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.[12] 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 moved his capital to Dai La.[10] Lý Công Uẩn chose the site because it had been an earlier capital in the rich Red River Delta. He 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".[13] 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".[14]

The royal city at Thăng Long was laid out in the standard pattern: the urban center encompassed the Royal City. The Throne Room Palace was located within a Dragon Courtyard and faced south. The Crown Prince of the Lý dynasty lived in the Eastern Palace outside the city walls.[13] Palaces and offices were constructed of timber. Càn Nguyên Palace where the king held audience was located on the Nùng hill. By 1010, 11 palaces were built in Thăng Long.[13] The earthworks which were ramparts of the 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.[15]

Coin issued by Ly Thai To (top, right)

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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18] This administrative system resembles a naturally Southeast Asian mandala system.[19]

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.[20]

For three years, 1013–1015, Lý Thái Tổ sent soldiers into the northern mountains of modern Hà Giang Province to pacify Hani people who allied with the Dali Kingdom in Yunnan.[20]

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:[21]

• 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.[22][23]

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. In 1010, the Song emperor recognized Lý Công Uẩn without delay, conferring upon him the usual titles of vassalage.

In 1010, Lý Thái Tổ attacked and caught thirteen persons of Địch Lão (bandit) ethnicity and presented the captives to the Chinese court.[24] In August 1014 he sent a mission to China, presented 60 horses as gifts and notified the Song court that he had subdued a Hani community.[24][25]

• 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
• Bielenstein, Hans (2005), Diplomacy and Trade in the Chinese World, 589–1276, Brill
• Coedès, George (2015), The Making of South East Asia (RLE Modern East and South East Asia), Taylor & Francis
• Fjelstad, Karen; Nguyen, Thi Hien (2011). Spirits Without Borders: Vietnamese Spirit Mediums in a Transnational Age. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-113-7-29918-5.
• Kiernan, Ben (2019). Việt Nam: a history from earliest time to the present. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190053796.
• Miksic, John Norman; Yian, Go Geok (2016). Ancient Southeast Asia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-27903-7.
• Pelley, Patricia M. (2002). Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-822-32966-4.
• 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.
• Taylor, K.W. (2013), A History of the Vietnamese, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-520-07417-0
• 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
• Whitmore, John K. (2015), "Building a Buddhist monarchy in Dai Viet: Temples and texts under 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