From Title Standard To Official Standard: Research On The Vicissitudes Of Vietnam Bureaucratic System Between The 10^th To 15^th Century

The 10^th to 15^th century is an important period in the history of the development of Vietnam’s political system. Prior to that period, Vietnam was directly under the jurisdiction of China for more than one thousand years. And it didn’t break away from Chinese rule of counties until the mid tenth century, opening a new era of its politically independent development, but being independent feudal dynasty, Vietnam faced with how to transform from a local government long dominated by China into a complete national political regime. Vietnam chose to mimic China on its national political system construction, and the most representative one was that it referred to China’s official system and gradually established its own with Vietnam characteristics. Vietnam system between the 10 th to 15 th century varied from the simple clings to the Chinese system in the 10 th to 11 th century in the Ng?, ?ing, Ti?n Lê Dynasties to its localized adjustment and creation in the 11^th to 14^th century in the Ly and Tr?n Dynasties. With the steadily rising influence of Confucian culture, H?u Lê Dynasty of Vietnam in the 15^th century finally established a comparatively more complete and centralized bureaucrat regime, similar to the system of the Ming Dynasty of China. And this system attached more importance to merit system, flow of bureaucracy and was of early modern characteristics of ranking rather than to kinship, relative constancy and was of a strong aristocratic color of nobility standard system.The Ng?, ?ing, Ti?n Lê Dynasties were in the early-stage of political system transformation, and their emperor, as the supreme ruler, didn’t integrated the domestic political power thoroughly. Different geographical groups, who are of influential and privileged aristocratic families, had many attached properties and private army, and the area which the imperial power can directly control was small and was locally self-governed. The ruling mode of these three Dynasties is aristocratic instead of centralized monarchy, so their bureaucratic establishment is relatively simple, with only some names clinging to their Chinese counterparts and without establishing a complete system, which was a initial step in the history of Vietnam system. Ly Dynasty gradually built a hierarchical and serialized system, in which many semi-independent local nobles were honored with a column of differential titles and offices which were brought into the national unified differential officials and gradually perfected the system of the central agency officials. The political system of Ly Dynasty was also noble in nature, and its official system concentrated in the central level, but it was relatively simple at the local level. Titles in the Ly Dynasty occupied a very important position in the system and were labeled with its actual identity and political power. The social class distinction is measured mainly with their titles, which were highlighted with obvious "Title" characteristic, rather than their official levels. The hierarchical titles were a shortcut for the political system of Ly Dynasty to form its country from aristocratic alliance.Inheriting the political system of Ly Dynasty, Tr?n Dynasty was not a Chinese-style national centralized bureaucracy either. Its imperial clans and aristocrat enjoyed a monopoly of political privilege.Compared to the bureaucratic establishment of Ly Dynasty, the bureaucratic establishment of Tr?n Dynasty had considerable development. Especially in the 14^th century, imitating China’s Tang, Song Dynasties, its four systems of titles,positions,ranks and classes were basically established, and its official grading and classification were more and more obvious, showing a trend of ‘Official Standard’.The positional official groups represented by Confucian bureaucratic class had more and more political voice, but the title standard bureaucratic system mainly represented by its imperial clans and aristocrat had no radical changes yet, nor could it deal with its social crisis which was getting worse and worse in the latter period of Tr?n Dynasty, which led to its doom and was replaced with innovative H? Dynasty founded by H? Qúy Ly.H? Dynasty adopted a series of system reforms, aiming at strengthening the central power to cope with the problems at home and abroad, and established a bureaucratic system with the administrative affairs as the center and with the tendency of ‘official standard’, which, to a certain extent, achieved the Confucian officials’ political appeals in the mid-late Tr?n Dynasty such as establishing a centralized country and integrating social rank order with Confucian etiquette.In the early 15^th century Ming dynasty overthrew H? dynasty, and ruled Vietnam directly for twenty years. This invasion of Ming dynasty brought Vietnam into a more violent revolution era, during which its official standard system was implemented more thoroughly. All these attacked the long remaining nobility system of Ly and Tr?n Dynasties with a more fatal blow, and since then, it could no longer dominate the political arena and Vietnam was forced into a brand new history involuntarily.Then Lê L?i with the native Vietnamese overthrew the rule of the Ming dynasty and set up the H?u Lê Dynasty. Established with its force, the H?u Lê Dynasty set up a centralized authoritarian system similar to that of the Ming dynasty. At the beginning period of H?u Lê Dynasty, when Emperor Lê Thái T?, Lê Thái T?ng, and Lê Nhan T?ng were on the throne, the liquidity of its official system was very obvious. Furthermore, every position has its specialized responsibilities, officers and officials were different, the dominance of the central government to the local administrative affairs were strengthened greatly. Under strong autocratic imperial power, the rule model of centralized bureaucracy were carried out. During H?ng ??c Period in the middle of the 15 th century, actively learning from China’s Ming Dynasty in the national political system, Vietnam’s autocratic monarchy reached its peak, its feudal centralized administrative system was fully developed and the status of the imperially examined bureaucracy was very important in the administrative affairs. ‘H?ng ??c Official System’ founded by Lê Thánh T?ng was in accord with the system of the Ming Dynasty. Finally, Vietnam established a centralized bureaucracy system with the civil official as the dominance and the official standard as the apparent characteristic.