Tongking in the Age of Commerce

Li Tana

Tongking in the Age of Commerce

Li Tana

Studies on the pre-modern history of Vietnam owe much to Tony Reid,whose concept of the “Age of Commerce” has enlightened and inspired a generation of younger scholars. The “traditional” Vietnam had hitherto been portrayed as an undifferentiated swamp of peasantry living in closed and identical villages -- “the Vietnamese village” -- which stretched from north to south and throughout the centuries. Reid’s representation of pre-modern Southeast Asia in relation to the rest of the world re-shaped the study of Southeast Asia and threw powerful new light onto facets of Vietnamese history and society which had previously not been properly investigated. For the fi rst time, commerce was seen as an index of power and prosperity in pre-modern Vietnam like in its other Southeast Asian counterparts. If, over the last twenty years, scholars on Vietnam have more or less demolished the image of “a united Vietnam, a village Vietnam, a Confucian Vietnam, and a revolutionary Vietnam”, this owes much to Reid for providing powerful weapons and frameworks within which new ground could be opened.

Over the last 10 years, our knowledge of seventeenth-century northern Vietnam (Tongking, or Dang Ngoai) has grown remarkably.［1］In a way this is indicative and a result of the acceleration of researches on Vietnamese history over this period. Scholars in Vietnam, sometimes in collaboration with foreignscholars, have also contributed important work to the fi eld, and much of this is based on stele inscriptions collected from northern and central Vietnam.［2］This article will build on these new fi ndings and explore the relations between Tongking’s overseas trade and social changes, particularly the cultural and religious changes in seventeenth-century Tongking society.

The Size of Seventeenth-Century Tongking's Overseas Revenue

The role of commerce in changing societies has been recognized almost everywhere in Asia, but Tongking until recently retained the image of being comprised of classic autonomous villages, with deeply-rooted Confucian values and centred of an agricultural economy. If there was any sign of significant commercial growth here, it was but a“capitalist sprout,” incidentally grown out of the soil of a typical subsistence economy. Although the existence of foreign trade was acknowledged, it was treated as an affair between the king,mandarins and foreign merchants, with little or nothing to do with the ordinary people, their petty trade, or the society. This approach of viewing foreign trade and domestic society as isolated compartments was partly due to the lack of systematic economic data.

The greatly improved field of historical studies over the last five years has shed valuable light on seventeenth century Tongking. If we were not so sure about the importance of foreign trade before this, the new researches indicate with little doubt that it was indeed signi fi cant to Tongking’s economy,comparable to the effects in other Southeast Asian countries during the Age of Commerce. Between 1637 and 1680, a yearly average of 278,900 guilders or about 90,000 taels of silver were brought into Tongking by the VOC［3］, and another 43,500 taels were brought in by the Chinese merchants.［4］This meant that about 4.3 tons of silver was fl owing into the country each year from thesetwo sources alone. George Souza points out that Portuguese ships or chos yearly brought silver or coins (caixas) to Tongking between 1626 and 1669, at about 2-3 tons per year.［5］Before the VOC and Portuguese factors came into existence,there had been a constant inflow of silver between 1604 and 1629, when Japanese silver export to Tongking was around 2.5 tons per year.［6］We have good reason to believe that Chinese investment in Tongking remained constant or increased in the early seventeenth century, one of the peaks of commercial growth in Chinese history. In the light of the work of Souza, Hoàng Anh Tuấn and Iioka on Tongking, among others, we can now safely conclude that, for roughly 80 years of the seventeenth century, Tongking yearly had an inflow of around six to seven tons of silver.［7］

This suggests that around 450,000 quan of copper cash were being annually injected into Tongking’s economy, throughout most of the seventeenth century.［8］This fi gure is signi fi cant, because it means that the foreign silver income was eight times the taxes derived from passes, ferries and markets of Tongking in the 1730s.［9］This income from exports was thus also comparable to Tongking’s southern rival Cochinchina, or Đàng Trong. The Nguyn’s annual revenue during the mid-eighteenth century was an average of 380,700 quan［10］, and two-thirds of that would have come from overseas trade.［11］The Trịnh's silver income was more than the state revenue of the eighteenth-century Nguyn.

We have thus in recent years come to know that a large volume of silver flowed into Tongking society, significant enough to influence some of the policies. But once it came into the country, where did the silver go? Are we able to trace this from the surviving evidence, in order to see the impact of this foreign silver?

A set of figures about the religious life of seventeenth-century Tongking suggests one direction. There are still thousands ofình or village halls in contemporary Vietnam and the few hundred oldest ones have steles indicating their founding years. None of these indicates that it had existed prior to the seventeenth century.［12］Another set of figure is also interesting: among the 411 Certi fi cates granted to the local deities (thn sc) by different Vietnamese courts, none of the documents was done before the seventeenth century .［13］

If the income from overseas trade gives a rough idea of the size of theseventeenth-century Tongking economy and the share of its export sector,the emergence of the communal halls and a dazzling number of deities suggest a series of lively and signi fi cant changes occurring in Tongking society overlapping with the commercial boom of the seventeenth century. The following is an attempt to trace the path of the silver in exchange, production,and consumption, so as to present seventeenth-century Tongking as a “coherent arc of change”［14］through the interactions between foreign and domestic trade,between commerce and the state, and between commerce and the society.

Was 1550-1680 a Golden Era?

Contrary to the long-held view that the sixteenth century was a regressive and desolate era in Vietnamese history, which saw the country ruled by a usurping Ṃc family, who constantly fought against the Lê-Tṛnh, recent scholarship suggests a quite different picture of Vietnamese society in this period. According to Tr̀n Qúc Vưng, it was during this period that the suffocating atmosphere of Confucian domination under Lê Thánh Tn was significantly alleviated. It was also the Mạc, according to Đinh Khc Thun,after coming to power in 1527, who reformed the country’s rapidly declining economy. Agriculture was extensively developed, and an irrigation system was built around the Mạc capital region in Hải Dương. At least 15 new bridges were built, according to the existing stele inscriptions; while revived handicrafts production stimulated the need for more markets, and overseas trade fl ourished.［15］

This renewed vigour was also manifested in the constructions of this period. A survey of the 2000 steles of the period shows that, in terms of building or renovating temples, communal halls, markets, bridges and ferries,the construction projects under the half century of Mạc rule in the sixteenth century were more numerous than the projects from c.1680 to c.1840 combined(see Figure 1 below).

The civil wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have stimulated the two Đại Việt societies. When the war with the Mạc ended in 1593,the Lê-Trịnh continued to carry out the Mạc's open-door policies, encouraging handicrafts production and foreign trade, which offered the quickest source of income to repair the damaged agricultural infrastructure in the post-war era.The early seventeenth century thus saw Tongking picking up the momentum and development of the Mạc of the sixteenth century.

But Tongking also benefitted greatly from the broader background of the booming late Ming economy, one of the greatest economic expansions in Chinese history. By the late sixteenth century, China was intimately a part of the growing global economy. The Chinese traded actively in the South China Sea commercial trading networks with silk and porcelain in exchange for silver. These two exports were precisely the same staples of Tongking. It seemed therefore, while Tongking shared the boom years of the Southeast Asian economies between 1570 and 1630, as noted by Reid［16］, it shared the same export markets and products with China. Different from other Southeast Asian countries during the Age of Commerce, whose export items were spices,pepper, and luxury trade items such as aromatics and gold, Tongking’s main export items were silk and porcelain. Tongking’s strength, in other words,rested on manufacturing, which was the most important silver earner and one of the main engines of the seventeenth-century Tongking economy.

The demand for silk from Tongking fi rst by the Japanese and then by the Dutch must have stimulated the expansion of silk production. By the late 1640s the size of raw silk production was considerable. In 1648, for example, although the Chinese offered a high price and brought 6000 piculs of Tongking raw silk to Nagasaki, the VOC was still able to buy 522 piculs of raw silk, and a good amount of pelings, velvet and other silk products to Japan, worth over 300,000 guilders. Again in 1650, while junks from China brought a total of 930 piculs of raw silk to Nagasaki, Chinese junks from northern Vietnam carried 820 piculs of Tongking raw silk, plus large amounts of silk piece goods.［17］This indicates that Tongking raw silk was competitive in Japan markets and thus was an attractive alternative to Chinese silk, both in terms of quantity and price.

The capacity of silk production of Tongking averaged 130-150 tons of raw

Under such circumstance cutting taxes to encourage domestic trade was to the government’s advantage, as the enormous silver revenue derived from foreign trade had made the income from the domestic trade sector less important anyway. It was no coincidence therefore that the Trịnh abolished tax collecting passes in the country in 1658, and in 1660 further forbade officers from charging high fees on ferries and markets.［21］In the same year the government ordered the whole country to build highways (ưng thiên lì,“roads of a thousand li”), in order“ to facilitate travel.”［22］

The half-century war with Cochinchina seems to have stimulated silk production and given it more focus, as this was the most important means for obtaining hard cash to fi nance the more advanced weapons from the West. Silk manufacturing in Tongking thus developed to a higher level and numerous silk-producing centres flourished in and around Thăng Long. New villages emerged and the seventeenth century thus was an important period in the silk and around 10,000 piece-goods a year. It would have required no less than 20,000 households or 100,000 labourers to produce the amount.［18］But since 90% of silk production was women’s work and silk was a sideline production,the households involved in the silk production would have been three or four times the 20,000 figure. In response to the demand for silk, and the silver fl owing in, the number of Vietnamese peasants involved in silk production in the seventeenth century would have been considerable. Raw silk production is a labour-intensive business. A study of the silk-producing areas in China indicates that if the cycle of rice-planting on an acre of land requires 76 days,tending an acre of mulberry trees needs 196 days. Silkworm tending is equally labour-intensive and labour is usually 30-50% of the total production cost.［19］If we are not clear whether silkworm tending, cocooning, and spinning were done by the same family, we do know that dying operations were performed by specialised villages［20］,and silk piece-good producers de fi nitely bought raw silk rather than producing their own. So there were layers in the silk production,circulation and export sectors, each relying on the other, and all demanding some co-ordination. These in turn relied on agricultural productivity, transport and commerce, as these provided the necessary materials, food, transport and commercial links.history of settlement of the Red River Delta. Archaeological fi ndings in a tenyear Japanese project on the history of village formation in the Nam Định area reveals that a new landscape was made during the seventeenth century,possibly by both land expansion of the older villages and establishment of new settlements.［23］

New cash crops were introduced and became rapidly popular. Tobacco was brought into Tongking in the early 1660s from Laos and soon became an essential part of ordinary people’s life.“Officers, common people and women all compete to get addicted to it, so much so that there is a saying that, ‘one can do without eating for three days but cannot do without smoking for one hour’”.［24］The method of brewing rice wine came from Guangdong but was originally from Siam, according to Lê Quý Đôn. This involved “adding aromatics to the wine which was called a-la-ke (arrack).”［25］Corn was also brought in during the seventeenth century. Although its Vietnamese name is Lúa Ngô (the crop of Ngô, i.e. the Chinese), the method of planting using a knife to dig a hole and plant the seed suggested that it might have been introduced into Tongking from the mountain peoples. The Sơn Tây region even came to rely on corn as its staple food. Both corn and sorghum became important crops in the bordering provinces with China.［26］The seventeenth century was in many ways a “‘golden era’ and gave birth to an unprecedented commercial system”, as described by Hoang Anh Tuan.［27］The next sections examine this golden era.

The First Indicator: Expanded Construction

There is no doubt that a large percentage of the silver earned in the seventeenth century went to the war effort. According to De Rhodes, Tongking had at least 500 galleys, three times more than Cochinchina, and superior to those of Cochinchina in their size, armaments and decorations. The soldiers were well trained and disciplined, and skilfully used all weapons, as was shownby the pistols and arquebuses which they fi red with admirable skill.［28］

I will concentrate here however, on the expanded consumption resulting from this unprecedented inflow of silver. To begin with, the court spent considerably on the building and renovation of the capital, particularly the palaces. In 1630 alone, three palaces were built for the Lê king, together with another sixteen new buildings.［29］The funds spent on the Tṛinh lord’s palaces were carefully not recorded but must have been comparable to those used for the king’s residence. Government of fi ces were enlarged and renovated.An example was the enlargement of the Chiêu SHall of the Trịnh lord in 1663, where gold and red lacquer was extravagantly utilized.［30］Together the Vietnamese capital made an impressive sight for De Rhodes, who described Kẻ Chas“ a very large, very beautiful city where the streets are broad, the people numberless, the circumference of the walls at least six leagues around”.［31］

Because the Tṛinh lord did not monopolise the silk trade, enough space was left for ordinary people to make pro fi ts. In 1644, for example, among the raw silk the VOC purchased from Tongking, only 21% was bought from the Tṛinh lord and the local mandarins, and about 80% was bought from the local people.［32］Income from silk production was about 39 piculs (or 2,331 kg.)of rice, enough for a household of five to live on.［33］The silk income mainly fl owed from the coast to the regions around the capital area, and these were the areas where concentrated construction occurred. In the absence of information on civilian residence construction, the steles recording constructions and renovations of temples (chùa), communal halls (ình), markets, bridges and ferries suf fi ce to show that there was a construction boom in Tongking between 1500 and 1680.

Fig 1: Соnstruсtiоn аnd rеnоvаtiоn оf tеmрlеs, mаrkеts аnd bridgеs in Tоnking 1500-1840

What was also remarkable is that the most rapid growth in construction occurred in the neighbouring provinces of two major urban centres - Hanoi and Ph́ Hín – rather than in the two centres themselves. Construction in Hải Dương and Hưng Yên provinces was fi ve times more than that of Hanoi, while Băc Ninh province doubled Hanoi, and Hà Ty equalled that of Hanoi.［34］This suggested that there was fairly large volume of capital available in the society.Tongking’s urbanization in the Age of Commerce thus was represented more by the mushrooming village markets, more extensive market networks and more frequent exchanges, than the construction of large cities. The reason that these provinces saw the most remarkable growth was the handicraft industry.An important characteristic of seventeenth-century silk production in Tongking was that the producers were not producing household surplus but were manufacturing for the overseas markets. Although the producers continued to live in farming households, they specialised in parts of the production process,relying on markets. The markets will be the focus of the section below.

The Second Indicator: The Extension of Markets

Although the people of Tongking did not generally engage in sea commerce, the trade on ports and rivers was frequent, and pro fi t considerable,according to De Rhodes.

Yеt withоut lеаving thе Κingdоm … mеrсhаnts dо а lоt оf businеss, thаnks tо thе соnvеniеnсе аnd multitudе оf thе роrts, аnd in а mаnnеr sо аdvаntаgеоus fоr thеm thаt thеу dоublе thеir сарitаl twо оr thrее timеs in а уеаr withоut running thе risks sо соmmоn еvеrуwhеrе аt sеа. Fоr аlоng аll thе соаst оf thе Κingdоm оf Аnnаm, ехtеndеd fоr mоrе thаn 350 Frеnсh lеаguеs, уоu соunt а gооdlу fiftу роrts, аblе tо wеlсоmе аt lеаst tеn оr twеlvе lаrgе shiрs, аt thе mоuths оf sо mаnу rivеrs.［35］

Markets proliferated around the country – village markets, district markets, morning and afternoon markets - when the pace of production was quickened. Most of them appeared around the ports and rivers. On the Red River, according to Nguyn Đc Nghinh, in a distance of mere 10 kilometres,“there was a whole string of riverside markets.”［36］The dense network of waterways in the Red River Delta facilitated travel, trade, and transport of heavy and cumbersome merchandise.

Travel by land also became frequent and easy, facilitated by many inns or guesthouses which mushroomed during this Age of Commerce. A map of the mid-seventeenth century was accompanied by an interesting description of the routes and suggestions for places to stay, not unlike the Lonely Planet these days:［37］

Find а niсе dау tо stаrt уоur jоurnеу frоm thе сарitаl, in thе еаrlу mоrning.Trаvеl fоr а dау аnd уоu stау in thе (quа́n) LΙnn, sесоnd dау in thе С́t Ιnn,third dау in Са́t Ιnn, fоurth dау in Vа̣n Ιnn, fi fth dау in Во̀ tụс Ιnn, siхth dау in Hоа̀ng Маi, sеvеnth dау in Sо̀ Ιnn, еighth dау in Vinh Маrkеt (Сh), аnd thе ninth dау аt Nhа̀ Вridgе (Сầu). On thе 10thdау уоu stау in Lа̣с Ιnn, 11thdау inΚhе-lаu Ιnn; 12thdау in Phù-lưu Маrkеt, аnd оn thе 15thdау аnd а hаlf уоu stау in L-ăng Ιnn.

These inns seemed to suggest the existence of fairly dense and evenly distributed regional marketing networks. This contrasts with the density of the markets in northern and central Vietnam in the year 1417, recorded by the Ming documents. According to this source, there was a rough average of one market in every 50 villages, with great variation between the coast and the upland regions. On the coast where markets were more easily found,the density of markets was an average of one market per 10 villages.［38］A great many village markets emerged and thrived in the seventeenth century.According to Nguyn Đc Nghinh, the surviving documents suggest that 15 out of 17 temple markets came into being in the seventeenth century.［39］Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, a Vietnamese scholar who has done research on 1063 inscriptions found in Kinh Băc (today’s Băc Ninh and Băc Giang provinces), also points out that the majority of markets in Kinh Băc recorded in steles were established in the seventeenth century, during this “peak of the commercial economy in premodern Vietnam.”［40］The average of village markets of her data gives us one market per 4.4 villages in this province.［41］

Village markets mushroomed because of the rapidly growing need for exchange. Producers of raw silk, cotton and cotton thread for example needed markets to sell the products, and some markets were established to cater to that need.［42］Establishing a market was also a relative quick way to obtain cash income. According to a seventeenth- century inscription of a market in Hanoi suburb, textile sellers were to pay 5 tin (60 cash) per head, and each pork stall had to pay 2 quan (1200 cash). These rules however were applied to the traders from outside only, while the host villagers enjoyed a total or partial tax exemption.［43］Since a market was an income generator for the village in which it was located and the main purpose was to attract traders from the outside,villagers were keen to set up markets in their own villages but careful to avoid overlapping with the market days of the nearby villages. The folkloric saying in the region near Nam Định thus goes:

On thе 1stаnd 7thdауs gо tо Luоng mаrkеt,

On thе 2ndаnd 6th, tо Ninh Сuоng, оn thе 5thаnd 9thtо Dоng Вiеn.

Thе 4thаnd 10thаrе mаrkеt dауs аt Соn Сhаm,

On thе 3rdаnd 8thdауs, it’s thе turn оf Dоn аnd Trung.

Аt Hоm Dinh, thе mаrkеt is сrоwdеd in thе mоrning,

Whilе Phе Sаu is full tоwаrd nооn аnd sо is Саu оn thе rivеrsidе.

Nеаrbу is Phuоng Dе, whilе Dаu ореns in thе mоrning.

On оdd dауs lеt’s gо tо Соn Сос, аnd оn еvеn dауs tо Dоng Сuоng.

O trаdеrs, Quаn Аnh is full оf mаrkеts whеrе уоu саn buу аnd sеll!［44］

The development of handicraft villages, together with advantageous land and water transportation, gave rise to many trade markets and trade villages in Kinh Băc. The Đoan Minh pagoda in 1693 said that “we had a Buddhist market from the previous dynasty [i.e. Mạc] which met 12 times a month to sell earthen wares and ceramics. Traders piled up their stocks in mounds, wealth and goods were always in circulation. Each and every household had its own kiln to make utensils, and each autumn there was a festival for celebration”.［45］

Because of the financial benefit the village markets brought in, conflicts occurred frequently over the possession of a certain market. For example,when the villagers of CLoa determined to fi ght a lawsuit over the ownership of the market against the neighbouring village of Duc Tu, they agreed that “the population of CLoa unanimously pledged to see the lawsuit through to the end, whatever the costs.” Should the lawsuit be lost and the representatives of C̉ Loa were fl ogged at the court, “the population of the village would raise money to indemnify them, at the rate of 2 tin (or 120 cash) for each lash he received.”［46］

The number of vendors must have mushroomed. Again De Rhodes had a unique way to measure them, by way of counting the betel-nut traders in Thăng Long:

Thе mоrе соmfоrtаblе реорlе hаvе sеrvаnts whо рrераrе thе расkеt [оf bеtеl nuts], but tо suррlу thе rеst оf thе реорlе … whо hаvе nо оnе in thеir sеrviсе tо рrераrе it fоr thеm, wе соunt uр tо 50,000 dеаlеrs whо fоr а mоdеst рriсе sеll it in vаriоus раrts оf thе tоwn; frоm whiсh it is nесеssаrу tо соnсludе thаt thе numbеr оf реорlе whо buу it is inеstimаblу grеаt.

Most, if not all of these betel-nut vendors would have been women. To have good business, as a Vietnamese proverb goes, the best place is close to the market, and the second best is close to a river (Nh́t cn thị, nhị cận giang), so travel became important. A government edict of 1663, which issued 47 rules to maintain social order, con fi rms that travel had become an important part of life for ordinary people. These rules include Number 20, “Inns should be careful not to provide venues for illicit sexual activities, while not rejecting guests who are seeking accommodation”. Rule Number 18 also related to lifestyle in the public space: “Men and women are not to indulge themselves in sexual debauchery (肆淫風).”［47］

The picture of women busy along the rivers or crossing on ferries was portrayed by Tú Xương, a Vietnamese writer of the late nineteenth century,when he described his wife as follows:

Аll уеаr rоund уоu аrе busу trаding аt thе rivеrsidе,

Eаrning еnоugh tо fееd 5 сhildrеn аnd оnе husbаnd.

Slеерing аlоnе, уоu tоss аnd turn in bеd,

Сrоssing оn thе fеrrу, уоu сhаt hаррilу оn thе rivеr.［48］

The more relaxed atmosphere and more important role in silk production and commerce “gives great liberty to the young women, who offer themselves of their own account to any strangers, who will go to their price (from 5 to 100 dollars).”［49］This was not unlike, in the eyes of the VOC factors, their colleagues in Japan who enjoyed Japanese wives, or the company employees in Ayutthaya who courted and lived with the Siamese and Mon women. As Reid points out,interracial unions were a feature of all the commercial cities of Southeast Asia.［50］It was those women traders, according to Olga Dror, who were able to travel around the country protected by Liu Hạnh’s cult.［51］This female deity, a singing girl, a geisha, or a prostitute when she was alive, emerged from the coast as a most powerful female spirit in the seventeenth century, at least as potent as other male deities.

The Third Indicator: The Thrivingi nh

While the impact of silver was re fl ected in many aspects of the society, it is even easier to trace the silver used for the founding ofình. Theình, we are told, was a communal hall, and both a product and the symbol of the ancient and autonomous villages in which they were situated. Yet, the earliest stele inscriptions found in aình only goes back to the sixteenth century, and most of theình were founded from the seventeenth century onward. This contrasts sharply with Buddhist temples, where stele inscriptions go as far back as 618 AD.［52］The stele inscriptions of theình in other words, indicate their rather late founding dates, and can hardly support the view that these symbolise the ancient villages.

Весаusе thе [соuntrу] is hоt, thеrе аrе оftеn раviliоns (ình) built аlоng thе big rоаds (通衕) tо rеst thе trаvеllеrs. Веfоrе thе fi rst Trаn king bесаmе а king аs wаs still but а tееnаgеr, hе mеt а Вuddhist mоnk whо рrеdiсtеd thаt hе wоuld bесоmе in fl uеntiаl whеn hе grеw uр…whеn hе bесаmе thе king, hе оrdеrеd thаt еvеrуình in thе соuntrу build а stаtuе оf Вuddhа in thаnks tо thе mоnk.［55］

From the above information we can glean that before the sixteenth century theình was a simple building combining the functions of restingplace for travellers and courier station. The official Ming documents in the year 1417 recorded 339 courier stations 驛 in northern and central Vietnam.［56］Some of them likely overlapped with pavilions (ình) or indeed were the pavilions themselves.［57］It also suggests that no deity had existed in theình orpavilions before the Tr̀n Dynasty. The fundamental and earlier function ofình, in other words, was to assist in linking different places through travel and trade. This extroversive nature of the earlyình was overwritten by the scholars from the seventeenth century, who emphasised the nature of theình as a property possessed by only the villagers within a certain community,as against other communities. The locations of theình however betray such a view. According to Hà Văn T́n, they were often built along the rivers, and faced towards the river［58］, rather than being in the heart of the village.

Here we can clearly see how VOC silver passed into theìnhs. The capados or eunuchs were the most feared and hated people of the VOC factors in Tongking. They had the ears of the Tṛinh lord and were the ones directly involved with collecting taxes and engaging in negotiations. This put them into the best position to squeeze silver out of the VOC. In 1650 alone, other than the 25,000 taels paid to the Tṛinh lord and 10,000 to the Crown Prince, the VOC paid 10,000 taels to the fi ve chief eunuchs.［64］

Not surprisingly eunuchs became the richest people after the Lê-Trịnh rulers, if we take the donations of Bc Ninh province as examples. Among the donations made toình, temples and other public properties, 44 were made by queens and court women, 71 were made by Lê-Tṛinh government of fi cers, and 99 were made by the eunuchs. What is really telling however was the quantity of donations. While no officer’s donation was more than 8 mu of land, and the total land of 71 donations by the of fi cers was below 200 mu, in 1655, one eunuch alone donated 44 mu and 300 taels of best silver, plus 210 strings of copper coins.［65］

Here we see a crucial income flow from overseas trade feeding almost directly into the founding ofìnhs. Much wealth generated or squeezed from the foreign merchants came to the court, to government officials and particularly to the eunuchs. A considerable amount in turn fl owed from them to serve religious purposes, particularly building and renovating temples and communal halls. Manyìnhs could not have been founded without the direct involvement of some of the eunuchs, as the examples above indicate. The most visible avenues of silver disbursement were to two destinations. One went to the constructions ofình, and the other to the building of temple markets.Many new temple markets were built in the seventeenth century, although itwas one of the oldest forms of market in Vietnam.［66］

A large amount of silver fl owed into the pockets of the rich and powerful,in other words, was directly involved in the restructuring of theình and the local religion of thành hoàng worship, and in the fl ourishing of temple markets.Remarkably both establishments were created to generate more financial income to serve religious functions. What is also important here is that Tongking in the Age of Commerce did see the fl ourishing of a universal religion,in this case Buddhism, as pointed out by Anthony Reid, but along with this development, the worship of local spirits mushroomed, many of them housed under the roof of theình, in this age of religious revolution. In fact, if there was anything remarkable in the religious aspect of Tongking society, it was not the revival of Buddhism or Confucianism, but the emergence and worship of hundreds of spirits. Although about a dozen deities had been worshipped before the fifteenth century in Đại Việt［67］, the seventeenth century saw the flourishing of hundreds of deities, and none had been heard of before.A seventeenth-century Chinese traveler thus reported“:[Vietnamese] read fairly widely, and are literate, but they fancy strange and wield things…[They] worship shamans and spirits, not the two religions [Confucianism and Buddhism].”［68］

The Formation of Village Literati

It is puzzling that the rather rapid commercialisation, easier travel, more frequent mobility, width of choice in local religion and more relaxed social relations which were displayed in seventeenth-century Tongking society, it was to develop into a much more village-based society by the late seventeenth century. Here a view by a well-known Vietnamese scholar Phan Đài Doãn is worth pondering. He noted that Confucianism of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Tongking was typically rural, which made it different from its contemporary and more urban-based Confucianist counterpart in southernChina.［69］Tongking’s literati of this period also contrasted sharply to their forefathers of the Lý and Tr̀n periods. In those earlier periods the aristocrats were mostly aristocrats and more urban-based.

The dramatic political upheavals of the sixteenth century brought drastic changes at the elite level–Lê to Mạc, and Mạc to Lê-Trịnh within half a century,each producing a different group of aristocrats. Here “social disorder” literally and repeatedly occurred. When the Mạc fell, the temples owned by them became the property of villages, as did the temples privately owned by the aristocrats.［70］These village temples played important roles in binding villagers together.

The easier access to wealth and to cheap, printed books brought into Tongking by Chinese merchants expanded the size of village-based literati.From the late sixteenth century onwards the cost of printing in the Yangzi River Delta dropped dramatically. Different from other Southeast Asian countries,where the Chinese junks that visited were predominantly from Guangdong and Fujian, the Chinese junks visiting Tongking most frequently in the late seventeenth century were those from Ningbo, the port of the Yangzi River delta and the centre of print culture.［71］Cheap and abundant Chinese books therefore played an important role in raising literacy levels and enlarging the base of the literati. From this point of view, the literati revival of the late seventeenth century in northern Vietnam cannot be separated from the print culture fl ourishing in the Yangzi River delta. Nor can it be separated from the Japan trade, which was the main driver of the Asian trade in general, and book export in particular.［72］In other words, the “traditional” “Confucian” “village”values of the Vietnamese elites was built precisely upon the mass production of the Chinese print industry from the late sixteenth century onward. The books brought into Vietnam by the merchants formed the stock of knowledge, and served as important sources for the newly-developed approaches to textual interpretation, biography and historiography in the eighteenth century.［73］

Although the conventional view tends to put literati and merchants at two poles far apart from each other and sharing little, the stele inscriptions indicate that most scholars who passed examinations were from Hải Dương and Kinh Băc, the two provinces that had the highest level of commercialisation. Theplaces where the largest percentage of stele inscriptions is found were villages with a more developed economy of handicrafts and trade,［74］rather than purely agriculture-based villages.［75］The material foundation of the village-based literati was to a large extent the trade and commercialisation of the society during this period.

■NOTES

[1] Hoàng Anh Tuấn“,Silk for Silver: Dutch-Vietnamese Relations, 1637-1700”(Ph.D dissertation, University of Leiden, 2006); Iioka Naoko, “Literati Entrepreneur: Wei Zhiyan in the Tonkin-Nagasaki Silk Trade” (Ph.D dissertation , National University of Singapore,2009); Olga Dror, Cult, Culture, and Authority: Princess Lieu Hanh in Vietnamese History(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007); for new studies on Vietnamese villages, see Philippe Papin and Olivier Tessier (eds.), Làng ở vùng châu th̉ sông H̀ng: V́ncòn bngỡ [The village in questions] (Hanoi: Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient/Trung tâm Khoa học xã hội và Nhân văn Qúc gia, 2002).

[2] Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thời Lê x́ Kinh Bc và sphản ánh sing hoạt làng xa [The Stelae of the Kinh Bac Region during the Lê Period: Re fl ections of Village Life], (Hanoi:Bibliotheque vietnamienne-VIII and Ecole franaise d'Extrême-Orient, 2003); Đinh Khc Thuân, Ḷich sử trìu Mạc qua thư tich và văn bia [A history of the Mac through books and inscriptions] (Hanoi: Nhà xút bản Khoa học xã hội, 2001).

[5] George Bryan Souza, The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630-1754 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 111-115.The figure of 2-3 tons came from personal communications with Prof. Souza. My deep gratitude to him for his advice.

[6] Japanese exports of silver to Southeast Asia were 20 tons per year between 1604 and 1629,and the percentage of Red Seal ships which sailed to Tonking was 12.4%. See AnthonyReid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680. Volume Two: Expansion and Crisis (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 18, 24.

[7] This did not include the investment of the English and the French during the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

[8] The silver/cash ratio fl uctuated between 1 tael: 2000 cash and 1: 1300 cash, and sometimes dropped to as low as 1 tael: 500 cash in the 1650s, when there was a high in fl ow of silver from the VOC. See Hoàng Anh Tún, pp.178-179. The average ratio was still around 1 tael:2 quan, as recorded by Phan Huy Chú. See Phan Huy Chú, Lịch trìu hìn chơng loại chí [A reference book of the institutions of successive dynasties], 3 volumes (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản khoa ḥc xã ḥi, 1992), 2: 243.

[9] Taxes collected from passes (1732): 26731 quan; taxes from ferries (1732): 2737 quan; Taxes from markets (1727): 1660 quan. Total: 31128 quan. Phan Huy Chú, Lịch trìu hín chơng loại chí, 2:268-270.

[10] Li Tana and Anthony Reid (eds.), Southern Vietnam under the Nguyn: Documents on the Economic History of Cochinchina (Dang Trong), 1602-1777, Economic History of Southeast Asia Project (Canberra & Singapore: ANU/ISEAS, 1993), p.118. Silver: cash ratio 1:2 quan.

[12] Văn khắc Hán-Nôm Việt Nam [Steles in Han-Nom characters in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Social Science Publishing House, 1993), pp.27-192.

[13] Liu Chun Yin, Lin Qing Zhao and Tran Nghia (eds.), Yuenan hannan wenxian mulu tiyao[Catalogue and Abstracts of Han-Nom textual material in Vietnam] (Taipei: Asia-Paci fi c Studies Centre, Academic Sinica, 2004), Supplement vol. 1, pp.1-127.

[14] Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1999), p. xvii.

[16] Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, vol. 2, pp.17-24.

[18] The VOC’s exports comprised 90 tons of raw silk and 6000 piece-goods in a good year in the mid-seventeenth century; Chinese export were equivalent to two-thirds of the VOC figures; the yield and income are based on Hoàng Anh Tún, “Silk fоr Silvеr”, pp.181-182.

[19] John Lossing Buck, Land Utilization in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937), p.302.

[20] Cotton thread was made by some specialised villages to supply the textile-weaving villages.Vú Đc Thơm ,“Bcu tìm hỉu v̀ cây bông trongi śng của ngi nông dân trc năm 1945Quỳnh Côi” [Towards an understanding of cotton planting in peasants’livelihood before 1945], in Hồi thảo khoa học ngời dân Thái Bình trong lịch s̉ [Proceedings of the conference on the people of Thai Binh], (Thái Bình: Bộ phần lịch sdân tộc, ban nghiên cu lịch sĐảng̉nh Thái B̀nh, 1986), p. 417.

[21] Phan huy Chú, Ḷich trìu hín chơng loại chí, 2: 267.

[23] Nishimura Masanari and Nishino Noriko“, Archaeological study of the settlement formation in the Red River Plain: a case of Bach Coc and the surrounding” (Paper presented at the conference‘Vietnamese Peasant Activity: An Interaction between Culture and Nature’,Leiden, 28-31 August 2002), p.10.

[24] Lê Quý Đôn. Văn Đài Loại Ng[Classi fi ed talk from the study], (Saigon: Phủ quốc vụ khanh ǎc trách Văn hóa, 1973), vol. 3, pp. 34b-35a.

[25] Lê Quý Đôn. Văn Đài Loại Ng, p. 40a.

[26] Lê Quý Đôn. Văn Đài Loại Ng, p. 49b.

[28] Alexandre de Rhodes, Histoire du royaume du Tonkin, edited by Jean-Pierre Duteil (Paris:Éditions Kimé, 1999), pp. 33-36. My thanks to Nola Cooke for translating the relevant sections for me.

[31] See Solange Hertz (trans.), Rhodes of Vietnam: the travels and missions of Father Alexander de Rhodes in China and other kingdoms of the Orient (Westminter, Maryland: The Newman Press,1966), p. 64.

[32] Hoàng Anh Tuấn“,Silk fоr Silvеr”, p. 140.

[33] The VOC exported 90 tons of raw silk and 6000 piece-goods in a good year in the midseventeenth century; Chinese exports were two-thirds of those of the VOC; the yield and income are based on Hoàng Anh Tún“, Silk fоr Silvеr”, pp.181-182.

[34] Interestingly, this pattern is repeated in contemporary Vietnam. The 2006 growth rates ofHưng Yên, Vinh Phúc, Hải Dương and Hà Tây near Hanoi were between 23% and 28.3%;while Bình Dương and Đồng Nai provinces near Ho Chi Minh City were 23.4% and 21.2% respectively. The GDP growth rates of the two major cities were 12% and 11%respectively.

[35] Alexandre de Rhodes, Histoire du royaume du Tonkin, p. 58.

[38] Ngannan tche yuan (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extreme-Orient, 1932), vol. 2, pp. 61-63.

[40] Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Bc, p. 166.

[41] Phạm Tḥi Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Bc, pp. 166-170. See“諒江府安勇縣玉林社福嚴寺” “,集市碑記”“,二社共論碑記”, an d“開市立碑”。

[42]“They sell cotton thread to people outside the county, even those from Hà Đông would come and buy cotton thread here.” Vữ Đc Thơm“. Bưcu tìm hỉu”, p. 417.

[45] Phạm Tḥi Thủy Vinh. Văn bia thi Lê xKinh B́c, p. 221.

[49] Quoted from Hoàng Anh Tún, p. 174.

[50] Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680. Volume One: The Lands Below the Winds (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 155.

[51] Dror, Cult, Culture, and Authority, p. 81.

[52] Not even one earlier stele inscriptions was collected from a dinh. See Phan Văn Các &Claudine Salmon, Épigraphie en chinois du Viêt Nam = Văn khán Hán Nôm Viêt Nam (Paris:Presses de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient; Hà Nôi: Vien nghiên cuu Hán Nôm, 1998).

[55] The practice of placing statues of Buddha in the pavilions seemed to have disappeared in the fi fteenth century, perhaps during Lê Thánh Tôn’s reign. The oldest dinhs existing in Vietnam still do not have any deity. See Hà Văn T́n and Nguyn Văn K, Đình Việt Nam, p.83.

[56] Ngannan tche yuan, vol. 2, pp. 61-63.

[60] My calculations are based on Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Băc, pp. 573-587.[61] For example, the“ Hau than bia ky” in the year 1682, in Mai Dinh village, Hiep Hoa district,Bac Ha prefecture, see Phạm Thì.Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Băc, p.574; the“ Phùng sh̀u th̀n”, of 1694, No. 3905-3912-13; the“ Cảm ơn duc bi” of 1683 in An Tru village,Lương Tài district, Băc Ninh province, no.6008-11;“ Phùng sh̀u th̀n bi”, No.3905; 3912-13 in Hán-Nôm Institute.

[62] No.2355-56, Hán-Nôm Institute“, Hung tao Minh dinh bi”; also see Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh,Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Băc, p. 610.

[63] No.2345-47, Hán-Nôm Institute“, Vinh tran am bi”; Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Băc, p. 612.

[64] Hoàng Anh Tuấn,“ Silk for silver”, p. 90.

[65] Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Băc, p. 610.

[66] In 1632, for example, the marquis of Van Nghien from Hải Hưng founded a market and offered it to a pagoda; in 1650 another marquis named Võ also bought a plot of land toset up a market which was later donated to a pagoda. NguyĐc Nghinh, “Markets and Villages”, p. 333.

[68] [Qing dynasty] Li Xiangen李仙根, “Annan zaji”安南雜記 [Miscellaneous notes on Annam],collected in Congshu jicheng chubian: Annan zhuan ji qita erzhong (Shanghai: Shangwu Press,1937), p. 2.

[69] Phan Đài Doãn,“Introduction”, in Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê xKinh Bc, p. 208.

[71] 1689: April 28 (ship no. 42): statement of Lin Ganteng: There were two ships which visited Tongking from Ningpo in the March-April period. Another statement by Jiang Chouquan from Xiamen (ship no. 44) said that the two ships would soon head back to Ningpo. See Chen Chingho, “Chinese Junk Trade at Nagasaki at the Beginning of the Qing Dynasty”,New Asia Journal, no.1, vol. 3 (1960): 273-332. 250. For other references to ships trading to Nagasaki from Tonking, see Kai-hentai華夷変態 (Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 1958):1690: ship no. 87 (June 22) Ningpo ship, came from Tongking. (vol. 2, pp. 1285-86);1691: ship no. 18(Jan. 27), Ningpo ship from Tongking (vol. 2, pp. 1316-17)；1692: ship no. 59, (May 27),Tongking-Tongking (vol. 2, pp. 1471-72)；1693: ship no. 58, (June 3), Ningpo ship from Tongking (vol. 2, pp. 1565-66)；1698: ship no. 70 (June 16), Ningpo ship from Tongking.(vol. 3, pp. 2022)；1699: ship no. 37 (May 16), Ningpo ship from Tongking. (vol. 3, pp.2065-66)；1708: ship no. 101 (June 5), Guangdong ship from Tongking (vol. 3, p. 2580)；1710: ship no. 52 (July 10), Ningpo ship from Tongking (vol. 3, p. 2680)；1711: ship no. 55(June 22), Ningpo ship from Tongking. (vol. 3, pp. 2689-90)；1712: ship no. 62 (July 16),Tongking ship via Putuo Shan. (vol. 3, p. 2690)

[72] Keith Taylor, “The Literati Revival in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies XVIII, no. 1 (March, 1987): 1-23.

[73] Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830.(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 404-405.

[74] Phạm Thị Thủy Vinh, Văn bia thi Lê, p.228. See also Thinh Liet village in Shaun Malarney,“Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam”, PhD dissertation, University of Michgan, 1993, p.xiv.

[75]“The chief riches, and indeed the only commodity, is silk, raw and wrought”from Samuel Baron, “A Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen” (1685), in Views of Seventeenth-Century Vietnam: Christoforo Borri on Cochinchina, and Samuel Baron on Tonkin, introduced and annotated by Olga Dror and K.W. Taylor (Ithaca: SEAP, 2006), p. 210. According to Hoàng Anh Tuấn, the main silk-producing areas were Sơn Tây, Băc Ninh, Hải Dương and Sơn Nam. These were also the places from where the highest number of persons passing examinations came. See Hoàng Anh Tuấn,“ Silk fоr Silvеr”, p. 41.

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