Whither the bronze pillars? Envoy poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese relationship in the 16th to 19th centuries

This dissertation examines the Sino-Vietnamese relationship in the 16 th to 19th centuries from the perspective of a body of writings known as Vietnamese “envoy poetry.” The various Vietnamese kingdoms that existed during this time period (the Le, the Tay Son, and the Nguyen) all acknowledged that their kingdom was a vassal of what we now call “China.” As part of this relationship, Vietnamese ruling houses were obliged to dispatch regular embassies to the Chinese capital to present tribute. The envoys who served on these missions usually composed poetry along the way. This dissertation examines some of this poetry as a means of gaining an understanding of how Vietnamese envoys viewed the world and understood their kingdom's relationship with China.; Nationalism in Vietnam, and sympathy with Vietnamese nationalist sentiments in the West, have pushed scholars in recent decades to play down the significance of the historical Sino-Vietnamese relationship for the Vietnamese, even for the elite. These studies have emphasized the sense of distinctness, in both political and cultural terms, that the Vietnamese supposedly maintained through the centuries. The poetry that Vietnamese envoys composed while journeying through China, however, suggests otherwise. Far from believing in their own cultural distinctness, Vietnamese envoys expressed in their poetry a profound identification with the cultural world which found its center at the Chinese capital. Further, while Vietnamese envoys felt that they were culturally part of a larger world, they had no difficulty accepting the fact of their kingdom's political subservience in that same world.; These two points—that Vietnamese envoys believed that they participated in what we would now call the Chinese or East Asian cultural world, and that they accepted their kingdom's vassal status in that world—are the main issues that this dissertation seeks to discuss and illuminate through the examination of Vietnam envoy poetry. In the process though many other issues regarding the world and thoughts of Vietnamese envoys in the 16th to 19th centuries are discussed.