Nola Cooke, BA(Hons), MA(Hons) (Syd), PhD
Visiting Fellow, Division of Pacific and Asian History and Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora
Email: nola.cooke@anu.edu.au
Biographical Statement
My doctorate on French political mythology and colonial politics in Central Vietnam (Annam) in
the early colonial era (1897-1925) created an interest in the antecedents of the colonial
Vietnamese political elite. From there my research expanded to consider the influence of the
pre-dynastic southern Nguyen kingdom (Dang Trong) on the political and cultural life of the
nineteenth-century Nguyen Empire. This research showed that a 'southern' (i.e., Dang Trong)
background was the single essential political element for high mandarinal success in late precolonial
Vietnam (1800s-1870s). My current research interests build on this background: I am
using French missionary archives to illuminate the history of Nguyen Cochinchina (modern
central to southern Vietnam) and the place of Catholicism within it; and am researching
Chinese interactions with local peoples and colonial authorities in later-19th-century southern
Indochina (including Cambodia), using mainly colonial archives.
Research Interests
Southern Vietnam under the Nguyen, 17-19th centuries; Catholicism in early modern Vietnam;
the historical interactions of Chinese and local peoples in south-eastern Indochina.
Key Publications
- Strange Brew: Global, Regional and Local Factors behind the 1690 Prohibition of Christian
Practice in Nguyen Cochinchina', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies [JSEAS], 39, 3 (2008):
383-409
- 'King Norodom's Revenue Farming System in Later Nineteenth-Century Cambodia and his
Chinese Revenue Farmers (1860-1891)', Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, 1 (2007): 30–
55
- 'Southern Regionalism and the Composition of the Nguyen Ruling Elite, 1802-1882', Asian
Studies Review, 23 (1999): 205-31
- 'Regionalism and the Nature of Nguyen Rule in Seventeenth-Century Dang Trong
(Cochinchina)', JSEAS 29 (1998):122-161
- 'Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Confucianization in Historical Perspective: Evidence from the
Palace Examinations (1463-1883)', JSEAS, 25 (1994):270-312
