Le - Trinh State and the Foreign Trade in the Period from the 16th to 18th Century

Abstract

The 16th-18th centuries of the Vietnamese history, especially in 17th century, is recorded as a flourish period of the foreign trade in the medieval history of Dai Viet. The flourish of the foreign trade was resulted by many endogenous and exogenous factors, among which the Feudal State played an important role. The attitude of the Le-Trinh Government is manifested in only very few writing documents. Some legal documents dealt with only some issues, like the resident sites of the foreign traders, imported and exported goods. They rarely dealt with trading activities. These were sometimes mentioned in letter exchanges... Although the Vietnamese foreign trade achieved some developments in the 16th-17th centuries, but these were only very unstable developments. This unstable development was resulted mainly from the backward feudal economy, but also because of the lack of rational economic strategy of the feudal state, particularly the right policies concerning the foreign trade.