Between the Philippines and India there is an odd looking part of Asia that seems to be hanging from China. It is called Indochina and the nations of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are found there. It is three times the size of California with five times the number of people as that state.
Along the eastern coast of Indochina, on the South China Sea, is the land we now know as Vietnam. Round at the north, narrowing to a thin mountain range in the center and widening and curving in the south, it looks like the long poles that Asian farmers carryon their shoulders with a rice basket on each end.
That picture is a good one, for the northern bowl contains the rich Red River valley and the southern bowl contains the rice-growing Mekong River delta. Down the center runs the Annamese Cordillera, a rugged range of mountains running from the western borders almost co the sea on the east. It is like an hour glass with its center blocked.
Vietnam’s story as a nation begins around 2000 B.C. or so an ancient story has it. A prince named Lac-Long-Qua was said to have married a fairy called Au-Co. Au-Co is said to have laid one hundred eggs. These hatched into sons and half went north into China while the other half stayed and founded Vietnam.
The real story, of course, is not so fanciful. In the fourth century before Christ, the kingdom of the Viet people in southern China was attacked by invaders and fell. Its people fled south, settling in the Red River delta near the city we now call Hanoi. They called their new home Nam Viet, and China hung over it like a dark and dangerous cloud.
In III B.C, the cloud burst and the Chinese moved south. The Chinese had recently thrown out foreign invaders who had been troubling them for a century. Freedom from trouble at home gave them a new strength, and they sought to expand their territory. The new nation was easily captured and became the Chinese province of Giao Chi. It remained a captive for one thousand years. (The United States has been an independent country for only two hundred years.) The province extended as far south as the city of Hue (pronounced “Hway”) which is near the center of the narrow waist of modern Vietnam.
This long period of captivity had two important results. First, to the Viet people, the Chinese were the enemy, the feared and fearful force always nearby. But also, the Chinese had a strong influence over the Vietnamese. Chinese culture, religion, language, and desires were felt in the province for ten centuries and the impact of those years would not quickly pass away.
But China was like an elephant. It was powerful, yet so large that its size sometimes worked against it. The small province rebelled again and again against Chinese rule, even though its enemy was many times stronger than it.
The first of these rebellions took place in 40 A.D. when the Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, took control of the province and established themselves as joint queens. Their reign was short-lived because the Chinese counterattacked and took control again.
The Chinese were alarmed by the rebellion and sought to strengthen their control of die province through the commune system. Under this program the province was broken up into small villages with from five to fifty families in each. Each village was designed to operate by itself without outside help. The system discouraged the people of Nam Viet from working together to throw out the Chinese. They were like a football team that played without a huddle. If they could not plan together, they could not work together. If they could not work together, they could not overcome the Chinese. The commune system also established the village as the basic structure in the province, a fact that would be important for centuries to come.
The Chinese brought something else that would be important for a long time, too. In 188 A.D., the Chinese brought the Buddhist religion to the southern province.
Buddhism was founded around 528 B.C. by Siddhartha Gautama, better known today as the Buddha or “the enlightened one.” Siddhartha was the son of the ruler of a small country in northern India. He was raised in a wealthy household and protected from any knowledge of the troubles of the world. As an adult, of course, he discovered that there was much unhappiness around him. The knowledge shocked him, and he abandoned his family and wealth to seek understanding.
For six years he studied with various holy men, but did not find the knowledge he was seeking. As a final effort he vowed to sit beneath a tree (now known as the Bo Tree) until he understood the purpose of life. After seven weeks he arose with what he felt was a new and clearer way of looking at things. He spent the next forty-five years of his life preaching and practicing what he had learned.
Buddha taught by preaching, not by writing. It was centuries before his ideas were written down, and by that time there was some disagreement as to what the Buddha had taught. Those differences remain today, and so it is not possible to say what Buddhism teaches, because it teaches many different things depending on the branch of Buddhism.
But if there is one thing that Buddhists generally believe, it is that pain and sorrow are part of our lives and must simply be accepted. It is better to expect nothing than to expect happiness. The true Buddhist believes in the value of self-denial, giving up all worldly goods and seeking to relieve the troubles of others. Once selfishness is removed from a person, the Buddhist believes that he or she will reach a state of complete peace called “nirvana.”
This does not mean that all Buddhists at all times act in this ideal manner. Just as Christians do not always turn the other cheek or love their neighbor, Buddhism has a group of beliefs that its believers often find hard to live up to. But the ideas of patient acceptance of fate and sacrifice are very important in cultures that are influenced by Buddhism.
Despite the Chinese commune system and the peaceful influence of Buddhism, revolts against Chinese rule continued, though the rebellions were often centuries apart. A woman named Trieu Au led the next one in 248 A.I); Ly Bon tried in 542; Ly Xuan in 589, and Ly Phat Tu in 602. All efforts failed.
They must have had some effect on the Chinese though, because in 679, they decided to grant Giao Chi a limited form of self-government. The province was renamed Annam. This was during the Chinese Tang Dynasty, a period when China was growing quickly, ruling from Korea to India. It was also one of the great periods in Chinese history. The huge territory China controlled and the great culture it developed gave the Chinese enough security to be willing to allow their provinces more freedom.
The Tang Dynasty ended in 906 and was followed by more than fifty years of division in which local lords were more powerful than any central government in China. During this time China divided into seven kingdoms, and five separate dynasties attempted to rule the nation. The people of Annam took advantage of this division in China and under the military leadership of Ngo-Quyan, a local governor, they defeated the Chinese at the battle of Bach Dang and became once more a free nation.
The new nation was called Dai Co Viet, which means the Great Viet State. Established in 968 under Dinh Bo Liuh, it was a feudal society--one with peasants tied to the land and local lords owing allegiance to a national emperor.
Once free of Chinese rule the Viet people turned their attention to the south. They were very much aware of the fact that while China might be weak today, it could be very strong tomorrow. New territory and new people could give the Viet the strength needed to hold off their ancient enemy.
The land south of the Annamese Cordillera was then known as the Kingdom of Champa, which included most of what is now the southern part of Vietnam except for the Mekong Delta area. By 1069, the Viets had taken control of much of Champa, though a final victory was not to come until 1471.
The Viet march to the south is an idea in this story until the very end. Like Buddhism and the relations between Vietnam and China, it is an ancient root which, if kept in mind, makes the events of modern days easier to understand.
Look at the map of Indochina. Notice the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. At the northern end, where Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam join together, the border makes sense. At this point the border follows the foothills of the central mountain range. To the east are mountains and Vietnam. To the west arc plains and Cambodia.
In the time before surveyors and border stations and artificial markers such as highways, natural things like mountain ranges and rivers were the borders between nations because they were visible and not subject to much dispute. Also, before planes and large boats were common, such natural borders were easy to defend since they were so difficult for large numbers of people to cross at one time.
But if we follow the Cambodian-Vietnamese border down farther, we find a different situation. As we reach a point of the border just above Ho Chi Minh City, we have reached the end of the mountains and have entered the Mekong River valley-a large and fertile plain that ends in the South China Sea but begins in the heart of Cambodia. Not only is there not a natural border here, but there is the river itself providing both easy transportation and much-needed fertile land. Instead of being a barrier, it was a magnet, pulling people in search of rich farmland to it.
If you were to fly over Indochina and know nothing of its present borders, you might decide that the Mekong Valley from the sea to the Laotian border (where the mountains begin again) was part of one nation. And, in the tenth century, it was all part of Cambodia. But once the Viets reached the edges of this territory, they saw it as part of their future. This was not unlike what happened in America in the days of the pioneers. Once they reached the Great Plains of America’s Midwest, they saw a land they believed to be their OWll. They had worked very hard to reach those plains. They had crossed the ocean, pushed aside the Indians, and cut roads through the mountains. The new land was theirs; it was their destiny.
The Viets felt their destiny was to the south and west. This thousand-year-old desire of the Vietnamese people to move up the valley represents another basic fact that was to bear fruit centuries later.
But while the Viets were looking toward Cambodia, someone else was looking at them. Early in the thirteenth century the Mongol leader Genghis Khan began to move from his small central Asia base to create one of the largest empires of all time. Striking in every direction, Genghis Khan’s forces soon took Europe as far west as Poland, much of Russia to the north, as well as the northern half of China. His death in 1127 slowed the Mongol expansion for a while, but his sons firmed up the Mongol rule in the new territories and his grandsons began to spread the empire farther, Among these grandsons was Kublai Khan, who would become a powerful force. Bur not too powerful for the Vietnamese.
Between 1268 and 1284, Kublai Khan completed the Mongol invasion of China. He became the Emperor Shis-Tsu, the founder of the Yuan Dynasty, and turned his attention to Indochina. Three times he invaded and three times he was beaten, the last time by the great Viet general Tran Hung Dao. Tran met five hundred thousand Mongols with two hundred thousand Viets and defeated the invaders. His military exploits remain legendary in Vietnam to this day.
The Mongols were forced from China itself in 1398 by a fighting Buddhist monk (a very odd thing) named Chu Yuan-Chang. This new Chinese regime was greatly concerned about the security of its borders. In the north they expanded the Great Wall of China and in the south they moved again into the land they called Annam. From 1406 to 1428 it was once again a Chinese province, but the Chinese rule was never firm.
The leader of the Viet opposition was Le Loi, a wealthy landowner. He knew that an open battle with the Chinese was useless. There were too many Chinese and they had the use of gunpowder. Instead of fighting major battles, he used small groups of soldiers who would attack a Chinese fort and disappear quickly, After ten years of struggle, the Chinese were worn down and left. Le Loi established the Le dynasty which ruled Vietnam for three hundred and fifty years. Vietnam, which was still largely the northern half of the modern nation, was secure from Chinese rule-if not from Chinese influence.
But no sooner had the Vietnamese expelled the Chinese than a new group of foreigners began to make their presence felt.!
In 1487, a Portuguese sailor named Bartholomew Diaz achieved an ancient goal when he rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. Once this feat had been accomplished, it was only a matter of time before the great Portuguese sailors reached their main goal-India. Vasco da Gama landed there in 1497, and the riches of India were opened to Portuguese trade.
The Portuguese kept their route a secret, because they wanted all the riches of Asia for themselves. They sought to increase their hold over Asian sea trade by travelling to China and Japan. By the early 1500s they had opened trade to both countries. They could not travel these seas for long, though, without coming to Vietnam. Its position on the South China Sea was an important one and the fertile Red River region was a choice place to trade. This discovery finally took place in 1535, when the Portuguese captain Antonio de Faria dropped anchor in Da Nang Bay near Hue.
It would be pleasant to say that these first encounters with Europeans were good for both sides. It would be pleasant, but untrue, A large part of the early European trade involved firearms. This trade was a rich one, for the Vietnamese, while free from outside troubles for the first time in centuries, were now involved in a long and bitter conflict among themselves. The Le dynasty had grown weak and the real power in the nation was held by two families. The Trinh held sway in the north and the Nguyen in the south, in what had been the kingdom of Champa. Both sides felt that they were the true leaders of the Vietnamese people.
On paper at least the struggle should have been one sided. The northern part of Vietnam was strong, with a stable government and a large number of people. The south had a much smaller population and had not yet fully established its government.
But the population of the north worked against it too. There was not enough land to feed the people, and much of that land was controlled by rich landowners. The people were hungry and angry. Many moved to the south where land was available and government was not as strict. The Trinh in the north had very weak support from their large population, while the Nguyen had strong support from their smaller population.
The Trinh were backed by the Dutch, who had followed the Portuguese to Asia, and the Nguyen were backed by the Portuguese. The civil war continued until a truce in 1673. By that time the Nguyen felt safe enough on their northern border to turn south and continue their expansion. The Mekong Delta was then part of Cambodia, but by 1700 it had become part of the still-divided Vietnam.
Between 1650 and 1770, the Nguyen invaded Cambodia eleven times. They never succeeded in taking it entirely, but each attack expanded Vietnamese influence in the area.
Despite the southern expansion and the military successes of the Nguyen, Vietnam was a troubled land. It was still basically a feudal society divided into small, independent regions each headed by a feudal lord. Its economy was divided as well. Each village was designed to produce what it needed and the needs were few.
A feeling of nationhood usually has some economic root. Where one region produces food and another coal, and the ties of language and religion are strong, a bond develops that often leads to national unity. The independence of the Vietnamese villages worked against national unity, but at the same time the villages provided another strength.
The village life was communal. The fields were held in common and worked in common. In each of the villages the bonds of family were strong. So the village represented a powerful force that neither the decaying Le dynasty, which still ruled the nation in name, nor the Trinh or Nguyen families had learned to use.
In 1772, though, three brothers from the village of Tay Son rose against the leaders of Vietnam. Taking their name from their village, the Tay Son brothers led the last of the dozens of peasant revolts that had shaken the nation for a hundred years.
They started in the south, and in 1777, while American revolutionaries were suffering the cold winter of Valley Forge, they overthrew the Nguyen family in the south. Nine years later they had conquered the Trinh family and had removed the last of the Le dynasty from the throne. For the first time in two centuries Vietnam was one nation again. Really it was a new and much more powerful nation, for the earlier expansion into the Mekong Delta that took place during the Trinh-Nguyen division increased the country to its present borders.
Other changes had taken place too. The Europeans, who had brought firearms into the struggle, had brought a more gentle force as well-Christianity.
This was the age of exploration in Europe, which took place at the same time as the religions Reformation. To Catholics and Protestants alike this was a difficult period. They were changing their ideas about the geographic world at the same time as they were changing their views on spiritual life. It is not surprising that the explorers felt that their travels and their contacts with new nations were part of the great spiritual battle that divided the European nations.
The Portuguese and Spanish explorers and merchants who came to Vietnam brought priests with them. It was important to them that part of their search for riches also involved a search for souls. As time went by, though, the largest numbers of missionary priests came from France. Because many converts to Christianity were members of the most powerful families, the French grew to have more influence than other European countries in Vietnam.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, Vietnam was united as a nation and as a government, but deeply divided in other ways. Rich and poor, north and South, Buddhist and Catholic are just the clearest groups into which the Vietnamese could be placed. In the new nation there were many people other than the Viets. And supporters of the Le dynasty or the Trinh and Nguyen families still had some power.
The unity of Vietnam then was a very fragile thing, and the increasing interest of the Europeans in Asia was a danger to that unity and to the independence that brought it about.
The Age of Exploration was turning into the Age of Imperialism. The colonies of the New World, which had once supplied great wealth to the nations of Europe, were breaking free from their homelands. The European powers were turning to Africa and Asia as they lost their Western sources of supplies and trade. But the Europeans were no longer content just to trade; they wanted to gain control in the East to make up for their lost colonies in the West. With superior weapons and with political unity they looked about for likely lands.
Vietnam was one of those lands.