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The formation of a Kinh traditional village in Huế in early modern Vietnam
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2022
Abstract
This article traces the transformation of Huế from an open migrant society to a closed community from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries through an examination of the village documents of Thanh Phước in Thừa Thiên Huế province. In Thanh Phước, the expansion of cultivated land reached its limits around the end of the seventeenth century. Subsequently, continuous population pressure resulted in the emergence of social groups with closed and fixed membership called làng and dòng họ after the eighteenth century. A significant feature of this social development was that the patrilineal kinship favoured by Confucianism was used to protect the vested interests of the earliest inhabitants of the village and their descendants. This indicates that the penetration of Confucianism among the common people and the development and stagnation of agriculture in early modern Vietnam were mutual, complementary phenomena.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2022
Footnotes
The author would like to thank the fiscal support of the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development, Vietnam (NAFOSTED, Research project number: 601.99- 2020.302) and the Mishima Kaiun Memorial Foundation, Japan.
References
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3 Koichi Mizuno's work on multi-household compounds in Southeast Asia is pathbreaking, and subsequent studies have identified similar household groups in other parts of the region. See Koichi Mizuno, タイ農村の社会組織 [Social organisation of Thai villages] (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1981), pp. 75–126; Narifumi Tachimoto, 家族圏と地域研究 [Family sphere and area study] (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2000), pp. 211–23. Satoru Kobayashi Satoru, カンボジア村落世界の再生 [Reconfiguring Cambodian rural villages] (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2011), pp. 142–51.
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6 See Yoshihiro Tsubouchi, ‘生活の基礎単位’ [Basic unit of livelihood], in 東南アジアの社会 [Southeast Asian society], ed. Yoshihiro Tsubouchi (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1990), pp. 22–37.
7 Wolters, History, culture and region, pp. 27–40.
8 Regarding membership of Vietnamese paternal kinship groups, see Michio Suenari, ベトナムの祖先祭祀-潮曲の社会生活 [Social life and ancestors in a Vietnamese village on the outskirts of Hanoi] (Tokyo: Fukyosha, 1998), pp. 152–72, 303–7. Regarding membership of village communities, see Trần Từ, Cơ cấu Tơ chức của Làng Việt Cổ truyền ở Bắc bộ [The organisational structure of traditional Vietnamese villages in the North] (Hà Nội: Nxb Khoa học Xã hội, 1984), pp. 47–53.
9 Hiroshi Miyajima, ‘東アジア小農社会の形成’ [Formation of peasant society in East Asia], in 長期社会変動 [Long-term changes in Asian society], ed. Yuzo Mizoguchi, Takeshi Hamashita, Naoki Hiraishi and Hiroshi Miyajima (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1994), pp. 86–93. According to Miyajima progress and stagnation in agricultural development from the 16th to 18th centuries brought about changes in family structure and management and the popularisation of Confucianism (especially Neo-Confucianism) in East Asia. The ‘small peasant society’, based on Confucianism, was established by this series of social phenomena. See also Momoki, Formation and transformation, pp. 375–8; and Takao Yao, 黎初ヴェトナムの政治と社会 [Politics and society in the early Lê dynasty] (Hiroshima: Hiroshima University Press, 2009), pp. 419–20.
10 Trường Hữu Quýnh (Chế đọ Ruộng đất và Một số Vấn đề Lịch sử Việt Nam [The land system and some Vietnamese historical issues] (Hà Nội; Nxb Thế giới, 2009, p. 340) argued that preferential treatment for officials in the public rice field system and the development of private rice fields advanced the stratification of local society and brought about the establishment of village communities led by a landlord class. Yumio Sakurai (ベトナム村落の形成 [The formation of the Vietnamese village] (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1987, pp. 330–61) argued that overpopulation led to the cultivation of land with unstable agricultural conditions in the 17th and 18th centuries. The resulting agricultural fluctuations caused the stratification of peasant society and outmigration.
11 There is no exhaustive study yet, but the following studies show the general trend of compiling family genealogies and the building of Confucian facilities in the Red River Delta: Phạm Thị Thùy Vinh, Văn bia thời Lê xứ Kinh Bắc và Phản ánh Sinh hoạt Làng xã [Inscriptions of the Le Dynasty of Kinh Bac and reflections on village life] (Hà Nội: Viện Viễn Đông Bác cổ, 2003), pp. 133–66; Suenari Michio, ‘ベトナムの「家譜」’ [Vietnamese ‘family genealogy’], 東洋文化研究所紀要 [Memoirs of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia], 127 (1995): 8–9. Regarding popularisation of Confucianism in the 17th and 18th centuries in the Red River Delta, see Minoru Simao, ‘ベトナムの家礼と民間文化’ [Family rituals and folk culture in Vietnam], inアジアの文人が見た民衆とその文化 [People and culture as seen by Asian literati], ed. Eishi Yamamoto (Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 2010), pp. 132–5.
12 The current Vietnamese administrative address is: thôn Thanh Phước, xã Hương Phong, huyện Hương Trà, tỉnh Thừa Thiên Huế.
13 For an overview of Thanh Phước's historical documents, see Lê Văn Lưu, ‘Làng Thanh Phước’ [Thanh Phước village], in Làng Văn vật Thừa Thiên Huế [Cultural village in Thừa Thiên Huế province], ed. Trần Đại Vinh (Huế: Nxb Thuận Hóa, 2017), pp. 249–349. However, this volume only surveys the documents in the village communal hall, but not the private genealogical collections. For the local documents of other villages around Huế, see Lê Văn Tuyên, ed., Văn bản Hán Nôm làng xã ở Huế giữa thế kỷ 17 đến đầu thế kỷ 19 [The Hán Nôm village archives in the mid 17th to early19th centuries] (Huế: Nxb Thuận Hóa, 1996); Lê Văn Tuyên, ed., Văn bản Hán Nôm làng xã vùng Huế: Nghiên cứu–Tuyển dịch [The Hán Nôm village archives in Huế region: Research–Translation] (Huế: Nxb Thuận Hóa, 2008); Lê Nguyễn Lưu, Khoán định–Hương ước và nếp sống văn hóa làng xứ Huế thế kỷ 17–đầu thế kỷ 20 [Village regulation and cultural life of Huế region in the 17th–early 20th centuries] (Hà Nội: Nxb Thời đại, 2011).
14 At the time of this study, these documents were not held in public institutions, so they did not have catalogue numbers. I photographed them and assigned a private set of reference numbers, which are used in this article, abbreviated as follows:
DTP: Đình Thanh Phước document no. (Village Communal Hall)
CTP: Chùa Thanh Phước document no. (Thanh Phước Temple)
TP Nguyễn Văn (Kinship Group's Name): Nguyên Văn Branch of Thanh Phước document no.
The DTP documents consist of about 5,800 photographs (JPEG files), the CTP documents 500 photographs, and the kinship group documents 3,400 photographs, including about 1,500 photographs taken by Huỳnh Đình Kết and Nguyễn Văn Đăng (the total number of photographs reflect the number of leaves/pieces making up each referenced item). Once 31 sắc phong were stored in the village communal hall, but they were transferred to a safer Buddhist temple for security reasons. For document management by the village community, see Ueda Shinya, ベトナム・フエ近郊村落の変遷と文書保存:タインフオック集落の事例 [The transition and document preservation in the villages around Hue in Vietnam: A case study of Thanh Phuoc village], 史学研究 [Review of Historical Studies] 272 (2011): 32–4.
15 In the early 14th century the area around Huế was ceded by Champa to the Trần dynasty. However, in the latter half of the 14th century it was retaken by Champa (see Momoki, Formation and transformation, pp. 145–7). The establishment of Lê Dynasty control over the area and settlement of the Kinh people are regarded as beginning in the reign of Lê Thánh Tông (1442–92).
16 Đỗ Bang, ‘Sự biến đổi của làng xã vùng Huế từ nửa sau thế kỷ XVIII đến nửa đầu thế kỷ XIX trước những tác động của lịch sử’ [The change of villages in Huế from the second half of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th century before the historical impacts], in Thay đổi của Văn hóa Truyền thống ở Thừa Thiên Huế: Tiếp cận Nhân loại học và Sử học từ trong và ngoài nước [Changes in traditional culture in Thừa Thiên Huế: Approaches from anthropology and history of our county and abroad], ed. Michio Suenari and Nguyễn Hữu Thông (Tokyo: Asia Research Center, Toyo University, 2009), pp. 385–9; Tana, Li, Nguyễn Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1998), pp. 28–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Đỗ Bang, Lịch sử Thanh Phước, pp. 8–9; Lê Văn Lưu, ‘Làng Thanh Phước’, pp. 278–83.
18 The three districts around Huế, Hương Trà, Phú Vang and Quảng Điền still had a very high proportion of public rice fields in the early 19th century. This was perhaps due to the large-scale policy of creating new settlements in the Lê Thánh Tông era.
19 Genealogies of the Nguyễn Ngọc branch (TP Nguyễn Ngọc 24, TP Nguyễn Ngọc 2, etc.) recorded a person named Nguyễn Sĩ Vô, who reclaimed a private rice field (開耕私田阮士無) in the fourth generation. However, Thanh Phước's cadastres did not record any private rice fields. The private rice fields reclaimed in the 16th century might have been made public by the Nguyễn lords.
20 In Thanh Phước, 1 mẫu equals about 4,200 m2, 1 sào equals 420 m2, and 1 thước equals about 28 m2. Thus, 1 mẫu equals about 10 sào; 1 sào equals about 15 thước.
21 Trương Hữu Quýnh (Chế độ Ruộng đất, pp. 329–31) estimated that the Thuận-Quảng region as a whole in the 17th and 18th centuries had more intensive agriculture compared to the 15th century, but there was still space for expanding the cultivated area.
22 The officials did not refer to Thanh Phước's land cadastre in the Thịnh Đức era probably because Thanh Phước may have scrapped the preceding land cadastre after the 1669 edition.
23 The area west of Thanh Phước had taken in many migrants since the southern advance of the Nguyễn lords. See Huỳnh Đình Kết, ‘Quá trình tụ cư lập làng khu vực thành Hóa Châu qua tiếp cận gia phả một số dòng họ khai canh, khai thác: Trường hợp các làng Kim Đôi, Thành Trung, Phú Lương’ [The village formation process in Hóa Châu citadel area through examining family genealogies of some first settled lineages: The case of Kim Đôi, Thành Trung, and Phú Lương villages], in Văn hóa-lich sử Huế qua góc nhìn làng xã phụ cận và quan hệ với bên ngoài [Culture and history of Huế from the perspective of neighbouring villages and relations with the outside], ed. Nguyễn Quang Trung Tiến and Masanari Nishimura (Huế: Nxb Thuận Hóa, 2010), pp. 181–2; Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina, pp. 24–30.
24 The cultivated area in the 1814 land cadastre was smaller than recorded in the preceding one. However, it cannot be determined whether this was due to changes in the units of Tây Sơn dynasty cadastres. See Trương Hữu Quýnh, Chế độ ruộng đất, p. 455.
25 Thượng Mũi Cồn (about 12 mẫu) was converted from public rice fields to public land; Hào Cung (about 6 mẫu) and Hạ Mũi Cồn (about 6 mẫu) were converted from public rice fields into a cemetery. In the twentieth century, Thanh Phước created a new residential area and built a junior school by infilling and raising low-lying rice fields. The 19th-century land conversions were probably done in the same way.
26 Trấn Đức Anh Sơn, ‘阮朝期ベトナム(1802–1883 年段階) の造船業と船舶’ [Shipbuilding and shipping in Nguyễn dynasty Vietnam (1802–33)], trans. Masanari Nishimura and Shinya Ueda, 周縁の文化交渉学シリーズ [Series of Cultural Interaction Studies in the Periphery] 5 (2012): 80–81.
27 Đỗ Bàng also indicated that Thanh Phước received many migrants in the 19th century. See Đỗ Bang, Lịch sử Thanh Phước, p. 22.
28 Village elders and officials met regularly at the communal hall, to make decisions about village management or lay down new regulations. Thanh Phước village also was likely managed in the same way, however, the village regulations (DTP67) do not specify the meeting place. A part of Thanh Phước's regulations is translated into Vietnamese. See Lê Nguyễn Lưu, Khoán định, pp. 306–35.
29 The year of the transfer from the site next to the temple to the present site is not clear. In an 1891 document (DTP2), the new location of the village communal hall was divined by feng shui (phong thủy), and the present location of the village communal hall was marked. It probably was transferred to its present location in the late 19th century.
30 In the Red River Delta, membership in a village community was managed by an organisation called giáp 甲. The giáp was based on a kinship group, only for men, and patrilineal, not based on residence. That is to say, the giáp was an organisation between a land-connected community and kinship lineage. Thanh Phước did not have giáp, but its membership was also substantially managed by paternal kinship groups. It is probably no coincidence that the lineage patterns in both regions are similar. See Trần Từ, Cơ cấu Tổ chức, pp. 47–53; Nguyễn Đồng Chỉ, ‘Sự tồn tại của quan hệ thân tộc’ [The existence of kinship ties], in Nông thôn Việt Nam trong Lịch sử [Rural villages in Vietnamese history], tập 2, ed. Viện sử học (Hà Nội: Nxb Khoa học Xã hội, 1978), p. 196. For a specific example of giáp, see Ueda Shinya, ‘ベトナム黎鄭政権の地方統治: 17–18 世紀鉢場社の事例’ [The local administration of the Le-Trinh government in 17th–18th century Vietnam: An example of Bat Trang village], in 近世の海域世界と地方統治 [Local administration and the maritime world of early modern East Asia], ed. Yamamoto Eishi (Tokyo: Kyuko Shoin, 2010), p. 262.
31 For details, see Shinya, ‘The transition and document preservation’, pp. 43–51.
32 Suenari Michio, Social life and ancestors in a Vietnamese village, p. 310; Miyazawa Chihiro, ‘ベトナム北部の父系出自・外族・同姓結合’ [On the paternal origin, paternal and maternal combination in Northern Vietnam], in〈血縁〉の再構築 [Reconstruction of kinship], ed. Yoshiwara Kazuo, Suzuki Takatoshi and Suenari Michio (Tokyo: Fukyosya, 2000), p. 194.
33 Today, the Phan lineage has again prohibited marriage between branches as many youths study and work outside the villages, making marriages with persons from other villages easier.
34 There is an extremely low diversity of family names among the Kinh. The family name Nguyễn covers about half the Vietnamese population, and there are many Nguyễn lineages around Thanh Phước. Consequently, it is difficult to judge whether people share a lineage only by their family name. Genealogies written for women's birthplaces such as TP Ngyuễn Văn 1 are very rare in the Thanh Phước documents.
35 All three men gave their name as Nguyễn even before their adoption into the lineage was approved. In many marriages into the Nguyễn Đăng branch, the descendants of Trần Hạng probably used either the Trần or Nguyễn names depending on the situation. On the use of double family names, see Ueda Shinya, ‘19世紀前半べトナムにおける家族形態に関する一考察’ [A study on family structure in early-nineteenth-century Vietnam] アジア遊学 [Intriguing Asia] 191 (2019): 286.
36 Nguyễn Đồng Chỉ (‘Sự tồn tại của quan hệ’, p. 186) indicates that personal pronouns in Vietnamese do not distinguish between maternal and paternal relatives, and speculated that the Kinh people practised a bilateral kinship system before the penetration of Confucianism.
37 Today, the first settled lineages in Thanh Phước still perform the ritual in mid-June according to the lunar calendar as the founder's death day is unknown.
38 Onishi Kazuhiko, ‘ベトナムの雷神信仰と道教’ [Daoism and faith of Lôi Công in Vietnam], 国立民族学博物館調査報告 [Senri Ethnological Reports] 63 (2006): 96–100; Onishi Kazuhiko, ‘18世紀ベトナム仏教儀礼文書集に見える仏僧の道士としての役割’ [The roles of Buddhist monks as Daoist priests, as reflected in Buddhist ritual texts of the 18th century], ベトナムの社会と文化 [Society and Culture of Vietnam] 7 (2007): 9–18; Onishi Kazuhiko, ‘18世紀ベトナム儒教入門者の道教儀礼’ [Rituals in Taoism for Vietnamese Confucian novices in the eighteenth century], 東洋文化研究 [Journal of Asian Cultures] 14 (2012): 71–8. On Buddhism and Confucianism during the Nguyễn Lords period, see Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina, pp. 101–2.
39 Onishi Kazuhiko, ‘トゥアティエン-フエ省タインフォック村諸族所蔵族譜・家譜中の道教関係記事初探’ [An elementary study on the articles related to Taoism in the documents of Thanh Phước village, Thừa Thiên Huế province], ベトナムの社会と文化 [Society and Culture of Vietnam] 4 (2003): 128–32.
40 On Daoism around Huế, see Trần Đại Vinh, Tin ngưỡng Dân gian Huế [Folk religion in Huế] (Huế: Nxb Thuận Hóa), pp. 56, 72–5. During the Mạc period Red River Delta communities also displayed mixtures of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. See Đinh Khắc Thuận, ed., Văn bia thời Mạc [Inscriptions from the Mạc dynasty period] (Hà Nội: Nxb Khoa học Xã hội, 1996), pp. 183–7.
41 Suenari Michio, ‘中部ベトナムにおける墓祀り: 清福村の事例から’ [Grave worship in Central Vietnam: A case study of Thanh Phước village], 東洋大学学術フロンティア報告書 [Bulletin of Academic Frontier of Toyo University] 43 (2008): 151–3.
42 The Nguyễn Đăng branch also bought land for the construction of an ancestral hall (date unknown) in 1887 (TP Nguyễn Đăng 3).
43 Regarding inscriptions in the Red River Delta, see Trịnh Khắc Mạnh, Nguyễn Văn Nguyên and Philippe Papin, eds, Tổng tập Thác bản Văn khắc Hán Nôm [Corpus of Vietnamese inscriptions], vols. 1–22 (Hà Nội: Nxb Văn hóa Thông Tin, 2005–08), and its catalogue: Trịnh Khắc Mạnh, ed., Thư mục Thác bản Văn khắc Hán Nôm Việt Nam [Catalogue of Vietnamese inscriptions], vols. 1–14 (Hà Nội: Nxb Văn hóa Thông Tin, 2007–10).
44 According to Trần Từ (Cơ cấu Tổ chức, p. 137), in northern Vietnam during the agricultural land reform period, bán công bán tư meant land that was neither owned by a village nor by individuals, but mainly by small social groups such as lineages. However, in Thanh Phước, all the land was either public rice fields or public land, so the case in the north cannot be directly applied.
45 According to DTP7 and DTP62, the territory of Thanh Phước saw the construction of a national road in 1813. See Ngô Đức Thọ, ed., Đồng Khanh Địa dư chí, tập 3 [Geography of Đồng Khánh era, vol. 3](Hà Nội: Nxb Thế giới, 2003), p. 298. It is likely that Thanh Phước sold the cultivation rights to Tich because the village had difficulties paying the tax levied for the statutory labour to build the road.
46 In the Thanh Phước documents, almost all the land sales and re-purchases occurred in the third or ninth lunar-month, reflecting the double-cropping cultivation cycle.
47 Based on the land sales contracts, the average price per mẫu was 200–300 quan in Thanh Phước. However, most contracts were made in the second half of the 19th century, so price fluctuations from that time might need to be considered.
48 See Trương Hữu Quýnh, Chế độ Ruộng dất, pp. 207–12, 383–6; Sakurai Yumio, The formation, pp. 503–8.
49 Such a situation was not a reflection of strong or weak government but merely administrative costs. Sakurai (Formation, pp. 503–8) and Trương Hữu Quýnh (Chế độ Ruộng dất, pp. 364–9) understood the development of the rural self-governing taxation system as evidence of declining control by the central government and the rise of local land gentries. However, the present study, instead, sees it as evidence of the emergence of fixed village communities that could undertake taxation. See Ueda Shinya, ‘ベトナム黎鄭政權における徴税と村落’ [Tax collection and villages during Vietnam's Le Dynasty under the Trinh Lords], 東方學 [Eastern Studies], 119 (2010): 92–5. In studies on the public rice field system by Vietnamese researchers, no consideration has been made of administrative changes, for example, in the tax collection system.
50 Lê Quý Đôn, ‘Phủ biên tập lục, quyển 3’ [Miscellaneous chronicles of the pacified frontier, vol. 3], in Lê Quý Đôn tuyển tập [A selection from Lê Quý Đôn's works], ed. Nguyễn Khắc Thuần (Ho Chi Minh City: Nxb Giáo Dục, 2007), pp. 105b–6a. See also Trương Hữu Quýnh, Chế độ Ruộng đất, pp. 333–4.
51 Lê Quý Đôn, ‘Phủ biên tập lục, quyển 3’, pp. 106a–8a.
52 This regulation remains today in Thanh Phước. Rice fields given by the village can be rented to others, whether villagers or outsiders, with no restrictions. However, even if the rent is not paid, the lender is still obligated to pay the land tax.
53 The case of Thanh Phước points to an important need to consider the decline of the public rice field system in Northern Vietnam. On public rice field transactions in the Red River Delta, see Trương Hữu Quýnh, Chế độ ruộng đất, p. 343.
54 Miyajima Hiroshi, ‘Formation of peasant society’, pp. 86–93.