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Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <[email protected]> > Date: September 1, 2020 at 8:43:27 AM EDT > To: [email protected] > Cc: H-Net Staff <[email protected]> > Subject: H-Net Review [H-Asia]: Herr on Davis, 'Imperial Bandits: Outlaws > and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands' > Reply-To: [email protected] > > Bradley Camp Davis. Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the > China-Vietnam Borderlands. Seattle University of Washington Press, > 2017. 288 pp. $30.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-295-74205-2. > > Reviewed by Joshua Herr (UCLA) > Published on H-Asia (September, 2020) > Commissioned by Sumit Guha > > Herr on Davis, _Imperial Bandits_ > > Bradley Camp Davis's book, _Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in > the China-Vietnam Borderlands_ (2017), has much to offer to scholars, > policymakers, and readers interested in issues of insurgency, > informal political power, and violence. While Davis's book is focused > on the nineteenth century, the China-Vietnam border today remains a > fascinating space of global connections. > > In Hanoi in 2011, I was introduced to a man visiting from London who > was of Vietnamese heritage. Over local beer, he told me his family > had fled their home near Vietnam's northern border when PRC forces > invaded in 1979, and eventually settled in London. He was back to see > the home country and, when he found out that I spoke Cantonese and > was doing research on the China-Vietnam border, he told me more about > his family. Growing up in London, his family spoke Vietnamese and a > bit of Cantonese within their wider social circle as well as a > language they only spoke at home. He did not know what that language > was called but it was neither Vietnamese nor Chinese. I was > fascinated by their story: a family from the China-Vietnam > borderlands, forced to flee because of the clash of national > ambitions, traveling halfway across the world, and speaking multiple > languages found on both sides of the border. I suspect the home > language to which the man referred was one of the several Tai > languages spoken in these borderlands, closely related to what is > spoken by the Nung, Tay, and Zhuang peoples today. > > _Imperial Bandits_ gives us a glimpse into the dynamics of this > border in the nineteenth century, through a focus on the fluid and > violent world of bandits, and helps us understand the continued > volatility and complexity of borders today. Davis tells the story of > the rise of a powerful bandit movement, the Black Flags, on the > northern frontier of Vietnam, how it confronted and became entangled > with Vietnamese, French, and Chinese states, and what its legacy is > today. > > The Black Flags were a large bandit organization that had origins in > the volatile borderlands of southwest China in the mid-nineteenth > century. Drawing membership from a variety of ethnic groups in the > area, the Black Flags created a base across the border in northern > and northwestern Vietnam, supporting themselves through control of > the opium trade and customs revenue as well as violent intimidation > of the populations in the area. In addition to their success in > seizing local power, the Black Flags are significant historically for > building alliances with, first the Nguyen Vietnamese court and then > the Qing Chinese court, and most famously, confronting French > colonial designs in northern Vietnam in the Sino-French War of > 1883-85. > > This book will prove to be a valuable and engaging read to many > people interested in contemporary foreign affairs, geopolitics, and > the future of state and nonstate power, as well as historians > interested in Vietnam, China, French colonialism, transnational > movements, and the global nineteenth century. Davis's bandits, in > fact, resonate with several recent hot topics of international > politics, including US use of military contractors in the Iraq War in > the 2000s and the rise of ISIS in the past decade, and touch on > issues of informal power, the outsourcing and legitimacy of violence, > and the relation of these to state power and state-building. > Historians will find the Black Flags interesting when considered as a > parallel case to the role of nonstate actors such as the Hoa Hao in > the Mekong Delta in the twentieth century, as another example of the > "ambiguous colonization" of the French (Pierre Brocheux and Daniel > Hémery, _Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954_, 1994), > and in relation to the transition from margin to center of groups > such as the Ottomans, the Qing, the Safavids, and the Tay Son. > > Davis does several things in this book. First, he makes an important > argument about the relationship between state and informal power. > Extending Eric Hobsbawm's classic study (_Bandits_, 1969), Davis > argues that groups like the Black Flags were not garden-variety > outlaws. Rather, they were "imperial bandits," meaning that they > became an intrinsic part of imperial Nguyen frontier policy. More > broadly, the symbiotic relationship between Nguyen imperial rule and > the Black Flags was part of the game of empire that Qing China and > France also played. France won the round in the 1880s but it was only > by incorporating this repertoire of imperial banditry into their own > designs while at the same time camouflaging it in the language of the > civilizing mission. > > Second, Davis questions many colonial as well as anticolonial > nationalistic narratives about the Black Flags through a brilliant > use of oral accounts of the Black Flags. He rejects French colonial > accounts of Black Flags that exaggerate their violence and foreign > origins. At the same time, he questions Chinese and Vietnamese > nationalist hagiographies of the group by presenting oral narratives > from the borderlands that clearly speak of the violent, cruel nature > of banditry. Ultimately, the oral history that Davis has collected > shows the Black Flags as a highly organized political force, rooted > in multiethnic borderland society, and having a stark impact on local > society with a lasting legacy. > > Third, and this is not the least of its achievements, Davis's book > provides a cogent account of the Black Flags, Nguyen imperial rule, > and French colonial projects in the late nineteenth century in highly > readable, well-integrated, and insightful prose. It replaces several > earlier works that focus on only one of these three elements. > > Some of the highlights of the individual chapters are as follows. > Chapter 1 provides a revisionist account of the origins of the Black > Flags in the 1860s, rejecting a common myth that it was a splinter > group from the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64). Rather, Davis pinpoints > the origins of the Black Flags in the volatile power vacuum of > borderlands society in southwest China, as Qing state power receded > following the rise of the Taipings. Furthermore, he traces the Black > Flags' rise as closely tied to the control of the transborder opium > trade between the upland interior and the coast. > > Chapter 2 argues that French colonial propaganda about the Black > Flags--which has strongly influenced the groups' image in the > historiography--was shaped by French commercial designs on the > overland trade to China and mines in the 1870s. The evolving image of > the Black Flags as a threat to trade and local order was developed by > French consular reports in Hanoi, in what Davis calls "consular > optics" (p. 50). > > Chapter 3 reconsiders the Sino-French War of 1883-85, which was > provoked by renewed contention between the Black Flags and the French > over access to trade. Davis's central argument here complements Lloyd > Eastman's 1967 study of the war (_Throne and Mandarins_): Vietnamese > mandarins were just as varied and divided in their positions on the > Black Flags and the French as the Qing Chinese were about the war. > > Surprisingly, there is rather less on the Black Flags themselves in > this chapter. But Davis offers some intriguing new angles on the > conflict. First, in parallel to the Black Flags and French figures > like Jean Dupuis, Davis introduces us to Qing adventurers such as > Tang Jingsong, who, while holding Qing office, sought out and > supported the Black Flags on his own initiative, and Qing Vietnam > hands such as Cen Yuying and Xu Yanxu who were tasked with liaising > with the Black Flags and leading Qing forces in the 1883-85 > Sino-French War. Secondly, Davis presents international views of the > war and the Black Flags, ranging from the Shanghai-based > Chinese-language newspaper _Shenbao_ to a metropolitan French play. > > Chapter 4 argues that despite French triumph in the Sino-French War, > the borderland and imperial dynamics that gave rise to the Black > Flags continued unabated in the 1880s and 1890s and beyond. Like the > Nguyen and Qing before them, the French attempted to simultaneously > suppress and incorporate the remnants of the Black Flags and other > bandit groups in the aftermath of the war. The French also clarified > and strengthened the Qing-Vietnam borderline and established > telegraph connections, but these were just as amenable to use and > manipulation by borderland populations as they were to French > colonialists. Davis's pioneering discussion of the uses of the > telegraph in the borderlands, including by revolutionaries against > the Qing and by Liu Yongfu, the former Black Flags leader, to seek > aid for his former comrades, is particularly noteworthy. > > The conclusion is really more of an epilogue, where Davis provides > the obligatory first-person, present-day visit to the border, winks > at the statist illusions of the fixity of a border, and gives the > border-crossing borderlands' locals the last word. Of more substance > here is his demonstration, through a reflection on Chinese and > Vietnamese historiography and the potential of oral traditions, that > the borderland context, rather than the national, is vital to > understanding phenomena such as the Black Flags, and that, at the > same time, there is a history of effacing and forgetting this > context. > > My main criticism of Davis's valuable work is that the Black Flags > themselves remain relatively obscure. The book on the whole reads > well as a counternarrative to both colonial and nationalist > narratives of the Black Flags, and the deft use of oral traditions > contributes to the revisionism. I am left with a pretty clear idea of > how the Nguyen, French, and Qing representatives related to and > represented the Black Flags, but the book offers surprisingly little > information about so many questions surrounding the Black Flags, > including, among others, their ethnic composition, their > organization, how they controlled opium production and distribution, > their ideology, and what society looked like under their sway. These > aspects are all mentioned in the book but the details and the hows > and whys are left unclear. > > Having done research of my own on the China-Vietnam borderlands, I > recognize the difficulties of finding primary sources that speak to > these questions. Assuming the paucity of sources from the Black Flags > themselves, I wonder if more could be done with the admittedly biased > and fragmentary French, Chinese, and Nguyen sources, if read against > the grain and with an eye to finding convincing integration of the > information. > > The still-shadowy nature of the Black Flags relates to some of the > questions I am left with after reading the book: Did the Black Flags > aspire to state-building; and if not, why didn't they? Were they more > Blackwater than Taliban or ISIS, or at the end of the day, just > opportunistic and successful bandits? Certainly, there are quite a > number of interesting cases in Davis's historiographical backyard, > including the Manchus in the early seventeenth century, the Tay Son > in eighteenth-century Vietnam, and later, semi-state-like groups such > as the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen in the Mekong Delta in the > early twentieth century, for comparison. > > And from the point of view of empire, how does the case of Black > Flags fit into the extensive imperial repertoires now known, for > example, in the work of Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper (_Empires > in World History_, 2010)? Can we consider the Black Flags as a kind > of imperial intermediary or perhaps as an example of outsourced state > power in the field of violence comparable to tax farmers in the > fiscal field? Again, situating the Black Flags in some proximate > examples would have been illuminating, for example, Sino-Vietnamese > piracy in the South China Sea at the turn of the nineteenth century, > or the halter-and-bridle and _tusi_ systems of imperial Chinese > history. > > However, I do not want to distract from the real contribution of > _Imperial Bandits_. This is a brilliantly woven narrative of the > intersecting imperial designs of the Nguyen, Qing, and French, at the > center of which was the quintessentially borderland phenomena of the > Black Flags. It is the standard work on the Black Flags now, > replacing earlier work such as Eastman's, and will find a welcome > place on the desks of political scientists and historians of > transnationalism, colonialism, and Asia. As a plus, the book is > compact (170 pages of main text), clearly written, and action-packed, > making it an effective illustrative case study to assign > undergraduates in courses on colonialism, political economy, and > Asian histories. > > Nineteenth-century Vietnam remains a remarkably understudied subject, > especially given the rich, untapped sources from the period and the > pivotal nature of this period. _Imperial Bandits_ succeeds in picking > up the conventional focus on the French colonial project and going > beyond to the role of Nguyen politics, local society, and a > transnational history that does not assume an ultimate European > destination. I have high hopes that this book will inspire further > exploration of this vital and intriguing century in the history of > Vietnam. > > Citation: Joshua Herr. Review of Davis, Bradley Camp, _Imperial > Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands_. > H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. September, 2020. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54776 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1061): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1061 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76560720/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
