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Water Space in Crisis and Political Legitimacy in Dynastic Vietnam, 1430s-1850s

Fri, April 12, 8:30 to 10:00am, Hyatt Regency Columbus, Clark

Abstract

Rainfall shortage probably stirred up the most pressing environmental crises in pre-twentieth-century Vietnam. Having pursued an irreversible project of state building that made a deep commitment to the monoculture of wet rice, Vietnamese rulers watched the regularity of rainfall with great caution. This paper proposes a new concept of “water space” to rethink how the state’s responses to rainfall shortage played a role in channeling political legitimacy in dynastic Vietnam. The notion of water space here will capture a spatial body whose capacity to provide the needed water for wet rice crops could stir up great anxiety among state rulers. Meanwhile, these rulers forcefully believed in their legitimacy to intervene in this space during times of drought. One of the most important interfering methods was an attempt to communicate with supernatural forces deemed to have been associated with the making of rainfall. I argue that between 1430s and 1850s the impetus for performing rain rituals changed from a quest of divine mercy to the rectification of the governance. In the later periods, the practices of rain rituals served as a political imperative: the entire government ought to have enhanced its performance. Challenging the idea that the retention of these rain ceremonies signifies a stagnant perception of the natural world, this paper suggests that Vietnamese rulers’ interaction with their water space was not static. Its changes were not linear either; the introduction of new ideas about rainfall did not necessarily subvert or replace the older elements.

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