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The Nature of Kingship: The Weather-World in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam

Name: The Nature of Kingship: The Weather-World in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam
Brand: University of Hawaii Press
SKU: 9780824899806
Price: 74.99 USD
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Contributors:

Kathryn Dyt

Publisher:

University of Hawaii Press

Binding:

Hardcover

Book Category:

History, Nature

Book Subcategory:

Asia, Modern, Ecology

Book Topic:

Southeast Asia, 19th Century

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Release Date:

2024-12-31

ISBN 13:

9780824899806

Weight:

1.01 lbs

Size:

Pages:

292

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product description

Description

The Nature of Kingship is an innovative exploration of dynastic power and the environment in nineteenth-century Vietnam. It offers important insights into Vietnamese kingship by delving into the intricate workings of the Nguyễn court and its interactions with the natural world. Weaving together a rich array of sources including official histories, royal poetry, astrological manuals, geography texts, and provincial gazetteers, Kathryn Dyt vividly demonstrates how Nguyễn governance and court hierarchies were intertwined with a powerful, agentive, and emotional "weather-world"--a world inhabited by ecological actors such as rain, wind, land, and skies.

While previous narratives have often faulted Nguyễn rulers for being aloof and detached from their surroundings, this new study considers how Nguyễn dynastic rule was in fact highly responsive to its setting and sensitive to the environment. It shows that Nguyễn kings were not static, inert individuals, cut off from the world, but rather were intensely engaged with their environment and its cosmological and spiritual dimensions. Placing kings in the thick of lived experience, in a land perceived to be alive and responsive to human incantations, prayers, and pleas, this account demonstrates how Nguyễn rulers consolidated their authority through displays of superior weather knowledge and modes of affective rule rooted in reciprocal emotional resonance with the weather-world. The king's exemplary affective responsiveness to the weather was central to his preeminence and it was a means by which the court validated its power within Vietnam's extensive social field. Exploring kingship from phenomenological perspectives, this wide-reaching study addresses diverse forms of court engagement with the environment, including the observation of astronomical and meteorological phenomena, divination practices, rainmaking rituals, travel through the kingdom, the writing of environmental histories, and imperial poetry.

About the Author
Kathryn Dyt is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department at SOAS, University of London.

The Nature of Kingship: The Weather-World in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam

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