VII.

History

Archaeological findings indicate that settlers in the Red River Delta may have been among the first peoples in East and Southeast Asia to practice agriculture. By the end of the 2nd millennium bc, Vietnamese civilization had begun to enter the Bronze Age. The ancestors of the modern Vietnamese were one of many scattered communities that lived in what are now South China and northern Vietnam during the 1st millennium BC. According to local tradition, a line of hereditary kings ruled over the ancient kingdom of Van Lang in the Red River Delta for thousands of years. Van Lang was conquered by Thuc Phan, who founded a small Vietnamese kingdom called Au Lac.

A.

Chinese Rule

In 221 bc the state of Qin completed its conquest of neighboring states and became the first dynasty to rule over a united China. However, the dynasty collapsed soon after the death of its dynamic founder Qin Shihuangdi in 210 bc. In the wreckage of the empire, the Qin’s Chinese commander in the south, General Zhao Tuo (Chao T’o), created his own kingdom out of the Qin’s former southern provinces. Zhao, known in Vietnam as Trieu Da, named the kingdom Nam Viet (Nan Ywe in Chinese, meaning “southern Viet”). He soon conquered the Vietnamese kingdom of Au Lac and added it to his kingdom.

In 111 bc, however, Chinese armies conquered Nam Viet and absorbed Zhao’s kingdom, including the old state of Au Lac, into the growing empire of the Han Dynasty. At first, the Han tried to rule through local chieftains, who periodically attempted to expel the Chinese invaders and restore an independent state. The Han imperial court then integrated the Red River Delta politically and culturally into the Chinese Empire. They imposed Chinese-style political institutions and made Confucianism the official ideology. They also made Chinese the official spoken and written language. Eventually, Chinese characters were adapted as the written form for the Vietnamese spoken language. Chinese art, architecture, and music all became models for their counterparts in Vietnam.

Vietnamese resistance to Chinese rule was fierce but sporadic. The first major revolt occurred in ad 39 when two widows of local chieftains, known as the Trung Sisters, led an uprising against foreign rule. The revolt was briefly successful and the eldest sister established herself as ruler of an independent state. However, Chinese armies led by General Ma Yuan invaded the Red River Delta and again conquered the Vietnamese four years later.

B.

Independence Restored

In the succeeding centuries a series of unsuccessful uprisings against Chinese rule followed. Finally in ad 939 Ngo Quyen took advantage of chaotic conditions in China and led a successful Vietnamese rebellion against the local occupation forces. He established the Ngo dynasty, but after his death in 944 the dynasty disintegrated and a long period of civil strife followed. In the early 11th century Ly Thai To founded the first of the great Vietnamese dynasties. Under the astute leadership of several dynamic rulers, the Ly dynasty ruled Vietnam from 1010 to 1225. The rise of the new state, known as Dai Viet (Great Viet), reflected the emergence of a strong sense of Vietnamese national identity. The Ly rulers, however, found Chinese techniques useful in controlling and mobilizing their subjects; therefore they retained many of the political and social institutions that had been introduced during the long centuries of Chinese rule. For example, they adopted the Confucian civil service examination system, formalized in China during the 8th and 9th centuries, as a means of selecting government officials. This method of selection allowed talented individuals to rise to positions of power based on their abilities, not their political connections. At first, only members of the ruling aristocracy were authorized to compete in the examinations, but eventually the right was extended to most males. The Ly used the educational system to spread moral principles valued in China. Young Vietnamese who prepared for the examinations learned the Confucian classics and grew up conversant with the great figures and ideas that had shaped Chinese history.

But Vietnamese society was more than just a pale reflection of China. Beneath the veneer of Chinese thought and fashion popular among the upper classes, native forms of expression continued to thrive. Young Vietnamese learned to appreciate the great heroes of the Vietnamese past, many of whom—like the Trung Sisters—had built their reputation on resistance to Chinese occupation. At the village level, social mores reflected native traditions more than patterns imported from China. In Vietnam, for example, the legal rights of women were more extensive than in neighboring China. Although to the superficial eye Vietnam may have looked like a “smaller dragon” under the watchful eye of the powerful empire to the north, it continued to develop a separate culture with vibrant traditions of its own.

B.1.

An Agrarian Society

Nevertheless, China and Vietnam shared a number of important similarities. In both states, the primary source of wealth was agriculture. Because of its subtropical climate and plentiful rainfall, Vietnamese food production was based almost exclusively on the cultivation of wet rice. As in China and medieval Europe, much of the land was owned by powerful noble families, who often owned thousands of serfs (indentured farm laborers) or domestic slaves. A class of peasant landholders also existed, however, and the imperial court frequently attempted to limit the power of the noble families by dividing their large manorial estates and distributing the land to the peasants.

The Vietnamese economy was not based solely on agriculture, however. Commerce and manufacturing thrived, and local craft goods appeared in regional markets throughout the area. Especially prized were Vietnamese ceramics, cheaper than those produced in China and only slightly lower in quality. But Vietnam never developed into a predominantly trading nation, nor did it become a major participant in regional commerce. Like China, Vietnam looked inward, and the imperial court viewed the merchant class with suspicion.

B.2.

March to the South

Under the Ly dynasty Vietnam gradually became a dynamic force in Southeast Asia, and this power increased under the succeeding Tran dynasty. The Tran took power from the Ly in 1225, when the eight-year-old Ly empress transferred power to her new Tran husband. During the remainder of the 13th century, the Tran were preoccupied with the growing power of the Mongols, pastoral warriors from northern Asia. The Mongols completed their conquest of China in 1279 and established a new empire there known as the Yuan dynasty. A few years later, Mongol armies invaded Vietnam in an effort to reincorporate the Red River Valley into China. Under the leadership of General Tran Hung Dao, the Vietnamese vigorously resisted; after several bitter battles they defeated the invading forces and drove them back across the border.

While the Vietnamese maintained their guard to the north, an area of equal and growing interest lay to the south. For centuries, the Vietnamese state had been restricted to its heartland in the Red River Valley and the mountainous perimeter. Determined to obtain an outlet for their growing population, in the 10th century Vietnamese rulers began turning their attention south to the kingdom of Champa, a seafaring state inhabited by Malay-speaking peoples. The two states competed bitterly for advantage. On several occasions, Cham armies broke through Vietnamese defenses and occupied the Vietnamese capital. More frequently, Vietnamese troops were victorious, and they gradually drove the kingdom of Champa to the south. In the 15th century Vietnamese forces captured the Cham capital, south of present-day Da Nang, and virtually destroyed the kingdom. For the next several generations, Vietnam continued its historic “march to the south,” wiping up the remnants of the Cham kingdom and gradually penetrating the marshy flatlands of the Mekong Delta. There it confronted a new foe, the Khmer kingdom of Angkor, which had once been the most powerful state in mainland Southeast Asia. By the late 16th century, however, it was in a state of decline and unable to offer sustained resistance to Vietnamese encroachment. A hundred years later, Vietnam occupied the lower Mekong Delta and began advancing westward, threatening to transform the disintegrating Khmer state into a mere protectorate.

B.3.

Civil War

The Vietnamese advance to the south coincided with new challenges to the north. In 1407 the Chinese Ming dynasty, which had overthrown Mongol rule in 1368, occupied Vietnam. By 1428, however, resistance forces under rebel leader Le Loi had restored Vietnamese independence. Le Loi mounted the throne as the first emperor of the Le dynasty, which was to last for more than 300 years.

The new ruling house retained its vigor for more than 100 years, but internal rivalries weakened the dynasty in the 16th century. In 1527 General Mac Dang Dung deposed the Le monarch and made himself ruler. The Nguyen and Trinh families, Le nobles who supported reinstatement of the Le ruler, regained control of the country by 1592. By that time an ambitious Trinh noble, Trinh Kiem, had become dominant in the Le court and had granted a member of the Nguyen family a fiefdom in the south. This effectively divided the state into two separate administrative regions, and a rivalry developed between the Trinh and Nguyen lords. The split of Vietnam into two squabbling regimes coincided with European interest in the region. In the 16th and 17th centuries European fleets visited Vietnam carrying traders who sought wealth and missionaries who were intent on converting Vietnamese and others in the region to Christianity. To seek advantage over their rivals, the European traders and missionaries sided with one or another of the Vietnamese states, further dividing the country.

By the late 18th century, the Le dynasty was near collapse. With no powerful central government, feudal lords increasingly gained control of vast rice lands. In 1773 three brothers from the village of Tay Son in central Vietnam launched a peasant rebellion against the corruption and misrule of the Nguyen court. In each village they captured, the Tay Son confiscated land from the wealthy and redistributed it to the poor. By 1783 the Tay Son rebellion succeeded in overthrowing the Nguyen family in the south. The Tay Son brothers, as they were popularly called, then turned their forces against the Trinh government in the north. By 1789 the ablest of the brothers, Nguyen Hue (no relation to the Nguyen family that had controlled the south), gained control of the north and declared himself founder of a new dynasty. His death in 1792, however, left a power vacuum.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Anh, the sole surviving heir of the Nguyen house in the south, had assembled a force to retake Vietnam. By 1789 his forces had recaptured most of the former Nguyen territory. They then moved north and in 1802 defeated the Tay Son armies. Nguyen Anh established a new Nguyen dynasty, with its capital at Hue in central Vietnam to symbolize the newly restored unity of the country.

C.

French Conquest

A French Catholic missionary, Bishop Pigneau de Behaine, had raised a mercenary force to help Nguyen Anh seize the Vietnamese throne. The bishop hoped the new emperor would provide France with trading and missionary privileges, but Nguyen Anh was suspicious of French influence. Under his rule and that of his successors, any resistance to the absolute power of the government was dealt with harshly. The Nguyen regime persecuted religious followers, including Christians, Buddhists, Daoists (Taoists), and followers of traditional beliefs. The persecution of French Christian missionaries and their Vietnamese converts, in particular, received the attention of French Catholics. Religious groups in France demanded retaliatory action from the government in Paris. When commercial and military interests also urged a decisive move to protect French interests in Southeast Asia, the French emperor Napoleon III approved the launching of a naval expedition to punish the Vietnamese and force the court to accept a French presence in the country. The first attack at Da Nang in 1858 failed to achieve its objectives. A second attack farther south the following year was more successful, however, and in 1862 Emperor Tu Duc agreed to cede several provinces in the Mekong Delta to France as the colony of Cochin China. In the 1880s the French resumed their advance, launching an attack on the Red River Delta on the pretext of protecting French citizens there. After severe defeats, the Vietnamese court accepted French rule over the remaining territory of Vietnam, which was divided into two protectorates—Tonkin in the Red River Delta and Annam along the central coast. In 1887, after France had established a third protectorate over Cambodia, it consolidated the administration of its Southeast Asian territories, creating the Indochinese Union, or French Indochina. Laos was incorporated into the union in 1893.

C.1.

Colonial Rule and Resistance

The imposition of French colonial rule met with little organized resistance. Emperor Tu Duc himself hoped that by adopting a conciliatory attitude toward French demands in the southern provinces, the invaders might eventually be brought to reason and persuaded to give up their new conquests. He therefore prohibited his subjects from openly resisting French actions. But the sense of national identity was not extinguished, and anticolonial sentiment soon began to emerge. Poor living conditions, worsened by French economic exploitation, contributed to growing Vietnamese hostility to foreign rule. French occupation did bring some improvements in the area of transport and communications and also contributed modestly to the growth of a commercial and manufacturing sector. However, as a whole, colonialism brought little improvement in the lives of the Vietnamese. In the countryside, peasants struggled under heavy taxes and high rents. Workers in factories, in coal mines, and on rubber plantations labored in abysmal working conditions for paltry wages. By the early 1920s nationalist parties began to demand reform or independence. In 1930 the Moscow-trained revolutionary Ho Chi Minh (real name Nguyen Tat Thanh) established the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP).

Until the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945), the ICP and other revolutionary groups labored with little success. In 1940, however, Japan demanded the right to place northern Vietnam under military occupation. Japan planned to use the area as a base from which to launch a future invasion of the rest of Southeast Asia. The French viceroy, the senior government official in French Indochina, lacked sufficient armed forces to resist. He agreed to Japanese demands and was reduced to a figurehead authority. Seizing the opportunity, Ho Chi Minh organized a broad national front group called the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh, or Viet Minh for short) and built up guerrilla forces in preparation for an uprising at war’s end. To win wide popular support, the Viet Minh program emphasized national independence and moderate reform rather than openly Communist aims. When Japan surrendered to the Allies in August 1945, Viet Minh forces rose throughout the country and, in what is known as the August Revolution, declared the establishment of an independent republic with its capital at Hanoi.

The French, however, were unwilling to concede independence, and in late 1945 they seized control over the southern provinces from retreating Viet Minh and other nationalist forces. Negotiations to seek a compromise solution were held in France in the summer of 1946, but they failed to resolve differences. War broke out in December when Viet Minh military units attacked French positions in Hanoi and then retreated to the mountains north of the Red River Delta.

C.2.

The Expulsion of the French

The Franco-Viet Minh conflict (now often called the First Indochina War) lasted nearly eight years. The Viet Minh set up their headquarters in the mountainous area between the Red River valley and the Chinese border and built up their forces for a major counter-offensive. After failing to capture Ho Chi Minh and destroy the guerrilla movement, the French formed a rival Vietnamese government under Bao Dai, the last emperor of the Nguyen dynasty. In August 1945 Bao Dai had abdicated the throne in favor of Ho Chi Minh’s republic, which was formally declared in September. Viet Minh forces lacked the strength to defeat the French, but the movement had earned sufficient popularity among the Vietnamese people to prevent French victory. In 1950 the United States—increasingly concerned about Communist advances in Asia—recognized Bao Dai’s government and began to provide military and economic aid to the French. In turn, the Viet Minh (still dominated by Ho Chi Minh’s ICP) sought assistance from the new Communist government in China.

The war was a virtual stalemate for three years. In France, however, the public grew weary of the war in Indochina. In March 1954 Viet Minh forces attacked Dien Bien Phu, the French military outpost in the isolated town of Dien Bien. The dispirited government in France agreed to hold negotiations on a peace agreement at Geneva, Switzerland. The French outpost fell to a Viet Minh assault on May 7, the night before negotiations began at Geneva (Dien Bien Phu, Battle of).

D.

Vietnam Divided

Representatives from all the major world powers, the two rival Vietnamese governments, and the new royal governments in Laos and Cambodia attended the peace talks, which lasted for several weeks. In mid-July, despite U.S. urging to continue the struggle, the French agreed to a compromise agreement (known as the Geneva Accords). This agreement called for the withdrawal of French troops and a temporary division of the country into two separate zones. The Communists would withdraw to North Vietnam, while the non-Communists would move into South Vietnam. To avoid a permanent division, a solution unacceptable to the supporters of both Ho Chi Minh and Bao Dai, national elections were to be held in 1956 to bring about a reunified Vietnam.

D.1.

The Uneasy Peace

For the next five years Indochina experienced a brief interlude of peace. In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh’s government (known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or DRV) focused attention on laying the foundations of a Communist society while hoping for national reunification by means of elections, which were widely expected to favor Ho. But in the South, Bao Dai was soon replaced by Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunchly anti-Communist Catholic who refused to hold national elections as called for by the Geneva Accords. Sympathetic to his anti-Communist beliefs, the United States supported Diem, who claimed that Vietnam’s colonial oppressors had negotiated the agreements. A constitution was written, and after elections staged only in the South, Diem became president of a new Republic of Vietnam (RVN).

During the next several years the Diem regime vigorously sought to crush lingering support for the Viet Minh in the South, as well as all other forms of domestic opposition. His harsh actions resulted in growing hostility from many South Vietnamese. Meanwhile Diem’s social and economic programs failed to reduce the severe inequality of landholdings in the countryside. In 1959, fearing that the Communist base in the South could be entirely eliminated, the North adopted a policy of revolutionary war intent on toppling Diem’s government and bringing about national reunification. In 1960 the North Vietnamese government ordered the creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), based on the model of the Viet Minh created two decades earlier. Most members of the NLF were native southerners. Relatively few were members of the Communist Party, but the Communists ruled from behind the scenes. In 1961 the armed wing of the NLF, the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF, popularly known as the Viet Cong, or “Viet Communists”), was formed.

The United States provided increasing amounts of military assistance to Diem’s government, and U.S. advisers instructed South Vietnamese troops on how to fight a guerrilla war. Diem became increasingly unpopular, however, and conditions throughout the country steadily worsened, allowing the PLAF to gain control of much of the countryside. The South alienated many Vietnamese Buddhists by the government’s alleged favoritism to Catholics. With tacit U.S. approval, dissident elements in the army launched a coup in November 1963 to overthrow Diem, and he was killed in the attack. In the political confusion that followed, the security situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate, putting the Communists within reach of total victory. In early 1965, faced with the South’s imminent collapse, U.S. president Lyndon Johnson ordered the intensive bombing of North Vietnam and the dispatch of U.S. combat troops into the South.

E.

The Vietnam War

The U.S. intervention caused severe problems for the Communists on the battlefield, but it did not persuade them to abandon their struggle. The North Vietnamese leaders were convinced that they could outwait the Americans as they previously had the French. The North Vietnamese government sent regular units of the North Vietnamese army into the South to bolster the efforts of the local PLAF forces. But the sheer weight of U.S. firepower was difficult to overcome. As casualties mounted, insurgent units were being driven out of the villages into the mountains or along the borders of the country.

In early 1968, hoping to bring about a collapse of the RVN or at least undermine public support for the war effort in the United States, Hanoi launched the Tet Offensive, a simultaneous attack on almost every major South Vietnamese city. Similar attacks took place on towns and villages in the countryside. The Tet Offensive resulted in enormous casualties for the attacking forces, but it also weakened the regime of the new South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu. The Tet Offensive was also successful in severely shaking the American people’s confidence in the effectiveness of U.S. strategy. In March President Johnson decided to seek a negotiated settlement and announced he would not run for reelection. Peace talks opened in Paris in May but quickly collapsed and stalled for months. In November Richard Nixon was elected as the new U.S. president.

During his presidential campaign, Nixon announced that he had a secret plan to end the war. When implemented, the plan consisted of a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops while simultaneously strengthening the South Vietnamese army to defend its own territory. At the same time, Nixon opened contacts with China, hoping China would agree to limit its support for North Vietnam in return for better relations with the United States. In 1972, when a second Communist offensive failed to achieve a victory, North Vietnam agreed to a compromise settlement. Under the arrangement, the South’s president, Nguyen Van Thieu, was allowed to remain in office in Saigon, but the NLF was permitted to play a legal political role in the South. All U.S. combat troops were to be withdrawn from Vietnam, but the United States could continue to provide military assistance to the South. The agreement did not address the presence of North Vietnamese units inside the South’s territory. Despite President Thieu’s anger at these conditions, the Paris Agreement was signed in January 1973. According to the terms of the agreement, consultations were to be held on future elections to form a new government in South Vietnam.

The agreement soon unraveled. In early 1975 the Communists launched a military offensive in the Central Highlands, intensifying the attack when the United States failed to respond. At the end of April the Thieu regime collapsed, and the Communists seized power in Saigon.

F.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam

In 1976 the South was officially reunited with the North in a new Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Under the leadership of Le Duan, party chief since the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969, Communist leaders in Hanoi adopted an ambitious plan to bring about the creation of an advanced Communist society. However, extensive war damage, lack of foreign investment, managerial inexperience, and the passive resistance of millions of people in the southern provinces all combined to defeat the program. By the end of the decade, the economy was in shambles, and popular hostility to the leadership had reached alarming heights. Thousands of people, many of them ethnic Chinese merchants and their families, fled the country in flimsy boats or across the border into China.

A foreign policy crisis worsened the domestic problems. For decades, Communist Party leaders had planned to unite Vietnam with revolutionary governments in neighboring Laos and Cambodia to form a militant alliance against the threat of imperialism. By the end of 1975, Communists had come to power in both countries, but the new government in Cambodia, under the leadership of militant revolutionary Pol Pot, was suspicious of Vietnamese intentions. Pol Pot refused to join with Hanoi, and Cambodian troops attacked Vietnamese villages near the Cambodian border. Pol Pot also demanded the return of territories in the Mekong Delta that the Vietnamese had seized from Cambodia’s predecessor, the Angkor Empire, during their “march to the south” centuries before.

In December 1978, after abortive efforts to bring about a compromise, Vietnam launched an offensive to overthrow the Pol Pot regime and install a new pro-Vietnamese government in Cambodia. They accomplished this in early 1979; however, the Vietnamese government had underestimated China’s interest in the area. Long suspicious of Vietnamese plans to dominate all of Indochina, Chinese leaders warned Vietnam that any attack on Cambodia would be viewed as a grave threat to the peace. Adding to China’s suspicions was the fact that Vietnam had recently signed a military security pact with China’s bitter rival, the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Chinese and Vietnamese troops had recently clashed on their mutual frontier, and the Chinese government bitterly criticized Vietnamese mistreatment of its ethnic Chinese population.

Less than two months after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, China launched a brief but bitter assault into northern Vietnam. Although Chinese troops withdrew a few weeks later, they remained along the common frontier, forcing Vietnam to maintain a high defense posture in the area. In the meantime, Vietnam was forced to station nearly 200,000 occupation troops in Cambodia to protect the pro-Vietnamese government it had installed there.

G.

The Doi Moi Reforms

By 1986, the year of Le Duan’s death, Vietnamese leaders had begun to recognize that major changes were needed. At a national congress held in December, new party leaders launched the doi moi (economic renovation) program to reform Vietnamese society and stimulate economic growth. They abandoned efforts to build a fully Communist society by the end of the decade and dismantled collective farms. Party leaders declared their intention to bring about a mixed economy, involving a combination of state, collective, and private ownership. Foreign investment was encouraged, and a more tolerant attitude was adopted toward the free expression of opinion in the country.

Vietnam also sought to improve its position in foreign affairs. All Vietnamese occupation troops were withdrawn from Cambodia by the end of the 1980s. In 1991 Vietnam signed a peace agreement in Paris that created a coalition government of Communist and non-Communist elements in Cambodia. Vietnam made serious attempts to improve relations with China and with the United States, which ended its economic embargo in 1994. Full diplomatic relations were established the following year. In 1995 Vietnam joined with non-Communist governments in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional organization dedicated to promoting the economic growth of its member states. Also in 1995, Vietnam applied for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) with the aim of opening the country to greater foreign trade and investment.

Vietnamese leaders, however, have not yet entirely abandoned their dream of creating a Communist society. While stating their intention to create a modified market economy, they insist that state-run industries will hold the “commanding heights” in the system. Party leaders will not tolerate the creation of rival political organizations and rigorously suppress dissent from opposition forces. Conservative party leaders express open concern at the corrosive influence of decadent ideas from the West, which they view as a plot by “dark forces” in the United States to destroy the Vietnamese revolution. Like the leadership in neighboring China, Vietnamese leaders have declared their support for a policy of “economic reform, political stability.”

In 2001 Vietnam’s Politburo elected Nong Duc Manh as the Communist Party’s general secretary, making him the country’s top leader. Manh pursued a program of economic liberalization, and Vietnam’s economy came to be characterized as “a market economy with socialist orientation.” Manh was reelected to a second five-year term in 2006 and indicated that economic reforms would accelerate. The doi moi reforms had brought tangible success, making Vietnam one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. From 1996 to 2006 Vietnam maintained an annual growth rate of more than 7 percent. In 2006 it ranked second only to China in economic growth.

Vietnam’s economic prospects received a further boost in November 2006, when the WTO approved the country’s bid for membership. The acceptance capped more than a decade of negotiations. The Politburo of Vietnam ratified the deal in late November, paving the way for Vietnam to become the 150th member of the WTO the following month. To gain membership, Vietnam committed to further opening its economy to foreign trade and investment. Among other provisions, Vietnam agreed to lower many import tariffs, abolish trade quotas and restrictions, and open previously protected economic sectors to foreign investors. Membership was expected to give Vietnam more access to overseas markets but also increase the pressures of foreign competition on Vietnamese businesses.