Vietnam: Maybe You Have Heard of It

The nation state under analysis today has a lot of meaning to me personally. Both my children are ¼ Vietnamese and my partner’s ethnicity is ½ Chinese (Hoa) and ½ Vietnamese (From her father’s side). During our nearly 30 year partnershp, I have experienced more Vietnamese culture than probably most expatriated Vietnamese have. I have a great deal of respect for their culture and perseverance through a 20th Century that was not very positive. Understanding the domination that the Chinese have had in the region going back two thousand years, how did these short, intelligent people gain their autonomy from their intimidating neighbors to the north? How did the Vietnamese end up with their chunk of paradise on their narrow strip along the South China Sea?

Vietnam rests alongside the South China Sea to the east and the Gulf of Thailand to the south. Vietnam’s population has exploded and recently passed 100 million in total population for a midsized nation (102 million exact) and is now the 14th most populous country on the planet. In comparison, California is 22% bigger (Wider going west to east) than Vietnam, but has only a population around 40 million. So Vietnam packs over two and a half times the amount of people in an area that is smaller. According to the WorldPopulationClock, Asians make up 59.1% of the individuals on this planet, a clear majority. Vietnam’s population when understanding how many individuals are packed into the Far East is not that much different from the norm in terms of density. The capital of Vietnam is Hanoi which rests to the north while the most populated city is Ho Chi Minh City (Also knows as Saigon) with a population that just passed 14 million lying near the Mekong River in the South. Since 1976, Vietnam is officially called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam after reunification being one of six remaining countries that continue to exist under Communist rule. The others are mostly in Asia: North Korea, Laos and China along with the Caribbean island of Cuba and South American nation of Venezuela. The currency of the nation is the Vietnamese Dong. For thousands of years, Vietnam was an agricultural hamlet. But with the centralization of the communist state, private ownership is now encouraged and Vietnam has become one of the primary producers of Bauxite (Aluminum) and has embraced the internationalists’ global economy with textiles and apparel being one of their largest exports as well as increasing their service economy through tourism and tech call centers. Currently, the Vietnamese economy is the most prosperous it has ever been and its share of global wealth has almost doubled over the past decade.

Historically, tracing the history of the Vietnamese people usually starts with the Nguyen Dynasty. In the United States diaspora population, you would not be wrong to assume that half the Vietnamese people have the last name of “Nguyen.” Well, this summary explains why.

“Approximately 36 to 40 million Vietnamese, or around 40% of the population, bear the surname Nguyen.

Nguyen (Nguyễn) is the most common surname in Vietnam, with estimates suggesting that 30% to 40% of Vietnamese people carry it. Given Vietnam's population of roughly 100 million, this translates to 36 to 40 million individuals. The surname is also prevalent among the Vietnamese diaspora worldwide, further increasing the total number of people with this last name.

Historical and Cultural Context of Nguyen

The widespread use of Nguyen is not coincidental but the result of centuries of historical events and dynastic changes:

• During the Trần dynasty in 1232, members of the previous Lý royal family were forced to adopt the surname Nguyen to avoid persecution.
• Subsequent dynastic collapses, including the Hồ, Mạc, and Trịnh dynasties, prompted many families to adopt Nguyen as a safe fallback surname 
• The Nguyen dynasty (1802–1945), Vietnam's last imperial family, further reinforced the surname's prominence, as adopting the royal surname became a symbol of loyalty and social advantage.

But the area that is now known as Vietnam has a history going back almost 65,000 years. The first settlers were called the Hoabinhians who were hunter-gatherers who found lots of animal, sea and plant life in the Mekong River Delta. Eventually, migrants from China moved into the area around 4000 years ago which led to the cultivation of rice in the area which is still one of the top economic exports and a huge foundation of the economy in the present day. Because of the lack of historical analysis, no one can really put a definitive start on when the Vietnamese people came to be. Around 100 BC, the Chinese began calling people in Southeastern China/North Vietnam along the Yellow River, the Lac. The Lac were closely related to a tribe called the Viet (Called the Lue by the Chinese). This is what many people believe is the beginning of our modern day knowledge of Vietnamese history. Others think this analysis is incorrect and that the Vietnamese were an offshoot of the Khmer people (That became modern day Cambodia) due to sharing many of the same cultural traits as them. It is very possible that a Vietnamese person is a natural mix of a Chinese person to the north and a Khmer to the south and eventually established and evolved their own culture in the area over time. The Vietnamese language is also a hybrid. It developed the tones of the Chinese language but due to its many differences in words, the foundation of the language is often seen as Austronesian. Religion has always been an interesting part of Vietnam as various religions from the Buddhists of India and Cambodia to Caodaism based on the teaching of Confucius to the Catholicism and Protestantism brought to the region by the Europeans, Vietnam does not have one designated state religion. And since the takeover of the country by the Communists, religious practice is mostly private. According to the Vietnamese authorities, 86% of the country practices no religion which is an obvious lie. Despite this, over 10% consider themselves Catholic or Protestant and another large minority still identifies as Buddhist.

The Vietnamese were ruled by the Chinese for over a thousand years right around 200-300 BC before the time of Christ into the 900s. The Chinese dominated the region building infrastructure and due to the rebellious nature of the Vietnamese who fought their attempts at cultural assimilation, they divided the people up into rural communities and had them controlled by lords to fight any attempts at revolution or centralization. One of the most famous rebellions was called the Trung Sisters Rebellion. Trung Trac’s husband was murdered by the Chinese. She and her sister gathered together some tribal chiefs and destroyed Chinese strongholds. The women declared an independent Vietnamese kingdom around 40 AD. This was later crushed by the Han Chinese a mere three years later.

The Chinese successfully controlled the area as long as their dynasties and empires thrived. But when the economy began to fail, the Vietnamese often rebelled. When the Tang Dynasty fell in 907 AD, a commander named Ngo Quyen defeated the Chinese in 939 and established the first ever independent Vietnam. Eventually, the entire nation was united under the Later Ly dynasty which had ties with both the Khmer and Chinese. But Islamic incursions into the region in the 12th and 13th Centuries by the Indian based Champa and the Khmer Empire based out of Angkor weakened the nation. As the Ly Dynasty fell, the Tran Dynasty re-established control and ruled for over 150 years into the 1400s. The Vietnamese for the first time in their history would soon be recognized as brave fighters (More on this later) as the Mongols invaded the area in the 1200s and Tran Hang Dao, the commander of their military, repelled the Mongols making the Vietnam area one of the few places in Asia that the Mongols did not have any influence. He is still considered one of the greatest Asian military strategists of all-time.

As the Tran Dynasty failed, the Chinese regained control of the Vietnamese land until again being expelled around 1418 which led to the founding of the 3rd Vietnamese Dynasty. This era is what led to the expansion of their territory which is similar in size to where Vietnam’s borders are now. The Vietnamese pushed south and conquered land from the fading Khmer Empire including taking Saigon in 1747. The country became long and narrow (Almost a 1000 miles) and the Southern Vietnamese began to evolve differently from their richer neighbors to the north. The kingdom did eventually divide and they fought Civil Wars amongst themselves multiple times over the next 150 years. During this period of time until the conquest by the French, all the dynasties of Vietnam were scholarly but the economy never diverted much from its agricultural and metallurgical core with different rulers just controlling these same resources and territories over long periods of time.

The Portuguese were the first people to make contact with the Vietnamese in the 1500s. First Portugal and then France established a Christian presence there. Multiple Vietnamese rulers had no interest in preserving the European culture that was being established. Eventually, they kicked the French out. As this region was very prosperous for the French Empire, Napoleon III eventually sent a military force to take Vietnam in 1850. Over twelve long years, the French eventually took full control of their three protectorates and the Vietnamese signed a peace treaty in 1862. The French pushed south and did not take the entirety of that area until the 1870s along with Cambodia. North and Central Vietnam (Known as Tonkin and Amman respectively) took even longer to conquer, 1883, when the Vietnamese officially turned that section over to the French. Laos was added in 1887. The French would call the area Cochinchina.

So coming into the present day, a question is often asked? Did the Vietnamese who had a lot of military success in their history, actually win four wars in the 20th Century?

The answer is YES.

Disgusted by the economic exploitation of the area by the French and the downgrading of Vietnamese citizens into second and third class tiers while forcing the women to “service” the French elite eventually led to rebellion. Even among the educated Vietnamese, the French prevented the population from participating in the modern day economy and civil liberties were non-existent. This was the beginning of the Vietnamese hatred for capitalism. Multiple uprisings occurred through the early 1900s which were always put down by the French military.

After the French fell in World War II, Hitler gave Indochina to the Japanese who stationed over 30,000 troops there. After Japan took over administration, the French allowed the last Vietnamese administrator to declare independence despite the Japanese military having firm control over the nation. This led to the creation of the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh who despised the Japanese and who helped the Allies by feeding them information on troop movements and locations. The Viet Minh, a Communist organization and after gaining power due to their support of the French, ordered a general uprising near the end of the war and declared the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After the war ended and the French regained control over the territory, Ho Chi Minh signed a treaty with them in 1946. But quickly, he realized that the autonomous state of Vietnam promised to him was a façade. Leading guerilla attacks on the French, Ho Chi Minh eventually got the French to acquiesce in 1954 which led to the division of North Vietnam into a Communist Country and South Vietnam which stayed under the influence of the Allied West.

War number two followed with the United States. There is so much written about the Vietnam War that I will not go into detail about it here. But in late 1975, the entirety of Vietnam fell to the Communist north reuniting the country again as one. Reuniification occurred in 1976. After reunification, Vietnam won War number three with Cambodia who invaded the nation during the Communist reign of tyrant Pol Pot. After massacring over three thousand Vietnamese civilians, the Vietnamese launched an invasion of Cambodia in December of 1978 and took the country in a couple of weeks effectively ending the rule of the Khmer Rouge. This intervention likely saved millions of Cambodian lives who were struggling to survive in the Killing Fields. Vietnam called the new nation Kampuchea which Vietnam occupied till 1989. They turned the country over to the UN in 1991 which helped establish a government and enabled the first democratic elections inside Cambodia in 1993. The final war that the Vietnamese won was against China. They launched a war as a protest against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and occupied a few cities in the North. Before that war escalated and knowing that the Vietnamese were coming back to capture what was taken, the Chinese withdrew.