Villages as political actors in eighteenth century northern Vietnam

Within the research to date on the history of Vietnam, much discussion exists extolling the high level of autonomy achieved by agrarian villages during their formation on the Hong River Delta during the 17 and 18th centuries. However, historians still remain in the dark over the question of how these same politically conscious communities coped with the threat of depopulation during the 18th century, in the midst of limits on land reclamation opportunities and an excess of mouths to feed imposed by continuous natural disasters. This article examines strategies adopted by villagers to deal with the situation, by shedding light on peasant efforts to lobby government officials in the hope of maintaining and expanding their interests through reductions in their public tax burdens. Here the author focuses on villagers who were hired out to religious shrines, Buddhist temples and local government offices to perform menial law enforcements duties, called tao-le 皂隷 and thu-le 守隷（guards, jailers, executioners, etc.）, in return for tax exemptions.<br>　 Although during the two centuries in question many villages were granted tax reductions for tao-le/thu-le services, such exemptions fluctuated over time, even for a single village, indicating that the entitlements granted for those services were both fluid and unpredictable. Moreover, since the imposition of taxes and corvee on villages presented the opportunity for local authorities to enrich themselves personally, the author cites cases in which tao-le providing villages deserving of tax exemptions were nevertheless taxed at the full burden. In response, there were villages that continuously demanded the central government to reconfirm its recognition of public burden reductions.<br>　 Villagers’ attempts to maintain or expand the exemptions owed to them included such strategies as submitting petitions signed in conjunction with villagers throughout the region or backing up their claims by citing the exemptions enjoyed by neighboring villages. In particular, during the frequent natural disasters and civil unrest rife from the mid-18 century on, villages, in efforts to avoid impoverishment, must have tried all kinds of measures to gain tax relief, including resorting to tao-le service to obtain tax exemptions. On the other hand, the central government, finding it fiscally inconvenient to grant the demands of all villages, no doubt took measures to provide as much relief as possible under the caveat of ensuring fiscal solvency, which meant refusing demands made by some villages. Here the author offers a scenario of fierce competition among the central government, local authorities and the peasantry for scarce resources in the midst of overpopulation, limited land reclamation opportunities and the decline in foreign trade plaguing Vietnam during the 18th century.