1 Tanabe, Susumu, Hori, Kazuaki, Saito, Yoshiki, Haruyama, Shigeko, Vu, Van Phai and Kitamura, Akihisa, ‘Song Hong (Red River) Delta evolution related to millennium-scale Holocene sea-level changes’, Quaternary Science Reviews 22, 21–22 (2003): 2348Google Scholar.

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8 Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư [Chronicles of the Great Viet, hereafter Toàn Thư] (Tokyo: Tokyo University, 1984Google Scholar), pp. 189, 194, 195, 200, 210, 211. Việt sử lược [A concise history of the Viet] (Hanoi: Văn sử địa, 1960)Google Scholar records that during the raid of Champa in 982 several hundred court ladies were captured, not just over a hundred, as claimed by Ngô Sĩ Liên in Toàn Thư, p. 20.

9 Toàn Thư, p. 234.

10 Ibid., p. 236.

11 Việt sử lược, p. 35.

12 Toàn Thư, p. 245.

13 Zhongguo guji zhong de jianpuzhai shiliao [Sources on Cambodia in Chinese classics], ed. Chen et al. (Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1985)Google Scholar, p. 117.

14 Toàn Thư, p. 248; also excerpt in Gudai zhongyue guanxishi ziliao xuanbian [Sources on Sino–Viet history] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1982)Google Scholar, p. 214.

15 Zhongguo guji zhong de jianpuzhai shiliao, p. 224.

16 Toàn Thư, p. 261.

17 Momoki Shiro points to the practice of raiding the Cham population and buying slaves from southern China and suggests that the population under Lý control was sparse, with small and scattered areas of cultivation. Shiro, Momoki, The formation and transformation of the medieval state of Đại Việt: A Vietnamese history during the Lý–Trần period within regional histories (Osaka: Osaka University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, p. 90.

18 After the invasion of Champa in 1044, the Lý settled the Cham prisoners of the war in outlying areas of Hanoi, at Từ Liêm and Hòai Đức, as well as at Sôn Tây and Phú Thọ.

19 For a photo of Cham inscriptions on Thăng Long citadel, see Lê, Phan Huy, ‘Giá trì toàn cầu của khu di tích trung tâm hoàng thành Thăng Long-Hà Nội’ [The world value of the Thang Long-Hanoi citadel], in Selected Japanese–Vietnamese papers on the Thang Long Citadel (Tokyo: National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, 2012)Google Scholar, p. 129; there are Cham-style wells in several areas near Hanoi. See Vượng, Trần Quốc, ‘Viet–Cham cultural contacts’, in Phương, Trần Kỳ and Lockhart, Bruce M., The Cham of Vietnam: History, society, and art (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2011), pp. 269–70Google Scholar. On settling Cham prisoners in Bình Lục district, see Yao Takao, ‘Landholding and opening by the generals who contributed to the founding of the Lê dynasty’, in Report on the project: The opening of the lower Red River Delta, ed. Yao Takao, p. 177, MS.

20 Wenxian tongkao [General study of the literary remains], juan 330, ‘Siyi kao 7’, http://www.guoxue123.com/shibu/0401/01wxtk/333.htm (last accessed 20 June 2013).

21 Toàn Thư, pp. 230, 233.

22 Momoki Shiro, The formation and transformation of the medieval state of Đại Việt, pp. 91–2. See n.75.

23 Sakurai, Yumio, ‘On the opening of the Red River delta’, Southeast Asian Studies 18, 2 (1980): 304–10Google Scholar; Momoki Shiro, The formation and transformation of the medieval state of Đại Việt, p. 84.

24 Whitmore, ‘The rise of the coast’; James A. Anderson, ‘Political alliances and trade networks along the Sino–Vietnamese frontier from the later tenth to mid-eleventh century’, paper presented at the Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, 31 Mar.–2 Apr. 2005, quoted in Whitmore, ibid.: 107.

25 D.S. van Maren, ‘Morphodynamics of a cyclic prograding delta: The Red River, Vietnam’ (Ph.D. diss., Universiteit Utrecht, 2004), ch. 2.

26 Bùi Thị Thu Phương et al. , ‘Khái quát lần thứ nhất lò gốm Tuần Châu (Quảng Ninh)’ [First excavation of the kiln in Tuần Châu, Quảng Ninh province], in Những phát hiện mới về khảo cỏ học năm 2009 [New archaeological discoveries in 2009] (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học xã hội, 2011), pp. 524–7Google Scholar. Báo Quảng Ninh [Quảng Ninh Daily], 29 Nov. 2011.

27 Phan, John, ‘Re-imagining “Annam”: A new analysis of Sino–Viet–Muong linguistic contact’, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 3 (2010): 3–24Google Scholar.

28 Taylor, Keith, A history of the Vietnamese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Taylor, Keith W., The birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 217Google Scholar, 260.

30 ‘The Vũ family in Mộ Trạch’, in Nantian zhenyiji [Nam Thiên Chân dị tập in Vietnamese], Yuenan Hanwen xiaoshuo jicheng [Collections of the Vietnamese novels in Han script] (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 2010), vol. 10, pp. 140–41Google Scholar.

31 These figures exclude the Lý and Trần royalty. The birthplaces of some authors are not provided, and they are therefore also excluded. Thơ văn Lý-Trần [Poetry and essays of the Lý-Trần periods], 3 vols (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học xã hội, 1977–1978)Google Scholar. Two writers whose poems were included came from Fujian, in the twelfth and thirteenth century, respectively.

32 Whitmore, ‘The rise of the coast’: 107.

33 Toàn Thư, p. 424. The Vân Đồn garrison, prefecture and sea patrol offices as well as the Bình Hải (Sea Pacifying) navy were only set up in 1349, almost two hundred years after the port officially opened.

34 James Anderson, ‘“Slipping through holes”: The late tenth and early eleventh-century Sino–Vietnamese coastal frontier as a subaltern trade network’, in Cooke et al., The Tongking Gulf through history, pp. 94–5.

35 Robert Antony, ‘Violence and predation on the Sino–Vietnamese maritime frontier, 1450–1850’, Asia Major (forthcoming).

36 Anderson, ‘“Slipping through holes”’, p. 93.

37 See Tana, Li, ‘A view from the sea: Perspectives on the northern and central Vietnamese coast’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1, 37 (2006): 83–102Google Scholar.

38 Chengda, Fan's report, ‘Guihai Yuhengzhi’, is included in Duanlin, Ma's Wenxian tongkao [General study of the literary remains] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936), pp. 2593–5Google Scholar (quotation, p. 2594). The English translation is by Whitmore, J.K. in ‘Brush and ship: The southern Chinese diaspora and literati in Đại Việt during the 12th and 13th centuries’, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 4 (2010): 38–9Google Scholar.

39 John Whitmore, ‘The fate of the Ngô: Montane/littoral division in 15th–16th century Đại Việt’, paper presented at the conference ‘Maritime frontiers in Asia: Indigenous communities and state control in South China and Southeast Asia, 2000 BCE–1800 CE,’ Pennsylvania State University, Apr. 2013, p. 5.

40 Toàn Thư, p. 290.

41 Vượng, Trần Quốc, ‘Xứ Đông: Hải Hưng nhìn từ Kẻ Chợ’ [The Eastern region: Hải Hưng viewed from Kẻ Chợ], in Vượng, Trần Quốc, Theo dòng lịch sử [Tracing the stream of history] (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Văn hoá, 1996), p. 259Google Scholar.

42 Tín, Tống Trung et al. , ‘Di tích Đền Thái qua tư liệu khảo cổ học’ [Archaeological data of the temple of ancestors], Khảo cỏ học [Vietnam Archaeology] 5 (2011): 5–22Google Scholar. The article points outs that An Sinh was the original homeland (quê hương, quê gốc) of the Trần. See pp. 20–21.

43 Di dân của người Việt từ thệ kỷ X đến giữa thế kỷ XIX [Vietnamese migrations from the 10th to the 19th centuries], ed. Thu, Đặng (Hanoi: Phụ san Nghiên cứu lịch sử, 1994), pp. 36–7Google Scholar.

44 ‘Trần Khác Trung, Phạm Sư Mạnh and other famous officials all came from the eastern edge of the delta, such as Mạc Đĩnh Chi in Nam Sách, Đoàn Như Hài in Gia Lộc, Nguyễn Trung Ngạn from Khoái Châu’, all in Hải Dương. Momoki Shiro, ‘Main points on the history of cultivation of the lower Red River Delta in the Lý and Trần period’, in Yao Takao, ‘Report on the project: The opening of the lower Red River Delta’, p. 19.

45 Whitmore, ‘Brush and ship’: 40–41.

46 Lieberman, Victor and Buckley, Brendan, ‘The impact of climate on Southeast Asia, circa 950–1820: New findings’, Modern Asian Studies 46, 5 (2012): 16Google Scholar.

47 Momoki Shiro, ‘Mấy luận điểm mới về lịch sử khai phá vùng hạ lưu châu thổ sông Hồng trong giai đọan Lý–Trần: (I) Hệ thống hành cung thời Lý’ [Some new insights into the history of opening of the lower Red River Delta during the Ly and Tran periods], paper for conference ‘Vietnamese studies in Vietnam: Contemporary situation, achievements and directions’, 2005, Hanoi, p. 1.

48 Lieberman and Buckley, ‘Impact of climate on Southeast Asia’: 17.

49 Lieberman, Victor, ‘Charter state collapse in Southeast Asia, ca. 1250–1400, as a problem in regional and world history’, American Historical Review 116, 4 (2011): 947Google Scholar.

50 Sakurai, Yumio, ‘Age of commerce’, MS, cited in Lieberman, Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context. c.800–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), vol. 1, p. 368Google Scholar.

51 Lieberman, Strange parallels, p. 368.

52 Reid, Anthony, ‘Flows and seepages in the long-term Chinese interaction with Southeast Asia’, in Sojourners and settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, ed. Reid, Anthony (St Leonard's: Allen & Unwin, 1996), p. 17Google Scholar; see also Wade, Geoff, ‘Southeast Asian Islam and Southern China in the fourteenth century’, in Anthony Reid and the study of the Southeast Asian Past, ed. Wade, Geoff and Tana, Li (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012), pp. 129–30Google Scholar.

53 Toàn Thư, p. 345.

54 Nguyễn Thị Phương Chi, ‘Vài nét về tình hình điền trang thời Trần’ [On the estates in the Trần period], Nghiên cứu lịch sử [Journal of Historical Studies] 2 (2002): 53–4Google Scholar; Momoki Shiro, The formation and transformation of the medieval state of Đại Việt, p. 70, n. 11.

55 Toàn Thư, p. 473.

56 Momoki Shiro, The formation and transformation of the medieval state of Đại Việt, pp. 72–3.

57 See Masanari, Nishimura and Noriko, Nishino, ‘Nghiên cứu khảo cổ học về hình thành làng xã ở đồng bằng sông Hồng: Trường hợp làng Bách Cốc và khu lân cần’ [Archaeological findings on the formation of villages in the Red River Delta: Case studies of Bách Cốc and adjacent areas], in Thông tin Bách Cốc, Số Đặc biệt [Newsletter on the Bách Cốc project, special issue] (Tokyo: Hội Nghiên cứu làng xã Việt Nam, July 2006), p. 22Google Scholar.

58 For the locations of the Trần manors, see Nguyễn Thị Phương Chi, ‘Ấp thang mộc của An Sinh Vương Trần Liễu và vai trò của di tích Đền Thái ở An Sinh (Đông Triều)’: 69; For điền trang, see Nguyễn Thị Phương Chi, ‘Vài nét về tình hình điền trang thời Trần’: 52–6.

59 Quoted from Momoki Shiro, The formation and transformation of the medieval state of Đại Việt, p. 90; Whitmore expressed a similar view, that each locality worked out its own hydraulic system, sufficient to allow such cultivation to take place. Whitmore, John K., ‘“Elephants can actually swim”: Contemporary Chinese views of late Lý Đại Việt’, in Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th centuries, ed. Marr, David G. and Milner, A.C. (Singapore: ISEAS and Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1986), p. 129Google Scholar.

60 Sakurai, Yumio, Betonamu Sonraku no keisei [The formation of Vietnamese villages] (Tokyo: Soubunsha, 1987), p. 262Google Scholar.

61 Nguyễn Văn Siêu, ‘Điều Trần về đê’ [Suggestions to the emperor on dykes], in Đê chính tập [Collection of the documents on the policies of dykes], MS, Hán-Nôm Institute, Hanoi, shelf number A.615.

62 Aurousseau, Léonard and Gaspardone, Émile, Ngan-nan tche yuan: texte chinois (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient, 1932), pp. 83–100Google Scholar.

63 Làng Cổ truyền Việt Nam [Ancient Vietnamese villages], ed. Khánh, Vũ Ngọc (Ho Chi Minh City: Thanh Niên, 2004), pp. 227–8Google Scholar.

64 Vũ Tự Lập, Văn hoá và cư dân Đồng bằng Sông Hồng, p. 26.

65 Tri, Bui Minh and Nguyen-Long, Kerry, Vietnamese blue and white ceramics (Hanoi: Social Sciences Publishing House, 2001), p. 148Google Scholar.

66 Ibid., p. 123.

67 Zha Shenxing et al., Kangxi xijiangzhi [Gazette of Xijiang], juan 27, cited in Zhongguo jindai shougongye shi ziliao [Sources on industries of pre-modern China] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 108–9Google Scholar.

68 Song Yingxing, Tiangong kaiwu 天工開物: 罌翁, ‘大抵陶器一百三十斤，費薪百斤’ [Exploitation of the works of nature: An encylopaedia of technology with illustrations], http://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/天工開物/ 罌翁 (last accessed 30 July 2014).

69 ‘Yi li yao, shi li jiao’.

70 Treasure from the Hoi An hoard: Important Vietnamese ceramics from the late 15th/early 16th century Cargo (San Franciso: Butterfields, 2000)Google Scholar, p. II. There were 150,000 pieces of blue-and-white ceramics.

71 Bui and Nguyen-Long, Vietnamese blue and white ceramics, p. 175.

72 Taylor, Birth of Vietnam, p. 268.

73 Ngan-nan tche yuan, pp. 88–9, 127.

74 During the Tang and Song periods in China, salt was made by boiling sea water and therefore required fuel. It is therefore likely that the same technique was used for salt-making in the Red River Delta during the Trần period. The technique of evaporating seawater in salterns to make salt was not used in Guangdong before the Ming era.

75 Lê Quát, ‘Bắc Giang Bái thôn Thiệu Phúc tự bi ký’ [For the inscription on Thiệu Phúc temple in Bái village], in Thơ văn Lý-Trần, vol. 3, p. 144.

76 This explains a fourteenth-century Chinese envoy's description of the Vietnamese: ‘everyone is barefoot, whether his status is high or low; everyone shaved his hair, whether he is old or young’ [尊卑雙跣足,老幼一圓顱]. He must have seen a large percentage of monks, which made him believe that everyone was a monk. See [Yuan] Chen Gangzhong, ‘Poetry of Chen Gangzhong’, in Qinding siku quanshu, part Ji, vol. 5.

77 Cited in Tấn, Hà Văn, Kự, Nguyễn Văn and Long, Phạm Ngọc, Chùa Vietnam, Buddhist temples (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội, 1993), p. 111Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., p. 110.

79 Quoted in Ibid., p. 85.

80 Ibid., p. 109.

81 The Lãm Sơn temple (Quế Võ, Bắc Ninh, built in 1086) is 120 metres long, 70 metres wide and four stories high. Báo Thiên pagoda in Hanoi (1121) is 12 stories, over 60 metres high, and the bronze Buddha statue in Quỳnh Lâm temple in Đông Triều is 20 metres high. Lịch sử Việt Nam [Vietnamese history] (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội, 1971)Google Scholar, Chinese trans. (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1977), p. 182.

82 I am grateful to Professor Đỗ Bang for this information.

83 Vickery, Michael, Society, economics, and politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th–8th Centuries (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO/Toyo Bunko, 1998), p. 292Google Scholar.

84 Lịch sử Việt Nam, p. 182. For more details see Li Tana, ‘A view from the sea’: 98–9.

85 Lập, Vũ Tự et al. , Văn hoá và cư dân Đồng bằng Sông Hồng [Culture and people in the Red River Delta] (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội, 1991), p. 26Google Scholar.

86 Toàn Thư, p. 347.

87 Quoted in Momoki Shiro, The formation and transformation of the medieval state of Đại Việt, p. 91.

88 For a more detailed analysis of the changes to river courses and the waterscape of the Red River Delta, see Li Tana, ‘The sea becomes mulberry fields and mulberry fields become the sea: The Red River and environmental history’, paper presented at the 8th Water History Conference of the International Water History Association, Montpellier, 24–29 June 2013.

89 Lịch sử Việt Nam, p. 257; Taylor, A history of the Vietnamese, pp. 150–52.

90 Ngô Bế rose from Kinh Môn in 1344 and was active until 1360. Toàn Thư, pp. 421, 430, 431.

91 Sakurai, Betonamu Sonraku no keisei, p. 262.

92 Ibid., p. 254.

93 Gourou, Pierre, The peasants of the Tonkin Delta, vol. 1 (New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files, 1970), pp. 176–7Google Scholar; see also O'Connor, Richard, ‘Agricultural change and ethnic succession in Southeast Asian states: A case for regional anthropology’, Journal of Asian Studies 54, 4 (1995): 982Google Scholar.

94 Toàn Thư, pp. 384–468.

95 Sakurai, Betonamu Sonraku no keisei, pp. 261, 266.

96 Toàn Thư, p. 421.

97 Ibid., p. 432.

98 Li, ‘The sea becomes mulberry fields’.

99 Champa's political and cultural advances into the highlands were made during these periods. J. Whitmore, ‘The last great king of classical Southeast Asia: “Che Bong Nga” and fourteenth-century Champa’, in Trần Kỳ Phương and Bruce M. Lockhart, The Cham of Vietnam, p. 194. Some authors refer to the Cham polity as ‘Nagara Cāmpa’; its extent and structure are still being debated.

100 Whitmore, ‘The last great king of classical Southeast Asia’, p. 186.

101 Nishimura Masanari, ‘An essay on the formation of enclosed-type dykes in the Red River plain, northern Vietnam’, MS, p. 6. The excavation at Ngói, another important ceramic centre of fifteenth and sixteenth century Hải Dương, revealed that this location was unoccupied between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.

102 The Ming invasion of Đại Việt in 1407 came by two routes, neither of them involving water. A Taiwanese travel account recorded clearly why: ‘From Taiwan to Tongking by waterway takes 89 geng … although the port is wide, the further up to the west the narrower the river became.’ [由台至东京水程八十九更，自东京渡海十二更抵安南，其两海自港口横渡，虽甚广，渐西渐隘，而海亦尽，盖皆海之支汊] Taiwan tongzhi [A complete gazette of Taiwan] (Taipei: Taiwan sheng wenxian weiyuanhui, 1956), p. 33Google Scholar.