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Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mang (1820-1841): Central Policies and Local Response

Choi Byung Wook

SEAPS-20, March 2004 , 226 pp. 9780877271383 paperback $20.95

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This study of nineteenth-century Vietnam focuses on interactions between the Vietnamese king, Minh Mang, and the heterogeneous southern region of the country, which he sought to bring more firmly under state control through a series of polices intended to “Vietnamize” the populace and unite north and south.

“Choi Byung Wook…begins his regionalist approach to the [Nguyen Dynasty's] foundation with a premise that challenges this restorationist view. He envisions the early Nguyen state as a new kind of multiethnic empire of unprecedented size, whose ambitions projected southward far beyond the reach of previous dynasties…Choi's regionalist argument, the crux of the book, is convincingly made, and the consequences of his argument for our understanding of the Nguyen, rebellions, the French, and the roots of revolution are so profound that this ought to be required reading for all Vietnamese specialists.” Pacific Affairs

“The strength of Choi's scholarship derives from his use of the Nguyen court chronicles in the original classical Chinese: the Nguyen Veritable Records … and the Vermilion Records. …Choi has broken new ground by historicising southern identity in the late dynastic period and in doing so has enriched a field of study which has long remained stagnant under the heavy gaze of official Vietnamese nationalist historiography.” Jacob Ramsay, Southeast Asian Studies

“Choi Byung Wook's study of what he calls the “Gia Dinh Regime” is a major contribution to our understanding of Viet Nam during the late eighteenth century and the first four decades of the nineteenth…Wook's study is a significant addition to the field of precolonial Vietnamese history. His arguments are important, nuanced, and wide-ranging, offering substantial insights concerning the complex relationship between the Gia Dinh region and the Nguyen central court. This study will become a standard reference for scholars exploring the first decades of Viet Nam's nineteenth century.” Journal of the Siam Society

“[I]t is a joy to see a scholar employing primary sources, rather than their modern Vietnamese translations, to conduct research on premoden Vietnam. It is also fabulous to see these important issues in nineteeeth-century Vietnamese history discussed in such lucid detail. [It] is a pioneering volume…” JESHO

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