Hue re-examined : history, memory, heritage

Abstract

My thesis focuses on the heritage of Hue, a city of special significance to the Vietnamese. For four centuries, Hue was at the heart of developments that shaped the course of Vietnam. In modern times, commencing with the French occupation of Vietnam in the mid nineteenth century, and lasting until well after the end of the Vietnam wars, Hue's position in the nation's cultural agenda dimmed. However, it regained international attention when UNESCO inscribed its complex of monuments on the World Heritage List in 1993. My thesis engages critically with some of the premises that inform the UNESCO heritage listing and, more broadly with the way Hue has been represented in modern Vietnamese public culture. In political discourse and scholarly literature on Vietnam, Hue features in four broad themes. As the former center of the Nguyen dynasty, Hue has come to represent the stagnation, impotence and obsolescence of the precolonial imperial order that failed to deter the colonisation of Vietnam by the French. When radical movements of opposition to the French were emerging in Vietnam's more dynamic urban centres, Hue was singled out as a bastion of conservatism and so-called feudal values. During the Vietnam War, Hue became a symbol of the destruction and suffering inflicted upon the Vietnamese people by external agents and powerful violent forces. Today it has re-emerged as custodian of Vietnam's imperial heritage materialised in the monumental architecture that features prominently in the heritage listing. I suggest that this rehabilitation of Hue's status, as heritage has taken place without sufficient consideration being given to the contradictory notions of decline, irrelevance and victimhood still pervasively associated with Hue in Vietnamese political discourse, or to the non-material aspects of living heritage that remain potent in Hue to the present. Providing a critical re-appraisal of these themes, my thesis begins with tracing the rise and fall of Hue as the imperial center of Vietnam to demonstrate that this locality has a long and dynamic history of becoming and reinvention. The decline of monarchy rule, in turn, left a legacy that facilitated the radicalization of a generation of Vietnamese leaders. Demonstrating the critical role Hue played in this radicalisation process, my thesis hence reassesses Hue's significance in modern Vietnamese political life. The thesis then covers the radical movement in Hue during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War, and shows how the war's ideological fault-lines found expression in the city. My thesis then returns to the complex of monuments built by the Nguyen kings and studies their spiritual significance to reveal the enduring power of Hue's heritage. The argument of the thesis is that critical re-appraisal of these aspects of Hue's history and cultural legacy is essential in order to achieve a balanced and nuanced understanding of Hue's local significance, and of its status as heritage. Show more