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UID:pretalx-wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026-GTMCPT@pretalx.com
DTSTART;TZID=KST:20260625T101500
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DESCRIPTION:The Sino-Burmese War and the rise of Thonburi dynasty in Siam h
 ave long been examined in isolation\, even though both followed the Burmes
 e sack of Ayutthaya and the dispersal of its royal house in 1767. In Manda
 la polities\, this was a transfer of merit rather than territory\, making 
 both Burmese ascendancy and a new Siamese order episodically expected with
 in the karmic logic of kingship. However\, Qing observers read the turmoil
  after Ayutthaya’s collapse as a single southern moral crisis\, since th
 e military and dynastic destruction of a tributary polity violated the rel
 ational and ritual order of the Tianxia ideal (the Confucian moral world-o
 rder). This interpretation drove Qing military intervention and created op
 portunities for overseas Chinese to position themselves as guardians of le
 gitimate order. This paper approaches this dynamic through Hà Tiên\, a C
 hinese-founded polity on the Mekong Delta whose Confucian elite likewise o
 perated within Tianxia moral grammar while navigated overlapping Mandala h
 ierarchies. Drawing on correspondence preserved in the Veritable Records o
 f Qing\, the paper reconstructs how Hà Tiên positioned itself as the pro
 tector of the Ayutthaya royal house and sought Qing recognition as the pro
 per agent of regional order. The Emperor Qianlong’s acknowledgement inte
 grated Hà Tiên into the Qing diplomatic response to the crisis\, momenta
 rily enhancing its authority. Yet when the war ended in 1769\, Qing withdr
 ew from Southeast Asian affairs\, abandoning its ethical claim to the regi
 on. Deprived of imperial recognition\, Hà Tiên soon fell to Thonburi for
 ces in 1771. Hà Tiên’s brief rise and collapse illuminates not merely 
 the fate of a small polity but an epistemological collision between Confuc
 ian and Theravada world orders that contracted the Tianxia ideal in a reco
 nfigured mainland Southeast Asia\, demonstrating the need to understand pr
 emodern Asian diplomacy through plural\, overlapping world orders than a s
 ingle framework.
DTSTAMP:20260412T140124Z
LOCATION:Room 105 (Seats 84)
SUMMARY:The Southern Crisis of Tianxia: Hà Tiên and the Reordering of Mai
 nland Southeast Asia (1767-1771) - Wenxu Zhang
URL:https://pretalx.com/wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026/talk/GTMCPT/
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