Nanzhao as a Southeast Asian kingdom, c.738–902

Abstract

This article sets out to demonstrate the Southeast Asian nature of Nanzhao as a Sinitic state similar to Dai Viet. Previous studies have focused on Nanzhao's relations with Tang China, and emphasised the heavy Tang influence on its political organisation. Examining Nanzhao's expansion of governance into the Upper Ayeyarwady and Upper Mekong river regions during the eighth and ninth centuries, I argue that it was a kingdom characterised by a combination of Sinitic-style bureaucracy with indigenous Southeast Asian allegiance ties. I demonstrate how Nanzhao utilised these features to broaden its entire power base by administering conquered peoples and maintaining trade routes in the Upper Ayeyarwady and the Upper Mekong from a network of walled-cities. Though Confucianism exerted limited influence at the local level, the elite invoked Confucian civilising ideology to morally justify their governance of conquered peoples. The authority of the king extended beyond the core area, and his bureaucracy was powerful enough to loosely administer regional areas and to shift subdued peoples to populate strategic points within the kingdom, while governing Mon-Khmer polities at the southern periphery indirectly through their own leaders.