Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This study examines 15th-century Melaka's significant role as the primary intermediary eastern maritime port-of-trade between the Indian Ocean and China. It addresses the strategic South China Sea Jiaozhu Vietnam coastline passage to the Ming court's newly designated southern China Guangzhou port. It replaced Quangzhou to the north as the preeminent port of China's eastern Asia maritime trade. In 1371 the Ming China court restricted its foreign maritime trade beyond China. In response Chinese and multi-ethnic maritime diasporas based in Southeast Asia ports traveled the South China Sea to the Eastern and Western Indian Oceans and in doing so sustained a post-1400 substantive intermediary transit trade network that connected southern China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and east-coast of Africa.

Abstract
The expansion of the Sông Cái (Red River) delta combined with the first Chinese diaspora and settlement in the region led to the Chen/Trần clan emerging and rising to power in the polity of Ðại Việt 大越. Emerging among the Ngô (吳 Sino-Vietnamese) community in the lower delta, the Trần 陳 emphasized the agricultural development of this area as they built their power. I approach Trần rule in three phases: 1220s–1260s, 1260s–1330s, and 1330s–1420. In the first phase, under the tight clan control of Trần Thủ Ðộ, the Trần developed Ðại Việt in their own form within the existing Viet pattern, politically, administratively, and economically. After Thủ Ðộ's death, the clan reformed, as a new generation of princes first fought off the Mongols, then retired to their country estates, leading to a decentralization of power. To counter this decentralization, the kings and the court developed their Thiền Buddhism of the Trúc Lâm school. But in the end this was not successful, and in the third phase the court turned to a brand of Chinese Classical thought (that of Han Yu) in the face of many calamities, natural and social. Eventually three political and ideological crises emerged, the Champa invasions (1370–1390), the seizure of power by Lê/Hồ Quý Ly (1380–1407), and the Ming conquest and occupation (1407–1427) turning Ðại Việt into its province of Jiaozhi. Each crisis led to deeper Sinic ideological penetration.

2010 saw the millennial celebration of Thăng Long/Hà Nội as capital of an independent Vietnam, and archaeology has tended to confirm this strong sense of continuity. Yet study of written texts shows us how political power, administrative style, and religious belief have shaped the city and how a cyclical pattern in this history has appeared twice and may be in its third time. In this pattern, each cycle saw the city begin as the provincial capital of an external power before becoming capital of an independent Vietnamese state. Then a local base draws power to itself and displaces Thăng Long, eventually dismantling it, before a new external power enters and begins the cycle anew. In this way the Tang and Ming dynasties of China and the French made the site their local administrative center. Lý Công Uẩn, Lê Lợi, and Hồ Chí Minh in succession drove them out and established Thăng Long/Hà Nội as their capital, bringing Buddhism, Confucianism, and Socialism to it. But first the Trần and Hồ, then the Mạc, Trịnh, and Nguyễn, shared power with, and eventually displaced, the Royal City. Will it happen again?

The surge in Song foreign trade affected Ða[under dot]i Viê[under dot]t greatly, helping to integrate the upper and lower valley of the Red River first economically in the twelfth century, then politically with the rise of the Trâ[grave accent above]n dynasty in the thirteenth, and finally culturally in the fourteenth. Coastal wealth, power and classical Chinese scholarship entered the inland capital of Thăng Long (Hanoi) and strongly influenced it, leading to major changes across the land.

To review a volume such as this in this journal is a bit tricky. I am not an historian of the United States nor of its diplomatic history. Rather I am a pre-modern historian of Vietnam looking at a book on American legislative history that deals with Vietnam and our war in that country. I shall seek to examine it from a more Vietnamese point of view.