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Milestones: Bradley Davis, Ph.D.
VSG-ers,
At our last AAS meeting in Atlanta, we had talked about encouraging the posting of more "milestone" messages on VSG, i.e., announcing list members' major achievements such as receiving high academic degrees, academic appointments, promotions, major research grants, book publications, prestigious awards and recognitions, etc. So here's one from UW-Seattle:
Yesterday, Bradley Davis successfully defended his History Ph.D. dissertation "States of Banditry: The Nguyen Government, Bandit Rule, and the Culture of Power in the post-Taiping China-Vietnam Borderlands." Weighing in at a hefty 440+ pages, Bradley's dissertation is based on research in a combination of sources rarely if ever seen: Nguyen Dynasty-era sources and archives, Vietnamese and French colonial archives and libraries, Chinese national and regional archives, historical museums and commemorative sites on both sides of the Sino-Vietnamese border, provincial and local repositories as well as oral traditions from various ethnicities in Viet Nam's northernmost regions. In addition to his mastery of the many shades of the English language, Bradley's linguistic abilities in Vietnamese, modern and classical Chinese, Nom Viet Nam, Nom Dao/ Yao, and French made such a broad and impressive endeavor possible.
Focussing on the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands, particularly northern Dai Nam --and thus de-centering the perspectives of lowland-based states-- the dissertation traces the competition over territorial control, resources and populations between and among bandit groups, insurgents, rebels, Nguyen and Qing central state authorities, and French colonial interests from roughly the 1850s to the 1910s. In particular, Bradley's work concerns the Black Flags, their rivals the Yellow Flags, and their use of --and by-- emerging French colonialism and Nguyen and Qing administrative prerogatives. He argues that despite changes in central government authorities and the introduction of new colonial technologies, a borderlands culture of force persisted in adaptive ways, where bandit groups were crucial power brokers and where violent extractive practices were habitually visited upon the people. Bradley Davis's dissertation is certain to make important contributions and necessary revisions to Nguyen/Dai Nam studies, our knowledge of the early colonial period, the de-mystification of the Black Flags, the Sino-French war, as well as to the dynamic comparative fields of banditry and borderlands studies.
Congratulations, Brad!
C. Giebel
UW-Seattle