Release of Prof. Hang Xing's New Book, " The Port: Hà Tiên and the Mo Clan in Early Modern Asia. "

Description

The Port (present-day Hà Tiên), situated in the Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam littoral, was founded and governed by the Chinese creole Mo clan during the eighteenth century and prospered as a free-trade emporium in maritime East Asia. Mo Jiu and his son, Mo Tianci, maintained an independent polity through ambiguous and simultaneous allegiances to the Cochinchinese regime of southern Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam, and the Dutch East India Company. A shared value system was forged among their multiethnic and multi-confessional residents via elite Chinese culture, facilitating closer business ties to Qing China. The story of this remarkable settlement sheds light on a transitional period in East Asian history, when the dominance of the Chinese state, merchants, and immigrants gave way to firmer state boundaries in mainland Southeast Asia and Western dominance on the seas.

About Prof. Hang Xing

Prof. Hang Xing received his Ph.D. degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley. His first project, which has yielded a book, an edited volume, and several articles and reviews, has examined the Zheng organization and its unique and profitable role in tying together the seventeenth-century maritime Asian trading lanes while struggling to define its legitimacy in terms of Confucian tenets and the imperial dynastic symbols of the Ming and Qing courts. Prof. Hang’s interests are now drawing me to a study of Chinese communities in Southeast Asia from the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries. He wants to understand their institutions, collaboration with multiple state and non-state actors, and how these elements intersected with the rise of nationalism in China itself.

Reviews

‘A fascinating historical exhumation of a port known to specialists, but not to the general public (though by virtue of its importance, as Xing Hang shows, it should be). A truly interesting read.’

Eric Tagliacozzo - Cornell University

‘In The Port, Xing Hang provides a tour de force history of the rise and fall of Hà Tiên, a Chinese creole frontier entrepot on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Based on meticulous research in multiple languages, this book adds significantly to recent scholarship on the New Qing Maritime History and the Chinese diaspora by skilfully analyzing the complex interconnectedness between Chinese officials, merchants, refugees and poets, pirates, Buddhist monks, and French Catholic priests, as well as indigenous Viet, Khmer, and Austronesian populations. The author writes in an engaging and thought-provoking style that will make this book a must read for students and scholars interested in Asian history and comparative studies.’

Robert J. Antony - Guangzhou University

‘This study of Ha Tien (in modern Vietnam) shows how the Mo clan drew on the networks of trade, ethnicity, kinship, and Chinese culture to create a cosmopolitan hub that retained its own distinct identity. It is a major contribution to our understanding of the ‘water world’ in early modern Southeast Asia.’Barbara Watson Andaya

Barbara Watson Andaya - University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa