The Regional Roots of Conflict

In some respects, the roots of these conflicts lay in the patterns of regionalism that have shaped Vietnamese history since the early years of the common era, if not before. As Vietnamese populations slowly expanded their territorial footprint and Vietnamese leaders gradually extended their political claims, there emerged distinct regional identities that came into conflict as a function of historical and geographical circumstance.

Most notably, these early region- alisms pitted more scholarly and Sinically oriented populations of the Red River region in the north, which was the centre of Chinese dominance and influence, against more rustic, militaristic and indigenously oriented populations of Thanh Hoa to the south. This pattern of scholastic Sinicism contrasted with militaristic indigenous sentiment, while something of an oversimplification, captures some element of the fundamental divide between these two areas, one with significant echoes into the early modern clashes. The early modern period saw two more regions entering the contests for power. One was situated along the coastal rim where the Red River spilled into the Gulf of Tonkin. Several claimants to power emerged from this region in the early sixteenth century, including one, the Mac family, which would continue to vie for power well into the later seventeenth century. The other newly relevant region was the southerly territorial expanse stretching from the Linh River across the forbidding Hai Van pass and into lands once controlled by the Chams. This territory had been captured by the Le dynasty in the 1470s, but subsequently only lightly settled and garrisoned against Cham attempts to reclaim their land. It became the stronghold of the Nguyen clan beginning in the mid sixteenth century.

While these regional divides created geographical affiliations among particular communities of lowland residents, a second divide juxtaposed lowland Vietnamese with upland ethnic populations.

This division was generally eastwest, with the Vietnamese occupying the lowland coastal territories and members of other ethnic groups inhabiting the upland hills, plateaus and mountains. This was a significant point of contrast and frequently of clashes. While there were areas of overlap and mutually beneficial contact, it was a kind of regionalist separation that frequently spurred violent conflict over resources and territorial control. Periodically, the Le rulers had sought to regulate or control some of these areas, either through legal codes that spelled out the nature of engagement between upland and lowland Vietnamese, or through the use of force by a regime that in the last decades of the fifteenth century was at the height of its military capabilities. In any case, the division between lowland areas and upland regions was a form of regionalism that would come into play in the conflicts of the early modern period, as it had before.

Even as domestic regional distinctions and rivalries were an important factor shaping these political conflicts, this landscape of violence was also shaped by external factors. Most notably, the Chinese, who had always represented a significant threat, occasionally took sides in these domestic wars. For decades in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries the Qing court was an ally and protector of the Mac clan in its protracted wars with the Trinh and Nguyen. In the late eighteenth century the Qing court openly interfered in a Vietnamese succession dispute, which saw its forces invading Vietnamese territories (in 1788), only to be ousted in less than a year. To a lesser extent the Siamese were periodically drawn into these clashes, as occasionally were the adjacent Lao principalities. Chinese pirate mercenaries also joined the fray, particularly in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Other newcomers became significant players, notably Europeans who had begun to arrive as missionaries and then merchants over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The British and Dutch supplied armaments to parties in these conflicts, and at times also served as mercenaries or logistical assistants. This crowded historical stage featured numerous antagonists pitted against each other over the course of several centuries, and conflict, violence and rebellion were the backdrop against which the Vietnamese historical drama played out during this period.

Conflict commenced with the rise of the Mac family in the 1510s as it came to vie with the faltering Le for political supremacy. It was only with the establishment of the Nguyen dynasty at the beginning of the nineteenth century that a measure of political stability returned. And, even then, it was a fragile peace, frequently interrupted by popular unrest from various quarters

Table 22.1 Episodes of large-scale violence

Time frame

Nature of military conflict

1516-21

1523-1600 1600-1670S

1627-72

1738- 70

1739- 69

1771-1802

Tran Cao Rebellion

Civil wars between the Mac, Nguyen and Trinh

Ongoing civil war between the Mac and the Trinh

Civil war between the Nguyen and the Trinh/Le

Le Duy Mat rebellion against the Trinh

Hoang Cong Chat rebellion against the Trinh

The Tay Son Uprising against the Nguyen, which then transformed into a civil war with the Tay Son state battling the Nguyen, Trinh, and Le regimes

including lingering dynastic loyalists, unhappy peasants and bandit gangs.² Indeed, the period was one in which respite from military clashes was a rare occurrence, as Table 22.1 summarises.

As this table suggests, conflict, often of a sustained and significant nature, was a near constant feature of the Vietnamese landscape from about 1520 until 1802. Much of this was centred on Tonkin, the northern part of the Vietnamese territories, but with the Nguyen clan's migration into the southern reaches of Quang Nam, the possibilities for extended conflict travelled with them. This region would not be fully engulfed until the start of the nearly half-century war between the Nguyen and their erstwhile allies, but by then long-term rivals, the Trinh.

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Source: Antony Robert, Carroll Stuart, Pennock Caroline D. (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 3: AD 1500-AD 1800. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 710 p.. 2020

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