[Hybrid] Korea and Vietnam in the Nineteenth Century: Colonialism, Monarchy, and Imperial Ideology in East Asia

Dr. Duc Liem Vu (left) and Dr. Joshua Van Lieu

Wednesday, March 13, 2024
3:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Bunche Hall, Room 10383

Roundtable Panel Information 

1. Vietnamese expansionism and the practice of empire in the early 19th century

Presented by Dr. VU Duc Liem 

The modern world was dominated by Western empires. Their patterns of operation define the way conventional scholarship views imperialism and colonialism. At the same time, Vietnamese nationalist historiography, which came out from 20th-century colonial experiences, perceives the country’s past through a victim’s lens in which Vietnam, a peace-loving country, was constantly subjected to foreign invaders and aggressive empires, ranging from imperial China, Japan and Western colonial powers to the Khmer Rouge Regime. This research is intended to explore the historical experiences of another Vietnam’s past – one that greatly contributed to its modern territorial form: expansionism. In fact, Vietnam as we know it today is the product of a vast range of expansions over time and their effects are still with us today. By investigating early 19th-century Vietnamese imperial enlargement into the Mekong region, this paper addresses some of the overall issues of state expansion in traditional Vietnam, the questions of expansionism, imperialism and colonialism, and the relevance of such terminology in the Vietnamese context. They include the terms “opening up” (kaifa 開發) and Nam tien (Southern Advances) to describe the mechanism by which Vietnamese imperial states expanded into neighbouring areas over time. In some circumstances, these terms imply to readers an almost natural, perhaps inevitable or even desirable process of social, economic, political, military, and “civilizational” growth. The Viet’s colonial mechanism ranges from administrative establishment to redefining social and demographic categories, such as the transformation from “a clear distinction between Hua and Yi” (Hán di hữu hạn 漢夷有限) to “an equal treatment for all peoples with benevolence” (nhất thị đồng nhân 一視同仁) and the mass operation of cultivation projects (mission civilisatrice 教化). While there have been few detailed studies of the process of colonization, this research not only presents patterns of Vietnamese expansion but also their terminology, “geopolitics” and political justification. By examining the terms, motivations, processes, conditions, mechanisms, limitations, reversals and validations involved in Vietnamese expansionism in the early 19th century, this paper suggests that Vietnamese rulers were often equally concerned about imperial Tianxia (天下), military security, territorial control and expansion, whether for political or strategic advantage, trade purposes, defence needs, agricultural expansion or increased tax receipts. Understanding Vietnamese imperialism demonstrates how important have been non-western expansions in the creation of our world today and contributes to the positing of some potential models of the early modern world’s state expansion.

2. Rewriting the Geography of Ming Loyalism in Korea at the Turn of the 20th Century

Presented by Dr. Joshua VAN LIEU

Chosŏn Ming loyalism was predicated on a particular geography. By the turn of the twentieth century, the political and intellectual spaces across which Chosŏn scholars inscribed this geography had changed dramatically, leading Yu Insŏk and other Ming loyalist scholars to armed rebellion, but the early years of the twentieth century, the Ming imperial house remained unrestored, the Chosŏn state had given way to the Han and Japanese Empires, and Yu Insŏk had taken refuge in the dreaded Qing. Undeterred, fin de siècle Korean Ming loyalists remained loyal across geopolitical spaces deeply transformed. A teleological understanding of Northeast Asian history would suggest that figures such as Yu Insŏk committed themselves to an anti-modern fantasy of a lost Ming wonderland, but this early twentieth-century loyalty to an empire that collapsed in the seventeenth century was neither a reaction to the modern, nor a refusal of the modern; it was the modern. 

Discussion

Joined by Dr. Bradley Camp Davis

Dr. VU Duc Liem is Vice Dean, Faculty of History at Hanoi National University of Education where he offers courses on Vietnam, Southeast Asia and world history. Dr Vu's work investigates political history of early modern Vietnam and Southeast Asia, combining local sources, field trip research, and archival materials. His previous education and training include Chulalongkorn University (Thailand) and the National University of Singapore. Since earning his Ph.D. from Hamburg University in 2020, Dr. Vu has taught at Hanoi National University of Education. 

Dr. Joshua VAN LIEU is Associate Professor at Department of History, Keimyung University. He teaches courses on early modern and modern East Asian politics and thought. He has published on nineteenth-century Qing-Chosŏn tribute politics, the historiography of reform movements in late Chosŏn Korea, the political roles of the Chosŏn state Guandi cult, and critical approaches to historical international relations. Some of his current projects include an examination of pre-colonial historiographies of Chosŏn factionalism, the rhetoric of state legitimacy in the Korean imperial project, and Korean Ming loyalism at the turn of the twentieth century. 

Dr. Bradley Camp Davis is a Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University who specializes in nineteenth century Southeast Asia and Vietnam. He is the author of Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands (Washington, 2017), a co-editor of The Cultivated Forest: People and Woodland in Asian History (Washington, 2023), and a co-founder of the Yao Script Project. His current book manuscript examines the multispecies, environmental history of the last Vietnamese empire.    

Please RSVP here or click 'Register' below. 

This is part of the “Koreans in the World” project hosted by UCLA’s Center for Korean Studies. The event is supported by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS Award Number: AKS-2023-SRI-2200001) as part of its Strategic Research Institute Program for Korean Studies. It is also supported by the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.

Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Academy of Korean Studies, The James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation