A History of Vietnam

PROFILE

Region: Southeast Asia

Climate: Damp and Tropical

Leader(s): Truong Tan Sang, since 2015 (at time of writing)

Population: 91,700,000

Capital: Hanoi

Largest City: Ho Chi Minh City
Currency: Vietnamese Dong
Languages: Vietnamese

Independence: 1945 from France

Territories or Colonies: None

HISTORY OF VIETNAM

THE FACTS

Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,  a name that comes from its time as a communist state, is a narrow country in Southeast Asia, that encompasses most of the Pacific coast in the region.

Vietnam has a damp and tropical climate, similar to its neighbors Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam is relatively dense, having a small land area and the 11th largest population of any country on Earth.

BEFORE AND DURING CHINESE OCCUPATION (????-938)

Vietnamese people are thought to have come from two places. Northern Vietnamese people came from Mongolia and China and migrated south to the Indochina Peninsula. The Southern Vietnamese migrated north from Indonesia and Malaysia to the area.

These two cultures assimilated and eventually the Vietnamese cultural identity was born. The Vietnamese people quickly developed new ways of cultivating rice, which are still used, as rice is still the largest crop in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese origin story is a good example of how the Vietnamese thought of themselves in ancient times. The story involves the two groups, the lowlanders and the highlanders as brothers and sisters separated at birth that live in different areas, yet share a lot of cultural tradition.

The first major historical event came when China, an important figure in Vietnamese stories, on account of China being a massive empire with rockets and a million-man army growing ever closer and closer to not only the Vietnamese but every country that bordered China.

Chinese colonization began by accident. The central Chinese government in the 300s B.C.E. didn’t just decide to waltz into Vietnam and add it to their list of things they wanted, the colonization began somewhat peacefully when members of Southern Chinese kingdoms were forced to leave when the Qin Empire (back then the largest of the Chinese Empires, and the one that gave China its name) hiked their borders south.

An influx of ethnically Chinese people radically changed the Vietnamese culture and to this day Vietnamese people share some genetics with the Chinese and some of the traditions the Southern Chinese brought with them.

The Qin Empire/Dynasty didn’t last forever. Empires always fall, no matter what ideology they’re based in. The Qin Empire fell because Qin Shi Huang, the last emperor ate waaaay too much mercury (which to be fair is any amount of mercury) because he thought it would make him immortal, which was so violently wrong he died a painful death as he slowly poisoned himself. Anyway, I’ll go more into this in the long and incredibly complicated China post). The long and short of it is that Chinese power shifted from the Qin to the Han, one of the most far reaching and long lasting Chinese dynasties reaching from the Pacific to Kazakhstan, and lasting a good 405 years.

The Han decided to move their borders even farther south into what is now Northern Vietnam and started the colonization train. The people of Northern Vietnam were already more related to the Chinese because of the Southern Chinese southern immigration, but the Chinese still saw the Vietnamese people they met as backwards and dumb, which was not true and was just racism (which is ironically what the Europeans and Americans thought of the Chinese, despite the fact that China invented almost everything), anyway the Chinese were big ol’ racists against the Vietnamese because they didn’t have a centralised government or gunpowder. The Vietnamese lived in small villages that were sometimes united in a regional council, something similar to many African societies of the time.

China had a different idea than Europeans when it came to colonialism. The Europeans had this idea that if you had “one drop” of non-white blood in your genetics that you weren’t white and were shunned by the Europeans which led to it being a taboo to have relationships with colonized peoples or slaves in European colonies. China had a different idea. They thought they could impose their will and ideas on the Vietnamese if they completely assimilated. They tried to force the Vietnamese to adopt Chinese religions, culture and language (which mostly didn’t work). China created trading posts in Vietnam for trading with the Indonesians or the Indians without having to navigate the treacherous route through the Himalayas.

The Chinese built roads, temples, canals and other infrastructure that was missing from Vietnam. The Han Dynasty faltered in 9 CE and many of the aristocrats found sanctuary with the Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese under China, hated it because China was raising taxes and slowly annexing Vietnamese farmers' land, which made it harder for them to grow food for themselves and to sell for profit. The Chinese imposed ethnically discriminatory laws that prevented the Vietnamese from ever gaining power because they were “inferior”.

The Chinese all in all were huge dicks to the Vietnamese and as this thing usually goes (see every country ever colonized, besides perhaps Canada) there was a revolt. The series of revolts happened between 39 CE and 248 CE, when a woman revolted against the Chinese because she could see women’s quality of life declining, as the Chinese had introduced foot binding and concubinage to the Vietnamese, which made life for women increasingly harder. This rebellion did nothing, sadly.

With the rise to power of Emperor Wu, in the 500s Vietnam enjoyed a brief period of relaxed Chinese rule. Emperor Wu wasn’t a big proponent of colonialism and favored art and philosophy to war, which of course angered everybody in the Chinese government, that was filled with people who loved fighting and taking land.

Emperor Wu, however, was terrible at keeping control of the land holdings he did have. The local governors of land in Vietnam were fed up by Wu’s lack of support and broke off from the Chinese government setting up satellite states, which was terrible because now these governors could do whatever they wanted unfettered by the Chinese government.

From 546 to 603 Ly Bon, a Vietnamese revolutionary and his followers set off a series of guerilla attacks against the massive Imperial Chinese force and the force of the satellite governors.

In 618, the Tang Dynasty gained power in China and regained control of Vietnam from the satellite governors. They renamed Vietnam Annam, which means “pacified south” which is kind of a dick move.

And this proved to be false as well, as the Vietnamese launched yet another series of attacks from 687 to 820. The most interesting of which was led by Mai Thuc Loan a.k.a. The Black Emperor who tried to defeat the Chinese from his giant death fortress called the Citadel, which was later converted into a buddhist temple where people go to pray for him. That should be every person’s dream to have a cool nickname, defeat an imperialist power from a well-constructed death fortress and then be worshipped even after death.

The final rebellion and only successful one, was that of Ngo Quyen who in 939 defeated the Chinese at the battle of Bach Dang River, where Ngo Quyen pulled one of the coolest war maneuvers ever. He planted a bunch of sharpened metal poles in the harbor, just low enough that they couldn’t be seen at high tide and sent a bunch of rafts to bait the huge Chinese war boats. The fast rafts retreated to the bank of the river and watched the Chinese war boats cripple themselves on the sharpened metal rods. DAAAAAAAAMN!

This tactic was so cool that it was reused in 1288 by Tran Hung Dao to destroy the Mongols.

After this, Ngo Quyen declared himself the coolest person in Vietnam and also king. He set up government buildings at Co Loa and renamed Annam, Dai Viet. After the death of Ngo Quyen who was holding together Vietnam, the country fell back into disarray under the leadership of his ineffectual son and the Chinese tried to retake the country, but failed. They finally had independence from the Chinese after almost 1000 years under them. China needs to learn to let go.

INDEPENDENT VIETNAM (944-1859)

Vietnamese independence began with leadership in the north by a man named Dinh Bo Linh, who tried to unify the north with China, by mixing religion and political traditions. He was popular, but his dynasty lost control in 980 when it was overthrown.

Something that people don’t often think about is that back a long time ago, power was almost never handed over peacefully. This was one of the most revolutionary ideas of the American Revolution. When Washington served his two terms John Adams succeeded him, without an armed conflict.

Back in the old days a dynasty held power until a different dynasty went and killed the leader and installed their own guy. This was true in Vietnam. Independent Vietnam was in a position of every 80 or so years, their dynastic government would be replaced by a new dynastic government, Game of Thrones style. For the average agricultural worker in Vietnam this usually didn’t mean much. Policy usually didn’t change much and these dynastic changes more affected the dynasty that just got overthrown and the upper echelons of society than your average Joe.

The Ly Dynasty greatly expanded the borders of Vietnam. The Vietnamese state now stretched from China in the north to the water in the south. This dynasty was then overthrown by the Tran who had Mongol problems. The Trans made enemies with the worst possible people, Kublai Khan and his Mongol fighting force that were known to destroy empires from Japan to Europe, but surprisingly the Tran kicked Kublai Khan’s ass.

Various dynasties remained in power until the country was again split into the North and South, in the early 1700s, with the split in power between the Le Kingdom in the North and the Nguyen Kingdom in the South.

These ruling Kingdoms were increasing the wealth of the ruling families and the bureaucratic government class in each of the societies and ignoring the struggles of the working and peasant classes. They imposed strict taxes which left the peasants penniless and unable to escape the cycle of poverty in the country. The Kingdoms would employ these peasants and pay them less, essentially creating a system of indentured servitude, which the peasants hated.

So, in the 1770s the peasants supported an uprising by the Tay Son Dynasty who promised better conditions for workers and actually did what they promised. They lowered taxes, but kept the same services for the public and gave women more rights allowing them major public offices as either Generals, or Treasurers or other things like that.

Everything was going well until the Tay Son King died and his successor was to be chosen, and thus began the game of thrones all too similar to societies with hereditary leadership.

The Tay Son King Quang Trung left the throne to his tiny ten year old brother (because what could go wrong giving the throne of a country with thirty million people and a huge economy over to a ten year old).

The leader of the Nguyen Dynasty which had fallen at the hands of the rebellion thirty years earlier saw that he could easily defeat a dynasty whose most powerful member wasn’t old enough to see PG-13 movies.

In 1802 the Nguyen matriarch Nguyen Anh asked the French to help him regain the throne, and thus began the beginning of French involvement in the area. Nguyen Anh went crazy with power and reversed everything won in the revolution. He was like “fuck you peasants and women, I’m reinstating old taxes and my palace is going to be made entirely of gold and have pictures of myself in every room. I’m taking away all rights from women and setting up a crazy bureaucratic mess because I can!!!”

Nguyen Anh wasn’t super concerned with being well-liked by the populace as you can probably tell, but he should have been because a revolution was yet again steaming in the villages. Revolution Take Two, however failed as Nguyen Anh’s successor was somehow crazier and never left his palace. His only idea for policy for the country was to buy a fleet of war elephants from Laos to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. Vietnam was struck with food shortages and the threat of the French Imperial Forces invading and their missionaries converting people, so the government administration began jailing missionaries. They didn’t believe that the French were a threat, so they didn’t do anything to prevent their attack, which in 1859 came ending a period of independence that lasted almost a thousand years. The French did this by slowly converting disenfranchised southerners and villagers in the north to Catholicism. These people easily converted because the other religious option Confucianism was the religion of the oppressive Nguyen Dynasty and was the basis for much of the taxation that was so unpopular.

The French sympathizing converts aided the French in overthrowing the leadership in Da Nang. The French inserted themselves into the North during a period of intense strife. The North had been ruled by a string of crazy people, peaking with the Elephant Man and his successors Thieu Tri and Tu Duc, so the French saw an entrance. They could get the populace to overthrow the government. Eventually they forced Tu Duc to sign away most of his power to the French, which they claimed when he died in 1883.

FRENCH COLONIZATION (1859-1954)

The French colony of Indochina was unwieldy. This was an area that was somewhat unfamiliar to Europeans, culturally and geographically. The French had trouble reaching out to the citizens in the north who were in conflict with Tu Duc until his death in 1883.

France introduced French cuisine, culture and literature to the region in hope of Frenchifiying the Vietnamese. (This is why the Vietnamese Banh Mi Sandwich is on a French Roll.) Under France the Vietnamese were somewhat prosperous, but most of the money went to France. Most people stayed as low-paid peasants, but a few ascended the ranks of French government.

By the early 20th Century though Vietnam was really finding it’s own voice and cultural identity among the French. One of the main goals of imperialism besides steal the resources of others to make money, was to impose the culture of the Imperial force on to the colonized country, and it’s always a challenge to cultivate a national identity and culture, when a different culture is imposed upon you. Sometimes it creates a culture that is a blend of imperial ideals and old school tradition, which is what happened in Vietnam.

Eventually the colonial fist of France had grown unbearable to the Vietnamese people and were looking for a way out. A young student named Ho Chi Minh (who got Saigon named after him) travelled to Europe and learned about communism and liked it because of its stance against imperialism (even though the USSR was a big fan of imperialism). Communism quickly spread among the Vietnamese as a way of overthrowing the imperialist leaders. The Indochinese Communist Party or ICP was founded as the second most famous ICP after Insane Clown Posse.

Ho Chi Minh, Communist Leader

The ICP failed to gain control though because in WWII the Japanese seized control of all of the area from southeastern Russia to Korea to the Pacific Islands to Southeast Asia. The French and Japanese although on opposite sides of the war were both united in their belief that the Vietnamese should not govern themselves, but the Japanese were destroyed in 1945 and after removing forces from Vietnam struck a deal with Ho Chi Minh to give all of their weapons and stuff to the Communist Viet Minh, so they could fight the French.

CIVIL WARS AND THE PRESENT (1954-PRESENT)

The French returned to reclaim full control of their colony, but were met with opposition from Ho Chi Minh who eventually kicked the French’s ass, but was only granted control of Communist North Vietnam, while South Vietnam was left to be run by Ngo Dinh Diem, who hated Communism.

A civil war broke out between the Communist North and the Capitalist South in 1954, which included the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem by the Viet Minh. JFK sent Americans to sort out the situation, but found out that the capitalist south who they were poised to support were corrupt and ineffective and not as worthy of support as they had hoped. Both sides of the conflict were not favorable to the US, but that didn't stop America.

By 1964, Americans had joined in the fighting on the side of South Vietnam and the Vietnam War officially became an American conflict. In 1968 it became clear that the Vietnam war was a lost cause as the North Vietnamese knew the land better and had more civilian support.

In 1968, when Nixon became president he tried to remove soldiers from the area and hand over power to the South Vietnamese, but this didn’t work. Americans had left Vietnam by 1975, after the utter failure of the Cambodian Invasion which did nothing but make Cambodia which was neutral, hate America and side with the North Vietnamese.

After America left, the South Vietnamese economy was crippled from wartime spending and embargos from the North and eventually the North seized many southern cities like Hue, Da Nang and Saigon which the north invaded in 1975 and renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

After the war recently victorious North Vietnam's economy faltered as the government started destroying anything to do with their capitalist past. In 1986, the economy was in an all-time slump and the election of Nguyen Van Linh helped jumpstart capitalism into Vietnamese society. As of now, Vietnam still has remnants of its communist/socialist past, but has some modern capitalist elements as well. 

VIETNAM FACTS

It is popular to look pale in Vietnam, rather than Tan like in the West. This bizarre quirk is also true in Japan and Korea.

75% of Vietnamese people have motorbikes, while only 2% have cars.

Vietnam is the sixth narrowest country in the world.