The Rebel Den of Nung Trí Cao: Loyalty and Identity along the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier

6. Tempting "Treacherous Factions" : The Manipulation of Frontier Alliances on the Eve of the 1075 Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands War

I Tempting "Treacherous Factions": The Manipulation of Frontier Alliances on the Eve of the 1075 Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands War No one in either Thang Long or Kaifeng was likely to have imagined that the suppression of Nung Tn Cao would lead to war. Nonetheless, the official containment ofthe frontier chieftain eventually had the effect of escalating rather than decreasing tensions along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier region. In fact, the pacification campaign launched against NiIng Tn Cao's followers in the 1050s and the subsequent submission of strategic Tai-speaking frontier communities to the direct control of Song authorities contributed directly to the outbreak of the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands war of 1075-77. As important as it was, the factor of shifting alliances between the two courts and these frontier communities was not all-determinative in the conflict that brought about the breakdown in relations between the Chinese and Vietnamese courts. Among the other crucial influences were the Chinese court's efforts to increase frontier economic activity under the Song-sponsored reforms of the new policies initiated by the grand councilor Wang Anshi during the period 1068 to 1085 as well as the consolidation of peripheral fiefdoms undertaken by the Ly court during an accelerated period ofstate building. Nevertheless, despite other factors 119 120 Tempting "Treacherous Factions" that aggravated regional tensions, in the aftermath of open hostilities, the two courts conducted talks to negotiate a fixed border between the D~i Vi~t kingdom and the Song empire.1 These talks and the establishment of a fixed border marked a diplomatic watershed in Middle Period Sino-Vietnamese relations. In these negotiations, one must consider the role the frontier Tai-speaking communities played in shaping this firm dividing line between Chinese and Vietnamese domains. Control of these communities and their resources was an important consideration in the positions taken by both the Song and Ly negotiators. Moreover, the line of demarcation established upon the conclusion of these talks remained largely in place up to the present day. Inferring the true nature of frontier relations in this period proves to be a difficult task when a cursory reading of existing historical sources reveals only a battle between two imperial powers staged among dispossessed Tai-speaking communities. The available Chinese sources do not readily disclose local concerns, because most of the language used even by Song frontier officials in their memorials to the court couched matters in court-centered contexts. Likewise, extant imperial Vietnamese sources view this period from the perspective ofthe Ly ruler and his closest advisers at court. Efforts to gain a clearer understanding of regional interaction along the frontier in the premodern period owe a great deal to Vietnamese scholars working in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam after 1954. This group of scholars was the first to question the paradigm of a Chinese political and cultural monolith employed by French colonial writers in their assessments of Vietnamese history. Patricia Pelley notes that, "by emphasizing the ethnic heterogeneity of China, by underscoring the tenacity of regional politics in China, and by calling attention to South China's historic links to Southeast Asia, revolutionary scholars managed to reduce the apparently monolithic and overwhelmingly Han dimensions of China."2 Where these historians saw a diversity of interests among the subjects of Chinese rulers, they often read solidarity and unity among the subjects of Vietnamese kings. The unified, invariant picture created by these revolutionary scholars, of an eleventh-century Vietnamese society filled with Kinh and non-Kinh in a "united front" against Chinese aggression from the north, does not fit neatly with the picture presented in this chapter. Tempting "Treacherous Factions" 121 Much of the above-mentioned scholarship has also relied on the assumption that the Ly court prevailed in its efforts to woo the Tai-speaking communities ofthe region over to the Vietnamese. While this conclusion could be inferred from existing sources, there is a strong nationalist bias to these findings. Patriotic Vietnamese scholars in the twentieth century have long been interested in overcoming the picture ofVietnamese regional and ethnic disunity promoted in earlier French colonial scholarship. Shortly after the seizure and colonization ofVietnam in the late nineteenth century, much French colonial academic effort was devoted to the reconstruction ofVietnamese premodern society as a key to explaining the relative ease with which Vietnam fell to French domination. Pelley notes that, "to overcome this characterization, revolutionary writers were supposed to recite haranguing cliches...