Title: The Myth of the Restoration: Dang-Trong Influences in the Spiritual Life of the Early Nguyen Dynasty (1802–47)
Abstract: English-language historiography conventionally portrays the nineteenth century as the apogee of Neo-Confucian political influence in traditional Vietnam, and the new Nguyen dynasty as perhaps the most Sinic ruling house in Vietnamese history. Generally, scholars emplot late traditional Vietnamese history as the story of how Neo-Confucian political ideas and Chinese administrative models came to monopolize Nguyen society and politics, from the Gia-long reign (1802–19) onwards. Despite stirrings of change elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Nguyen ruling circles resisted reforming their dangerously outmoded perceptions and practices and thus helped render inevitable their defeat by an expansionary European power. The fact of later colonial conquest organizes the narrative thrust of most discussions of early nineteenth-century history, turning the early Nguyen era into little more than a necessary prolegomena to the real historical drama enacted later in the century. Perhaps as a consequence, with the exception of Alexander Woodside's classic study, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, the period has attracted little scholarly interest in its own right.1
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Date: 1997-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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