On the financial structure and personnel organisation of the Trịnh Lords in seventeenth to eighteenth-century North Vietnam

After the restoration of the Lê dynasty, the Red River delta region was flooded with military men who set up and controlled irregular departments from the end of the sixteenth to the first half of the seventeenth century. The imperial administration became a shell during the Lê-Trịnh period, with the Trịnh Lords as de facto rulers who constructed their own parallel government on the basis of these local departments. This analysis of contemporary inscriptions indicates that the Trịnh Lords subsequently expanded their administration and secured their rule by absorbing large numbers of Red River delta literati, while retaining many eunuchs in influential financial and military roles. Overall, the Trịnh bureaucracy, comprising of the Lục Phiên andLục Cung,was a kind of financial organisation combined with a military district system because it harnessed the existing military organisation.