The Tay Son uprising (1771-1802) was a cataclysmic event that profoundly altered the eighteenth-century Vietnamese political and social landscape. This book offers a new look at an important and controversial era. George Dutton follows three brothers from the hamlet of Tay Son as they led a heterogeneous military force that ousted ruling families in both halves of the divided Vietnamese territories and eventually toppled the 350-year-old Le dynasty. Supplementing Vietnamese primary sources with extensive use of archival European missionary accounts, he explores the dynamics of an event that affected every region of the country and every level of society. Tracing the manner in which the Tay Son leaders transformed an inchoate uprising into a new political regime, Dutton challenges common depictions of the Tay Son brothers as visionaries or revolutionaries. Instead, he reveals them as political opportunists whose worldview remained constrained by their provincial origins and the exigencies of ongoing warfare and political struggles.