State of Southeast Asia (329 ' 560 km2), limited to north by China, the west by Laos and Kampuchea, bordered in the east by the southernmost China Sea. Initially made up in Tonkin, Viet-Nam, during its long story, always sought to extend towards the South, while denying itself the expansionist aimings of its powerful neighbor of North, China. Its national unit was forged at the end of a marked out history of wars, conquest or release, whose last - which extended over one thirty years period (1945-1975) - were particularly devastating for the civil populations.
Prehistory
The vestiges put at the day on the site of Harm-C (province of Thanh Hoa) attest human presence on the Vietnamese ground since the paleolithic one. To the Neolithic era (sites of Vat-Sound and Hoà-Bînh), mixing, in the delta of the Red river (Sông Hông), of tribes Vietnamese soldiers, Muongs and Chinese and Indonesian populations gave rise to the Vietnamese people.
At the end of the II E thousand-year-old front J. - C. (traditional date: 1042 av. J. - C.), appears the age known as “of the bronze drums”, whose principal site is Dông Its (in the North-East of Thanh Hoa); the objects discovered in the excavations testify to the commercial relations that the semi-legendary dynasties of the Hundred principalities of Bach Viêt maintained then with China the South and Indonesia.
In the middle of the III E front century J. - C. (traditional date: 247 av. J. - C.), Year-Duong, sovereign of the one of these principalities, it Tây-With (today Yunnan), seized the kingdom close to the Lake-Vietnamese soldier and annexed it to form the kingdom of the With-Lake (contraction of Tây-With and of Lake-Vietnamese soldier), on which it reigned until in 208 av. J. - C. Its capital was established to approximately 20 km of Hanoi current.
In 258 av. J. - C., the kingdom of the With-Lake was in its turn integrated into the Nam-Vietnamese soldier, one of the Hundred principalities Vietnamese soldiers of the coasts of Tonkin, on which the more or less sinicized dynasty of Triêu reigned.
Thousand years of Chinese domination
The Nam-Vietnamese soldier, that the Chinese called Nan yue guo (the “kingdom of Yue of the South”) extended until the 16th parallel, around current Da Nang. In 111 av. J. - C., the Nam-Vietnamese soldier was conquered by the general Chinese Lou Po-to and incorporated in the Empire of Han, which establishes a commandery with Xiang (today Hanoi). The Chinese domination thus established lasted more than 1000 years (until 938 after J. - C.) and marked Viet-Nam deeply, as well from the point of view of the techniques as of the culture and the social organization and policy (civils servant mandarins recruited by contest, diffusion of the Confucianism, the taoism, Buddhism, and the writing by ideograms).
This domination, although it brought to the Vietnamese kingdom the benefits of a civilization then more advanced, and later on enabled him to continue in an autonomous way, was punctuated cruel abuses, which were in the beginning many risings: the first of them, in 39 apr. J. - C., was carried out by the two sisters Trung-Exam nerves and Trung-Nhi, still greeted today like heroins of the national independence of Viet-Nam, and one needed to the general My Yuan (“the general trainer of the floods”) four years of war to come to end; this rising was followed many others, such those of Triêu-With into 248, Ly-Good into 544, Phùng-Hung into 793.
The Chinese governors of the Year-nam C-Ho-phu (“general Protectorate of Annam”) also had to be opposed to the attempts at expansion towards the North of the hindouized kingdom of Champa (Flax-Yi of the Chinese), founded by Chams into 192 in the area of Huê, and which controlled the territories of the center and the south of current Viet-Nam.
The Chinese domination was exerted however on Viet-Nam until 939, date on which Ngô-Quyên, victorious from the battle of Bach-Dang, released the Nam-Vietnamese soldier of the influence of Han of the South. Its death, five years later, was going to temporarily dip back the country in anarchy (period “of the twelve Known-quân”) but, in 968, king Dinh-Tiên-Hoàng managed to reconstitute a unified and independent empire, the Dai-Co-Vietnamese soldier. In 981, the Dai-Co-Vietnamese soldier victoriously pushed back a last attempt of Song, thus putting a final term at the long hegemony that the Chinese Empires and the kingdoms of China of the South had exerted without interruption for more than thousand years in the basin of the Rouge river and on the coasts of Annam.
National dynasties and push towards the South
The short dynasty of Ngô (939-968) thus founded by Ngô-Quyên, that of Dinh (968-980) succeeded, then that of the former ones (980-1009) and, especially, that of Ly (1010-1225) and Trân (1225-1400), which provided the foundations of the power Vietnamese at the end of important reforms: reinforcement of the royal authority and improvement of the administrative organization of the country.
Built on the current site of Hanoi per order of Thai Ly Tô, founder of the dynasty of Ly, Long Thang (“the dragon which flies away”) became, in 1010, the capital of a State which took the name of Dai Viêt. The country was divided in twenty-four provinces. The court obeyed a strict hierarchy, with twin spool of mandarins, civilian and soldier. The creation of a powerful national army, spearhead of the fight against Champa, supported the progressive projection of Dai Viêt towards the South; as of the XI E century, the provinces of Quang Binh and Quang Tri were annexed. Moreover, Ly founded a written legislation and took a care particular to economic development. Ly succeeded Trân (1225-1413) which was going to work in the same direction.
The consolidation of independence, economic development, the constitution of a power centralized under the dynasties It, Ly and Trân allowed the assertion of an original national culture, although still strongly influenced by Chinese civilization. These dynasties still had to defend their territory: Ly against the Chinese in XIe century, and Trân against the Mongols (1257, 1282.1287). At the end of the XIV E century, a political and social serious attack shook the country; in 1406, Ming benefitted from it to launch an army of 200 ' 000 men which invades Dai Viêt and drove out the last Trân sovereign.
But this military occupation of the basin of the Rouge river could not be maintained: since 1418, a liberation movement raised the country against the Chinese occupant, whom it ends up rejecting of the territory in 1427. The chief of this rising, the Law, an property owner, founded the new dynasty as of the posterior ones (1428-1789), which knew its apogee under the reign of Thanh Tông (1460-1497). This one supported agriculture, developed the network of dams and of channels, the division of the communal grounds fixed, which caused to improve the agricultural production.
With the disappearance of the great fields, administrative centralization reached its more high degree, and the bureaucracy of the mandarins profited from many privileges. To serve this administration, a legislative apparatus was instituted in 1483 (code Hông Duc, first complete code of the history of Viet-Nam). The southernmost borders were pushed back, thanks to a decisive victory over Champa (1471), followed by a military colonization (diên gift) of the conquered territories, plains of Annam, Quang Tri until the course Varella; moreover, Dai Viêt imposed his suzerainty on the Laos kingdoms of Mekong.
The feudal company, under first kings Lê, to the XV E century, knew a brilliance rise, but the following sovereigns could not face the many revolts and the decline appeared more and more to the XVII E century.
Nominally, the kings reigned It on all the country, but actually two rival families shared it: Trinh in North (the Tonkin future of Europeans), Nguyên in the South, which established their capital with Huê.
From 1627 to 1672, North and the South delivered ceaseless wars, which left the final victory to the South. In North, Trinh had established a company very hierarchical, on the Chinese model. The mandarins, which concentrated the land and buildings, subjected the peasants to hard taxes. In the South, Nguyên organized a less strict company. They completed the dismemberment of the kingdom of Champa, took Saigon in 1698; finally, continuing their expansion towards the South to the detriment of the Khmer Empire, fallen in decline, they occupied the Mekong delta
At the end of the XVIII E century, colonization Vietnamese approached the provinces of Transbassac, and Kampuchea gradually passed under the double protectorate of the Thais, in the west, and of the Vietnameses, in the east, the latter becoming thus the Masters of all the area which will be called Cochinchine by Europeans. Those, missionaries and tradesmen, had started to be established in the country starting from the XVII E century. Portuguese, then the English and the Dutchmen entered in competition. The missionaries Jesuits, in particular, showed themselves very active; among them, the Alexandre father of Rhodos contributed to the diffusion of a romanized writing of Vietnamese (quôc ngu). But the Vietnamese States favorably did not accommodate this foreign penetration “of the impious barbarians of the West”.
If the situation of the peasants were better in the south than in north, it is however in the South that burst a popular revolt which was going to lead to the reunification of Dai Viêt. In 1773, three brothers, called Tây His, name of their village, close of Which Nhon, revolted against Nguyên; with the support of Trinh, they took Saigon and Annam, then being turned over against Trinh, they occupied Hanoi (1786). The Tây brothers Its, after having definitively eliminated the dynasty It, shared Dai Viêt; one of them, Nguyên-Huê, proclaimed emperor under the name of Quang-Trung, and establishes its capital with Hanoi.
But, while not proceeding to a land reform, Tây Its disappointed the peasants who had supported them, and could not be opposed to the return to the power, in the South, of a heir to Nguyên. This one, Nguyên Anh, found a support at a French missionary, Mgr Pigneau de Béhaine, to reconquer the country; after having made the conquest of Cochinchine, it seized Huê and Hanoi, and put in rout the lords of North and the dynasty of Tây Its (1786-1802).
The event is capital; under the name of Long Gia (1802-1820), Nguyên Anh became the first Vietnamese emperor to reign on an empire, which it named Viet-Nam, and which extended from the Chinese border to the gulf of Siam (Thailand). Founder of the dynasty of Nguyên (1802-1945), Gia Long, after being itself assure the support of China, reorganized and modernized his State which, although centralized, respected particularisms of the three provinces: Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchine. He made build roads (whose “road Mandarine”), dams, citadels (in particular in Huê, its capital), ports and proceeded to a land reform.
Viet-Nam remained however strongly sinicized: new code, known as Long Gia code, inspired by that of Qing, Confucianism, taoism, worship of the ancestors, mandarinat, etc the reign of Long Gia marked the apogee of the political power of Viet-Nam, which dominated Kampuchea, and constituted one period of brilliance cultural rise.
The French conquest (1858-1896)
The successors of Long Gia were good administrators, but the external threats were not long in being specified with the intervention of Great Britain in China (1842), which was forced to open its ports with the Westerners. Fearing a similar attack, king You-Duke (1848-1883) decided to close Viet-Nam with the Western influences and authorized the persecution of the catholic missions, suspectées to be information agencies to the service from abroad.
The reaction of France, which wished to take foot in Indo-China, did not delay: in 1858, the admiral Rigault de Genouilly, which ordered the Franco-Spanish squadron travelling towards China, bombarded and removed Tourane (Da Nang). The following year, the French seized Saigon and, in 1867, made of Cochinchine a colony. In north, the search for one access to China involved two successive forwardings. Thus in 1883, France occupied Huê; a treaty of protectorate was then signed, and the country was divided soon into three parts: Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchine. Lastly, in 1887, the creation of the Indochinese Union (to Viet-Nam Kampuchea had been joined, then unified Laos) provided the foundations of the French domination on Indo-China (1887).
Rise of the nationalism and creation of the NCV (1896-1941)
Resistance to French colonization at the end of the XIX E century and the beginning of the XX E century was mainly the fact of the well-read men. It was incarnated by two men: the first, Phan Boi Chan, refugee in Japan with a young applicant with the throne, asserted the independence of the country at the price, if need be, of a foreign armed intervention; the second, Phan Chan Trinh, more moderated, invited France more strictly to respect a mode of protectorate without intervening more in the go concern of the country.
This tendency reformist yielded the step, as from the years 1920, with more revolutionary movements: the Vietnamese national party and the Indochinese Communist party (PCI), founded in Hongkong in 1930 by Nguyên Have Quôc, the Ho Chi Minh future, which was member of the French Communist party (1920), then Comintern (1923). Making profitable the economic serious attack of the years 1929-1930, which touched in particular the agriculture of plantation, the NCV organized many demonstrations and strikes; those were severely repressed, and the principal leaders, among whom Nguyên Have Quôc itself, were stopped.
Having thus restored the order by repression, the French government, vis-a-vis the evolution of the company Vietnamese, was however constrained to release ballast: in 1932, it made reach the throne the young emperor Bao Dai, made in France and of reputation reformist. Committed measurements were not long in disappointing, without to call into question the colonial presence.
The day before the Second world war, the economic revival was however real: the country had 14 ' 000 km of tarred roads, 2 ' 600 km of railways making it possible to rejoin Hanoi in Saigon easily, of the modern ports, an agriculture of plantation of foreground (hévéas, tea plants) and an industry which diversified. The work conditions had been improved overall, but the wages remained very low; more than 80 % of the population was illiterate and, in spite of vaccination campaigns, a child on three died during his first year. This development, at the very least contrasted, resulted nevertheless in the rise of new national, impatient elites to reach the political power.
Associated topics
The Second world war and the war of Indo-China
From 1941, France, overcome and occupied, can be maintained in Indo-China, vis-a-vis Japan, only at the cost of important economic and military concessions, among which right to use many naval bases and air in the country
On March 9th, 1945, after their defeat in the Pacific, the Japanese take the military control of Indo-China and, by fear to be taken with reverse, disarm the French troops. A few months later, benefitting from the Japanese capitulation, the forces of the Vietnamese soldier-minh (“Face for the independence of Viet-Nam”, created by the Communists in 1941) pass to the offensive and occupy Hanoi, where Ho Chi Minh proclaims the independence of Viet-Nam (September 2nd, 1945).
However, France, supported by the Allies in its “sovereign rights” on Indo-China, reinvests the South immediately and decides to negotiate with the mode of Hanoi (at the end of 1945). The conference which is taken place in Fontainebleau, during the summer 1946, fails. This failure involves at the same time the military reoccupying of Tonkin by the French Army.
From 1949, the victory of Mao Zedong and the advent of the popular Republic of China change the political data radically. Supported militarily, the forces of the Vietnamese soldier-minh pass to the offensive. Rammed by artillery of the general Giap, the French forces, after a long resistance, capitulate on on May 7th, 1954 at Diên Biên Phu. After this disaster, the fate of the war is thrown. Signed at the conclusion of an International Conference, the agreements of Geneva (July 1954) put an end to the French domination and decide the provisional partition of the country, on both sides of the 17th parallel.
Elections are envisaged, prior to a unification projected in 1956, but one will evolve quickly to a durable separation between the Democratic republic of Viet-Nam (RDVN), in north, directed by Ho Chi Minh, and the Republic of Viet-Nam, in the south, initially directed by Bao Dai, then, after his deposition in October 1955, by Ngo Dinh Diem.
The American war (1954-1975)
The instituted cease-fire lasts little. During following months, military operations begin again between the regular army of Viet-Nam of the South and the opponents - mainly communist - gathered from 1960 within the National front of release, or “Vietcong”, and supported by North. To deal with the attacks of the Vietcong, the Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, appealed, as from 1960, with the military aid of the United States, which sends initially special advisers, then troops, increasingly many as the military situation is degraded.
In 1968, the American task force understands nearly 600 ' 000 men who can count on their bases postpones inhabitants of Thailand and the Philippines. The rupture sino-Soviet, in 1960, weakens the position of Viet-Nam of the North, which refuses to be aligned on continuous Moscow or Beijing but to claim the assistance of these two capitals. Moreover, the Vietnamese conflict, while being regionalized (it is carried to Laos, then in Kampuchea, in 1970, by the Americans and the South-Vietnameses), becomes one of the major theaters of the cold war.
In spite of the fire power and intense American bombardments on North, the war sinks and causes the reprobation of an important part of the American and international public opinion. The Vietcong offensive of the Small fireclay cup, which misses carrying Saigon at the end of January 1968, decides the Americans to engage of the talks directly with Hanoi; these negotiations, held a long time secret, succeed, in January 1973, with the agreements of Paris at the end from which the Americans commit themselves evacuating Viet-Nam militarily.
These agreements, at the same time as they put an end to the direct intervention of the United States, recognize two authorities in Viet-Nam of the South: the government of Saigon and the Vietcong, under the name of provisional revolutionary Government (GRP), each one controlling its own zones. In fact, the war begins again almost at once between the two parts. For little time however, because, in January 1975, the GRP, supported by the forces of North, launches a final offensive which is completed, on on April 30th, by the catch of Saigon (renamed at once Ho Chi Minh-City). In July 1976, the new National Assembly proclaims the reunification of the country, under the name of socialist République of Viet-Nam.
Reunification and the rebuilding
Reunified Viet-Nam must face the immense devastations of the war: million deaths, displaced people (crippled, orphan, taken refuge, downgraded). The government engages the South in the way of socialism: nationalization of the private companies and the banking environment, controls trade, collectivization of the grounds. This policy, united for much with the fear of an exile in the “new rural economic zones” (on the high plateaus), involves the exodus, often tragic, of hundreds of thousands of people by the sea (the boat people).
As regards the foreign policy, Viet-Nam, aligned on the Soviet Union whose assistance was essential for him, quickly ran up against China. Its victory of 1975 pushed Hanoi to extend its political influence on the countries of French ex-Indo-China. At the end of 1978, taking the pretext of frontier incidents, the army Vietnamese invades Kampuchea, in the grip of genocide perpetrated by the government of the Khmer Rouges (supported by China), and imposes on Phnom Penh a government directed by Heng Samrin. But the adventure turns short because of the vigorous Khmer armed resistance, supported by Thailand and China, and of the disavowal of the international community vis-a-vis the establishment of this protectorate in fact on Kampuchea; in addition, China intervenes militarily in the north of Viet-Nam in 1979 and 1987.
The interior situation worsening, Hanoi was forced, as from 1984, to withdraw its forces of Kampuchea little by little. The economic situation had indeed become catastrophic; in 1986, the Life congress of the Communist party proposes a program of restorations, the DOI Me; it is a question of advancing towards the market economy and of democratizing the company. This liberalization of the economy is still accentuated after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, with the beginning of the year 1990.
The collapse of the USSR makes the support Russian increasingly weak; in 1991, Russia disengages itself completely of Viet-Nam; as from 1992, this one undertakes to join again diplomatic and commercial contacts with France, Western Europe and the United States (which, on on February 3rd, 1994, raises the commercial embargo that they imposed on the country since 1975), and the country opens again with tourism and the overseas investments. Viet-Nam adheres then to the ANSEA (1995).
In July 1996, C Muoi, general secretary of the party, the Duke Anh, Head of State, and Vo Van Kiet, Prime Minister, were re-elected at the conclusion of VIIIe congress of the Communist party. On September 25th, 1997, Trân Duke Luong, Deputy Prime Minister since 1987, is elected for five years with the presidency of the Republic, and names Phan Van Khai with the direction of the government. For lack of deep structural reforms of its economy, the country increases in 1999, its delay compared to the economies of the area, which join again with stability, after having undergone the by-effect of the Asian crisis.
In addition, the government of Phan Van Khai, confronted with the aggravation of the social unrest generated by a generalized corruption and increasingly heavy taxes to discharge, announces the launching of a new campaign of fight against the corruption, similar to that which had preceded in 1985-1986, the opening of the country to the foreign investors and the tourists.