The South China Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

during the first millennium CE . Their histories are still being unearthed: both literally from archaeological digs and metaphorically from the pages of Chinese and other texts. Often we see them only in reflection, as they were recorded by others. And too often we view them through our present-day preoccupations: trying to trace the pedigrees of modern states through the shifting borders and migrating peoples of earlier centuries. But our present borders and identities would have made no sense to people actually alive in this early period. The historian Michael Churchman has shown that texts written in the Han–Tang period (from 111 BCE to 938 CE ) made no linguistic distinction between ‘Chinese’ and ‘Vietnamese’, for example. It was nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians who forced modern national identities upon these ancient peoples. 4 During the period when the French imperial administrators were trying to define a clear border between their realm and ‘China’, French historians were simultaneouslydividing ancient people into different categories by transcribing their names in either ‘Chinese’ or ‘Vietnamese’ styles.
    What is now China looked very different two millennia ago. Peoples referred to as Yue or Viet in Chinese texts lived all along the southern coast, including the Red River Delta in present-day Vietnam. They were briefly conquered by the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE but within 15 years the Qin had collapsed and the south coast regained independence for about a century. It wasn't until 111 BCE that the south fell to the Han Dynasty – and even then the region remained largely autonomous for another century. In the early years of the Common Era the Han imposed more direct rule, prompting occasional revolts and punitive military campaigns, and this state of ambiguous control persisted until the collapse of the Han in 220 CE . When the Han finally fell, their empire fractured into three, with the Wu Dynasty taking over much of the area south of the Yangtze River. But the Wu state only lasted until around 265 when it was defeated by its northern rivals, the Jin. Then, just 80 years later in 316, the Jin were forced out of the north and became a southern-based state until they too collapsed in 420 and were superseded by a series of other southern-based states.
    Where then is ‘China’ in this era? Historians of China have tended to describe ‘a civilization pretending to be a state’, to use Lucian Pye's formulation, a continuous culture that has controlled the landmass of East Asia for millennia. 5 This is not how it appears from the perspective of the South China Sea. For many centuries, the dynasties and peoples who controlled the Sea's northern shore were different from those controlling the inland areas of ‘China’. While the northern-based kingdoms looked inwards, those of the south looked outwards. They were directly connected to the maritime trading networks and through them to Funan and the rest of the region.
    Throughout most of this period, Funan possessed two things that have proved to be crucial for every successful Southeast Asian trading centre since: beneficial relationships with whoever was ruling India and southern China. In times of crisis, and particularly after political changes, Funan would send ‘embassies’ to China seeking to preserve its position as preferred trading partner. Its representatives would make ‘tribute’ offerings to facilitate the discussions. Much has been made of these tributary relations.Some nationalist Chinese historians argue that they prove Southeast Asian societies were vassals to Chinese emperors. This is how old Chinese texts tend to record them. However, contemporary Southeast Asian accounts suggest that ‘tribute’ wasn't viewed as some kind of feudal relationship between master and servant but simply as a trading partnership. Chinese rulers welcomed this ‘tribute’ as foreign recognition of their right to rule. Tribute ensured