‘Treacherous Factions’: Shifting Frontier Alliances in the Breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese Relations on the Eve of the 1075 Border War

Neither the Vietnamese court in Thang Long nor the Chinese court in Kaifeng could likely have imagined that the suppression of the insurgency of Nùng Trí Cao (Nong Zhigao) (1025–53) would lead to war. However, the official containment of the frontier chieftain’s three ambitious attempts to establish a frontier kingdom in 1042, 1048 and 1052, eventually had the effect of escalating tensions along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier region to the point of major conflict. Indeed, the pacification campaign launched against Nùng Trí Cao’s followers in the 1050s and the subsequent submissions of strategic Tai-speaking frontier communities to direct control of the Song dynasty (960–1279), contributed directly to the outbreak of the Sino-Vietnamese border war of 1075–77