A History of The United Arab Emirates

PROFILE

Region: The Middle East

Climate: Hot, Dry, Desert-y

Leader(s): Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, since 2006 (at time of writing)

Population: 5.779.760

Capital: Abu Dhabi

Largest City: Dubai
Currency: UAE Dirham
Languages: Arabic

Independence: 1761, from the United Kingdom
Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS
The United Arab Emirates is a country in the Middle East, in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. Like the U.S. the UAE is more of an alliance than a country, but instead of states UAE is comprised of Emirates which are like mini-kingdoms. It's in a hot-arid desert climate and is very rich with oil, having the 7th largest oil reserves in the world. Recently it has moved from oil to tourism and investment, being known as a playground for the rich. The UAE is home to islands in the shape of the world map, large palm-shaped artificial islands, the worlds largest mall, the worlds tallest building, the future worlds largest amusement park and an indoor ski resort. 

However, this has led to a huge wealth-gap. While rich Emirati and rich foreign nationals live well, many poor Emirati and migrant workers from India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia face human-rights violations and terrible, near-slavery working conditions. 

The history might be kind of complicated considering UAE has seven independence dates in 1761, 1775, 1819, 1820, 1899, 1900 & 1952. 

BEFORE ISLAM (????-632) The Arabian region in general is known as a crossroads between Africa, Asia and Africa (the Old World) as Uzbekistan was in the last post. Scientists believe that the region was one of the first human populated places outside of Africa. The whole Arabian peninsula was populated with pre-Islam nomadic cultures that believed in folk religions.

One of these groups was the Umm an-Nar, who existed alongside the Egyptians in the 2000s BCE. The Umm an-Nar traded with North Africa and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and like the Egyptians had a culture that was very burial-focuses. While they didn't quite construct 400 foot tall tombs, they had fairly ornate traditions building cylindrical fortresses out of stone. The era was a golden age for UAE cultures. Art and trade were very prevalent. Another interesting bonus fact is that Umm an-Nar means "Mother of Fire" which on the scale of cool names is pretty high alongside Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Gauls and Vestal Coffin a civil war figure.

The Umm an-Nar were followed by several groups like the Wadi Suq, who in comparison to the Umm an-Nar kinda Suqqed Ass. They didn't have nearly as many trade connections or as much art or ornate tomb construction as their predecessors.

Now you may wonder why anyone at all lived in this inhospitable desert before the invention of AC, advanced irrigation techniques or oil extraction. Back in these days these cultures knew how to work the land using their early irrigation techniques of building long canals that brought water deep into the desert. These canals could be as narrow as a foot, but they used gravity to carry water farther than many irrigation systems at the time.

Trade was another reason to stay. Southern Arabia was an important stop for Caravans going to Yemen or across the Red Sea to the cultures of the Horn of Africa like Ethiopia and Somalia or Egypt.

MUHAMMAD & ISLAM SHOWS UP (632-1500s)
The UAE's convenient location near-ish Mecca meant they were visited by Muhammad and
absorbed into his first caliphate which included Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar among other places. The locals took to the new religion rapidly and those who didn't were rapidly killed. The non-muslims lost the war of conquest, as most did.

The UAE was important to the expansion of Islam in other ways. The UAE port of Julfar was used as a stop on the way to Iran which was still Zoro-Astrian and the Muslims weren't into that.

Islam stayed the dominant system of beliefs and culture for most of the next 1000 years until 
the Portuguese showed up.

THE PORTUGUESE & OTTOMANS (1500s-1790s)
Ok, so it's the 16th century and you're the head of Portugal. You're empire is already doing pretty well with holdings in Africa & Brazil but you're noticing that the Indian Ocean is the hot new ocean (quite literally as it's a very warm ocean, but it was also hot shit back then) and you want to get in on it.

The Portuguese had this conundrum and decided the Arabian Peninsula was the way to go. Portugal actually did have some ties with Islam as many of its people were Muslim and it was part of the Caliphate for a while along with Spain, Southern France, Sicily and Malta.

Vasco da Gama, who was Portugal's star explorer was at the head of Portugal's Indian Ocean expeditions, and while Portugal was more interested in Macau and Portuguese India, they did have large territories in the UAE.

In the early half of the 18th century the Ottoman Empire was gaining power. They had existed since the 1200s, but they were at their largest from 1680-1720. They controlled vast portions of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and other areas in North Africa as well as large parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

THE BRITISH MAKE DEALS (1790s-1930s)
If you remember from the Yemen post the Brits were in a full on race with Russia to colonize the Middle East and Britain was winning. To ensure they won, in 1892 they went to the weakened leader of the Al Qawasim dynasty. This dynasty had lost power  because of attack from the British. They then went to the Al Qawisim and basically said. You guys can still rule the Emirates, but we're gonna technically own them and we're gonna collect taxes and impose some new laws. 

The British did this a lot. It's called home-rule and while it's technically better than having some pasty British guy boss you around, it's still not preferred.

The region was known as a hotspot of pearl fishing, along with the southern coast of India and Sri Lanka. The British wanted that pearl money, but the depression in the 30s along with other factors, like people not wanting pearls as much as diamonds and other more expensive gemstones and the ability to raise oysters domestically led to this industry tanking. UAE didn't see the example Zambia set when they put all of there eggs in the copper basket and said "Oh no, we've put all of our resources, infrastructure and money into a fickle industry with a finite amount of resources". But, then oil was discovered so they said "Let's put all of our resources, infrastructure and money into this fickle industry with a finite amount of resources!" 

THE BRITISH LEAVE AND THE UAE IS BORN (1930s-PRESENT)
The country, with its newfound oil wealth had new capital to start a country and tell the British to fuck off. Oil exports began in 1962 and the country used its newfound wealth to build new roads, public works projects and a new drydock-port system in its major port towns of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And calling these places towns was fairly apt. While Dubai and Abu Dhabi are now towns with more than a million people each back then they had only 150,000 & 90,000 people respectively, less than some suburbs. 

But the population spiked with the arrival of foreign nationals who saw the opportunity to get work as contractors, architects and designers of the UAE's many ridiculous and insane projects. 

The UAE in many ways is like the Middle East's Vegas. It was a small desert outpost that was taken over by some shady businessmen and was transformed by a newfound industry into a massive, tacky blob. But like Las Vegas, the UAE has many problems deep down. Only 10% of the residents of the UAE are citizens, the rest being foreign migrant workers, primarily from India and Pakistan (40%) and other migrant workers and western foreign nationals. This means only one in ten get any representation in the government, which itself is very backwards. 

The UAE is a complicated mesh of seven absolute monarchies, so democracy isn't really involved. Imagine if the US had only seven states and each was ruled by a wealthy family from that state. This is kind of how this works. 

The UAE has been criticized, like Bahrain and Qatar for its atrocious human-rights record. Many migrant workers die during the construction of these massive projects. Also it's illegal to be gay in the country, with one man on trial for a "gay handshake". This man reports not being gay, but handshaking another man in a way that "offended the government". 

Also many of the monarchs of the UAE are convicted rapists and torturers who get a pass because they are in the rich upper class.

FUN FACTS
The UAE contains the worlds largest skyscraper, shopping mall, theme park and many other world records.
The UAE contains the worlds fastest roller coaster.
There's a hotel in Dubai that's apparently so nice it's the only seven star hotel in the world.
The Dubai police drive Lamborghinis.
There are ATMs in Dubai that dispense gold.
Dubai has no sewer, just trucks that drive poop from houses to treatment centers.
You have to have a liquor license just to drink by yourself.
The Emirate of Abu Dhabi owns most of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan.

A History of Uzbekistan, Part 1

PROFILE

Region: Central Asia

Climate: Continental, Seasonal, Incredibly Cold at Times

Leader(s): Shavkat Mirziyoyev, since 2003 (at time of writing)

Population: 31.576.400

Capital: Tashkent

Largest City: Tashkent
Currency: Uzbekistan Som
Languages: Uzbek, Karakalpak, Russian

Independence: 1991, from the Soviet Union
Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan (of course), is a country in Central Asia. It's one of the "stans" which besides Pakistan and Afghanistan are incredibly obscure countries most people haven't heard of, like Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ugrigstan and Kyrgyzstan. One of those is fake, but you probably don't know which one is.

Uzbekistan is culturally similar to Central Russia, as they were part of the USSR, and Uzbek people come from several different ethnic groups. The country is about as big as California, with about as many people as California and has a pretty low standard of living.

EARLY HISTORY (????-700s)

Uzbekistan has been an important country since the time of Rome. Before then the land was settled by nomads that moved east from Mesopotamia (also called the cradle of civilization), which I guess makes the "stans" the "awkward teenage years of civilization". Uzbekistan, like Yemen benefited greatly from its position in the world. Central Asia is so central it literally has the word Central in its name, just like the MIDDLE East. Central Asian civilizations like the city state of Samarqand, for examponnected different people from China, to Java to Kenya to Rome. This fostered the specializale, benefitted greatly from the Silk Road. The Silk Road is the network of trade routes in Asia, Europe, Africa and Indonesia. It wasn't necessarily a single road, but a sort of ancient interstate that ction of industry in different countries. India and Java sold Spices to China and Rome, while China sold silk to the Romans.

Central Asia, however, took a different approach. They basically entered into the hotel business. All across Central Asia, in Uzbekistan and surrounding countries stopping places popped up. They were sort of proto-truckstops. They had places to sleep, food, often mosques or churches and even an Ancient Cinnabon. If you were a trader crossing the vast steppe of Uzbekistan you'd fucking cry tears of joy if you saw a place to stop after walking for months across arid, desolate nothingness.

In the 400s BCE, the Persians saw the profit that could be gained in annexing all of this land, so the Persians walked north a bit and easily conquered the land. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan both spoke dialects of Persian and were culturally similar, since they had migrated mostly from what is now Iraq and Iran. Persia finally annexed Transoxiana (read Central Asia) to their increasingly large list of things they wanted.

Transoxiana's prime location was perfect for trade between Persia, China, Rome, Indonesia and Africa, and therefore was one of the most vital Persian colonies. It was constantly attacked because when your colony is in such a prime location, it's almost taunting other Empires that they can't rake in the wealth from it. 

Uzbekistan's early pre-Islamic history is marked with people coming up to it and being like "hey Uzbekistan, we're gonna, like, colonize you and take all of your trade money" and Uzbekistan was like "dammit, not again." Uzbekistan has been conquered by the likes of the Mongols, the Persians, Alexander the Great and the Arabs, in a relatively short period of time. 

Alexander the Great is noted to have one of the largest empires in the world and I will discuss him in greater detail in the Greece post. Coinage from his empire has been found as far east as Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and remember he traveled all that way from Northern Greece.

As BCE turned to CE, Uzbekistan was enjoying the fruits of its lucky location, as well as dealing with the negative things that come with that, like constant invasion. In 200 BCE to 100 BCE the market for Chinese Silk in Greece and Rome was growing, after all what are you gonna make Togas out of, so the Chinese needed a way of shipping their valuables: Silk and Porcelain to Europe. They used something called the Silk Road, which is a network of trade routes that zig-zag around Eurasia. If you include Indian Ocean Trade Routes, the Silk Road stretched from the two ends of the known world. From Rome in the west, to Manila in the east, to Zanzibar in the south, and at the center was the Persian Empire and its star province Transoxiana.

When you're the center of trade, you invariably become the center of arts and culture, ask London, Istanbul and New York, among many others, and Transoxiana was no different. It became a crossroads for religion, and culture. The culture of the region blended east with west, with the indigenous culture of the Central Asian steppe. You had Chinese influence (many residents were Buddhist), Persian influence (many residents were Zoroastrian, the monotheistic religion of the Persians) and Christianity from the Levant was present. 

MUSLIM CONQUEST TO THE KHANS(700s-1200)

This changed in the 700s CE though when the new Caliphates of Arabia, based on the new religion of Islam, which at this point was only about seventy years old. Think of it like how Scientology is perceived today. Throughout the Eighth Century the various Caliphates, especially the Umayyad Caliphate led by Qutaybah ibn Muslim (who is so Muslim, his name is Muslim) arrived in Transoxiana, after crossing the treacherous deserts of Iraq, Iran and the southern steppe of Central Asia. 

The Muslims main goal was to transform the religiously diverse population into Muslims. There were already some Muslims, primarily from Persia in the south which had converted years prior.

The Muslims, probably more importantly were after that Cash Money, and Transoxiana was still flush with Cash Money. The Silk Road was still the primary system of transporting goods across Eurasia all the way until the early 13th Century, when the Crusades turned this relatively stable and holy-war-free zone into a battlefield. Darn Crusades!

But in the 8th Century the Silk Road was still the bees knees, and the Muslims knew this and wanted to capitalize on it, but this period of success wasn't meant to last and in less than 150 years the Caliphates lost control of the region. Their religious footprint remained, but their political control didn't. In fact, Muslims are still the dominant religion today, with 90% of the population identifying as Muslim.

Until the 1200s when the Mongols happened, the region was controlled by a series of ethnically Turkish dynasties and sultanates and empires that traveled east to the region. 

This time was a time of relative stability. There was some fighting between the Turkish empires, as to who would rule the region but the steady influx of money from China and the East, as well as Europe and Africa brought immense wealth to the region.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16218972

http://www.uzbekistan.org/uzbekistan/history/

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.

A History of Yemen

PROFILE

Region: The Middle East

Climate: Arid, hot desert

Leader(s): Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, since 2015 (at time of writing), leadership disputed

Population: 25,408,000

Capital: Sana'a, Aden (sort of)

Largest City: Sana'a
Currency: Yemeni Rial
Languages: Arabic

Independence: North Yemen - 1918 from the Ottoman Empire, South Yemen - 1967 from the United Kingdom, Unified in 1990
Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS

Yemen, officially The Republic of Yemen, (the most popular official name for a country: the Republic of ___) is a country in the middle east at the far southwest of both the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and Asia in general.

Yemen is relatively arid in the eastern and less populated part of the country, but in the more heavily populated west it has some vegetation.

The country is important in trade as it lies on the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the gateway from Africa, Asia and Australia to Europe via the Suez Canal.

Along with Somalia and Djibouti, Yemen has problems with pirates that prey on ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait.

ANCIENT HISTORY (????-650s)

Now, the Middle East as a region, as vast and diverse as it is, is often associated with Islam. All of the countries in the region except Israel are muslim and many of them are theocracies ruled by a muslim monarch.

Nations in this region are very conservative, with laws against drinking, public displays of affection or homosexuality.

It’s a common misconception that the Middle East is home to all or most of the world’s muslims. There are huge populations of Muslims in the Caucasus Region, the Balkans, Kazakhstan, India and Indonesia among other places.

Islam is an important factor in the history of Yemen, but it doesn’t really come into play until the 700s. Islam, despite what many would like you to believe is very closely related to both Christianity and Judaism. They are sort of three branches from the same tree, or maybe Judaism is the trunk and Christianity and Islam are the branches. Whatever way you decide to look at it, these religions are very closely related.

The main differences between these religions is age. Judaism is a good 3,500 years old, christianity is about 1,900 years old and Islam is a measly 1,450 years old. Which is REALLY old, but not nearly as old as Judaism and Christianity, which means there was a long portion of time when Yemen was well connected, but not a Muslim state.

The reason Yemen was so well connected was because of its perfect position. Yemen is located in the middle east, which really was the middle back in the old days. The world was believed to be just Afro-Eurasia until the late 1400s when the New World was re-discovered and even later when Antarctica and Australia were discovered.

If you look on a map the Middle East is the midpoint between Africa, Europe and East and Central Asia. Yemen was in close proximity to the Roman Empire’s outposts in Arabia, Northern Arabia, Egypt, Central Asia and other areas in Southeastern Africa.

Now, what did Yemen trade? Their primary goods were spices and incense, like Frankincense and Myrrh, both resins from trees that can be used to make perfume and other things like that and they both fetched top dollar. Frankincense and Myrrh might seem familiar if you’re familiar with the nativity story where the three wise men each bring Frankincense, Myrrh & Gold, the first two I’m guessing were not as popular as Mr. Gold. It seems kind of rude to bring gold like that. The Wise Men should have agreed on a price limit so nobody looked stingy.

But Frankincense and Myrrh aren’t cheap, they were highly coveted products in the ancient world.

 

Before the rise of Islam several kingdoms ruled the area known today as Yemen. They all capitalized on the dolla dolla billz (which back then was salt) that could be gained from selling spices and incense.

In around 150 B.C.E. the Romans came to Egypt. You probably know the story, Shakespeare did, Mark Antony and Cleopatra were in a pretty intense relationship that ended when Mark Antony left for Rome and some other things happened. I’m not here to recap Antony and Cleopatra, but it was set in this time period and I will go into this more in the Egypt post (which will be a long and complex post, I foresee).

Anyway, the Romans show up in Egypt and add it to their increasingly ridiculously large list of “Places We Want”. The Romans flex their colonizing muscles and reroute much of the incense and spice trade away from the land routes favored by the Yemeni rulers (they favored them because that’s the only way they made money) and rerouted them through the red sea and across Egypt (which Rome owned) to the mediterranean and up to Rome (which Rome also owned) or maybe to Greece or Spain (both places Rome owned).

This obviously crippled the economy because like in Zambia (where they put all their chips on “copper”) putting all your chips on one easily disruptable industry is a really bad idea (looking at you Modern Arabian Nations with your oil dependent economies. Let’s hope this isn’t a retread of Ancient Yemen).

The smaller kingdoms who oversaw trade slowly dwindled down into nothingness and from their ashes arose newer kingdoms that were at the disadvantage of not having any money.

These kingdoms weren’t prosperous in any sense of the word and in the late 400s Ethiopia, at this point known as Abyssinia showed up and occupied many of the weakened city states and kingdoms that were once powerful spice barons.

An interesting side-note that will show up again in the Ethiopia post (one that I’m really looking forward to) is that Ethiopia unlike many of the other African nations wasn’t made christian when missionaries arrived, they had been Christian for a really long time and even today Ethiopia is home to one of the oldest branches of Christianity: Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.

The Ethiopians were lead by Abraha. an Abyssinian leader. Abraha was known for his massacre of Jews in Abyssinia and Yemen. After the conquest he stayed in Yemen to rule it and expand the Abyssinian Colonial Empire. Abraha sent a war party north to Mecca to try and capture it but failed.

As you would expect of a group that’s being controlled by a crazy war-monger like Abraha, Yemeni people weren’t thrilled and looked for any way they could of overthrowing the Abyssinians, but their military superiority prevented that from happening alone, so the people of Yemen went to the Persian Sassanids for help. The Sassanids overthrew the Abyssinians, but the Sassanids instead of leaving started to occupy the land again.

The Yemeni people just traded one group of colonial occupiers for another, but by 628 Islam had taken hold in the region as the dominant monotheistic religion, which before was Judaism.

The Sassanian leadership could sense the religious landscape was changing. The majority of the populace of Yemen at this point were muslim, but the ruling Sassanids were either Jewish, Christian or Zoroastrian (one of the first monotheistic religions).

The Sassanids’ control of the region became less and less secure and finally it was completely relinquished in the mid 600s.

ISLAM SPREADS (650s-1538)

Islam reached the region in the early 600s, and spread reaaaaaaally fast. The Yemeni people (at this point still a disparate group of tribes and city states, not one national identity) had experienced a period of about two hundred years under oppressive colonial regimes, with little economic freedom or prosperity and were looking for answers. This is one reason why Islam spread so quickly. It was a religious alternative to Christianity or Judaism, which the Yemeni people were wary of because of how the Christian Abyssinians and predominantly Christian and Jewish Sassanians treated them.

Another factor for Islam’s quick spread was its close proximity. Mecca was about 500 kilometers away from Yemen and Arabian soldiers from Mecca often passed through Yemen en route to Africa.

In 632, Yemen was unified with the rest of Arabia under Muhammad’s successor Abu Bakr, but broke off. (DISCLAIMER: I know that Abu Bakr is a really incendiary topic for some muslims and forms the main difference between Shia and Sunni muslims, so I’m not really going to discuss him in great detail.)

Abu Bakr had trouble unifying the peninsula. He would often send representatives who would just never come back and be like “chillin’ in Yemen now Abu Bakr, sorry”.  

At this time (the early 800s to 1538) Yemen was still a muslim area, but not under the control of the unified Arabia (not as unified as one would hope I guess) and instead went back to its status as a land of many small kingdoms and city-states ruled by various dynasties like the Salayhids, Fatimids, Ayyubids and Rasulids. (Side note the Fatimid flag and Ayyubid flags are terrible, solid green and solid yellow, respectively. It’s almost as bad as Libya’s flag.)

Former Libyan Flag... *Comic Book Guy Voice* Worst... Flag... Ever

After the control of these various dynasties started to die out, the opportunists over in Portugal saw an opening. They were busy with their entrance into Indian Ocean trade, colonizing Mozambique and other southern African states. The Portuguese took control of the Yemeni Island of Socotra (home to some of the coolest trees ever) but they failed at securing the mainland. The Mamelukes tried to secure the mainland, but failed too, and finally the Ottomans, in 1538, took control of Yemen after their crushing defeat of Egypt in 1517.

Now, why was everybody from Europe to Africa trying to gain control of Yemen? The obvious answer is that the various dynasties weren’t in any way united and you would think that defeating an army that is splintered into many groups would be easy (except for Portugal), but the real reason for wanting to capture the land was the hot (literally) new bean that was taking the world by storm in the early 1500s: Coffee. Coffee was becoming the new beverage of choice for Europeans after tea and beer, but it could only be grown in the coffee belt, which Europe was too far north to be in the coffee belt which meant that all of their coffee had to be imported, and Yemen was in a pretty convenient location, being on the entrance to the red sea, so since coffee was such a prized commodity, and Yemen was a good place to grow it, everybody was fighting over it.

Interesting side fact, the word mocha, comes from the Yemeni town of Al Mukha, a coffee trading port in the highlands of Yemen.

TWO YEMENS AND UNIFICATION (1538-PRESENT)

As the Ottomans did, they didn’t like letting go and didn’t until the early 1900s. Well, it’s not this simple. The British at the time were expanding their empire into the middle east and they captured the lands in the south setting up their government in Aden, Yemen’s second largest city and expanding their territory to southern Yemen. The Ottomans remained with North Yemen, setting their territory’s capital in Sana’a. This began the conflict that still rages on today.

The two colonial powers drew a border separating North Yemen from South Yemen.

The Ottomans kept control of North Yemen until in 1911, a revolution began against the Ottomans. The residents of North Yemen were fed up with being controlled by a far away empire which they saw as a remnant of a different time. After seven years and defeat in World War One, the Ottomans evacuated North Yemen, the first half of the modern country to gain independence.

Starting in 1918, North Yemen was transformed into an imamate, a monarchy ruled by an imam, in this case Imam Yahya Hamididdin, who revitalized the country’s traditional muslim identity, but many in the country were unhappy as Yemen was lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of political freedoms and technological advancements.

The Imam became less and less popular and finally in 1948 the Imam was assassinated, but his son overthrew the revolutionaries and regained control of the country. Amad bin Yahya Hamididdin, the son of Yahya Hamididdin assured people that he would rule the country fairly, unlike his father and create a government with actual representatives, but of course he was full of shit, as many of these recently installed revolutionaries are.

Meanwhile in South Yemen, still a British territory, the local government rulers were starting to get worried. After a leader gets assassinated and his son comes in saying he’s going to enact all of these reforms and then reaffirms a monarchy, you’d probably be a little worried, so the local leaders offer their support to the British.

Britain said it would be advantageous if all of the local governments unified into a larger government that would be good if they ever needed to leave forever. They said they should be prepared to fight North Yemen.

In 1958, the British controlled South Yemen split into a federation of Six States, which is kind of like a team of countries. It’s hard to explain because there aren’t any federations anymore, but they were usually provisional and lasted only a few years. Two or more countries, bonded by similar culture or more realistically getting fucked by the same country combine forces for a common goal. This federation was backed by the British and was still technically British land even though they had almost full sovereignty.

But almost wasn’t enough. The Southern Yemeni people saw the Northern Yemeni people and their economic and political independence and wanted in on it. Britain wanted to avoid conflict with their almost independent protectorate so they left Yemen in 1967, but not after a war with the revolutionaries. After all of the conflict leadership was replaced with the racist and/or nationalist sounding National Liberation Front (the words National, Liberation or Front in a party doesn’t usually have good connotations).

The newly born country was renamed the People’s Republic of South Yemen, and was in immediate disarray from all of the fighting. Their communist leanings made it hard to make friends with the West. They didn’t receive any help or aid from Western countries so instead decided to go full Communist and ask the USSR for help. The USSR had been looking for ways to expand communism around the globe, from China in the East, to Angola and Benin in West Africa to Yemen in the Middle East (a strategic trading location).

Meanwhile in Northern Yemen a civil war broke out between the Imam (the royal leader of North Yemen) and civilians who wanted a republic with elected officials. The war lasted until 1970, and became a major area for proxy war. Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis, Jordanians, the UN, the British and the Americans all threw their hat in the ring for different sides. The Arab nations supported the royalty, on account that Saudi Arabia was a huuuge fan of royalty itself and the UK and US supported the civilians fighting for a republic.

In 1970 a compromise was struck that saw North Yemen becoming a republic, but the royal family could maintain a few positions in power in the legislature. It seems like the royalty got the short end of the stick, but I have no sympathy for oppressive monarchs.

Like they often do the recently installed republican government told the North Yemeni people that the following years would be marked with reforms and improvements to infrastructure, education and civil rights, but with no resources to do any of the things they promised, they were overthrown by Military Leader Ibrahim al-Hamdi  who ditched the idea of having any reforms in favor of an oligarchy run by Yemeni business owners. However, al-Hamdi did, after much pushback from the public, offer to try some reforms. He forced Yemen into the 20th Century replacing many cultural institutions with western ones, which angered the sector of the populace in tune with their cultural heritage.

Al-Hamdi’s regime was unpopular he was assassinated along with his successor eight months later.

A period of instability marred by coups rocked North Yemen until 1978, when officials from both North and South Yemen said it might be beneficial to unify. This was difficult because of ideological and cultural differences which led to a war, but in 1990 the two countries unified. Both countries found oil and decided to unify to share the profits and resources used in selling the oil. Both countries also lost a lot of aid money from the USSR and were forced to get each others backs to make it through the time of economic rebirth and instability.

The two sides agreed that the unified Yemen would be a non-communist republic, favoring the governmental style of North Yemen (this is why the current capital Sana’a is in the North). After 1990, the country was struck with a series of assassinations and suicide bombings which left the residents of the country afraid. The already weak economy faltered yet again and food prices skyrocketed. This conflict postponed the elections until 1993.

In 1993, the elections had gone somewhat smoothly, but yet again conflict was looming. The vice-president fled Sana’a for Aden (the capital of former South Yemen) and threatened to remove himself from politics, which would leave the country semi-leaderless again.

In 1995, the economy failed again when remittances stopped coming in. Remittances are small amounts of money sent back to the country by workers living abroad and in many 3rd world countries are an important part of the GDP.

The next important development in Yemen’s history was in 2001, after 9/11 when Yemen promised to help George W. Bush defeat the terrorist elements in the country, something that still hasn’t happened. Al Qaeda used to pose the most threat in the nation, but now ISIS has infiltrated the country and is proving to be more of a problem.

Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemeni President until 2012

Finally on our long journey to the present in Yemen, was 2011. In 2011 the “Arab Spring” affected much of the Middle East and North Africa including Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and if you remember Yemen. In 2011, on the “Friday of No Return” protesters called for the resignation of Saleh and after nothing happened, the presidential palace was bombed in hopes of killing Saleh. Saleh wasn’t killed, but injured badly and was sent out of the country for surgery.

Yemen’s current president took over as acting president and has been president of a disputed regime for the last four years. Yemen is a nation that has been in constant turmoil since 1967, and the future isn’t looking very bright. The regime wasn’t successfully overthrown, but protesters are continuing to fight against the current government.

YEMEN FACTS

Weddings are incredibly important in Yemeni culture and the average wedding lasts about a month.

Noah from the Bible knew Yemen as “The Land of Milk and Honey” and is the origin of that saying.

Next up, the Ancient Kingdoms of Vietnam...

http://www.yemenweb.com/History.htm

http://www.britannica.com/place/Yemen

http://www.cfr.org/yemen/yemen-crisis/p36488