by Jim Goodman
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| rice cultivation in the Red River Delta |
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| Chùa Dâu, the first Buddhist temple |
This is a summary of the
history of the Vietnamese people, but not that of what today constitutes the
territory of Vietnam. The events
just narrated concerned only the northern third of the country, called Đại
Việt. The narrow middle section, Central
Vietnam, was home to several Chăm kingdoms, while the swampy, very sparsely
populated Mekong Delta was part of the Khmer Empire.
Đại Việt
was the most populated and centrally organized. With the construction of dikes and canals, ancient
Vietnamese had turned the swamps of the Red River Delta into productive
rice-growing farms, enabling the formation of states based on agricultural
revenue. The long Chinese
occupation didn’t change this, but imposed a Confucian system for organizing
both government and everyday life, and introduced Mahayana Buddhism as a
state-sponsored religion.
Chùa Dâu in Bắc
Ninh province, constructed in the 3rd century, was the first
Buddhist temple. Vietnamese
adopted the religion whole-heartedly and it spread throughout the north. Buddhist monks served as advisors to Đại
Viêt’s first kings and the Lý Dynasty lavished funds on temple construction and
religious endowments. Taoism also
had its adherents, but in any case, animism never disappeared from the
Vietnamese psyche. The village’s
main deity was its own guardian spirit, who was once a living person, quite
often a general who fought northern invaders.
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| Quố Tử Giàm, the National University |
Like their
former overlords, the Vietnamese followed Confucian ideals in everyday life,
such as ancestral veneration, social hierarchies, models of behavior and respect
for learning. Confucian norms also
characterized the government. In
1076 the Lý Court established a National University (Quốc Tử Giàm)
to train officials. Confucian
classics dominated education.
Besides the periodic invasions
from Chins, Đại Việt also had problems with the
Chăm kingdoms on its southern frontier.
Chăm people began migrating into Vietnam from the Philippines
and Indonesia two thousand years ago, establishing different kingdoms along the
coast of Central Vietnam from the late 2nd century, influenced by
their Khmer neighbors to the southeast.
The religion was Hindu, the temples modeled on Khmer architecture and
sculpture, the rulers god-kings, identified with Shiva, with occasional
monarchs, as in Cambodia, Mahayana Buddhists.
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| Chăm Court, Đà Nẵng Chăm Museum |
The main difference between
Chăm and Khmer kingdoms was that the Chăm were also great seafarers and
supplemented their agricultural economy and national wealth by trading in ports
throughout Southeast Asia. After
the 8th century, many of those involved in the maritime trade with
Indonesia became Muslim, though Hindu Chăm still comprised the majority of the
population.
They were also a very
bellicose people, involved in frequent wars with Khmer princes and each other,
as mercenaries for one Khmer contender for Angkor’s throne against another, and
sometimes in alliance with the Khmer against the Vietnamese. Northern Chăm states made a habit of
raiding southern Đại Việt districts from the time of the Chinese occupation.
The eventual Vietnamese response was always a punitive expedition that forced
the Chăm to cede their own northern districts to Đái Việt. When Vietnamese
began settling in these acquisitions the Chăm would start raiding them,
provoking another expedition and another annexation.
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| Bánh Ít Chăm towers in Bình Định |
By the 14th
century, the Vietnamese had pushed the Chăm south of Quảng Nam. But the largest Chăm kingdom, Vijaya,
with its capital in present-day Bình Định province, rose to new strength later
that century under the charismatic King Chế Bồng Nga. For nearly two decades, starting in 1371, he launched
several invasions of Đại Việt, sacked the capital twice and would have done so
a third time, but was killed by Vietnamese artillery after a defector had
revealed which ship he was on.
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| royal court, Lê Dynasty |
Some decades later, grossly
underestimating his enemy’s strength, the King of Vijaya resumed raids on Đại
Việt territory. However, his
opponent this time was Lê Thánh Tông, the Lê Dynasty’s most talented king, who
was determined to end the Chăm menace once and for all. With an overwhelming invasion force,
backed by the latest artillery technology, he captured Vijaya, obliterated its
defenders and annexed the state, extending Đái Viết’s borders down through Phủ̉
Yên. Many Chăm fled by sea north
to Hainan Island, east to Cambodia or south all the way to Acheh, Indonesia.
Others moved to the hills or simply stayed, adopted Vietnamese names and
assimilated to the new order.
Lê Thánh Tông then set up an
immigration system of military colonies to promote Vietnamese settlement in the
conquered territories. But aside
from political exiles, runaway convicts, criminals and dubious adventurers—the
usual frontier riffraff—nobody went south. Vietnamese are very conservative and don’t like to leave
their ancestral lands without a serious compelling reason.
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| countryside near Huế--the heartland of old Thuận Hoá |
After two decades of four
successive depraved, bloodthirsty, reckless and incompetent teenaged kings
(with absolute power), each of whom was killed at the end of his rule, in 1527
Mạc Đăng Dung, the Court security chief, seized power and started a new
dynasty. Lê followers escaped to
Laos and several years later launched a protracted war against the Mạc
regime. Every few years contending
armies marched across the Red River Delta territories, conscripting every
able-bodied man in the villages, fought furious battles, beheaded all their
prisoners and retreated to regroup and campaign again later.
In many places there were no
men left for agricultural work.
Dikes fell into disrepair, rice fields became weed patches and famines stalked
the land. This bleak situation
provided the motives for emigration, not over-population. Đại Việt’s population fell sharply in
the 16th century, especially in the Delta. Life became untenable in the ancestral homelands.
Vietnamese had already been
settling in Thuận Hoà, the area below Quảng Binh down to the Hải Văn Pass near
Đằ Nẵng. Their numbers multiplied
in the 16th century, while some continued on to Quảng Nam and former
Chăm areas further south. They
were refugees fleeing a land they had no hope of returning to, pioneers that
included hardy farmers, skilled crafts workers, canny merchants and dedicated
soldiers.
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| Thiên Mụ Pagoda |
Up north, two rival families,
the Trịnh and Nguyễn, allies and inter-married but suspicious of each other,
led the Lê forces. Trịnh Tùng
commanded the forces that drove the Mạc out of the capital in 1592 and
installed the restored Lê king as a figurehead, keeping real power himself. His rival Nguyễn Hoàng had been
governor of Thuận Hóa since 1558 and made it his own autonomous fief. He set up an efficient administration,
dominated by military officers, and essentially broke away from the Lê
government by refusing to send taxes back. Visiting the Perfume River in 1601, he sponsored the building
of the Thiên Mụ Pagoda, still standing and a major tourist attraction.
When he died in 1613 the
country was effectively split. The
Trịnh Lords of the north were not yet strong enough to compel the Nguyễn Lords’
submission, but Nguyễn Hoàng’s capable successor, Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên, knew the
showdown was imminent. He married
off one of his daughters in 1623 to Chay Chetta II, King of Cambodia, to insure
the supply of war elephants and rice to his small and vulnerable realm. To secure his southern flank, he also married
off another daughter to Pôrômê, the Chăm King of Panduranga, south of former
Vijaya.
The long-expected invasion
came in 1627 and the southerners turned it back. They resisted more invasions
in the next decades and made one unsuccessful campaign into the north before
finally, in 1672, the two sides signed a truce, dividing the country at the
Ghanh River just above Đồng Hợt, Quảng Binh.
These campaigns were
intermittent, leaving the south long periods of peaceful development. Vietnamese settlers, less tradition-bound
and more open to changes than they were up north, made several adaptations in
the new lands, where they would be a minority for generations to come. Farmers found the soil in Thuận Hóa the
soil was different from that up north.
The plow they used there was not very strong in the sole or the blade,
light enough to be drawn by a single animal, and quite suitable for the less
compacted soil of the Delta. But
it would not work well with the thick grass and harder soil of Thuận Hóa. So they used the Chăm plow, stronger in
the sole and better suited for the fields. Then they improved it by adding a part to alter the angle of
the blade.
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| Pô Nagar, the main Chăm goddess |
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| whale temple wall, Bạc Liêu |
The immigrants took to eating
some of their food raw, like the Chăm, and wrapping their hair in headscarves,
male and female, like the Chăm.
They also adopted the Chăm way of capturing, training and using
elephants. Northern armies had
been using elephants in warfare for a long time, but now Vietnamese, like the
erstwhile Chăm kings, also employed them as royal entertainment and to execute
criminals.
In spiritual matters, too,
Chăm culture influenced immigrant Vietnamese. The latter erected new temples on the site of ruined Chăm temples
because they accepted the Chăm belief that the particular site was charged with
holy power. They adopted the cult
of the whale, Cá Ông, in Phú Yên and took it with them further south. Most significantly, they incorporated
Pô Nagar into their own cult of the Holy Mothers, one that had only become part
of Vietnamese culture since the 16th century. They renamed her Thiên Ý A Na.
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| Khleang Temple, Sóc Trăng, originally built 1533 |
After the truce with the Trịmh
Lords, the Nguyễn regime focused on the south. By this time Cambodia had fallen into a long series of
succession struggles among its royal princes. Since Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên’s daughter married Chay Chetta II,
Cambodia had become weaker and the Nguyẽn Lords’ realm stronger. Rival princes needed outside help to
win and in return for Vietnamese help; ceded provinces in the Mekong Delta over
which the Cambodian government had had no control for centuries. In this way,
the Vietnamese were able to set up direct administration of Saigon in 1698 and
in the following century gradually annexed the entire Mekong Delta.
The Mekong Delta at that time
was mostly an uninhabited swamp.
The Khmer lived mainly near the mouth of the Mekong, far from Cambodia
proper, in communities virtually autonomous since their founding. Vietnamese migrants did not displace
them, but moved into the adjacent areas and beyond, cleared the swamps and created
big rice plantations. Local Khmer
by then were Theravada Buddhists and while that did not influence the migrants,
they did adopt the custom of field shrines to the land spirit, the use of split
palm leaf to make houses, Khmer farming tools and the types of rice grown.
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| Khmer house of split palm leaf |
The late 17th
century also saw the introduction of Chinese settlers in the Mekong Delta, when
political refugees were allowed to settle in Biên Hoa and Mỹ Tho. Other Chinese refugees established the
port of Hà Tiên, now on the southwest border of Cambodia. Vietnamese were still a minority,
but their numbers increased with the arrival of Vietnamese Christians fleeing
periodic persecutions by the Nguyễn regime.
By the mid-18th
century the Nguyến regime was in decline.
The Tây Sơb revolt, named after a village in south central Vietnam where
it began, broke out in 1771 and in a few years overthrew the regime. They later went on tọ conquer the Trịnh
regime in the north. The Nguyễn
family escaped to the south, but the rebels caught up with then and massacred
every member except the teenaged prince Nguyễn Ánh. The next chapter of Vietnamese history is the story of how
this indomitable prince waged a 25-year campaign to finally defeat his Tây Sơn
opponents.
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| Chinese stage show, Hồ Chị Minh City |
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| Chợ Lợn Chinese market, Hồ Chí Minh CIty |
After several reverses and
recoveries, he consolidated control over the Mekong Delta and used this as his
base to slowly, methodically advance north. As his close friend and advisor, as well as link to Western military
technology, was the French priest Pére Pigneau, Nguyễn Ánh tolerated the practice
and spread of Christianity. He
also promised local autonomy to the Chinese, Khmer, Chăm and other
non-Vietnamese communities in return for their support for his cause. And he kept those promises after victory.
With this multi-ethnic army,
Nguyễn Ánh ultimately rolled into the northern capital in1802, terminated the Tây
Sơn regime, founded the Nguyễn Dynasty and took the reign name of Gia Long. His triumph was more than just the restoration
of his family’s power. This was a
new country, Vietnam, bigger and more culturally enriched than Đại Việt, with
the boundaries it still has today.
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| Vietnamese-made canal in rural Vĩnh Long |
*
* *
For the
full story, see my book Delta to
Delta: The Vietnamese Move South
