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>>History of the Vietnamese state and law: The state and law in the Hung Kings period
Lawyer NGUYEN VIET HUONG
Institute of State and Law
In the history of Vietnam, the 10th century recorded great changes in many areas and could be regarded as a turning point in the history of the nation. All these changes were centered on the fight against the rule of the feudal empire in the North to regain national independence, thus ending more than one thousand years of dependence and subjugation, and opening up a new period for national development.
It can be said that the 10th century is a century when Vietnam reaffirmed its independence and achieved its national unity. It was also a period when the Dai Viet civilization reasserted its identity and independence in face of the attempt of assimilation by the foreign invaders. The most important achievement in this century was the establishment and consolidation of the independent monarchical State, first by the founding of the rule of the Khuc family (905‑930) then the Dzuong family (931‑937), then the Ngo dynasty (939‑965) and the Dinh dynasty (968‑980), and finally the Early Le dynasty (980‑1009).
The 10th century began with the uprising of the Viets under the leadership of Khuc Thua Dzu to capture the citadel of Tong Binh (Hanoi). Khuc Thua Dzu then proclaimed himself Tiet Do Su (1) (905). In actuality, this means that the millenary domination of Vietnam by the northern feudal empire had been abolished. This also demonstrated a skilful maneuver of Khuc Thua Dzu to make use of the apparatus and the name of the invaders to seize power and autonomy as a first step to regain complete national independence. In 907 Khuc Hao took over the reins from his father, but still retained the title of Tiet Do Su to continue consolidating the fledgling autonomous regime. But the rule of the Khuc family did not last long. In 930 the Nam Han feudal rulers in China launched a full‑scale invasion of Vietnam and overthrew the Khuc family, then sent its mandarins to directly rule Vietnam then called An Nam.
In 931, a general of Khuc Hao named Duong Dinh Nghe regained power from the Nam Han, and proclaimed himself Tiet Do Su. However, he was murdered by a subordinate named Kieu Cong Tien who asked for help from the Nam Han which seized upon this opportunity to re‑establish its domination over Vietnam.
In the Spring of 938, the national hero Ngo Quyen (2) led a popular uprising and defeated the Nam Han occupationists. Ngo Quyen abolished the title of Tiet Do Su and proclaimed himself king, and set up the capital city in Co Loa (now Dong Anh district, Hanoi) and started building a completely independent central administration.
After the death of Ngo Quyen (944), the Ngo kingdom was wrecked by internal conflicts which considerably weakened the central power. The warlords in various localities engaged in a bitter dispute for power and proclaimed themselves lords. The central administration of the Ngo family quickly lost its control over the territories of these warlords, and was reduced to just one of the twelve lordships.
In 968 Dinh Bo Linh, one of the warlords, came out the victor of the "war of the twelve lordships" and founded the Dinh dynasty, proclaimed himself "emperor", adopted the name of Dai Co Viet for the country, and installed his capital city in Hoa Lu (Ninh Binh province). He also undertook vast reforms to strengthen the newly regained independence. The Dinh dynasty lasted for just 13 years through the reign of two "emperors".
In 980, in face of the threat of invasion from the Sung dynasty in China, the Dinh Court unanimously enthroned Le Hoan, a prestigious man of the Dinh Court who was then the general commander‑in chief of the army. Thus began the Early Le dynasty. The Sung court in China had to recognize Le Hoan and make him Tiet Do Su, and in 993 upgraded him to the position of Giao Chi Quan Vuong (subordinate king of Giao Chi territory), then again to the position of Nam Binh Vuong (King of Nam Binh country) in 997. The Early Le dynasty lasted through three kings, and spanned a period of 29 years. In 1009, the last king, Le Long Dinh, died, and the Le Court unanimously enthroned Ly Long Uan who founded the Ly dynasty. Thus began a new period in the national history which witnessed a large‑scale program of national construction, and laid a firm basis for steady and comprehensive development of the Vietnamese nation.
Thus, after a full century of struggle, finally an independent State of a sovereign nation was set up and quickly consolidated. This State was the outcome of a long struggle to regain and defend national independence. It was also the result of the struggle between two tendencies, the dispersion tendency of the lordships and the centralization tendency, between scatteredness and unity, which finally ended with the triumph of the centralization and unity tendency.
The Vietnamese State in the 10th century was one organized according to the monarchical system. In terms of institution, this State absorbed and took over to some extent the ruling apparatus of the Tang, and was patterned to a certain degree upon the mandarinate of the Sung dynasty in China. This is understandable, for a country which had just come out of ten centuries of subjugation to foreign domination, and at a time when the men in power started building an independent state from the legacy left by a highly organized and fairly complete political institution of the Tang and the Sung in China. However, the imprints of the mandarinate of the Tang and the Sung do not mean that the Vietnamese State in the 10th century was a replica of the burdensome and bureaucratic apparatus of the absolute monarchy, with the same form and character as the Tang and the Sung State.
On the other hand, the organization of the Vietnamese State in the 10th century remained simple, the activities of the State had not yet been institutionalized, and the selection of the mandarinate as well as the assignment of powers and responsibilities had not yet been clearly defined. The administrative apparatus of all the three dynasties, Ngo, Dinh and Early Le, represented the budding form of a centralized State.
This State apparatus was headed by the king or emperor. The king was the supreme ruler who held the national territorial sovereignty, was the owner of the land in the whole country, and the supreme legislator and executive who exercised unlimited authority on all aspects of the nation's life.
Below and subject to the direct command of the king, were the civilian and military hierarchies at the center and in the localities.
At the Central Court, the Ngo dynasty already instituted the titles of civilian and military mandarins, and laid down Court rites and the costumes of the mandarinate at various echelons, "through which the imperial hierarchy could be seen"(3). The Court also defined the hierarchy of the mandarins at the Court and for various religions. At the Court, for instance, there were the "Quoc cong", "Si su", Thap dao tuong quan, Tang thong, Tang luc, Sung chan uy nghi...(4). In particular, under the dynasty of the Early Le, the hierarchy of the mandarinate was patterned very closely on that of the Sung, such as the Tong quan, Thai Su, Thai Uy or Do chi huy su...(5). In 1006, Le Long Dinh, the last king of the Early Le dynasty decreed the readjustment of the mandarinate and costumes of the civilian and military officers, and the titles of the religious leaders to exactly the same as that of the Sung"(3).
The local administrative apparatus was set up on the basis of the administrative units. To escape the dependence on the Chinese feudalist regime, Khuc Hao abolished the old administrative system, divided the country into lo, phu, chau and giap, and established the ruling apparatus down to the chau. The Dinh dynasty, in its turn, divided the country into 10 dao. Regrettably, no documents are available about the denomination of these dao. Under the dao were the giap and xa (communes). The Early Le dynasty reverted to the administrative system of the Khuc family, and changed the dao into lo, phu, chau and huong, and instituted the An phu su to administer the lo, tri phu and tri chau to administer the phu and chau. Generally speaking, the local mandarins assumed both the executive and juridical powers, and there was yet no sign of any division of powers. For the giap and xa (communes), the managerial apparatus was openly and directly chosen by the population, and operated mainly in the form of self‑rule. They represented the local population in the relations with the higher State authorities, and also represented the central State, especially in the collection of taxes and military recruitment.
The organization of the military system was regarded as an essential part of the Vietnamese State apparatus in the 10th century. The army under the Dinh dynasty was divided into ten dao headed by the Thap dao tuong quan. Each dao was subdivided into smaller units which were trained regularly and fairly well equipped. Under the Early Le, the army was divided into the Infantry and the Navy. At the same time, a Royal Guard was stationed in the citadel with the words "Thien Tu Quan" (Soldiers of Heaven's Son) tattooed on their foreheads and wearing uniform... It can be said that in the 10th century, the State apparatus of Vietnam remained an essentially military apparatus, which reflected a close combination between administrative and military powers. This might be explained by the fact that the State power still had to rely heavily on military power. This can be explained by the fact that the State was faced with the constant task of solving two urgent needs: to defend itself against foreign aggression, and to stand ready to cope with the constant attempt of the local warlords to establish their own rule in the localities.
In fact, one of the main functions of the Vietnamese State in the 10th century was to organize the resistance against foreign aggression, and in a broader sense to carry out an external policy aimed at safeguarding national independence. Throughout a century, the young independent Vietnamese State constantly combined political authority or armed struggle with flexible diplomatic measures, to force the feudal empire in the North to recognize its independence. In so doing, the Vietnamese state always tried to maintain a friendly relationship with China, whereby Vietnam was nominally vassal state of China, while in essence it fully preserved the national sovereignty and the fundamental interests of the nation.
Domestically, the repressive character of the State was very obvious. If one takes a look at the political situation in Vietnam in the 10th century, one can easily perceive a constant tendency of the local warlords to detach themselves from the central authority. This tendency reached its peak in the late period of the Ngo dynasty with the warring state among the twelve lordships, and was also apparent in the late years of the Early Le dynasty through the dispute of the throne among the sons of Le Hoan. To repress militarily and to win over by political maneuvers the local warlords was the basis and the conditions for survival of the centralized State of the unified Vietnam. Naturally, it became a very essential part of the activities of the central ruling machine of the feudal State in that period.
Also apparent were the efforts of the Vietnamese State in the 10th century to develop its role in social management, although the results remained very modest. Most noteworthy in this domain was the effort to establish and stabilize social order, to control the finance, to build and consolidate the State ruling apparatus. In addition, to some extent, the State already conducted some forms of economic activity, in particular in the construction and management of the water conservancy projects to meet the urgent requirement of the agricultural economy based mainly on wet rice cultivation.
When studying the State and law in Vietnam in the 10th century, a question inevitably arises : what is the nature of this State, in other words, what type did that State belong to ? This has sparked very lively discussions among the scholastic circles in Vietnam in recent years. Basically, they have unanimously agreed that the Vietnamese society in the 10th century had not reached the stage of profound class differentiation. It was a type of social organization in the Asian style, where the aristocracy held the State power, and enjoyed the monopolistic right of receiving the surplus production in the form of tributes paid by the rural communes, and where the bulk of the exploited masses were the peasants living in rural communes. Thus, the State in the 10th century represented both the bureaucratic aristocracy and the alliance of the rural communes. It was above all a sovereign State.
Not much about the State law in this period has been known through history books and documents. However, the general features can be figured out through a number of documents which are preserved until today.
It can be assumed that to a very limited extent, there was already written laws promulgated by the State, although these were for the most part only very summary regulations. History books recorded the fact that King Le Dai Hanh established a "legal code" in 1002. Mention has also be made of the very brutal forms of punishment in this period, such as throwing criminals into a vat of boiling oil, burning criminals at stake, cutting the flesh of the criminals piece by piece, putting criminals in cages and rolling the cages into water, throwing criminals into a cage of ferocious aminals (tigers in most cases)... The lightest punishment was whipping. Nothing is known about how these punishments were worked out and applied. But one thing is certain, that is to the mind of the rulers at that time, the law was synonymous with punishment, which was regarded as the continuation and reinforcement of the military struggle against the vestiges of warlordism.
Understandably enough, in the conditions of the underdevelopment of written laws, the customs and habits of the community of the Viet tribes at that time were the dominant rules and played a crucial role in regulating the social relations, especially in the domain of marriage and the family, and in the civic relations.
It is equally certain that a number of former regulations of the old foreign domination remained effective.
Thus, along with the establishment of an independent monarchical State, a sovereign legal system was instituted step by step, although not much had been achieved in the domain of legislation. This is inevitable in the conditions of a newly set up independent State, whose primary concern was to consolidate its military strength to pacify the country, resist foreign aggression, consolidate the unity of the nation, hence had no time nor conditions to look after the other aspects of national construction.
To sum up, after more than ten centuries of foreign domination and a constant attempt of assimilation by the foreign rulers, Vietnam had not been transformed into a province of China, but had instead become an independent country with a sovereign State, which though still primitive in its organization already took on an ever deeper national character, and was developing vigorously along the direction of high centralization and unification.-
Footnotes:
(1) Tiet Do Su is a post installed by the Tang in China to administer a territory under the rule of the Tang. It is in fact a vassal of the Chinese empire.
(2) Ngo Quyen is a son‑in‑law of Duong Dinh Nghe.
(3) According to Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu by Ngo Si Lien (Volume I).
(4) Quoc cong : The highest administrator directly under the king
‑ Si su : the highest administrator of justice.
‑ Thap dao tuong quan : commander‑in‑chief of the national army.
‑ Tang Thong, Tang luc : the highest Buddhist priest.
‑ Sung chan uy nghi : the highest Taoist priest.
(5)‑ Tong quan : the equivalent of Quoc cong
‑ Thai su : the highest civilian mandarin who acted as advisor to the king.
‑ Thai uy, Do chi huy su : the highest military commander.