Chapter 12 The Colonial Period 463Vietnam
While most of Southeast Asia was being Indianized during the first few
hundred years of the Christian Era, Vietnam was coming under the influence
of China. In 214 B.C.E. China established a military post just north of the
Tonkin Delta and by 111 B.C.E. controlled most of the north. For about a thou-
sand years the Vietnamese of the northern region were considered to be
China’s southernmost province, which they called Giao Chi.
During the first millennium this province was strongly influenced by Chi-
nese culture. They used Chinese irrigation and terracing methods. The Viet-
namese elite became Confucianists and also Mahayana Buddhists, and there
were important Buddhist centers in the region, but, as in China, Buddhism
never became the dominant religion. Confucianism was always more signifi-
cant. The peasants continued to worship numerous spirits and deities of indige-
nous origin.
All this did not mean they liked the Chinese or thought of themselves as
Chinese. In fact, they were highly ambivalent toward the Chinese. Like the Jap-
anese at the same time, the Vietnamese greatly admired China as the center of
civilization. But unlike Japan, China was close enough to exert real control,
and as a result there were many uprisings against the Chinese rulers, until in
939 one of these was successful and the Vietnamese gained their independence.
By the thirteenth century, there were three main regions, peoples, and
dynasties in the region now known as Vietnam: (1) In the north, the Tran
dynasty (1225–1407); (2) in the central region, the Chams, who were Indian-
ized speakers of Austronesian languages, whose kingdom was known as
Champa; and (3) in the south, the Khmer, whose kingdom stretched from
Cambodia to the Mekong Delta. The cultural and political distinctions
between north and south were so great that once, in the 1630s, a Nguyen ruler
built two great walls across the narrow waist of the country near Dong Hoi, to
keep the northerners out.
Vietnam did not overcome these regional and ethnic differences and begin
the formation of the modern sense of national identity until the late eighteenth
century. French Catholic missionaries played a role in this development.
Because of Vietnam’s very long coastline with many places for Western ships
to put in, Portuguese began to come in the sixteenth century to buy raw Viet-
namese silk, followed soon by Jesuits, who had much success in converting the
Vietnamese. By the eighteenth century, there had been two centuries of Chris-
tian proselytizing; there were more Christians in Vietnam than in all of China,
and Christianity was fully integrated into rural culture and political life. They
romanized the language, a much simpler system that won out over the Chinese
script, which is why Vietnamese today is written with roman letters.
Politically, there were small, mutually hostile states in Hanoi under the
Trinh dynasty and in Hue under the Nguyen dynasty. Another hostile force, in
the form of a peasant rebellion led by three brothers from Tay Son, caused
major disturbances and the massacres of both families in 1777. Nguyen Anh, a