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Vietnam and the Chinese model

How Chinese are the Vietnamese? Heretofore the general impression has been that for two thousand years the Vietnamese people underwent a steady and consistent influence from China which led to the development of a state and society strongly along Chinese lines. More recently we have begun to question the simplicity of this view and to examine in more detail the complexity of the cultural relationship between Vietnam and China throughout the former's history. Alexander Woodside has produced a major study which poses this question for one of the central periods in the relations between the two countries. As Mr. Woodside states, "The question of the historical nature of the Chinese influence in recent Vietnamese history is, I think, a crucial one" (p. 2). He proceeds to examine the question in terms of the government structure and activities in the newly reunited Vietnamese state of the first half of the nineteenth century, specifically the first three reigns of the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1847). His main focus is, however, upon the reign of the Minh Mang emperor (1820-1841), son by a concubine of the founder, Gia Long, and one of the major Confucian figures in Vietnam's history. In so doing, Mr. Woodside has resurrected a man generally maligned by the French historians and those who have copied them. The approach of this book is topical rather than chronological. The five chapters and their 231