central government, were said to have escaped. Interestingly, Nguyen Khac Tuyen escaped easily, but Nguyen Nhac continued to chase Dang and Luong, "killed Luong, and exterminated the entire family of Dang". See Chinh Bien Liet Truyen So Tap, vol.30, p.1332.
the 17508. An even heavier one was implemented in 1769, on the area from Quang Nam to Dien Khanh, which demanded a 55% increase in rice and 75% in cash.52 The later Nguyen dynasty biography of Tay Son leaders argued that the Tay Son broke out as a result of the imperious and despotic activities of the Regent, Truong Phuc Loan.53 At first glance, court affairs might seem distant from the ordinary people who joined the Tay Son rebels, except that "people said that the miscellaneous levies collected from the Quang Nam region started when Truong Phuc Loan came to power".54 Loan’s demands were the spark that set the dry tinder of popular unrest alight here. But what fanned the flames afterwards was the existing taxation system. When the people were squeezed to the extreme, it left little for most of the Nguyen officials themselves to live on. The great dilemma of the Nguyen remuneration system for officials was thus exposed: while it had been convenient and effective for the Nguyen in good times, in the difficult times of the mid-18th century meeting the needs of the officials could only make things worse for the government. The same can be said about the Nguyen army. Their demands aggravated the already tense situation between the Nguyen and its taxpayers.
On top Qf all this, in the mid-18th century the Nguyen regime itself was in a process of transition, changing from a military machine into a civil government. In the 18th century, the Nguyen regime seems to have reached a new position where it needed to adjust to the unprecedented conditions brought about by its own growth: the territorial over-expansion, a shift in the revenue balance from overseas trade to agriculture, and the political imbalance and manoeuvres between court factions, all grew out of the nature of the Nguyen polity. These stresses and changes all required innovative government responses, which the Nguyen failed to provide. We will never know whether the Nguyen might have found adequate solutions in time, for the Tay Son rose precisely at this moment. Other rebellions had happened before in D ang Trong without seriously threatening the government. What made the Tay Son movement so strong? Where did it find the energy, the drive, and the determination that helped push it to a previously unimagined level of success? First and foremost, and especially in the early years, the movement benefited from its close involvement with the
“ See Table 7 in Chapter 5.
“ Dai Nam Chinh Bien Liet Truyen So Tap, vol.30, p.1331. 54 Phu Bien. vol.4, p.2a.
uplanders. While the Nguyen themselves drew advantages from their contacts with the local peoples, and from adopting and adapting elements of their cultures in the early days, ironically this same process also helped create the enemy that almost destroyed them. The Tay Son movement itself was a direct product of Vietnamese localisation. The Tay Son were ethnically mixed, and emerged in the region most influenced by the mixing of cultures.56 What had originally made the Nguyen so powerful now made the Tay Son unbeatable. This dynamism gave the Tay Son a tremendous energy which, under Nguyen Hue’s leadership, no one could resist, not the Nguyen, not the Trinh, nor the Siamese, nor the Chinese.
As we have argued, the Tay Son movement began as a southern phenomenon. To a very considerable extent, it can be understood in the 1770s as little more than a local attem pt to displace the equally southern Nguyen regime, and to rule
Dang Trong in its stead. Local characteristics played an important part in attracting and keeping the Tay Son’s followers, many of them uplanders, in its early years. We will finish with a survey of some of these features.
The Tay Son as a product of Dang Trong localisation
The Tay Son emerged in a region of mixed cultural influences, and drew on a variety of sources for their strength, not the least of which were local legends and myths.
One of the most important of these concerned the existence of a sacred sword th at conferred invulnerability on its owner. Similar legends about a sacred sword existed among the Khmer, Jarai, Bahnar, Mnong, and other upland peoples; and the supposed ownership of such a sacred sword by the King of Water in the highlands prompted the Khmer king to send him gifts every year.56 This sword was so powerful th at it would enhance the owner’s prestige and guarantee his supernatiifal power to succeed in any battle. More important, it was a symbol of sovereignty. Ledere rites chronicles describing in 1613 how Soryopor, the Khmer
“ There is a striking similarity between the environment of the Tay Son and that of Lam Son, the place from which Le Loi rose and founded the Le dynasty. According to Gaspardone, Lam Son was very much a frontier region in the 15th century. He says that the village of Lam Son "situated in between plain and mountain in the Annamite-Muong area", and "in the 15th century, Tho Xuan was a barbarous region, infested with wild animals" where Vietnamese, Muong and Tai peoples mixed. In fact he says that the area of Lam Son was more Muong in appearance than Vietnamese. Quoted from John Whitmore, The Development if Le Government in Fifteenth Century Vietnam. Ph.D thesis, University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1970, p.4.
ruler "took the sacred sword and sat under [a] sacred parasol" to take the oath of royal office. 67 Hickey says th at Cham rulers would give Chaim vassal chiefs "a
Cham saber and seal and the Cham title of botao or potao", which means "lord" or "master", and in some contexts was tantamount to "king" . 68
It is therefore easy to understand why Nguyen Nhac claimed to possess a "sacred sword" in the early period of the Tay Son. This rebellion has been so studied from the political point of view that its local and religious aspects have been largely overlooked. No mention has been made about this sword in important scholarly works on the Tay Son. 69 Yet according to the Nguyen dynasty’s Chinh
Bien Liet Truven So Tap (First collection of the primary compilation of biographies of Imperial Vietnam), Nhac:
obtained a sword one day when he was passing An Duong Son mountain. 60
He claimed that it was sacred and deluded people with the sword. Many people believed in him.61
The degree of Tay Son localisation appears more clearly if we consider this in conjunction with Nguyen Nhac’s title. At least one contemporary source records Nhac styled himself "king of heaven" . 62 There is a distinct possibility that the real
local word behind the two Chinese characters was potao, meaning "lord" or "master", or sometimes "king". In other words, Nhac claimed for himself the local title the Nguyen had tolerated or accepted from indigenous peoples in the south. Nor did Nguyen Nhac choose Quy Nhon, Hue or Hoi An as his capital, but decided instead to enlarge the city of Do Ban, the old capital of the Cham
17 Ledere, Histoire du Cambodge. p.337.