Chapter 2 shows that Jiaozhi, the southernmost province of the Han empire was a cosmopolitan at the forefront of overseas contacts and influences. Many monks set out from here for the South Sea, India, and Sri Lanka, from where exotic plants were introduced and where they became cash crops. The aromatic economy gave Jiaozhi all the earmarks of a commercial-based economy that characterised cash-cropping of the Mekong delta. By the seventh century, Jiaozhi became the leading aromatic refinery of the South China Sea region. Production of aromatics, silk, and ceramics were organised by the hybrid Sino-Viet elite. This alone challenges the image of the ‘traditional Vietnam’, being essentialised into a rural and village Vietnam.

Chapter 1 examines the geographical and historical setting of Jiaozhi. Thanks to the sea, Jiaozhi formed a strategic knot integrating a network that reached as far as Sichuan, Central China, the South China Coast, and the South China Sea. Looking to the north, this structure integrated the Gulf of Tongking firmly into the empire of the Han, laying the basis for a millennium of Chinese rule in the Red River Delta. Looking to the south, it secured Chinese access to the riches of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.