The Ngô Thesis and Minh Hương Evolution: The View from the Sea

Abstract

John Whitmore’s recent study of Ngô (Chinese) communities in fifteenth-century Dai Viet has broad implications for the study of premodern Vietnamese history. While he initially defines Ngô as Chinese, he in fact describes a community developed from a longterm “fusion” of coastal elements that included seafaring Min-speakers but were not limited to them. Whitmore’s interest appears to be focused on this community’s role in the basic montane–littoral tension he perceives in Đại Việt political history. However, he ends this seminal work by pointing to a “new Ngô community” in Đại Việt history, the Minh Hương, developed from the same “coastal fusion.” This offers more than a comparison of two analogous historical communities; it opens the door to a new way of thinking about the function of “Chinese” in Vietnamese history. In this article, I take up Whitmore’s challenge and use his model, based on a long-term process of coastal fusion, to develop a preliminary long-term history of the Minh Hương. Emphasizing early modern developments contextualized within the longer stream of Vietnamese history, it shows that the pattern of Minh Hương evolution not only resembles that of the earlier Ngô but also suggests Whitmore correctly perceived a “Ngô” pattern of coastal cultural fusion that suggest a radically different vision of premodern history.