Mai Na M. Lee. Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom

Among the world’s hundreds of ethnic minorities who exist on the margins of larger, dominant societies, a particular group’s history may be only sporadically mentioned by rulers. Often what is archived reflects the perspectives of ruling elites. If the members of an ethnic minority group were docile people easily absorbed into dominant societies, it may sometimes be the case that the ruling class will have erased them from historical accounts altogether. When, however, there are members of an ethnic minority who desire political power and pose problems for ruling elites, that group may show up frequently in the paper trails in archives. Mai Na M. Lee has examined one ethnic group whose members strategically challenged ruling elites’ efforts to assimilate them. In Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom: The Quest for Legitimation in French Indochina, 1850–1960, Lee argues that from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, despite the aspirations of Hmong leaders for sovereignty, their legitimacy rested largely on outside patronage. She points out that “lack of clan consensus, linguistic and cultural group disparities, and geographic divisions” have perpetually served as barriers to a unified ethnic people under a king. What constitutes Hmong history during the study’s time frame is intense clan competitions for outside legitimation (12).

Clan · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Legitimacy · Legitimation · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Sovereignty · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies