Several thousand years of Vietnamese History in a few minutes.
Vietnamese history is the constant ebb and flow of borders. We shouldn’t think of them as static as borders are today. We are in an unusual time in history, where the current global order has mostly agreed not to recognize land taken by conquest, resulting in land borders which do not change as often today. As soon as a country takes another country by force, economic sanctions take hold and the benefit of taking additional land is negated by economic sanctions. The maps I include below are only a snapshot and occasionally become inaccurate as time progresses and borders change.
The history of Vietnam, prior to the French, finds its origins in three countries. In the north, you have the Chinese influenced (and occasionally occupied) Đại Việt (among many other names). From the center to the south you have the Champa empire. In the south you have a portion of the Khmer empire (which became Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Southern Vietnam).
The history of Vietnam usually focuses on the north. Before written history, Vietnamese were unified in the north by the Hùng kings. These kings are crucial to understanding Vietnam because they were the first unified Vietnamese dynasty which established the common mythology of the country. Unfortunately, not much is written about these kings because their rule predates writing. Much of their history is contained within legends, which leave their mark on the shrines and myths of the country. Later dynasties incorporate the Hùng legends into their own mythology, including the Lê dynasty who traced their lineage back to the Hùng kings to incorporate the Hùng cult into their own origin story.
Much of Northern Vietnamese history involved direct rule by the Chinese or as a tribute state to Southern China. I differentiate Southern China from China, because China also had shifting land borders over their history. The Vietnamese state in the Red River Delta was named by their Chinese rulers “Nan Yue” which became reversed when Vietnamese regained their independence a millennia later, which I heard was the origin of the common Surname, Nguyễn. Chinese occupation, which began in the year 111 B.C., created conflict with the tribal Vietnamese who were more egalitarian among the genders, with women granted property and inheritance rights.
The Chinese imposed their culture upon the Vietnamese, with the introduction of monogamy, Han clothing, as well as Han schools to introduce writing. These changes were creating societal problems for the Vietnamese. If we focus on the monogamy rule for example; people were required to pair up into marital unions. Regional Vietnamese governors were required to pay for Chinese style weddings. This policy drained the coffers of the local regional governments, which created tension between these local governments and the Han empire. This tension, along with other tensions which arise when one country occupies another, resulted in the first great Vietnamese rebellion.
The first Vietnamese heroines were the Trưng sisters in 40 AD, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị who led a rebellion to establish autonomous rule of Northern Vietnam after one of their husbands was executed by the Han Chinese. The sisters raised an interesting army, consisting of a mixture of men and women. Trưng Trắc was appointed queen regent, but her rule was short-lived as the Han returned with a larger force to take back their breakaway state in three short years. It is unclear whether the sisters were executed or died in battle, but their heads were sent back to the Han emperor as a trophy. They remain folk heroes to this day. The violent crackdown of this rebellion was so detrimental to the Vietnamese rebellious spirit that no other significant rebellion took place for hundreds of years.
It was a little over 150 years later that the Kingdom of Champa was formed in central Vietnam from the seafaring people of neighboring regions. I think of the Cham people as mostly merchant traders, as they mostly stuck to the coastal territories, with few settlements established in the central highlands region. They had an interesting mix of Hindu and Buddhist religious practices. They borrowed their writing from Indian Sanskrit which gradually evolved into their unique written language. Later, many converted to Islam along with many of the other island nations of Malaysia, Indonesia and Southern Philippines. Many of the ethnic Cham people who migrated to America now practice Islam. The French created an amazing museum in Đà Nẵng of artifacts. These artifacts may not have survived as well in the outdoors without French preservation and photography of archeological sites.
The next 900 years were a period of Chinese domination of Northern Vietnam under several different names for the region. There were occasional rebellions with varying levels of success. In 905 AD, the country was given the status of autonomous vassal as long as they agreed to make tribute payments. This didn’t work well for the Chinese because Vietnam decided to finally become independent of Chinese rule.
The Ngô dynasty became the first independent Vietnamese empire following nearly a millennium of Chinese rule in 939. The Ngô dynasty struggled to hold onto power because each of the Ngô kings could only hold on for a brief time, with the most successful of the kings lasting for a little over a decade. Following the Ngô dynasty is a descent into the warring states period were twelve different warlords wrestled power away from each other.
The Đinh dynasty was the first stable dynasty following the Chinese to successfully pass rule down to another generation, but they were quickly replaced by the Lê, who were quickly replaced by the Lý dynasty. They survived for a couple hundred years and endured several attempted Mongol invasions. The Mongols finally gave up and gave the Lý dynasty their autonomy with the condition that the Vietnamese emperor would resume occasional tribute. The official country name was changed in 968 AD to Đại Cồ Việt and in 1054 AD to Đại Việt meaning Đại (Greater) Việt (the name Vietnamese call themselves).
The Lê dynasty lasted for nearly a century until it was usurped by the Mạc dynasty. The Lê dynasty was reestablished less than a century later. During the later Lê dynasty, the region of Champa became a vassal state to Vietnam. Around the same time, the Khmer empire was breaking down, possibly due to plague or environmental degradation, and Thailand (Siam) emerged to take the place of the Khmer empire. This regime change allowed Vietnam to create settlements and gain control of the former Khmer region of what is now Southern Vietnam, including Prey Nôkôr which became Sài Gòn.
Gradually, the Lê dynasty became fractured, with several portions of the kingdom obtaining autonomy. Vietnam was united in name only. These factions sought to control the country, resulting in the Trịnh–Nguyễn civil war.
The war weakened Đại Việt and led to the Tây Sơn civil war, led by the three Nguyễn brothers (Nguyễn Nhạc, Nguyễn Huệ, and Nguyễn Lữ) from the village of Tây Sơn who sought to gain control of the country from the Lê dynasty. It is hard to call this a war as much as a series of raids. The Nguyễn brothers would take over a city for a year or two and Đại Việt would come back and take it again. Gradually concessions were made and the Nguyễn brothers were able to seize administrative control of region after region until they were able to seize full control of the country.
In 1778, the Tây Sơn brothers split the Vietnamese territories into three autonomous countries, with Nguyễn Huệ taking the north, Nguyễn Nhạc taking the center and Nguyễn Lữ taking the south.
The Tây Sơn empire was short lived, when another descendant of the Tây Sơn clan, Nguyễn Ánh, also known as Gia Long, founder of the Nguyễn dynasty, defeated the other factions and reunited Vietnam. This reunification roughly gave Vietnam its current borders.
The entire process left the country destabilized and easy pickings for the French to sweep in and take over Vietnam over the next few decades following the second Opium war in China.
In 1858, the French waged a victorious attack on Tourane (modern day Đà Nẵng) with the help of the Spanish Filipino Navy (Philippines was spelled with an “F” during Spanish rule). Đà Nẵng proved to be a bad choice to invade Vietnam because Vietnamese defenses were strong in this region.
The following year, the French invaded Saigon which they found to be a much better location to start their invasion of Southern Vietnam. Saigon became a base for the French to work from as they continued their conquest over the next few decades. Shortly after taking Southern Vietnam, the Cambodian king requested Cambodia become a French protectorate, thus removing any Thai claims to the region. The French proceeded to take the rest of Vietnam as well as the eastern part of Thailand (Siam). This area taken from Thailand became Laos and the Western border of Cambodia.
When the French took over, Vietnam became divided into three regions. The Southern region, which the French occupied first, became Cochinchina. The second region the French started to take over in the north became Tonkin. The final region became a French protectorate, administered by the Nguyễn dynasty and was renamed Annam after the Chinese name for Vietnam, which was the Western word for the country.
Most people know the history after this, so I will be brief.
The French were pushed out by the Japanese during WWII. Hồ Chí Minh declared independence after the Japanese were defeated. The French returned and tried to reestablish their colony. They were quickly overpowered in the battle of Điện Biên Phủ, where the French decided they had enough and organized a withdrawal under the 1954 Geneva Conference. It was agreed that Vietnam would have democratic elections to determine governance. The American’s stepped in and declared the South Vietnamese interim government to be a separate country causing hostilities to break out between Northern and Southern forces. Tensions escalated for a decade from the mid 1960’s until 1975 with America gradually losing interest in hostilities. In 1975 the American’s ended their support of the southern government which the north quickly absorbed and Vietnam became reunited.
What this cacophony of clashes and changing combinations tells us is that until the French imposed their rule the various pieces of the Vietnam puzzle did not know real unity. That is a useful gloss because it helps explain why communists efforts to "reunify" or even "unify" Vietnam imagined a national model that had never existed apart from French colonial maps. During the last war many protesters found it difficult to understand why many of us on the ground viewed North Vietnam's invasion/subversion of the South after 1954 as one sovereign nation attacking another, rather than the Vietnamese rising up under a universally accepted nationalist force, the Communist Party of the North. to cast out some new colonialist/imperialist intruder. The intelligence quickly revealed who controlled the so called revolution and it was most certainly not coopted southerners. This is separate from the question of whether the various factions of Vietnam wanted to be free of foreign interference. That is why nationalists in South Vietnam resisted the northern intruders whom they viewed as foreign interference. As any visitor to Vietnam today can see, the northern, middle, highlands-centric and southern parts of the country coexist imperfectly under the authoritarians in Hanoi with their imported ideology. There is a land mass called Korea but we have no problem accepting that North and South Korea are quite distinct national entities. Western romanticism and French colonialism brought a very different lens to Vietnam and the various peoples of Vietnam paid a heavy price for it.
Congrats on fitting so much in a short post, Brian!