Abstract
This chapter uses a simplified version of Foucault’s genealogical method to trace the emergence of the South China Sea as a ‘complex’ in international relations. It demonstrates how different knowledge systems and the ways of using and claiming this maritime area are interlinked and transformed through time. The mechanisms of power that have transmogrified a ‘common’ into something that holds the characteristics of a ‘territory’, with multiple sovereignty claims and conflicts, call for reflection on the value of independent institutions in bilateral diplomacy.
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Notes
- 1.
The Yi people are indigenous inhabitants of territories now known as autonomous provinces of China (Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi) and of the current north-eastern provinces of Vietnam (Hà Giang, Cao Bằng, Lào Cai) (Harrell 2001).
- 2.
In: The New York Times, 25 January 2005; at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/world/worldspecial4/survivors-of-tsunami-live-on-close-terms-with-sea.html (13 June 2015).
- 3.
Hoogervorst’s study (2012) of the interactions between ‘sea peoples’ and land-based communities in Sumatra and Borneo demonstrates the complex and dynamic character of their identities and livelihoods through history. With the emergence of large-scale harbour polities, ‘sea peoples’ have today appropriated the roles of protégés, outlaws and victims in a multilayered and multifaceted interplay of seaborne navigation, commerce and warfare.
- 4.
Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư (which are the complete annals of Đại Việt) by Ngô Sĩ Liên, completed in 1479, translated into modern Vietnamese and published by Nhà xuất bản Khoa Học Xã Hội, Hà Nội (1993).
- 5.
The neo-Confucian faction criticized the Eunuchs, who were favoured by the Ming Emperor Yong Le, for their lavish lifestyle and corruption (Tsai 1996).
- 6.
Vickery (2005) establishes that the Austronesian ancestors of Chăm people were among the navigators of prehistoric Southeast Asia, crossing from Borneo to present-day Vietnam. Chămpa was first recorded as a kingdom in the third century CE, when the Chinese speak of a political entity named ‘Linyi’ without making any allusion to its ethnic identity or language.
- 7.
In view of the concern about the contemporary meaning of the dots and dashes in China’s U-shaped line in the South China Sea and the haphazard numbers of dashes used (11, 10 and 9), it is important to remember this Chinese tradition that uses broken lines in cartography as symbols for navigation. The contemporary application of dots and dashes in defining China’s maritime boundary in the South China Sea raises the question of their technical meaning and origin, which is thus far not clarified. It is quite possible that the utilitarian meaning of navigation has been conflated through time with that of the administration of a sovereign area.
- 8.
Manchu language captions were superimposed on paper slips several centuries later.
- 9.
In the nineteenth century, Chinese scholars assimilated the European science of cartography, which meant seeing the earth as spherical, plus the use of a coordinate system for locating points on its surface (Yee 1994).
- 10.
In an interview on 23 July 2012, Dr. Mai Hong, who works for the Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre and is former head of the Library of the Institute for the Study of Chinese and Demotic Scripts and Cultures, stated that the names of European contributors written on the map are Matteo Bicci from Italy, Johannes Adam Schall Von Bell from Germany, and Ferdinandus Verbiest from Belgium. Vietnam Language Centre in Singapore; at: https://vietnameselanguage.wordpress.com/2012/07/ (25 May 2015).
- 11.
vnexpress; at: http://vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/thoi-su/hanh-trinh-tim-kiem-bon-sach-atlas-hoang-sa-noi-troi-tay-2869552.html (14 June 2015).
- 12.
Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc.; at: https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/25974?view=print (1 March 2014).
- 13.
Wikimedia Commons; at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1850_Perrot_Map_of_Indo-Chine_-_Geographicus_-_Indochine-perrot-1825.jpg (1 March 2014).
- 14.
See Trương (1967) and Vuving (2000). The major texts on independence and sovereignty include: (1) King Lý Thường Kiệt’s eleventh-century short poem entitled “Nam Quốc Sơn Hà Nam Đế Cư” (The Southern country’s mountain and river the Southern Emperor inhabits, The separation is natural and allotted in Heaven’s Book, If the bandits come to trespass it, You shall, in doing that, see yourselves handled with failure and shame!); (2) Nguyễn Trai’s 126 verses celebrating independence from Chinese rule in 1428 entitled “Bình Ngô Đại Cáo” (Proclamation of the Pacification of the Marauding Ngô). The term Ngô refers to people from the Northern Empire who during the different Chinese dynasties (Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming) had invaded the country. The first two verses declared a territorial division from the former colonizer and included a pledge to rule with compassion and righteousness to bring peace, and to dispatch troops to protect the population and suppress tyranny.
- 15.
Cát Vàng are words in Quốc âm, the spoken language of the Việt people; and Hoàng Sa is Nôm, the formal Sinicised writing language used by the cultured elite.
- 16.
Other official documents from the seventeenth century that show presence and administration are: (1) Đại Nam thực lục tiền biên (1600–1775) (大南實錄前編, The Early Chapter of the Chronicles of Đại Nam [an ancient name of Vietnam]); (2) Toản tập Thiên Nam tứ chí lộ đồ thư (1630–1653) (纂集天南四至路图書, The Collection of the South’s Road Map); (3) Phủ biên tạp lục (1776) (撫邊雜錄, Miscellany on the Pacification at the Frontier); (4) Đại Nam thực lục chính biên (1848) (大南實錄正編, The Main Chapter of the Chronicles of Đại Nam); (5) Đại Nam nhất thống chí (1865–1882) (大南ー統誌, The Record of the Unified Đại Nam); (6) Hoàng Việt dư địa chí (1833) (皇越輿地誌, Geography of the Viet Empire); (7) Việt sử thông giám cương mục khảo lược (1876) (越史通鑑綱目考略, Outline of The Chronicles of the Viet History) (Nguyễn/Dương 2012).
- 17.
Sach Viet; at: http://sachviet.edu.vn/threads/le-quy-don-toan-tap-tap-1-phu-bien-tap-luc-nxb-khoa-hoc-xa-hoi-1977-vien-su-hoc-345-trang.11166/ (4 September 2014).
- 18.
“The Pracel or Parocels, is a labyrinth of small islands, rocks and sand-banks, which appears to extend up to the 11th degree of north latitude, in the 107th parallel of longitude from Paris. Some navigators have traversed part of these shoals with a boldness more fortunate than prudent, but others have suffered in the attempt. The Cochin-Chinese called them Cón uáng [French articulation of Cát Vàng]. Although this kind of archipelago presents nothing but rocks and great depth which promises more inconveniences than advantages, the king GIA LONG thought he had increased his dominions by this sorry addition. In 1816, he went with solemnity to plant his flag and take formal possession of these rocks, which it is not likely any body will dispute with him.” The journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. I Part II, July to December, 1837, page 745, Biodiversity Heritage Library; at: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/123871#page/7/mode/1up (3 September 2014).
- 19.
These facts were quoted in a letter from the Governor General of French Indochina, Hanoi to the Minister for the Colonies, Paris (Letter No. 704–A–Ex, dated 20 March 1930) (Chemillier-Gendreau 2000).
- 20.
According to Winichakul (1994: 17), the ‘geo-body’ of a nation refers not only to its territory but more importantly to its image as being clearly recognizable to its citizens through exposure to maps with their borders; the image becomes an inspirational source of emotions (pride, loyalty, love, passion, bias, hatred, reason and unreason). A geo-body of a nation stands alone without reference to what is beyond its border. This is different from the pre-modern mapping techniques used in Thailand which connected areas of what is today Thailand with the Buddha’s birthplace in what is today India.
- 21.
Japanese companies were exploiting guano (bird dung used as fertilizer and phosphate to make soap) from the reefs of these islands, but Japan made no territorial claims on them (Tønnesson 2006: 575).
- 22.
Until 1973, a marker stood on Itu Aba with the following inscription: “France—Île Itu Aba et Dépendances 10 Août 1933” (MFARVN 1975).
- 23.
In 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) adopted this same map but in 1953, Premier Zhou En Lai agreed without an explanation to the deletion of two dashes lying within the Gulf of Tonkin (Li/Li 2003: 290). The formalized line since then carries nine dashes.
- 24.
The British emphasized the strategic importance of these islands as an observation post for naval and aerial movements from Singapore.
- 25.
University of Wisconsin Digital Collections; at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1939v03 (18 November 2014).
- 26.
Mainly to control the supply lines between this part of the country and the Chiang Kai-shek forces.
- 27.
Going beyond the Confucian notion of benevolent government, the principle of Dân Vi Quý is derived from Mencius’ idea that human nature is inherently good, and that it is the responsibility of government to ensure: (1) the moral cultivation of the people; and (2) the respectability of the government and the ruling elite (or the quality of leadership). The people’s experience and perceptions of their leader’s rule can lead to veneration and compliance or contestation and rebellion.
- 28.
Bảo Đại’s statement upon his abdication requested the new government to treat all parties and groups—which all had contributed to the country’s independence—in the spirit of fraternity, reminding people that the new regime should be built on the absolute union of the entire population. “Henceforth, we shall be happy to be a free citizen in an independent country” (Hoàng 2008: 251–252).
- 29.
Shiro’s (2010) survey of extant Đại-Việt’s geomantic texts shows a concept of the nation built on a network of veins and focal points rather than a clearly bounded surface. These texts and the accompanying diagram suggest that geomantic power came from outside the kingdom, the knowledge being externally controlled from the time of the Tang Dynasty, when a geomancy expert was sent to Annam to suppress powerful geomantic nodes which could lead to the emergence of another ‘Son of Heaven’. Although the geomantic diagram (the An Nam Phong Thủy) has been used in modern education, it does not express the same meanings as the ‘geo-body’ of a modern nation. The Nam quốc địa dư (the Geography of the Southern Nation) was produced in 1908 by the Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục (a short-lived indigenous cultural movement), using Hán Nôm or the Sinicized Vietnamese script exclusive to cultural elites, to describe the country in the terms of modern geography. The story of Vietnam’s ‘geo-body’ contemporaneous to China’s, if it exists, is still to be written.
- 30.
US Department of State Archive; at: http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm (21 August 2014).
- 31.
This seems consistent with the millennium-old tradition in Vietnam’s foreign relations with China: the grace of the emperor of the Middle Kingdom in granting a Viet monarch the authority to rule must be acknowledged. The struggle against European powers for national sovereignty in the twentieth century does not seem to alter the old framework of understanding ‘sovereignty’.
- 32.
For the full text of this agreement, see Chap. 1 of the ‘Pentagon Papers’. US National Archive; at: http://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/ (14 March 2015).
- 33.
H-Diplo Roundtable Review; at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-diplo, volume XI, no. 19 (2010) (2 April 2010).
- 34.
United Nations; at: http://www.taiwandocuments.org/sanfrancisco01.htm (14 June 2015).
- 35.
Summary of World Broadcasts: Far East, Part 3, Monitoring Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation, 1974—East Asia.
- 36.
Wilson Center Digital Archive; at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111963 (19 May 2015).
- 37.
Wilson Center Digital Archive; at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121142 (20 May 2015).
- 38.
Wilson Center Digital Archive; at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121142 (20 May 2015).
- 39.
In 1961, this government integrated the Paracel archipelago into the administration of Quang Nam Province, which had previously been part of Thua Thien province during the French administration.
- 40.
Nguyen Thai Hoc Foundation; at: http://www.nguyenthaihocfoundation.org/lichsuVN/hsts1.htm (25 August 2014).
- 41.
Mao has reportedly declared the following: “the Pacific today is not pacific at all. When it is under our control we shall be able to say that it is pacific indeed” (Gahrana 1984:7).
- 42.
See: Peking Review, September 1958, N. 34: 26.
- 43.
On 24 January 1966, in a report to the Soviet Vice Foreign Minister V.V. Kuznetsov, the Polish official Jerzy Michalowski discussed his visit to DRV and remarked that a great part of the armaments of the PRG at the time were Chinese-produced, since Soviet armaments remained in the DRV. This seems appropriate to the character of the ‘people’s war’ against the RVN. Wilson Center Digital Archive; at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117722 (19 May 2015).
- 44.
Discussion between Liu Shaoqi and Le Duan, 8 April 1965; at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113058 (19 May 2015).
- 45.
US Department of State, Office of the Historian; at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d203 (21 August 2014).
- 46.
In a conversation between the US secretary of state, Dr. Henri Kissinger, and two Chinese diplomats, Dr. Kissinger stated that the US held its distance from these protests and was only concerned with the prisoners and their release as an American was included in that group. This release would defuse the situation as far as the United States is concerned. US Department of State, Office of the Historian; at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v18/d66 (22 August 2013).
- 47.
BBC Vietnam; at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/vietnam/2009/03/090324_paracels_hanoi_reassessment.shtml (17 April 2015).
- 48.
Schottenhammer (2012) uses this term in reference to Gipouloux’s (2011) notion of “a tight-laced corset of bureaucracy”.
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Truong, TD., Knio, K. (2016). A Critical Genealogy of the Emergence of the South China Sea as a ‘Complex’ in International Relations. In: The South China Sea and Asian Regionalism. SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace(), vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13551-9_3
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