Hoang Sa (Paracel) Temple is now the communal house of Ly Hai, Ly Son Island, Quang Ngai province. Photo TTO

Vestiges of Hoang Sa (Paracel) Temple still remain today at the communal house of Ly Hai, Ly Son Island, Quang Ngai province. Vietnam did start to claim its sovereignty over the two islands of Spratly and Paracel when Lord Nguyen Phuc Nguyen took over the rule of the southern provinces of Vietnam and established naval companies of Hoang Sa (Spratly) and Bac Hai (Northern Sea) to exploit and protect the East Sea from the outermost marine defence line.

This is really a unique way of asserting sovereignty realization by Vietnam government over the archipelagoes at the East Sea that no country in the region did.

The greatest achievement of Tay Son Peasant Uprising was the reunification of the country, ending centuries of division into the north (Dang Ngoai) and the south (Dang Trong)(*).

This was the first time the country had been reunified in a large area which was equal to present-day Vietnam. This was also the first time the whole coastline from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Gulf of Thailand with thousands of inshore islands and the islands of Spratly and Paracel had been under control of Vietnam.

Under the Tay Son Dynasty, the companies of Hoang Sa and Bac Hai kept on their main tasks of protecting and exploiting resources at the remote archipelagos of Vietnamese territorial waters on the East Sea.

Under the Nguyen Lords’ rules, the company Hoang Sa was fixed at 70 men. Its recruits only came from An Vinh commune, Quang Ngai province. Every year, the company in 5 warships departed for Paracel and Spratly to recover goods from sunken ships and look for marine products.

They had stayed there till the end of mission in August. They returned then and submitted the items which they had gathered to the feudal government of the Nguyen Lords in Phu Xuan capital (the old name of Hue). The company Bac Hai recruited its effectives among the inhabitants from Tu Chinh village or from Canh Duong commune of Binh Thuan province. Unlike the company Hoang Sa, the latter had undetermined members.

The Tay Son Peasant Uprising had developed quickly. At the end of 1773, they claimed control over a vast region from the northern province of Quang Nam to the southern province of Binh Thuan. Consequently, hometowns of the two companies of Hoang Sa and Bac Hai were under the control of Tay Son troops in the very early day.

On the 15th of the first lunar month in 1776, the local authority of Re Island (present-day Ly Son Island), Ha Lieu, wrote an application form to ask for the imperial approbation (of the royal government of Tay Son Dynasty).

It said, “We now want to set up the two companies of Truong Sa and Que Huong as before. The companies’ men include immigrants whose names are in clearly listed. We would like to sail boats toward the islands (of Spratly and Paracel) and isles to collect bronze and tin goods, tortoise and turtle shells, and hand them over the order of the service. In case of news about attacks of (foreign) invaders, we are willingly reassured to intercept the invasion. After that, we would like to ask for a royal authorization to our mission of searching for the treasures there and return them to the royal government.” The application form was put into consideration and approved by Tay Son government of then King Thai Duc Nguyen Nhac (brother of Emperor Quang Trung Nguyen Hue). It has been kept at ancestral worship house of the Vo family in An Vinh ward (present-day Tay hamlet, Ly Vinh commune, Ly Son district, Quang Ngai province).

The Vo family also keeps a direction issued on February 14, the 9th year of the reign of Thai Duc (1786) by the high-ranking literary mandarin Tong Ly Quan. It said, “Marquis Hoi Duc, fleet foreman of company Hoang Sa is hereby assigned task of urging his men to sail 4 junks with Vietnamese navy flags to the Spratly Islands and other isles for the mission of gathering gold, silver, bronze goods, cannons, guns, tortoise and turtle shells, gemstones, etc. and then transport all of the items to the mainland for the submission to the government as required regulations. Any haughty one, who isn’t present to report his duty, deceitfully steals the precious objects or pick quarrel with fishermen and salt workers will be punished.”

In addition, the Vo family still keeps a royal ratification to a petition composed by people of An Vinh commune to the king on the submission of the tortoise and turtle shells, cinnamon and the proposal of exemption from the personal tax, corvée, tolls.

Accordingly, the king issued an imperial edict to bestow gold on the An Vinh people and ratified their petition. The royal ratification stated clearly, “(The marine goods exploitation has lasted) from the 1st to the 15th year of the reign Thai Duc (1778-1792) and from the 1st to the 9th year of the reign Can Thinh (1793-1801). Sir John Barrow, an English attaché to Lord Macartney, the secretary of Great Britain diplomatic mission to China, dropped in Da Nang harbour of Vietnam on his way from England to China in June, 1793 (under the reign of King Quang Toan, son of the Emperor Quang Trung Nguyen Hue).” In his book A Voyage to Cochinchina, in the year 1792-1793,  Barrow wrote that boats at the Land of Cochinchina (present-day Vietnam Central) had various designs for different uses: coastal trading, fishing, seafood exploitation and salangane’s nest harvest in the Paracel archipelago.

On the basis of the available documents, since the Tay Son Dynasty, Vietnam had claimed its sovereignty over the archipelagoes on the East Sea. At that time, China’s situation was very complicated. Many insurgents against the Chinese government of the Qing Dynasty lived a vagabond life at the East Sea.

Tay Son Dynasty issued edicts to advise the insurgents to enroll in the Tay Son troops. The edicts clearly stated that they (the Chinese insurgents) had gathered at the waters (of East Sea), living on robbery. They probably did it with unwillingness, partly because of their lack of means for subsistence and partly because of the wickedly cruel policies (of the Qing Dynasty).

Emperor Quang Trung called for their early surrender. Wish of each person would be satisfied. Even “strong-willed individual who wanted to challenge the danger in the waters of the archipelagoes” would be accepted.

Receiving the wandering Chinese insurgents into the navy and employing them in the administration’s tasks was an important and strategic policy of the then Tay Son Dynasty.

Wei Yuan (1794-1857) in one of his book wrote that many Chinese people worked as agents for the Annam government and were conferred titles of Divisional Commander and Wang of the East Sea by Seigneur of Annam, Quang Toan.

“The (Qing) Empire was so involved with the suppression of rebellion in the west region that it couldn’t care the archipelagoes in the remote waters. Taking advantages of the situation, the pirates had been boldly operated their activities. In the 1st year of the reign Jiaqing (1796), a then general of Kuzhou prefecture and the then Viceroy of Liangguang (Guangdong and Guangxi) reported many times (to the Qing administration) that the Chinese pirate Chen T'ien-pao had been bestowed Divisional Commander and conferred seal by the Annam Seigneur.”

In his book, Wei Yuan also described that “the barbarous boats” (of Tay Son navy) were bigger than boats of the Qing naval troop. On the boats of Tay Son navy, there were a lot of guns. The fleet had blatantly operated on the waters for a long time. The Qing naval troop could find hard to fight against them in case of encounter. The description was an obvious proof of the fact that the Tay Son navy in reality did control over the sea routes at the East Sea and actually claimed the de facto ownership of the islands and archipelagoes at the waters.

After the fall of Tay Son Dynasty, the Nguyen Dynasty continued the strategy of “moving forward to the East Sea”, reassuring sovereignty of Vietnam over the archipelagoes of Spratly and Paracel.

During the reign of the Nguyen Emperors Gia Long, Ming Mang, and Thieu Tri, the sovereignty was asserted with activities of the marine scout and exploration, patrol, control and exploitation of the goods and sea foods; tax collection over the service; sinking ship rescue operations, topographic measurement and map drawing, temple construction, stone stele erection as evidence of sovereignty claim, tree growing with aim of helping people recognize more easily the islands to avoid being wrecked. The important contribution of the Nguyen Dynasty in the late 19th century to the history of Vietnam sovereignty over the East Sea was actually the continuation of the previous Tay Son Dynasty’s policies.

• Source: People’s Army Newspaper Online

*During the 18th century, Vietnam was under the nominal rule of the officially-revered but politically-ignored Le Dynasty. Real power was in the hands of two warring feudal families, the Trinh Lords of the north who controlled and ruled from the imperial court in Hanoi and the Nguyen Lords in the south, who ruled from their capital of Hue. Both sides fought each other for control of the nation, while claiming to be loyal to the king.