The thirteenth province

One element in the early modern state of mainland Southeast Asia that differentiated it from the polity of the classical/charter era was a growth in centralised administration. The resulting administrative structure was, however, not merely an internal affair. It had, I shall argue, a significant impact on the ability of the state to grow and to maintain this growth. The flexible nature of the earlier focus, the mandala of an accumulation of localities, was transformed into a tighter, more permanent administrative structure with stronger links to the capital. ² This also allowed the capital to bring outer and newly acquired territories more directly under its control. The result was a more stable political entity that now had a greater ability to link the new regions to itself. I use the emergence of the thirteenth province in Đại Việt as an example to demonstrate one element of Victor Lieberman’s thesis of growing integration.