
Imperial Bandits
Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands

Description
The Black Flags raided their way from southern China into northern Vietnam, competing during the second half of the nineteenth century against other armed migrants and uplands communities for the control of commerce, specifically opium, and natural resources, such as copper. At the edges of three empires (the Qing empire in China, the Vietnamese empire governed by the Nguyen dynasty, and, eventually, French Colonial Vietnam), the Black Flags and their rivals sustained networks of power and dominance through the framework of political regimes. This lively history demonstrates the plasticity of borderlines, the limits of imposed boundaries, and the flexible division between apolitical banditry and political rebellion in the borderlands of China and Vietnam.
Imperial Bandits contributes to the ongoing reassessment of borderland areas as frontiers for state expansion, showing that, as a setting for many forms of human activity, borderlands continue to exist well after the establishment of formal boundaries.
About this Author
Bradley Camp Davis is assistant professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University.
Reviews
"Bradley Camp Davis has delved deeper into this topic than anyone before. . . . The discussion of the borderlands in this book and the way it reveals the challenges faced by a failed state is helpful in thinking about other periods of Vietnamese history. . . . Davis's Imperial Bandits takes us deep into one of those times when a Vietnamese state struggled to control its territory, but when we take a step back we can see parallels with other periods and places, too."
"This is a brilliantly woven narrative of the intersecting imperial designs of the Nguyen, Qing, and French, at the center of which was the quintessentially borderland phenomena of the Black Flags. It is the standard work on the Black Flags now, replacing earlier work such as Eastman's, and will find a welcome place on the desks of political scientists and historians of transnationalism, colonialism, and Asia."
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