout from the Taiping rebellion against die Qing dynasty in China, which had spilled across the border, as is discussed in Bradley Davis’s chapter in this volume In appointing Nông Hùng Ơn, Tự Đức was clearly reverting

to the traditional reliance on the thổ ty, which had always characterised

court policy apart from during the reign of his grandfather, Minh Mạng Nông Hùng Ơn was later succeeded by his brother, Nông Hùng Phúc, who rose to be administrator of Tuyên Quang province Nông Hùng Thác, and his sons, Nông Hùng Ơn and Nông Hùng Phúc, thus provided important protection to the Tày people in the aftermath of the Taiping rebellion Phúc was eventually succeeded in Tuyên Quang by Nông Hùng Tân, himself great-grandson of Nông Văn Vân, who had opposed Minh Mạng in 1833

The Ma Doãn

The Ma Doãn family roots lie in Tuyên Quang province Although the sources do not allow us to trace the family’s origins very far back, they clearly spanned the length of the nineteenth century, thus clearly surviving Minh Mạng’s reforms In 1802, Ma Doãn Điền had a lease on a copper mine

he was working in the provinces of Tuyên Quang and Hưng Hóa Some 60 years later, the Ma Doãn family still had significant economic holdings in the form of the Tụ Long copper mines and two custom posts (Bình Kinh and Đãi Man), all in Tuyên Quang province In 1896, the family was still prominent, holding political office in Tuyên Quang province’s Chiêm Hóa

district where the mandarin chief (tri châu) was a Ma Doãn Miễn and the auxiliary (bang tá) was Ma Doãn Thiện (Đặng Xuân Bảng 1923: 187).

The Vi

The third prominent Tày lineage on the Sino-Vietnamese border during the nineteenth century was the Vi At the end of Emperor Minh Mạng’s reign, Vi Thế Tuấn was appointed mandarin chief of Lộc Bình

district, a post which he held until 1854 This was despite the fact that

- like the Nông - the family had seemingly fallen out of favour with the court during Minh Mạng’s reign It was Vi Thế Tuấn’s son, Vi Văn Lý, who

was most famous Lý was elected to the honorary title thiên hộ in 1853 by

seven leading ethnic Tày lineages in Lạng Sơn During the 1850s and ] 860s he played a decisive role in the defence of the border against Chinese incursions, not only fighting in Lang Son province, where his power base lay, but also in the provinces of Cao Bằng, Quảng Yên and Thái Nguyên There are records of Lý winning victories in the face of attacks originating from China in 1853, 1854 and 1859 while between 1853 and 1862 he won 24 medals for bravery

Another episode dating from this period also illustrates the prominence

of Vi Văn Lý at this time In 1860, the vice-governor of Lạng Bằng, Bùi Huy Phan, was concerned about the lack of security in the border prefectures

of Trường Định and Trường Khánh, where there was neither a citadel nor

an army As a result, he suggested to Emperor Tự Đức that a reward of a

military diploma (đội trưởng) be given to every thiên hộ, bá hộ, chief and assistant canton managers (chánh tổng) if they successfully recruited 50 men

to help strengthen the defences Ly took full advantage of this new decree, recruiting soldiers to occupy the garrison at the military post of Trĩ Mã Two years later in 1862, Ly gathered 500 soldiers to retake the citadel of Cao Bằng from Chinese rebels under the orders of the governor of Lạng Bằng

As a result, Ly received from the provincial mandarins a diploma stating he

was ‘in charge of the functions of chief of company’ (quyền chánh đội trưởng suất đội) He then became chief of company (chánh đội trưởng suất đội) in

1863 In 1876, Lý provided 200 bushels (hộc) of rice to die provincial army,

further illustrating his continued power (NAV-KL 2515, f° 2-3)

Vi Văn Lý held a number of other appointments as well, including: sub- prefect of Yên Bác (1865); prefect of Trường Khánh (1869 and January- June 1878); sub-prefect of Yên Bác (June-November 1874); and sub-prefect

of Văn Quan (November 1874) In January 1879, Lý was appointed assistant

of the provincial mandarins (bang biện tỉnh vụ) while in 1883 he received the title of lecturer of first rank (thị giảng học sĩ) of the Imperial Academy Notwithstanding Emperor Minh Mạng’s assault on thổ ty power, the

continued prominence of these three families profiled here illustrates

clearly how any set-back they experienced was ultimately only temporary

in nature More than this, the important part played by at least two of these families in the subsequent defence of the northern border with China highlights the way in which the Vietnamese court was never able to

dispense with the services of the thổ ty even as it sought to encourage more

ethnic Vietnamese officials to take up positions on the border

I will now look at administration on the border after colonisation

Déjà vu under the French

It is clear that the colonial power faced many of the same difficulties as the Vietnamese court in its defence and administration of the border Being appointed to a position on the border was still looked upon as something of

a punishment, or as a way of getting rid of troublemakers, under the French Moreover, the practice of classifying parts of the country according to the climate also continued in the colonial era with some provinces labelled as unhealthy either in part or in their entirety (see Table 2.2)

In addition, the colonial authorities encountered many of the same

problems faced by the Vietnamese court such as kinh reluctance to serve on

the border, absenteeism among serving officials, and a shortage of suitably

trained local administrators One source from 1908 describes how a kinh

official in Hòa Bình district in Hưng Hóa province “resid[ed] in the chief town of the province, and visit[ed] his offices only one or twice a year” (NAV-RST 14487) Moreover, it is clear from looking at the files of district chiefs that there were never enough ethnic minority graduates from the

Collège des Jeunes Thái and the Collège du Protectorat to meet the needs of the

colonial administration despite efforts to recruit them

Table 2.2 Positions classified ‘unhealhy” in 1912

Bắc Giang Hữu Lũng district; Yên Thế prefecture, Sơn Đông sub-prefecture Bắc Kạn All of the province

Hà Nam Lạc Thủy district

Hòa Bình All of the province

Phú Thọ Đoan Hùng prefecture; Yên Lập and Thanh Sơn districts