The Nung chiefs of Quang Nguyen

Who he is

Name

not known for 1200 (the Nong house; Lưu Kỷ was the chief who attacked Yongzhou in 1075)

Title

Hereditary Nung chiefs of Quảng Nguyên

Confidence

low

English Wikipedia (Nùng people; Lý-Song War)

What it holds

• Gold and silver workings and washings; the upper Bằng Giang and Kỳ Cùng valleys
• Swidden and terraced fields of the Nung villages
• Tolls on the roads to Song Guangxi

How things stand that morning

Quiet under dual allegiance; no rising dated to the 1190s in what we read.

Threats

• A Song push for the gold
• A weak Ly court that cannot back them

Places of note

• Quang Nguyen: Board's point (Cao Bang)

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board says Quang Nguyen is 'held through the Nung chieftains'. Agreed. The English Wikipedia's 1077 and 1082 accounts of who held it conflict; we follow 'returned to Dai Viet in the 1082 to 1084 settlement'.

Evidence: Eleventh-century history is clear; the twelfth century is silent in what we read.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Primary sources for Chiefs of the south-west

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the Song, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345, from the Song veritable records, state histories and the Huiyao). The official history of the Southern Song, which ruled from Lin'an (Hangzhou) in 1200. Read online
• History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
• Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office. Read online
• Miscellaneous Notes on Court and Country since the Jianyan Era, Li Xinchuan (李心傳) (first series 1202, second series 1216). A contemporary handbook of the Southern Song state, written in Sichuan by the historian Li Xinchuan and finished in its first part in 1202, two years after the start of 1200. Read online
• Notes in Answer to Questions about the Lands beyond the Passes, Zhou Qufei (周去非) (1178, after service in Guangxi). A Guangxi official's notes, written twenty years before 1200, on the south-western frontier of the Song and the countries beyond. Read online