| This study links two simultaneous developments in the history of the South China Sea: the diffusion of Chinese overseas trade and shipping networks across maritime Asia, and the southern expansion of Vietnamese settlement and rule down the eastern Indochinese peninsula in the early modern period. This work shows how cross-cultural trade influenced historical patterns within a particular geographical region, in this case, the southern Vietnamese realm of Dang Trong (Cochinchina), ruled by the Nguyen clan. Specifically, it demonstrates how enterprising Chinese merchants set their own diasporic society firmly into the rapidly changing political, economic, and cultural landscape of the Indochinese peninsula, and in doing so, helped to shape the contours of modern Vietnam.; This dissertation traces the development and decline of Chinese-dominated trade in Hoi An—known to Europeans as Faifo—a central Vietnamese port city that served as a key entrepot in the South China Sea trade during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Using an Annales approach, the study develops a regional history of overseas trade in the port's rivershed, set in the larger context of the South China Sea as its own distinct, maritime region. Exploiting a network of clans, guilds and temple associations expanding throughout Asia, Hoi An's diasporic, Chinese mercantile community developed transportation links deep into the hinterland and across the seas, in order to consolidate their dominant position in the city-port. Successful in forging relationships with Vietnamese locals and officials thanks to shared norms, the Chinese were successful at shutting out their European competitors. Hoi An provided a key component in Nguyen expansion, not only by providing customs revenue, but by stimulating export-driven commerce, which in turn expanded the Nguyen revenue base, and integrating Dang Trong's divided regions through the coastal trade its merchants augmented. |
