Place
Giao Chau
The province to which the northern courts sent regional inspectors to govern; in the two hundred years or so after Si Nhiep, that post kept staying inside a few families.
At a glance
- Type
- A province headed by a regional inspector sent by the northern court: in 248 the Wu sent Luc Dan south as regional inspector of Giao Chau, with the added title of Colonel Who Pacifies the South1
- Dates
- Under the Tang, according to both Tang histories, the commandery of Giao Chi became Giao Chau in 622, and in the first year of Tiaolu (679; the Old Book of Tang gives the eighth month) the Governor-General's Office of Giao Chau was renamed the Protectorate of Annam, though the basic annals of the Old Book of Tang put the renaming of Giao Chau as the Protectorate of Annam in 681234
About the place
The old chronicles say
In the eleventh year of the Chiwu era of the Wu, that is, 248, there was a rising in Giao Chi and Cuu Chan; the Wu took Luc Dan, then serving as commandant supervising the army at Hengyang, and sent him south as regional inspector of Giao Chau, with the added title of Colonel Who Pacifies the South. The Tam quoc chi describes no battle — it describes a campaign to win surrender: Dan entered the southern lands and appealed to them with kindness and good faith, his aim being to draw them in; more than a hundred rebel leaders, and more than fifty thousand households from deep and hidden places that had never accepted any bond, all bowed their heads. The lands of Giao were at peace, and he was raised to General Who Pacifies the South.1
Reading the history of the next two hundred years, something odd stands out. In Giao Chau, the post of regional inspector kept quietly staying inside a few families. One family had five men as inspector across four generations. Another, father first and then son, kept the province at peace. And at the very end, a man of Giao Chi took the province for himself, and the court then granted his cousin that very post.5
Not every inspector left behind a concrete trace. The Liang shu, the Chen shu, the Nan shi, the Zizhi tongjian, the Viet su luoc, the Complete Annals and the Cuong muc all mention the inspector Tieu Tu, yet not one of them tells of a single concrete thing he did in Giao Chau: not one tax, not one levy of labour, not one tribute.6
Mentioned in
- Episode 2The rising of Lady Trieu, 24815 min
- Episode 4Giao Chau under the Jin and the Southern and Northern Dynasties16 min
- Episode 5The harsh policy of Tieu Tu9 min
Sources for this page
Every row of the profile and every passage below points to one of these documents. How we choose and check sources