No Man`s Borderland: Revisiting Ha Tien on the Eighteenth-Century Water Frontier

Abstract

This article is a re-examination of the history of the eighteenth-century state of Ha Tien on what is now the southern coast of Vietnam. It argues that past studies of Ha Tien have attempted to fit it into a narrative of state consolidation in Southeast Asia that characterises it as a borderland destined to be absorbed into the nineteenth-century Nguyen dynastic state. The present article will attempt to show that Ha Tien actually expanded its territory and developed its civil and military capabilities in parallel with its larger neighbours, making it a power centre in its own right by the middle of the century. This process made it fundamentally different from other settlements founded by Chinese immigrants in what is now southern Vietnam at roughly the same time. By the 1760s, it had expanded to the point where it was both a serious diplomatic and military player in the region that had the resources to defend its own independence and to compete with its larger neighbours. The destruction of the Ha Tien`s state in the 1770s occurred shortly after the collapse of dynasties in both Siam and the Nguyen domain in central Vietnam, but its fall was not directly caused by the resulting turmoil or by the establishment of new and more powerful states in either Siam or Vietnam. Instead, the reasons for Ha Tien`s demise can much more readily be found in the decisions made by its ruler Mo Tianci, who does not seem to have had a knack for picking the right enemies.

本文將重新檢視河仙地區（位於今越南南境）在十八世紀的歷史發展。過去學界對於河仙的研究，泰半都將其發展置於東南亞國家疆域整併的論述當中；換言之，河仙註定被十九世紀的後黎朝阮主朝兼併，成為其王國的邊境。然而，本文指出，河仙也如同當時鄰近的暹羅和阮主，經歷了領土擴張和軍政力量的增長，於十八世紀中葉，成長為該區域的權力中心。這也使得河仙和當時其他華人移民在今日越南南部所建立的聚落，有了根本上的差異。在1760年代，河仙成為該區域重要的外交和軍事力量，不僅能捍衛自己的獨立地位，同時也足於和鄰近大國一爭長短。在1770年代，河仙的鄚氏政權在阮主和暹羅政權垮台後不久，也隨之瓦解。原因並非直接根源於鄰國政權瓦解後所造成的政治動蕩，或是受到後來在兩地新建立強大政權的影響。相反地，本文將河仙鄚氏政權的瓦解，歸因於其統治者鄚天賜誤判當時政治情勢而成。