Dynastic Vietnam

Territorial expansion of Vietnam, 1009–1834

The Hồng Bàng dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered to be the first Vietnamese
state, known in Vietnamese as Văn Lang.[35][36] In 257 BC, the last Hùng king was
defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt and Âu Việt tribes to form
the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương.[37] In 179 BC, a Chinese general
named Zhao Tuo defeated An Dương Vương and consolidated Âu Lạc
into Nanyue.[30] However, Nanyue was itself incorporated into the empire of the
Chinese Han dynasty in 111 BC after the Han–Nanyue War.[16][38] For the next
thousand years, what is now northern Vietnam remained mostly under Chinese
rule.[39][40]Early independence movements, such as those of the Trưng
Sisters and Lady Triệu,[41] were only temporarily successful,[42] though the region
gained a longer period of independence as Vạn Xuân under the Anterior Lý
dynasty between AD 544 and 602.[43][44][45] By the early 10th century, Vietnam had
gained autonomy, but not sovereignty, under the Khúc family.[46]
In AD 938, the Vietnamese lord Ngô Quyền defeated the forces of the
Chinese Southern Han state at Bạch Đằng River and achieved full independence for
Vietnam after a millennium of Chinese domination.[47][48][49] Renamed as Đại Việt
(Great Viet), the nation enjoyed a golden era under the Lý and Trần dynasties. During
the rule of the Trần Dynasty, Đại Việt repelled three Mongol
invasions. [50][51] Meanwhile, Buddhism of Mahāyāna tradition flourished and became
the state religion.[49][52] Following the 1406–7 Ming–Hồ War which overthrew the Hồ
dynasty, Vietnamese independence was briefly interrupted by the Chinese Ming
dynasty, but was restored by Lê Lợi, the founder of the Lê dynasty.[53] The Vietnamese
dynasties reached their zenith in the Lê dynasty of the 15th century, especially during
the reign of Emperor Lê Thánh Tông (1460–1497).[54][55] Between the 11th and 18th
centuries, Vietnam expanded southward in a process known as nam tiến("southward
expansion"),[56] eventually conquering the kingdom of Champa and part of the Khmer
Empire.[57][58][59]
From the 16th century onward, civil strife and frequent political infighting engulfed
much of Vietnam. First, the Chinese-supported Mạc dynasty challenged the Lê
dynasty's power.[60] After the Mạc dynasty was defeated, the Lê dynasty was nominally
reinstalled, but actual power was divided between the northern Trịnh lords and the
southern Nguyễn lords, who engaged in a civil war for more than four decades before
a truce was called in the 1670s.[61] During this time, the Nguyễn expanded southern
Vietnam into the Mekong Delta, annexing the Central Highlands and the Khmer lands
in the Mekong Delta.[57][59][62] The division of the country ended a century later when
the Tây Sơn brothers established a new dynasty. However, their rule did not last long,
and they were defeated by the remnants of the Nguyễn lords, led by Nguyễn Ánh and
aided by the French.[63] Nguyễn Ánh unified Vietnam, and established the Nguyễn
dynasty, ruling under the name Gia Long.[62]
French Indochina
Main articles: Cochinchina Campaign, Sino-French War, Tonkin campaign, French
Indochina, and Empire of Vietnam

French Indochina in 1913

Since the 1500s, the Portuguese have become acquainted with Vietnamese coast
where they reportedly erected a stele in Chàm Islands to mark their presence.[64] By
1533, the Portuguese began to land into the Vietnamese delta but were forced to leave
due to local turmoil and fighting. They also had less interest in the territory than in both
kingdoms in China and Japan.[64] After having successfully
settled Macau and Nagasaki to begin the profitable Macau-Japan trade, the
Portuguese began to be involved in trade with Hội An where many Portuguese traders
and their Catholic missionaries set their foot into the Vietnamese
kingdom.[64] The Dutch also tried to establish contact with Vietnam through the central
part of Quinam in 1601 but failed to maintain a long presence there after several violent
encounter with the locals. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) only managed to
establish official relations with Tonkin in the spring of 1637 after leaving Dejima in
Japan to establishing trade for silk.[65] Meanwhile, the English first attempt through
the East India Company (EIC) to establishing contact with Hội An in 1613 are failed
following a violent incident involving their merchant but the English return to
establishing relations with Tonkin by 1672 where they were allowed to reside in Phố
Hiến.[66]

Grand Palais built for the 1902–1903 world's fair as Hanoi became French Indochina's
capital.
From between 1615–1753, French traders also engaged in trade in the area
around Đàng Trong and actively spreading missionaries.[67][68] Following the detention
of several missionaries as the Vietnamese kingdom feel threatened with the
continuous Christianisation activities,[69] the French Navy received approval from their
government to intervene in Vietnam in 1834 with the aim to free imprisoned Catholic
missionaries from a kingdom that was perceived as xenophobic against foreign
influence.[70] Vietnam's kingdom independence was then gradually eroded by
France which was aided by the Spanish and large Catholic militias in a series of
military conquests between 1859 and 1885.[71][72] In 1862, the southern third of the
country became the French colony of Cochinchina.[73]By 1884, the entire country had
come under French rule, with the central and northern parts of Vietnam separated in
the two protectorates of Annam and Tonkin. The three Vietnamese entities were
formally integrated into the union of French Indochina in 1887.[74][75] The French
administration imposed significant political and cultural changes on Vietnamese
society.[76] A Western-style system of modern education was developed and
Catholicism was propagated widely.[77] Most French settlers in Indochina were
concentrated in Cochinchina, particularly in the region of Saigon and in Hanoi, the
capital of the colony.[78]
Guerrillas of the royalist Cần Vương movement massacred around a third of
Vietnam's Christian population during the colonial period as part of their rebellion
against French rule,[79][80] but were defeated in the 1890s after a decade of resistance
by the Catholics as a reprisal of their earlier massacres. [81][82] Another large-scale
rebellion, the Thái Nguyên uprising was also suppressed heavily.[83] The French
developed a plantation economy to promote the export
of tobacco, indigo, tea and coffee,[84] however, they largely ignored the increasing
demands for civil rights and self-government. A nationalist political movement soon
emerged, with leaders such as Phan Bội Châu, Phan Châu Trinh, Phan Đình Phùng,
Emperor Hàm Nghi, and Hồ Chí Minh fighting or calling for independence.[85] This
resulted in the 1930 Yên Bái mutiny by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQDĐ)
which was suppressed heavily by the French. The mutiny caused an irreparable split
that resulted in many leading members of the organisation
becoming communist converts.[86][87][88] The French maintained full control over their
colonies until World War II, when the war in the Pacific led to the Japanese invasion
of French Indochina in 1940. Afterwards, the Japanese Empire was allowed to station
its troops in Vietnam while permitting the pro-Vichy French colonial administration to
continue.[89][90] Japan exploited Vietnam's natural resources to support its military
campaigns, culminating in a full-scale takeover of the country in March 1945 and
the Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which caused up to two million deaths.[91][92]
First Indochina War
Main articles: First Indochina War; Democratic Republic of Vietnam; State of
Vietnam; State of Vietnam referendum, 1955; and Operation Passage to Freedom

Situation of the First Indochina Warat the end of 1954.

Areas under Việt Minh control
Areas under French control
Việt Minh guerrilla encampment / fighting
In 1941, the Việt Minh, a nationalist liberation movement based on a Communist
ideology, emerged under the Vietnamese revolutionary leader Hồ Chí Minh. The Việt
Minh sought independence for Vietnam from France and the end of the Japanese
occupation.[93][94] Following the military defeat of Japan and the fall of its
puppet Empire of Vietnam in August 1945, anarchy, rioting and murder were
widespread since Saigon's administrative services collapsed.[95] The Việt Minh
occupied Hanoi and proclaimed a provisional government, which asserted national
independence on 2 September.[94] Earlier in July, the Allies decide to divide Indochina
into half at the 16th parallel to allow Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China receive
Japanese surrender in the north while Lord Louis Mountbatten of the British receive
the surrender in the south with the Allies agreeing that Indochina belonged to
France.[96][97]
Partition of French Indochina after the 1954 Geneva Conference
However, as the French were weakened as a result of German occupation, the British-
Indian forces together with the remaining Japanese Southern Expeditionary Army
Group were used to maintain order and to help France re-establish control through
the 1945–1946 War in Vietnam.[98] Hồ Chí Minh at the time chose a moderate stance
to avoid military conflict with France by which he asked the French to withdraw their
colonial administrators, and asked for aid from French professors and engineers to
help build a modern independent Vietnam.[94] These requests, including the idea for
independence, however, could not be accepted by the Provisional Government of the
French Republic, which dispatched the French Far East Expeditionary Corps instead
to restore colonial rule, causing the Việt Minh to launch a guerrilla campaign against
the French in late 1946.[93][94][99]Matters also turned worse when the Republic of China
gradually fell to the communists in the Chinese Communist Revolution. The resulting
First Indochina War lasted until July 1954. The defeat of French and Vietnamese
loyalists in the 1954 battle of Điện Biên Phủ allowed Hồ Chí Minh to negotiate a
ceasefire from a favourable position at the subsequent Geneva Conference.[94][100]

Hanoi Opera House, taken in the early 20th century, from rue Paul Bert(now Trang
Tien street).
The colonial administration was ended and French Indochina was dissolved under the
Geneva Accords of 1954 into three countries: Vietnam and the kingdoms
of Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam was further divided into North and South
administrative regions at the Demilitarised Zone, approximately along the 17th parallel
north, pending elections scheduled for July 1956.[n 6] A 300-day period of free
movement was permitted, during which almost a million northerners, mainly Catholics,
moved south, fearing persecution by the communists.[105][106] The partition of
Vietnamwas not intended to be permanent by the Geneva Accords, which stipulated
that Vietnam would be reunited after elections in 1956.[107]However, in 1955, the State
of Vietnam's Prime Minister, Ngô Đình Diệm toppled Bảo Đại in a fraudulent
referendum organized by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu, and proclaimed himself president
of the Republic of Vietnam.[107] At that point the internationally recognised State of
Vietnameffectively ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic of Vietnam in the
south and Hồ Chí Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north.[107]
Vietnam War
Main articles: Vietnam War and Role of the United States in the Vietnam War
Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various
agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in
significant political oppression.[108] During the land reform, testimony from North
Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village
residents, which extrapolated nationwide would indicate nearly 100,000
executions.[109] Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River
Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions became widely accepted by
scholars at the time.[109][110] However, declassified documents from the Vietnamese
and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than
reported at the time, although likely greater than 13,500.[111] In the South, Diệm
countered North Vietnamese subversion (including the assassination of over 450
South Vietnamese officials in 1956) by detaining tens of thousands of suspected
communists in "political re-education centers".[112][113] This was a ruthless program that
incarcerated many non-communists, although it was also successful at curtailing
communist activity in the country, if only for a time.[114] The North Vietnamese
government claimed that 2,148 individuals were killed in the process by November
1957.[115] The pro-Hanoi Việt Cộng began a guerrilla campaign in the late 1950s to
overthrow Diệm's government.[116] From 1960, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam
signed treaties providing for further Soviet military support.[117][118][119]

Three US Fairchild UC-123Baircraft spraying Agent Orange during the Operation

Ranch Hand as part of the overall herbicidal warfare operation called Trail Dust with
the aim to deprive the food and vegetation cover of the Việt Cộng, c. 1962–1971.
In 1963, Buddhist discontent with Diệm's regime erupted into mass demonstrations,
leading to a violent government crackdown.[120] This led to the collapse of Diệm's
relationship with the United States, and ultimately to the 1963 coup in which Diệm and
Nhu were assassinated.[121]The Diệm era was followed by more than a dozen
successive military governments, before the pairing of Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao
Kỳ and General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu took control in mid-1965.[122] Thiệu gradually
outmaneuvered Kỳ and cemented his grip on power in fraudulent elections in 1967
and 1971.[123] Under this political instability, the communists began to gain ground. To
support South Vietnam's struggle against the communist insurgency, the United
States began increasing its contribution of military advisers, using the 1964 Gulf of
Tonkin incident as a pretext for such intervention.[124] US forces became involved in
ground combat operations in 1965, and at their peak they numbered more than
500,000.[125][126] The US also engaged in a sustained aerial bombing campaign.
Meanwhile, China and the Soviet Union provided North Vietnam with significant
material aid and 15,000 combat advisers.[117][118][127] Communist forces supplying the
Việt Cộng carried supplies along the Hồ Chí Minh trail, which passed through
the Kingdom of Laos.[128]
The communists attacked South Vietnamese targets during the 1968 Tết Offensive.
Although the campaign failed militarily, it shocked the American establishment, and
turned US public opinion against the war.[129] During the offensive, communist
troops massacred over 3,000 civilians at Huế.[130][131] Facing an increasing casualty
count, rising domestic opposition to the war, and growing international condemnation,
the US began withdrawing from ground combat roles in the early 1970s. This process
also entailed an unsuccessful effort to strengthen and stabilise South
Vietnam.[132] Following the Paris Peace Accords of 27 January 1973, all American
combat troops were withdrawn by 29 March 1973.[133] In December 1974, North
Vietnam captured the province of Phước Long and started a full-scale offensive,
culminating in the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.[134] South Vietnam was briefly ruled
by a provisional government for almost eight years while under military occupation by
North Vietnam.[135]