ABSTRACT
As the dynasty which ‘lost Vietnam’ to the French, the Nguyen has often been tarred with the brush of incompetence, and even degeneracy, by historians surveying Vietnam’s last years of independence. While recently the label has come under the spotlight by a new generation of researchers keen to adopt a revisionist tone, it has, perhaps not surprisingly, proved hard to dislodge.1 Contributing to the tide of revisionism, this chapter looks at the Nguyen response to a persistent bandit problem on its northern border in the 1860s during the reign of the Nguyen Emperor Tu Duc (1848-83). Based on extensive research using both Nguyen and Qing sources, I fi nd compelling evidence for the thesis that there was a well-conceived and rational strategy for tackling the bandit problem, directed – at least in part – by the Vietnamese court in Hue. Of course, its tactics were only partially successful but that there was a strategy is beyond dispute. In the 1860s, a central pillar of the court’s approach was to enlist the support of a celebrated Chinese bandit-hunter, Feng Zicai, to suppress Qing bandits, highlighting the way in which just as the bandits sought to evade capture by moving backwards and forwards across the border so any solution to the problem demanded a ‘trans-borderland’ approach. It is the Vietnamese collaboration with Feng Zicai which provides the focus for this chapter.
