Once after he had some Ch'ing Chinese examination essays read to him in the 1830's, Minh-mạng said of them: "In their examination themes, why must they demand such strangely recondite things? I regard the issuing of policy questions as being like asking questions about the Territorial Leader of the West [Hsi Po, King Wen of Chou, an ancient Chinese warrior ruler] conquering Li [an ancient st...
Western ideas were accepted in the Minh-mạng and Thiệu-trị eras. But they were accepted only in those areas of Vietnamese life where there were no well-defined Confucian prototypes of behavior to resist and distort them. Also, the court was aware of the need for innovation in its military institutions. But it was aware as well of the concomitant need, three decades after the Tây-s...
Hence it (the Dynasty) moved inconclusively between the two extremes of a closed country policy (chính sách bế môn tỏa cảng, more literally, "close the gates and lock the harbor") and what were later to be called "bread and milk studies" (học bánh tây sữa bò)—that is, the study of the culture of Westerners, renowned for their milk drinking.
The Vietnamese court definitely desired trade with Europeans, provided it could manage such trade on its own terms. It had no Chinese-style illusions that Vietnam was economically self-sufficient or that trade was merely a favor conferred upon deserving barbarians. Its own terms meant, of course, a narrowly limited number of ports for the trade, heavy bureaucratic taxation of the trade, and pro...
In dealing with the weaker Cambodians, the Nguyễn court thus adopted the Chinese scheme of tributary relations—but added its own aggressive elaborations to it. The consequence was cultural as well as military aggression, which may well have tried to compensate for the fact that the real gap in sophistication between Vietnam and Cambodia was not as great as that between China and, say, the M...
In 1834 Minh-mạng ordered that all Cambodian documents that arrived in Hue be translated directly into quốc âm (that is, into Vietnamese 國音, not classical Chinese). He formally forbade their additional translation into Chinese characters and classical Chinese.
Thus in 1815 Gia-long published a list of 13 countries which he claimed were vassals (viễn phương chư quốc lai cống<遠方諸國來貢>) of Vietnam. This list included Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Burma, France, England, Trấn Ninh (a plateau in eastern Laos), and two countries which the Vietnamese called "Water Haven" (Thủy Xá Quốc) and "Fire Haven" (Hỏa Xá Quốc). Gi...
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