In Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia, Kathlene Baldanza draws the reader into a world of negotiation and compromise that she argues characterized foreign relations between China and Vietnam from the thirteenth through the sixteenth century. She examines the intellectual and cultural productions of border officials, envoys and literati, and ruling emperors to illuminate the thoughts and workings of both the people who lived on the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands and those who guarded and manipulated the border. Beginning with the Mongol invasion of Dai Viet and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty in the Middle Kingdom, and ending with the Le victory over the Mac in Dai Viet during the early years of the Qing dynasty, Baldanza leads the reader through the entangled histories of China and Vietnam and highlights moments when the cultural and political borders of the two countries were contested and negotiated.

Ming China and Vietnam is divided into three parts. Part one, “Southern Scholars in the North,” comprises three chapters. The first two chapters examine two works: A Brief History of Annan, composed by Le Tac (ca. 1260s–1340s), a Tran official who surrendered to the Yuan, and A Record of the Dreams of an Old Southerner, a work compiled by Ho Nguyen Trung (1374–1446), a prince of the short-lived Ho dynasty who was exiled to the north in the early years of the Ming. Whereas the first work presented Dai Viet as an integral part of the northern empire, the second established it as a separate state sharing in the efflorescence of its northern counterpart. The third chapter brings the reader to the court of Zhu Houcong (r. 1521–67), which was divided over whether to enter into a war with Dai Viet to right the situation brought about by Mac Dang Dung's (1483–1541) ascendance to the Tran throne. Beyond the issue of defending the Tran state against a usurper, the Ming court was confronted with a vassal state that had the temerity to deploy Chinese symbols of authority, which posed a challenge to the Chinese worldview of the uniqueness of its emperor's place in the universe.

Part two, “Officials in the Borderlands,” devotes attention to Ming border officials who sought to influence the central court's policies toward Dai Viet. Chapter 4 examines how a pro-war advocate, border official Lin Xiyuan (ca. 1480–1550), failed to convince the Ming state to go to war but managed to influence the terms of the treaty so that some border territories came to be defined as Ming territory. Chapter 5 examines how other Ming border officials who were opposed to war with Dai Viet negotiated the situation to their advantage. Against an emperor who was pro-war, they coached Mac Dang Dung into a surrender that would be acceptable to the emperor. Here, Baldanza introduces readers to the Illustrated Account of the Overawing of Annan, which depicts a minor Ming border official, Jiang Yigui, as the main protagonist who negotiated the successful surrender. Because its focus is on Jiang and not the surrender, the pictorial record reorients the reader of history away from official narratives that emphasized the Mac's humiliating defeat and toward the political theater orchestrated by border officials.

Part three, “The Return of the Le Dynasty,” explores events in the later decades of the sixteenth century. This section establishes the Mac, often neglected in official narratives, as a serious dynasty in Vietnamese history. The Ming, finding themselves once again in a position of navigating between the Mac and the Le, ended up recognizing both—the Mac were to hold Cao Bang and the Le the rest of the country. The book concludes with a chapter on Phung Khac Khoan (1528–1613), a Le envoy who went to Beijing to negotiate a name change for Dai Viet and its ruler from “pacification commission/commander” to “country/king.” He presented the Ming emperor with thirty-one poems on the occasion of the emperor's birthday and, on account of the quality of the poems, was admitted into attendance. Baldanza argues that Phung Khac Khoan's poetic compositions, and a later apocryphal account of his visit to Beijing, reveal the confidence of the Dai Viet elite's self-representation not just as participants in but also better preservers of the shared classical culture.

Baldanza has a delightful way of sizing up historical characters and their personalities. For example, when observing the correspondence between, on one hand, Zhu Yuanzhang and his son, Zhu Di, and, on the other, Ho Quy Ly and his son, Ho Nguyen Trung, Baldanza writes, “One son defied his father but strengthened the dynasty, while the other obeyed his father yet became an official of an enemy state” (p. 50). Or, when characterizing two emperors of the Ming and the Mac, she states, “The impasse brought into conflict two remarkable and complicated rulers: Zhu Houcong, a man who serenely chose the reign name ‘Admirable Tranquility’ (Jiajing) even as he was whipping officialdom into a suicidal frenzy over his violations of ritual precedent, and Mac Dang Dung, a man who chose the reign name ‘Shining Virtue’ (Minh Duc) between ordering the murders of two Le emperors” (p. 79).

Ming China and Vietnam's focus on the borderlands is lively and refreshing. It successfully challenges the trope of “Chinese aggression and Vietnamese resistance” and shows compellingly that negotiation and compromise were integral to the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. With this robustly researched contribution to the fields of Chinese and Vietnamese studies, Baldanza significantly expands our knowledge of the politics of the borderlands and introduces the reader to the rich textual world that records its history.