The Nguyễn Lords

He asked for a post nobody wanted

In 1558 Nguyễn Hoàng asked to be sent to govern Thuận Hóa. The country there was narrow, mountains at its back and the sea in front, with no plain large enough to feed a long war. Taking it meant taking a hard place.

In name he and the men who followed him stayed officials of the Lê court. They kept using the Lê reign titles and called themselves loyal subjects, whatever they were doing in fact.

Map from the 1651 Lyon edition of “Histoire du royaume de Tunquin” · public domain

In more than two hundred years nine lords held the seat one after another. The capital moved more than once: Ái Tử and Trà Bát, then Phước Yên and Bác Vọng, then Kim Long and Phú Xuân. Each move set the machinery at a different distance from the sea and from the Trịnh army in the north.

What made this government unlike others was where its money came from. The land was not enough and the people were not many, so what was left was the sea.

Three boards and one home province

Under Lord Sãi, Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên, the Nguyễn stopped sending tax north to the Lê and Trịnh and put troops on the northern line. From then on the lords appointed their own officials without waiting on anyone.

At the seat they set up 3 boards. One took suits and legal papers, headed by a Đô tri and a Ký lục. One took the collection of tax and the issue of rations to the army, headed by a Cai bạ. One took sacrifices, festivals and the pay of the guard at the seat.

Under each board sat clerks and copyists, and under the province came prefectures and districts with their own officers. Lord Thượng, Nguyễn Phúc Lan, added four more posts around himself, known as the four pillars of the court.

There was an unwritten rule about people. The important posts from the province down went only to men whose home province was Thanh Hóa, the lords' own. Men from elsewhere did not get them.

A government open to the ships of every nation, and closed to most of its own subjects.

The Hoàng Sa company and one captain's book

Off the coast of Quảng Nghĩa prefecture lie more than a hundred and thirty islands, and among them the Bãi Cát Vàng, the golden sandbank, more than 30 dặm long with water clear to the bottom. Lê Quý Đôn wrote that the sand there held countless swiftlet nests, giant clams as broad as a sleeping mat, sea cucumber, hawksbill turtle, and whatever had drifted out of wrecked ships.

The Nguyễn established the Hoàng Sa company at 70 places, filled from one coastal village, the men serving in rotation. Each year in the third month they took their warrant, drew 6 months of rations, and went out in 5 small fishing boats, three days and three nights to reach the islands.

The eighth month was the date to return. The boats came in at the Eo mouth and the men carried what they had up to Phú Xuân and handed it in. The state examined it, weighed it, graded it, and only then let them sell a few things on their own account and gave them leave to go home.

One former captain's book records the take year by year. In the year Giáp Ngọ, 30 ingots of silver. In Giáp Thân, 5,100 cân of tin. In Ất Dậu, 126 ingots of silver. Some years, nothing at all.

The same office ran a second company for the southern waters, manned by volunteers who were let off their head tax and their tolls and went out in their own boats to Côn Lôn and the sea off Hà Tiên.

The same book carries an incident from 1754. 10 soldiers from a company in Quảng Nghĩa went out for sea goods, 8 of them landed and 2 stayed with the boat, and a storm parted the cable. The boat drifted to a harbour on Hải Nam. The official there looked into it and had the men escorted back to their own district, and the Cai bạ of Thuận Hóa wrote the reply. A voyage blown off course left exactly what later history needs: paper on both sides.

Four lạng and four tiền for four months

Not every source of revenue worked. At the Phù Âu head-water in Phú Vang district there was a place for finding gold, and anyone who went was let off tax and given money and food for the search.

In the spring of the year Bính Thân the superintendent, the Đoan duke, sent the marquis Cơ Trung up to open the workings. He drew on men from the Hoàng Sa company and hired 65 more to dig the earth and smelt it.

In about 4 months the whole undertaking produced 4 lạng and 4 tiền of gold. It did not cover the wages, so they stopped.

The same ledger prices every post that watched a head-water: 4 quan and 5 mạch from the officer at the larger ones, 2 quan at the rest, 1 quan 6 mạch from the river officer and the same from the toll station. This government counted its money down to the mạch.

A state's books record the places where it lost.

Three guns at the bow, two at the stern

Đàng Trong had fewer people than the north, so it made up the difference elsewhere. The army is usually put at about 30,000 men, and the people who make that estimate say themselves that the figure did not hold still: it rose for a war and fell for a peace.

The strength lay in the fleet. A war boat carried about 30 oars, 3 cannon at the bow and 2 at the stern.

Gaiban shokan, compiled by Kondō Jūzō, completed 1818 · National Archives of Japan · public domain

The guns were bought from Europeans first and then cast at home. In 1631 Lord Sãi opened a shooting range, grounds for training elephants and horses, and a foundry for cannon at Thuận Hóa, put up with the help of a man of mixed Portuguese descent named Jean de la Croix. The place still carries its trade in its name, phường Đúc, the casting ward.

Merchants' money came in through the sea gate and left the treasury as gunpowder and bronze.

The titles changed, the living did not

In 1744 Nguyễn Phúc Khoát took the title of king. Even the guard around him was renamed.

The name changed, but what fed the machinery did not. It was still the duty on ships putting in at Hội An, the tolls at the head-waters, the head tax, the land tax, and one voyage out to the islands each year.

Forty years before that, one of these lords had sent to Guangdong for a title and been refused. His successor took one at home.

The Trịnh army entered Phú Xuân

At the end, power fell to one man, Trương Phúc Loan. The chronicles call it the trouble of an overmighty official, and it came exactly when the river mouth was silting, large ships were finding it hard to enter, and the port revenue was thinning.

Early in 1775 the Trịnh army entered Phú Xuân. The lord fled to Quảng Nam. In the fourth month the Trịnh crossed the Hải Vân pass and met the Tây Sơn at Cẩm Sa. The port town lay between the two.

Chart of about 1779 · public domain

For the last two years the lords' seat was at Hội An itself, and then it moved to Gia Định.

A government built on port money lost its footing when the port could no longer keep it.

What of that time is still in the town

The machinery ended in 1777. What it left does not carry its name.

The three characters on the bridge are a lord's own handwriting. The Minh Hương village inside the town was an institution the lords devised to give the men who stayed a place in law. The three Japanese graves at the edge of town belong to men the lords had licensed to build a quarter of their own.

And in the Phủ biên tạp lục, the ledger Lê Quý Đôn copied out when he came south to take the province over, the names are still there of the men who went out every third month and came back every eighth.