Interests, institutions and identity: the evolution of Minh Huong identity (ca. 17th-20th Centuries)

Abstract

In 1679, or 1682, a fleet commanded by Chinese loyalists to the long-dead Ming Dynasty landed on the shores of the Vietnamese domain of Dang Trong. Their resistance destroyed, they sought refuge from the country’s overlord; granting it, he settled them in the “southern frontier” lands of the Mekong Delta. Quickly, the “Ming Refugees”—or Minh Huong—became a powerful established interest within Vietnamese commerce, colonization and politics. Curiously, they remain understudied and misunderstood by both Vietnamese and Overseas Chinese specialists. This results from confusion about Ming Huong identity and origins, which this paper addresses by offering an alternative theory that focuses on the evolution of group identity and the interests and institutions that shaped it. Far from static, Minh Huong identity formed, metamorphosed, and all but disappeared through a series of adaptive responses that continually reshaped the content of Minh Huong interests, institutions and identity whenever “outside” circumstances challenged them. In this way, the Minh Huong evolved from the the merchant-driven Tang Chinese diaspora that developed in the chaos of 16th century maritime Asia, into a powerful merchant-bureaucratic class that exploited the institutions that Vietnamese matrilineage and Chinese patrilineage afforded them in order to advance its commercial and political interests. When their status eroded in the 19th century, the Minh Huong increasingly redefined their group as a minority ethnicity in defense of diminishing rights. Thus, the Minh Huong demonstrate the power of strategic representation in early modern Vietnam.