RICE TRADE IN THE 18th AND 19th CENTURY
: AND ITS IMPLICATIONS cea es eee a Li Tana Wollongong University, Australia INTRODUCTION
The history of southern Vietnam as a region has long been overlooked If the Nguyen lords’ period (1602 - 1774) has ben mn or less seen positively as it obtained a large piece of terri ne, Vietnam, the Nguyen dynasty has no doubt been seen as = at “reactionary” in Vietnamese history, and the 19th century as a portunity lost Both colonial scholarship and the Vietnamese on list historians held that early 19th century Vietnam kept 0 : cianist closed-door policy and that it was a static and unc ane society unless pressured by outside forces Moreover, it bi policy that was the source of Vietnam’s impoverishment in the
ury.!
man Lưng tt impression, scholars believe that the overseas of Vietnam with outside world was nothing but some seca ‘2 fragmentary pieces, carried out by some Chinese stange oa saa irregular basis, and had trifling significance to Vietnam a a vi economy It is not surprising, therefore, that no efforts ho a made even to retrieve data from some existing sources This pap
l For a systematic argument against the conventional view and a nw ae
on the states of pre-colonial Southeast Asia See Anthony: Red an = ae
“The Last Stand of Autonomous States in Southeast aoa and Korea, ; “ Problems, Possibilities, and a Project” Asian Studies Review, Vol.17, no.2, No ber 1993 198 ee ih &?
argues that these beliefs are established On some untested genera- lised assumptions, rather than solid data, and that there are com- pletely overlooked some dimensions of the 19th century Vietnamese experience By looking at rice in the Overseas trade in late 18th and early 19th centuries Cochinchina, a factor that has been neglected by the scholars, this paper tries to interpret Vietnamese experience of this period from a new angle
Rice from the Mekong delta was a by-product of the Viet- namese southward expansion Along with its development, however, it became a spur that stimulated the move of economic gravity to the south As a result, the Nguyen regime Speed up its pace to carry out economic and political integration of the Mekong Delta into its own political system, from the 1720s Meanwhile, Siam was also accelerating its pace of territorial expansion to the east It is in this context that the most famous rebellion in Vietnamese history - the Tay Son rebellion broke out, and saw the birth of Saigon Rice production as a commercial enterprise, and increased trade in the Mekong Delta region, appear to be the key factors in the economic transit to the south
RICE FROM THE MEKONG DELTA
Throughout the 17th century an unknown but considerable amount of rice was imported from Cambodia and Siam in order to feed the population in the Hue area Sources repeatedly mention tice exported from Cambodia and Siam to Cochinchina, throughout the 17th century.?
“———=-=_._
?L¡ Tana, “The Inner Region”: A Social and Economic History of Nguven Vietnam
in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Ph.D.diss., ANU, 1992, p.82; “Bowyear’s
Narrative”, in Lamb, The Mandarin Road to Old Hue, Archon Books, London, 1970,
p.53 Also see Southern Vietnam under the Nguven: Documents on the Economic
History of Cochinchina (Dang Trong), 1602-1777 Li Tana and Anthony Reid, ed
Economic History of Southeast Asia Project ANU/Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1993,
Trang 2Rice had always been produced in virtually every region where Vietnamese resided However, before the Vietnamese obtained the Mekong Delta, rice had never been produced on such a large scale for it to become a trade commodity The acquisition of the Mekong Delta to produce rice for commercial purposes was undoubt- edly one of the most momentous episodes in eighteenth century Cochinchina and a significant event in Vietnamese history This transformation of the agricultural pattern in the Mekong Delta was a tremendous variation from the traditional Vietnamese economic order The increase in rice availability brought about many conse- quences andimplications For example, the population in the central area such as Thuan Hoa and Quang Nam became more’ and more reliant on rice from the Mekong Delta The famous historian, Le Quy Don, stated that before the Tay Son rebellion, rice from the Mekong delta was so cheap that, “180 cash was enough to buy tice to feed a person for one month, at Thuan Hoa markets: People in Thuan Hoa thus ‘did not work hard on their own land.”
Under such circumstance, the transportation route between
the centre and the south became increasingly important According to the Phu Bien, 341 boats were levied by the government to transport rice from the Mekong Delta to Thuan Hoa, in 1768.4 This trend developed further during the early 19th century, when 2000 junks were engaged in transportation between Saigon and Hue Consequen-
tly, as observed by the British official, Crawfurd, rice became the
“source of the most extensive branch” of Vietnam's internal trade
3 Southern Vietnam under the Nguven p.105
4 Phu Bien Tap Lue (A compilation of the miscellaneous records when the southern border was pacified), reprinted by Phu quoc vu khanh dac trach van hoa, Saigon, 1973, vol.4, p.41
5 Crawfurd Journal of An Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochi China, re- printed by Oxford University Press, 1987 p.511
200
; When the region around Hue, and conse juentl i
one third of the population, became dependent on this rice transpona tion, it became a politically dangerous element to the Nguyen regime
Ricé transportation was by no means easy : according to a trader from the Thuan Hoa region it took ten days for-a single journey to Gia Dinh.” Transportation thus required a large number of junks to be involved The Nguyen government was constantly apprehensive about the transportation lines between the capital region and the Mekong Delta: a distance of thousand miles The vital importance of the Mekong Delta region therefore had a direct impact on the Nguyen regime’s policy of involving itself in the affairs of the region
The cultural world of the Mekong Delta was however, almost another universe In the long term, it could not be governed simply as an extension of the older Nguyen territory as Tegions of
Thuan Hoa and Quang Nam Under constant pressures, the whole
system was eventually thrown “out of its normal orbit into unprece- dented “instability The Tay Son rebellion was partly a product of this conflict between the centre and the expanding periphery
Trang 3THE RISE OF NGUYEN ANH ;
The Tay Son rebellion broke out in a central area of the rice transportation route between’ Gia Dinh and Hue and consequently the effects of Tay Son on the old rice trade pattern was immediate In 1774, in the Thuan Hoa region, the worst famine in Dang Trong’s 200 years history resulted.” The importance of this area is also evi- denced by the action, in 1776, of the Tay Son in sending 200 junks to Gia Dinh to rob rice to take back to Quy Nhon.® With the de- feat of the Nguyen government in Hue there was no one to carry out the task of organising internal rice transport any more
This situation unprecedentedly freed the rice market in the Gia Dinh area While before the Tay Son rebellion the rice from
Mekong Delta had been mainly consumed within Cochinchina, from
the late 1770s the civil war brought about the need’ for rice com- mercialisation Rice began to be seen as the principal foreign ex- change earner Anthony Reid points out that in Ball the rice trade “contributed much to the viability of the state, particularly through the purchase of arms” This was also the case in Vietnam
The Nguyen chronicles show that abundant rice in the Mekong delta was successfully used by Nguyen Anh to encourage foreign
7 Dan Nam Thuc Luc Tien Bien (Chronicle of Greater Vietnam, Premier Period of
the Nguyen), The Oriental Institute, Keio University, Mita, Siba, Minato-ku, Tokyo,
1961, vol.11 p.161
8 Ibia, vol 12 p 168 This seems to have become a common practice of the Tay Son in the later years, as Nguyen Anh called it “tau van” of the Tay Son Chink Bien vol.3 p.335 In 1788 Nguyen Hue sent 3-400 junks to rob rice from Gia Dinh region See Ta Chi Dai Truong Lich Su Noi Chien o Viet Nam Van Su Hoc Saigon 1973 pp.192-193
9 Anthony Reid “A New Phase of Commercial Expansion in Southeast Asia, 1760- 1850" paper for the Ball Conference, August 1994 p.19
202
merchants to bring strategic goods such as iron, steel, lead and sulphur to the Gia Dinh area Bach junk was allowed to buy up to 150,000 litres of rice taxfree as long as it brought enough of the four strategic
goods to the Gia Dinh area.!° Rice was also used as a symbol of
gratitude to Siam for being supportive of Nguyen Anh In 1789 when there was a famine ‘in Siam, Nguyen Anh gave perm
sell 264,000 litres of rice to the Siamese
; Junks were also sent by Nguyen Anh to other Southeast Asian ports to buy arms and Strategic goods, the means of
was: most likely rice.!* After coming to power in 1776, Nguyen Anh
by 1781, in a mere five year, already possessed an impressive navy
consisting of “So Gai Tau (junks), 3 galleys, and 2 European ships.”
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Nguyen Anh built his forces on the Tice, trade Crawfurd described the Nguyen’s 800 can- fons: as: a “most extraordinary spectacle.” Crawfurd wrote:
fission to
payment
=
10 : ˆ >
Dai Nam Thuc Luc Chinh Bien De Nhat Ky (Chronicle of Greater Vietnam,
Periodof Gia Long, Part1), hereafter Chinh Bien, The Oriental Institute, Keio Uni- versity, Mita, Siba, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 1968, vol 4, p 350
11 Ty
Ibid, p.349 The Thai source however, su
tt
iggests otherwise The rice was said to be “presented to the king fof Thailand] dt
in answer to an official Tequest bearing the seal of a minister of state sent to him [Nguyen Anh]” The Dynastic Chronicles:
Bangkok Era The First Reign trans & ed Thadeus and Chadin Flood The Centre
for East Asian Cultural Studies, Tokyo, 1978, vol.1, p.164 J2 Chính Biem, vol.3, p 340
13 Aye ’
Chinh Bien, vol 1, p.316 “The late king had one time 2 fine covettes mounting 18 guns each with an extraordinary number of war-galleys.” “Crawfurd’s Report”
in Lamb, The Mandarin Road fo Old Hue, p 268
14 Crawfurd, Journal, p.252-254, Nguyen Anh’s artillery thus contrast markedly to
those of his enemy the Tay Son See Chapman’s description in Lamb, p 102
Trang 4The iron cannon consisting of an extraordinary assemblage of old ship guns of various European nations - French, English, Dutch, and Portuguese
The carriages were all constructed, finished, and
painted, as substantially and neatly as if they had been manufactured at Woolwich or Fort William
The occupation and cultivation of Gia Dinh can also be viewed as an opportunity for revitalising the Nguyen Gia Long, the title that Nguyen Anh gave himself when he founded the Nguyen dynasty in 1802 indicates this It was from Gia Dinh (Gia) area that he flourished he flourished * substantially in the early 19th century In 1809 a junk from Fukien was wrecked near the Paracel Islands and was rescued by an English ship The junk had 561 people on
board, and was trading rice to the Dong Nai (Gia Dinh) area.””
Crawfurd estimated that in the early 18@% the whole trade between
Vietnam and China was about 311,750 piculs Rice was undoubtedly
one of the staple goods A report by the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi stated in 1828 that 60-70% of the coins circulating in Guangdong were cast in Vietnam.“ This suggests that a considerable volume of trade and commercial interaction existed between China and Vietnam at this time
22 Public Report Office, F.O 233/189, no 220, quoted from “Ging dai zhong yie xia men de hai shang mao yi, 1727-1833” (Overseas trade in mid-Qing period, 1727-1833), in Zhong guo hai yang fa zhan shi lun ven ji (Papers on the Chinese history of Naval development), vol 4 Taipei p 90
23 Lamb, p 265
24 Ming Qing Shi Liao, Geng Bian (Historical materials of the Ming and Qing periods:
Series G), Academic Sinica, Taipei, 1960, vol 3 NOTE * Please see the attached sheet
204
THE RISE OF SATIGON
in Soutte (eberman points out, in the 18th century the trade _— pattern 8S sia was changing from trade in luxury goods to trading n A ati Saigon’s rise can be seen as a direct result of this ene which aps ven more significantly, the rice trade was the corner marked this change A co
i
between Hoi An ete ge comparison can be drawn gon: while the rise of Hoi An as
¢ ) ¢ ¢
an entre had immediate relations with the demand of Calambac, gold and other
luxuries, the rise of Sai
trade aigon was undoubtedly established on the tice
paring the peak Nguyen lord period in the 1750s, Chinese junks wa ing n Hoi An numbered about 70-80 per year However accor- 8 fo Chaigneau, 300 junks traded in Saigon annually by the early 1800s.6 Since junks visiting Saigon from China were estimated at 30 annually,?” 90% of these junks would have to-have come f other ports of Southeast Asia In 1800 the revenue from ov seas trade in Saigon alone was 489,790 quan,“ while in the y ‘od of 338 n0 2) oe State revenue of the Nguyen ford was between 100 and 423,300 2 i i rice exportation from the Mekong dele meee NGIY teated lo the a 25 vị Vict i ` > i san = sue ame ory, c pena Intergration and Burasian Analogies: Structuring South -1830" ie : - y,
30", Modern Asian Studies, vol 27, no 3, 1993, p-491 John Crawfurd, Journal, p- 520,Nfn
Teo, >,
rawfurd’s paper” in Lamb, pp 264-265 *8 Chink Bien vol 12, p 500
29
Le Quy Don, Phu Bien Ta , ip Luc, written in 1774, i i i
Khanh Dae Trach Van Hoa, Saigon, 1973, pp 36b-3⁄7a ai ý EM Quac Vụ
Trang 5
The rise of Saigon brought-abouf a new trend in the Viet- namese history In pointing out that trade of Cochinchina wer oor ducted by Chinese merchants, Crawfurd, referring to Cochinc maritime ventures to the Strait of Malacca, writes:
Made within the last few years by the king of Cochinchina, on -his own account, and the junks employed in which, with the exception of the Chinese pilots, are all navigated by native Cochin-
chinese:
This situation might be attributed to the nature of bulk trade within Southeast Asian countries, which placed the Vietnamese ime affordable - position, to trade rice, sugar and salt with is uth Asian neighbours Salt seems to be a new export item w! ie met have been a response to the local need of other Southeas asin countries, rather than of China, On the other hand, Saigon’s rise sealed off the maritime access to Cambodia, which must have as “ a further decline of this country As Crawfurd observed: “o a years it has attracted on the whole commerce of Kamboja w! c
used formerly to be conducted on the great river of that country
itself.”>1 mà Vietnamese
With the rise of Saigon began a new era of /ietnam overseas trade and a new chapter of Vietnamese economic history Colonial scholarship maintained that early 19th century Vietnam <n a Confucianist closed-door policy and it was this policy that ma 30 Crawfurd, Journal, pp- 513-514 31 «Crawfurd’s Report”, in Lamb, p 258 206 ¬
Vietnam poor The Nguyen dynasty was labelled by Vietnamese * nationalist historians as uniquely “reactionary” They maintained that the Nguyen dynasty “put a reactionary ‘anti-commerce’ policy into effect”,>? and that “obscurantism, immobility, and rejection of outside influences caused the economy to stagnate while peasant revolts, whose number and intensity increased, translated into pro- ‘found social crisis ” As a result, such historians maintain that the Nguyen regime was “already half defeated internally” before the
French assault in 1858.33 Revolutionary scholars, like their colonial
predecessors, regard the Nguyen dynasty as the source of Vietnam’s impoverishment in ‘the ‘nineteenth century In both colonial and revo- lutionary scholarship, the incompetence of the Nguyen dynasty is seen as the reason for French intervention
However, data on the overseas trade between Vietnam and
Singapore during the first half of the 19th century, strongly suggests that some dynamic characteristics of the Vietnamese situation have been overlooked It was widely believed by many historians that the export of rice was prohibited during this period, and countless articles and works criticise this policy According to Crawfurd, how- ever, the prohibition on rice was “rather nominal than real” He States: “Except in times of apprehended scarcity, [it] is sent out of the country in abundance.”*4 This shed a light to the following discussion
aS
32 Phan Huy Le et al., Lich su che do Phong Kien Viet Nam, (History of the Viet- namese Feudal System), 1961, vol 3 p 446
33 Le Thanh Khoi, Histoire du Vietnam, des origines a 1858, Paris, Sudestasie, 1981
p 345
34 Crawfurd, Journal, p.519
Trang 6A PEAK OF ECONOMIC GROWTH2
There has beena widely held view that Siamese foreign trade
was carried out on a significant scale in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, while the foreign trade of Vietnam was almost negligible However, even in the 1820s, when Vietnamese imports to Singapore were still at a lower level, rice from Vietnam was already a factor to be reckoned with in Singapore The price of rice in :Singapore doubled in 1825, forcing the government to find a remedy by im- porting rice from the “neighbouring Malay countries” Reports from
Siam and Cochinchina maintained that the reason for this rise was
“that the Government of those countries had put a temporary em- bargo on the exportation of grain.”” Graph 1, - shows further that 19th century Vietnam being a consistent trading partner with Singa- pore Graph 1 Viet Imports & Thai Imports to Singapore, 1823-56 1400000 1200000 g Z 1000000 a ơ ô T8 600000 a 400000 200000 0 1823 1856
Sources: Tabular Statements of the Commerce and Shipping of Prince of Wales’ Island Singapore, and Malacca, Year 1923-56 35 Journal p- 545 208
‘The first noticeable point in G, point j i :
Trang 7level of sugar seems to be responsible for the decrease of the over- all imports of Vietnam to Singapore in the early 1850s, and might have been an important factor held back Vietnam’s exports ability
Despite the fluctuation of sugar imports, it is‘no doubt that Vietnam’s overall’ overseas trade to Singapore increased about five times - between 1840: and 1856 Graph 3 shows Vietnam's trade with Singapore on-a approximately five year average basis While a steady growth between 1823 and 1840 is seen, after this period we saw a most remarkable growth, both in terms of exports and in terms of imports The ten years between 1841 and 1850 appear to be the key period for this growth Graph 3 Vietnam’s Trade with Singapore 700000 600000 Š 500000 Ä 400000 ii a : 300000 "¬¬ - a 200000 100000 0 41-45 1831-35 1836-40 1846-50 1851-56 ° % mì 3 15
This growth, moreover, coincide with the growth of cultivated land in the country between 1820 and 1847, during which period it
grew by’ more than one third.*° The number of taxpayers also in- 210
on
tose the same speed, from 719,510 of 1829 to 1,024,388 period is n ° (though the data on the national revenues in the court bought oaained, it Is noticeable that in 1844, the Nguyen 80,000 conn op 30, quan of money erm ship from Overseas, alone of which costed Since this was half of the national re-
venue of 1800, the revenues in the 1840s must also have a remark-
hana sive of the junks, I should mention that there every year, for the last three
;
> fi
be Cochinchinese capital, a merchant-ship and ing poronging to his Cochin Chinese Majesty ,
withsatnding his Chinese prejudices, h judi : lately become enamoured of the details and fits
of trade.3°
mạ ———————_—_— _
37
Nguyen The Anh, Kink te va
the society in the Nguyen dynasty) Lua Thieng,
38 ny,» i
Chinh Bien:de tam ky, vol 40, p: 5267
39», Journal: 541-542,
Trang 8This policy was foreign to northern Vietnamese regime, the Le, but nothing new to the experiences of the southern Vietnamese regime, the Nguyen This Vietnamese royal interest and practice in trade appears to have continued throughout the period’ before the arrival of the French A paragraph about Cochinchina written by the Resident Councillor to the Goyernor of Prince of Wales’ Island in 1845 states:
The mandarins who annually visit Singapore in the king’s ship, have become better acquainted with us, they return to their country with practical informa-
tion calculated to impart confidence 1 would also
record that the several interpreters on board the king’s vessels are young men who have been in- structed and taught English at the Singapore Insti-
tution, there are three at present under tuition.*°
The Councillor also reported that in 1846: “Between Cochin- china and Singapore, exhibits a very favourable aspect in 1846-46 during the year five ships, equals to tons 2,400, belonging to the king of Cochinchina, arrived here with full cargoes ”4!
These statements provide the background information for the cohsistent overseas trade between Vietnam and Singapore, which 19th century Vietnamese literati would not mention in the official
history
40 “Letter of Resident Concillor to the Governor of Prince of Wales’ Island, 1845", Tabulated statements of the commerce and shipping, 1845, p 117
41 «letter of Resident Councillor, 30th June 1846”, ibid, 1846, p 70
212
CONCLUSION
The rice production and trade in the Mekong delta has been a fundamental part of Vietnam’s economy since the 18th century and increased dramatically in the nineteenth century Cultivated land was increased by one third in the first half of the nineteenth century This increase coincided with rice exports to Singapore which increased almost seventeen times between 1831 and 1855.2 Together with the overall trade volume greatly expanded with Singapore, and very likely increased with China and Bangkok, it appears that the process by which Vietnam’s economy became linked to global networks of com- merce was already under way by the time of the French conquest
Se
42
Tabular Statements of the Commerce and Shipping of Prince of Wales’ Island Singapore and Malacca, year 1839-56,