The Rise of the Coast: Trade, State and Culture in Early Ða[under dot]i Viê[under dot]t

To consider the extent and impact of trade between Song China and other parts of Asia, we need to examine political and cultural aspects as well as the economic. Stretching from the Song epoch through the Yuan and into the Ming, increasing international trade linking the southeast coast of China to the Mediterranean had a major impact on the world of Southeast Asia. It strongly affected the classical states of Angkor and Pagan, and gave major impetus to Majapahit in eastern Java and Vijaya in central Champa. What, then, was the role of Dai Viet in this trade, and how did it affect the Vietnamese? I shall suggest that its impact was great, politically and culturally as well as economically. The general historiography on Vietnam has tended both to downplay trade and international commerce among the Vietnamese and to treat 'Vietnam' as a whole. Traditionally considered as 'Confucian' and China-oriented following the millennium of control from the North, Dai Viet needs to be examined much more on its own terms and with reference to its various regions, and I am glad to join Momoki Shiro in studying this question. (1) From the tenth to the fourteenth century, Dai Viet and its capital of Thang Long (now Hanoi) operated in ways similar to those of Angkor and Pagan. Yet, Dai Viet felt the impact of the Chinese trade earlier and in a much stronger way than did its neighbours to the West. The Song trade led to a major shift in the Vietnamese state and marked the beginning of significant cultural changes in Vietnamese society. What I am proposing here, via the discussion of trade--both international and domestic--is a different view of Vietnamese history, one that is in keeping with ideas about other parts of mainland Southeast Asia. In 2004 the history of Champa was re-examined at an inspiring conference in Singapore; this paper carries that thought over to the history of Dai Viet. (2) Good work on Vietnam is now being done on the early modern period, and we need to examine the years prior to that era, especially the tenth to fourteenth centuries. To the usual north/south emphasis, we need to add an east/west interpretation, more specifically, a riverine one that speaks of upriver/downriver interaction. (3) Such interpretations have been made for the Chao Phraya and Irrawaddy valleys; it is now time to do so for the Red River valley as well. Such a view provides a different twist on Vietnamese history that will help us understand the dynamics of the Ly and the Tran dynasties as well as a more specific look at the nature of the Chinese role in the society and culture of their southern neighbours. The focus on commerce, oft ignored heretofore, offers us the opportunity to approach the Vietnamese from the sea and the coast, to examine the culture of the eastern coastal region, and to gauge its impact on Vietnamese society at large. This approach also leads to a somewhat different view of the Vietnamese interaction with China in these centuries. This article will begin with a look at how Dai Viet was put together in the tenth and eleventh centuries, how its regions were linked. It will then consider economic change and the role of trade once Dai Viet had formed, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We will next move to the impact of the economic changes and of the trade in the thirteenth century on the politics and culture of Dai Viet, specifically the coastal control of the Tran dynasty based on commercial development. This development anticipated what would later happen at Pegu and Ayudhya to the West, except that here the capital did not shift to the coast; rather, the coast took control of the old capital itself. With the rise of a coastal culture, wealth and power consequently led to a split with the inland, upriver core of Dai Viet. In the fourteenth century, attempts at integration of lower and upper, coastal and inland Dai Viet continued as the coastal culture drew in inland elements even as it superseded them--a process generally seen as a struggle between Buddhism and Confucianism. …