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On Telling a Story of Vietnam in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

O. W. Wolters
O. W. Wolters
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

My essay in celebration of the Journal's anniversary sketches what may be the concluding chapter in a study of Vietnam in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the Tran dynasty reigned (1226–1400). In 1225 the Tran family overthrew the last emperor of the previous dynasty, the Ly (1009–1225) and hitherto the only long lived one. The Ly imperial line, in fact, lasted nearly fifty years longer than its successor. Nevertheless, the Tran is unquestionably the most renowned of all Vietnamese dynasties on account of its victories when Kubilai Khan's armies attacked three times in the thirteenth century. Yet one has to ask what kind of dynasty it was and how the country it ruled should be defined. Should one look to China, the source of the dynastic institution, for guidance or should one look elsewhere? An event in 1237 suggests ambiguity. That year officials were required to offer betel and tea to the emperor when he was departing from the Eastern Pier near the capital. “Betel and tea” bring Southeast Asia as well as China into the picture.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 26 , 25th Anniversary Special Issue 1: Perspectives on Southeast Asian Studies , March 1995 , pp. 63 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1995

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References

I thank three friends for their advice: Hendrik Maier, Craig Reynolds, and Keith Taylor.

1 Wolters, O.W., “Engaging J.D. Legge. Narrating the Fall of the Ly and the Rise of the Tran Dynasties”, Asian Studies Association of Australia Review 10, 2 (1986): 24–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Chen Fu, Chen gang Thong shi za (Taipei: Si-ku quan-shu chen-pen ba-ji, no. 159); An-nan zhi-yuan (Hanoi: ed. Aurousseau, L., École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1932).Google Scholar

3 Ly Te Xuyen, Viet-dien u linh tap (École Française d'Extrême-Orient A 47).

4 I am influenced by Cunningham, Valentine, British Writers of the Thirties (Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 2Google Scholar. He refers to “a connected field, whole text, or set of diverse signs adding up, more or less, to a single semiotic”. This may be an unattainable enterprise for the historian, but it beckons all the same.

5 Wolters, O.W., “Possibilities for a Reading of the 1293–1357 Period in the Vietnamese Annals”, Vietnam Forum 11 (1988): 97–102.Google Scholar

6 For studying rural unrest in the fourteenth century, I have benefited from essays in Tim hieu xa hoi Viet Nam thoi Ly-Tran (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban khoa hoc xa hoi, 1981).Google Scholar

7 I prefer “rewriting” to Eric Hobsbawm's “invention of tradition”, which, according to him, is what happens in time of rapid social change.

8 The annals under the date of 1370, when Le Quat died.

9 That there were two fourteenth-century instances of calendar reform may not be coincidental.

10 Wolters, O.W., Two essays on Dai-Viet in the fourteenth century (Yale: Southeast Asian Studies, The Lac-Viet Series, no. 9, 1988), pp. xx–xxii.Google Scholar

11 Wolters, “Narrating the Fall of the Ly and the Rise of the Tran Dynasties”, pp. 25–27.

12 In my proposed final chapter I would consider other instances of fourteenth-century change such as an apparently expanded use of the Vietnamese nom script and Vietnam's participation in the international ceramics trade.

13 Eco, Umberto, Reflections on The Name of the Rose (London: Seeker & Warburg Limited, 1985), p. 2.Google Scholar

14 Wolters, Oliver, “What Else May Ngo Si Lien Mean? A Matter of Distinctions in the Fifteenth Century”, in Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese in Honour of Jennifer Cushman, ed. Reid, Anthony (Sydney: Allen & Unwin for ASAA, 1995).Google Scholar