A Maritime Vietnam
From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century

Powerful new history of Vietnam over two millennia arguing that key political changes resulted from the impact of the sea.

Tana Li (Author)

9781009237642, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 February 2024

354 pages
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.513 kg

'Crafted by one of the region's leading historians and written in an engaging style, this study of maritime Vietnam offers valuable new perspectives on the dynamics of premodern East and Southeast Asia.… Recommended.' M. T. Stark, CHOICE

Despite its 3,000 kilometre coastline, few people see Vietnam as a maritime country. Here Li Tana presents a powerful new argument about Vietnamese history: that key political changes resulted from the impact, economic and otherwise, of the sea. This is a finely layered account covering the two millennia before colonisation that radically restructures how we understand the role of the maritime and trans-regional in Vietnam's early history. Drawing on exhaustive research of Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese sources, Li reveals that it is only when viewed against the background of the sea that Vietnam's past can be properly understood. In contrast to traditional perceptions of an inward-looking society dominated by Chinese cultural influence, Vietnam was shaped by dynamic littoral economic and cultural contact.

Introduction
1. Maritime formations
2. Aromatics, Buddhism and the making of a south seas emporium
3. Aromatic forests, sea trade, and the rise of Linyi, 200–700 CE
4. Maritime resurgence and the rise of Dai Viet
5. Winds of trade from the Middle East: 6. Muslim trade and the conquest of the coast: the mystery of the Topkapi vase
7. Silks and society: Tongking in the age of commerce
8. Seventeenth century Dang Trong: a maritime entity
9. The rise and fall of the water frontier
10. Ships and the problem of political integration: the cost of Tao Van and shipbuilding
Conclusion: some reflections on a maritime Vietnam.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]