Lý Thái Tổ

Ly Thai To statue, Hanoi, Vietnam.

The royal court decided to relocate from Hoa Lư to the site of Đại La (modern-day Hanoi) in the next year, 1010.[10] Đại La was known as the city that the Tang general Gao Pian had built in the 860s after the ravages of the Nanzhao War. In 1010, Lý Công Uẩn published an edict explaining why he was moving his capital to this place. Citing kings who moved their capitals during the Shang and Zhou dynasties in classical antiquity, the edict compared Hoa Lư unfavorably to "King Gao’s old capital at Đại La", which was centrally located amidst the abundance of a broad plain and which displayed the marks of geomantic potency. Đại La was only ten kilometers from Đình Bảng, where Lý Công Uẩn had been raised and educated by Vạn Hạnh.[6] Lý Công Uẩn chose the site because it had been an earlier capital in the Red River Delta amidst land rich for wet rice agriculture. Lý Công Uẩn saw Đại La as a place "between Heaven and Earth where the coiling dragon and the crouching tiger lie, and his capital would last 10,000 years".[11] When Lý Công Uẩn’s boat docked at the new capital, a dragon, symbol of sovereign authority, reportedly soared above his head; he accordingly renamed the place Thăng Long, the "ascending dragon".[12]

The royal city at Thăng Long was laid out in the standard pattern: the urban center encompassed the Royal City, which contained the Forbidden City within its walls. The Throne Room Palace was located within a Dragon Courtyard and faced south. The Crown Prince of the Lý dynasty resided in the Eastern Palace outside the city walls.[11] Palaces and offices were constructed of timber, which explains why little of them remain. Càn Nguyên Palace where the king held audience was located on Mount Nùng. Two other palaces were constructed, one on either side of this palace, and two other palaces behind it, Long An and Long Thụy Palaces, residences of the king. By 1010, 11 palaces were located in Thăng Long.[11] The earthworks which were ramparts of his new capital still stand to the west of the modern city of Hanoi, forming a vast quadrilateral by the side of the road to Sơn Tây. A number of objects have been discovered at this site, which were either turned up during the process of tilling the soil, or were found by means of clandestine diggings.[13] They included terracotta tiles, fragments of cloth, pieces of turned-up corners of ridge tiles, and ceramics, many of which are celadon ware.

Coin issued by Ly Thai To (top, left)

The outer regions of the Red River Delta, beyond the Lý heartland, were in the hands of families allied with the Lý family by marriage. Lý Thái Tổ abandoned a scheme of dividing the plain into "ten circuits" that had been devised by Đinh Bộ Lĩnh (r. 968–979) and replaced it with 24 routes; these were not administrative jurisdictions but rather itineraries designating various localities. He organized the southern provinces into military outposts, indicating a policy of garrisons and patrols.[14] Officials did not receive a salary controlled by the capital, but were entirely dependent upon local resources, a region's fish and rice. The soldiers did receive some largesse at the same time as they were expected to do some farming of their own.[15] The village communities scattered about the countryside stayed within their own frames of reference except in times of emergency or of specific royal demands. Only then would they interact with the central power. Otherwise they sent some of their resources to the local lord, who in turn forwarded a share as tribute to the throne.[16] This administrative system resembles a naturally Southeast Asian mandala system.[17]

In 1011, Lý Thái Tổ raised a large army and attacked rebels in the southern provinces, in what is now Thanh Hoá and Nghệ An. He campaigned there for two years, burning villages and capturing local leaders. While returning by sea in late 1012, a great storm threatened to sink his boat, which he understood as a divine judgment upon him for the violence he had brought upon so many people.[18] A speech was recorded that he reportedly made amidst the storm, addressed to the heavenly power, in which he acknowledged that the innocent might have been harmed in error but that he nevertheless could not refrain from attacking these people because of their wickedness, cruelty, and savage resistance to "civilizing instructions"; he begged forgiveness for his soldiers and expressed his personal acceptance of any required punishment. In response to his appeal, according to the story, the storm abated and the sea became calm.[18]

For three years, 1013–1015, Lý Thái Tổ sent soldiers into the northern mountains, primarily the upland valleys of modern Hà Giang Province, to chastise people there who were falling under the influence of the Dali Kingdom in Yunnan. Soldiers commanded by a brother reportedly killed or captured thousands of people and obtained many horses.[18]

He also reformed the tax system in 1013 by creating six tax classifications, which enabled the royal court to efficiently collect taxes and citizens to clearly know which tax classification affected them, for instance, applied mostly to goods produced on royal estates:[19]

• Tax on fishing and seafood production
• Tax on agricultural production (farming)
• Tax on logging/wood and masonry
• Tax on salt production
• Tax on luxury goods production (ivory, gold, silk, precious materials, etc.)
• Tax on fruits and vegetable production

When a severe earthquake occurred in 1016, Lý Thái Tổ prayed to the gods that were in charge of the mountains surrounding the capital, while also sending more than 1,000 people to teach in Buddhist schools. He journeyed around his kingdom both to propitiate its disparate genies and co-opt them by having them "declare" themselves to him.[20][21]

Location of Dali and Dai Viet kingdoms; Song, Xia and Liao empires during 11-12th century

During the reign of Lý Thái Tổ, the Song Dynasty was pre-occupied with maintaining internal stability and still recovering from previous defeats or skirmishes with the Liao dynasty and Western Xia. Đại Việt, as a result, was mostly left alone and political relations between the two states revived. During the disorders following Lê Hoàn’s death, Song border officials had argued in favor of military intervention, but the emperor refused to act and admonished officials to avoid becoming embroiled in the violent affairs of distant uncivilized people. In 1010, Song recognized Lý Công Uẩn without delay, conferring upon him the usual titles of vassalage. Thereafter, Song maintained a pacifist policy, doing the minimum necessary to preserve border security, even willing to suffer minor violations. The aim of Song policy was to preclude any provocation that might arouse a major crisis requiring mobilization of armies into thesouth that were more urgently needed on the northern frontier.[12]

In 1010, Lý Thái Tổ attacked and caught thirteen persons of Địch Lão (bandit) ethnicity and presented the captives to the Chinese court. In 1014, Lý Thái Tổ made another gesture of reassurance to the Song court.[22] After subduing a Hani community, he turned the entire herd over to Song authorities, to mark that Đại Việt's commitment to the region’s standing political and trade arrangements. Horses were an extremely valuable trade item, bought at considerable expense for military purposes from traders residing in the neighboring Dali kingdom.[23]

• Taylor, K.W. (2013), A History of the Vietnamese, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-520-07417-0
• Kiernan, Ben (2019). Việt Nam: a history from earliest time to the present. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190053796.
• Whitmore, John K. (1986), ""Elephants Can Actually Swim": Contemporary Chinese Views of Late Ly Dai Viet", in Milner, Anthony Crothers; Marr, David G. (eds.), Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries, Cambridge: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 117–137, ISBN 978-9-971-98839-5
• Tarling, Nicholas (1999). The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume 1, From Early Times to c.1800. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-66372-4.
• Miksic, John Norman; Yian, Go Geok (2016). Ancient Southeast Asia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1-317-27903-4.
• Whitmore, John K. (2015), "Building a Buddhist monarchy in Dai Viet: Temples and texts uder Ly Nhan Tong (1072-1127)", in Lammerts, Dietrich Christian (ed.), Buddhist Dynamics in Premodern and Early Modern Southeast Asia, ISEAS Publishing, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 283–306, ISBN 978-9-814-51906-9
• Coedès, George (2015), The Making of South East Asia (RLE Modern East and South East Asia), Taylor & Francis, ISBN 9781317450955
• Anderson, James A. (2011), ""Slipping through hole": The Late Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century Sino-Vietnamese Coastal Frontier as a Subaltern Trade Network", in Li, Tana; Anderson, James A. (eds.), The Tongking Gulf Through History, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 87–100, ISBN 978-0-812-20502-2
• Pelley, Patricia M. (2002). Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-822-32966-4.
• Fjelstad, Karen; Nguyen, Thi Hien (2012). Spirits Without Borders: Vietnamese Spirit Mediums in a Transnational Age. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 113-7-29918-5.