Vietnamese nobility

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The nobility ( tước ) in historical Vietnam emerged from the takeover of the Chinese nobility system during Vietnam's approximately thousand-year affiliation to China , but developed independently over time.

The titles of nobility - which largely corresponded to the Chinese - were usually awarded by the monarch to family members, heads of influential families and to deserving officials and served as high-ranking titles of respect and honor. The titles were limited to their bearer and were not usually inherited; There was thus - unlike in Europe - no clearly delineated nobility. The European aristocratic upper class in Vietnam corresponded to the powerful, long-established family clans who ruled over extensive land holdings as feudal lords. Due to the relatively small number of Vietnamese family names , the social position of a Vietnamese could not be recognized only from his name - Nguyễn was the name of both emperor and peasant.

The custom of assigning posthumous titles was also adopted from China . These could also contain titles of nobility that the deceased had never worn during his lifetime. Successful generals and statesmen who came to the throne themselves and thus founded a new dynasty, for example, also awarded their non-ruling ancestors posthumous titles of rulers.

Belonging to the nobility did not in itself bring any advantage in civil service, since from the Lý dynasty (1009–1225) - analogous to China - civilian civil servants were selected by means of an official examination . This also offered educated people from the common people the opportunity to rise to the highest levels of society. In fact, it was undoubtedly easier for descendants of powerful families who could afford good teachers to achieve a career in civil service. Nevertheless, over time, a contrast developed between the Confucian court officials (“mandarins”) in the capital and the Buddhist lords (“landed gentry”) in the provinces. The rural aristocracy, with the support of the monasteries under the early Vietnamese dynasties, had ruled with almost unlimited power over huge estates and was now increasingly restricted by efforts to centralize. During the Trần dynasty (1225–1400) the court officials prevailed and restricted land ownership in favor of the village communities, although the most powerful landowners - the relatives of the monarch - were exempt from the restrictions. All later dynasties, even if like the Lê themselves, came from the rural aristocracy, basically retained this centralized, civil servant-based model of the state and further restricted the large landowners.

During the French colonial period , the titles of nobility only played a role in the context of the powerless imperial court. In 1945, like the entire monarchy, they were abolished as part of the August Revolution .

Nobility title

(in descending order of precedence, with the Chinese equivalent in brackets)

  • Hoàng đế or Đế (皇帝, Huángdì ): Emperor
  • Vương (王, Wáng ): King (as an independent ruler title) or prince / prince (for the sons of an emperor)
  • Công (公, Gōng ): Duke , with the increasing forms Quận công ("Provincial Duke") and Quốc công ("National Duke")
  • Hầu (侯, Hóu ): Margrave / Marquis
  • Bá (伯, Bó ): Count
  • Tử (子, Zǐ ): Vice Count / Viscount
  • Nam (男, Nán ): Baron

Rulers (emperors and kings) in general are referred to as Vua . This term, which can also be interpreted as “patron”, has no equivalent in Chinese, but comes from the Vietnamese vernacular and therefore had to be written in Nôm (court documents were written in Hán , i.e. classical Chinese). The Vietnamese monarchs usually carried the titles Vua and Hoàng đế in parallel, with the former predominating among the people and the latter at court.

The leaders of the Trịnh and Nguyễn families, who ruled the country from the 16th to the 18th century, used the title Chúa ( lord / lord / prince ), which is outside the classical hierarchy , which they use alongside the titles Công and later Vương led.

Emperor or king?

In literature, the country's monarchs are sometimes referred to as emperors and sometimes as kings. There is also no consensus on this in modern specialist literature, and both terms are common even in publications that were created in Vietnam. The reason for this is on the one hand the title Vua , which is usually translated as "King", and on the other hand the complex status of Vietnam towards China:

Around 968 the Vietnamese ruler Đinh Bộ Lĩnh had proclaimed himself emperor and thus declared the equality and consequently independence of Vietnam from China. Vietnam was seen as the "Empire of the South", which was smaller than the "Empire of the Middle", but was basically equal to it as its southern counterpart. The Vietnamese saw themselves as part of the Sinized world, but not as part of China. Nevertheless, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh and almost all subsequent Vietnamese monarchs recognized the sinocentric model of autocracy of the Chinese emperors ( Tianxia ) and humbly sent ceremonial tribute missions to the northern imperial court. The Chinese emperors gave the Vietnamese monarchs the title of King of Jiaozhi Prefecture , and from the middle of the 12th century King of the Annam Kingdom , both Jiaozhi and Annam being old Chinese administrative names for Vietnam. Since vassal kings had no specific administrative obligations towards the Chinese emperor and did not have to provide any troops, this was a de facto recognition of Vietnamese independence. At their own court and towards their own subjects, however, the Vietnamese monarchs always carried the imperial title, even in official documents written in Chinese. This apparent contradiction, although not necessarily unusual in the East Asian region, between independent empire and vassal royalty characterized the status of the Vietnamese monarchy until the 19th century.

The European traders, adventurers and missionaries who came to Vietnam from the 16th century onwards only spoke of the King of Tonkin (in the north) and the King of Cochinchina (in the south), whereby they were the ruling Trịnh and Nguyễn princes meant.

In 1802, after defeating the Tây Sơn dynasty , Gia Long proclaimed himself emperor, thus establishing the Nguyễn dynasty . As usual, he sent a tribute mission to the Chinese imperial court in recognition of his accession to the throne. At the same time he asked to be allowed to replace the empire name Đại Việt ( Great Việt ) , which has been used for centuries, with the ancient name Nam Việt ( Southern Việt ). However, the Chinese emperor swapped the two syllables for Việt Nam to avoid confusion with the ancient empire. Unlike his predecessors, Gia Long took over the Chinese court ceremony almost completely and for the first time also used the title Son of Heaven ( Thiên tử ). He is therefore often referred to as the first emperor of Vietnam, even if this is correct only in relation to the country name.

The French, who appeared as colonial rulers in Vietnam from the mid-19th century, however - with deliberately degrading intentions - used the Chinese name form and always spoke of the King of Annam ( roi d'Annam ). This designation also prevailed in the other European languages. It was only during the Indochina War that people returned to the Vietnamese form of the title and spoke of "Emperor Bảo Đại " - although he has not had this title since 1945.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Danny J. Whitfield: Historical and Cultural Dictionary of Vietnam , Scarecrow Press, 1976, p. 213 (entry Nobility )
  2. ^ Nancy Wiegersma: Vietnam: Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution: Patriarchy and Collectivity in the Rural Economy , Macmillan Press, Basingstoke 1988, pp. 34/35
  3. ↑ Alexander Barton Woodside: Vietnam and the Chinese Model: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century , Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1988, p. 10
  4. ↑ KW Taylor : A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 652 ( Table 7 )
  5. ↑ For example, KW Taylor ( A History of the Vietnamese ) only uses the title of king by default, while Ben Kiernan ( Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present ) speaks of emperors. Hà Văn Thư and Trần Hồng Đức ( A Brief Chronology of Vietnamese History ) speak of kings up to the Lê dynasty and of emperors in the Tây Sơn and Nguyễn dynasties.
  6. ↑ KW Taylor: The Birth of Vietnam , University of California Press, Berkeley 1991 (first edition 1983), pp. 286/287
  7. ↑ Kathlene Baldanza: Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia , Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp 100-102
  8. ↑ Samuel Baron, Cristoforo Borri: Views of Seventeenth-Century Vietnam: Christoforo Borri on Cochinchina and Samuel Baron on Tonkin , edited by Olga Dror and KW Taylor, Cornell Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) Publications, Ithaca NY 2006, p. 241
  9. ↑ Alexander Barton Woodside: Vietnam and the Chinese Model: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century , Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1988, p. 9