[Tlc] Understanding Nguyen rule over the Mekong delta

[Shawn McHale]

Dear list,

In the process of trying to figure out the situation of Khmer in Cochinchina right after World War Two, I have been going back in time to understand better how Khmer of the Mekong delta came under the sway of the Nguyen court. Members of the Vietnam studies list have been quite helpful at providing leads at explaining the Vietnamese understanding on events in the Mekong delta  from the 18th century onwards.  But I am working under the assumption that the Vietnamese sources provide only one narrative of these events. I am still puzzling over how a) the Cambodian courts in the 18th and 19tth saw their relationship with Khmer of the Mekong delta b) how the inhabitants of this area (the Mekong delta)  perceived the claims of both the Nguyen lords and the various Cambodian monarchs and local rulers.

David Chandler's History of Cambodia has been quite useful, but does not go into detail on the particularities of "Kampuchea Krom."  He does note somewhere that one of the "gates" to the kingdom was located near present-day Chau Doc on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, and also notes, somewhere, that the delta may have been beyond the reach of Cambodian administration.    

putting aside the *entirety* of the territory of the Mekong delta, however, I was wondering about the Cambodian court's relationship with the clusters of Khmer populations along the various branches of the Mekong. Today, Khmer are not spread evenly throughout the delta -- they are clustered in areas like Tra Vinh and Soc Trang. Did the court claim rights to rule over these populations into the mid-19th century?  

In my research last summer, I  came across the following statement in a 1954 French report about the way the Nguyen ruled the Khmer in the delta:

" The Cambodians established  in Cochinchina, where their king had a residence in Thuan Thanh (My Tho), were expelled by the Annamese Emperor Hien Vo Vuong in 1758. Since that date, the Khmer minority lived under the authority of the Hue court and rose up in rebellion numerous times, notably in 1780, 1822, 1841, and 1867.

"It appears that until 1856, these Cambodians were subject to different systems of rule [regimes] depending on whether they lived to the East or the West of the Saigon River. The first were directly under the Emperor of Annam, while the latter were administered by a representative of the King of Cambodia."

I am dubious about parts of this report's representation of Mekong delta history -- but am interested in the claim that there remained a representative of the Khmer court up to 1856 in the area. 
  
I had a working hypothesis (not sure it is still good)  that the Khmer dominated Mekong delta (in 18th and early 19th century) was caught between two ways of imagining "rule." The first is the Vietnamese one,  and I am guessing that the central Vietnamese court did indeed think that one could more or less demarcate borders and then control whomever lived within them.  The second way of imagining rule, however, would be that shared throughout the rest of mainland SE Asia. Here I like Thongchai's formulation (for Siam) better than the usual mandala model that many invoke. Thongchai  has argued that “Siam before the last decade of the nineteenth century was [ . . .] a discontinuous, patchy arrangement of power units where people of different overlords mingled together.”  (Siam Mapped, p.79).
It seems clear, from premodern SE Asian history, that strictly defined and clearly demarcated  borders were not the issue *EXCEPT* for short parts of a border. In the premodern workings of power in SEA, it was common for small areas on peripheries of larger political units to have* multiple* overlords. 

Reactions? Thanks for any elucidation, or for pointing me to the right books. Anything in French/ English/ Vietnamese would be helpful.


Shawn McHale 
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
202/ 994-2760