Vietnam

• Other Names: 大越 (V: Đại Việt), 安南 (Annam)
• Japanese: ベトナム (betonamu), 越南 (etsunan, V: Việt Nam, C: Yuènán)

Vietnam, also known as Dai Viet and Annam at various times historically, is a Southeast Asian country which runs largely along the coast, facing the South China Sea to its east. It borders Laos and Cambodia to the west, and China's Yunnan and Guangxi provinces to the north.

Vietnam is the sole "Sinicized" Southeast Asian country with a strong connection to Chinese Buddhist and Confucian culture, in contrast to the more "Indic" or "Sanskritic" cultures of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia. The territory of Vietnam was controlled by China for nearly one thousand years in the first half of the Common Era, before gaining independence in 939, amidst the fall of the Tang Dynasty. Though controlled by various independent Vietnamese dynasties & polities for nearly its entire history after that, Chinese cultural influences remained quite fundamental to Vietnamese political culture, literary culture, worldview, and arts. Vietnam remained a loyal tributary to the Chinese court, particularly during the Ming and Qing Dynasties; Vietnamese elites engaged in Chinese cultural practices such as literati painting and calligraphy, and all Vietnamese writing employed Chinese characters up until the early 20th century - Vietnamese is now written in a romanization form devised by the French.

History

Vietnam was conquered by the Han Chinese Empire in 111 BCE, and remained under Chinese control in one form or another through China's various periods of disunity, for over a thousand years, until 939 CE. Towards the end of this period, Japanese had at least some kind of experience of Vietnam at least as early as the 8th century, when on two occasions official missions to Tang Dynasty China got blown off-course and shipwrecked in Vietnam.

The Ly Dynasty ruled from 1010 to 1225.. Like the Tran Dynasty which followed it, the Ly emphasized Vietnamese cultural distance and differentiation from China, embracing Cham & other Southeast Asian influences, and taking a hostile stance against Song Dynasty China.

The Mongol Empire may have established a colony of some sort in Champa in the 1290s or so, but it was embattled; a mission had to be sent in 1295 to ascertain what had happened to generals and senior officials dispatched there, from whom there had been no communication. This mission, which continued on to Cambodia, included Zhou Daguan, whose diaries are a valuable resource for historians today.

The Ming-Ho War ended in 1406 with Ming victory, and Vietnam remained under Chinese control until 1428. This brief 22-year period represents the only period of Chinese control over Vietnam in the last thousand years.

Lê Dynasty

Renewed independence from the Ming marked the beginning of the Lê Dynasty, which lasted from 1428 until 1788. Still, in contrast to the Ly-Tran eras which came before, the Lê dynasty was comparatively Sinic, or Sinophilic, in its political cultural leanings. Vietnam remained a loyal tributary to the Ming, and later the Qing, however, for the remainder of the early modern period. Vietnamese officials were thus regularly seen in Beijing, and a small number of young Vietnamese scholar-bureaucrats studied at Beijing's National Academy, alongside Korean, Ryûkyûan, and mostly Chinese students.

Nguyễn & Trinh

In the 16th-18th centuries, Vietnam was divided, effectively, into three polities. Tonkin, in the north, was ruled by the Trinh family, and Quang Nam (also known by a number of other names) in the central region, was ruled by the Nguyễn, while the southern region was the independent and ethnically distinct polity of Champa. The Trinh and Nguyễn domains were ruled by "lords," however, both under the ostensible authority of the emperor-kings of the Lê Dynasty.

The first contact between Quang Nam and any Japanese was with the pirate Shirahama Kenki, who came raiding ships and shores in 1585. He was driven off by Nguyễn ships, but returned in 1599. The Nguyễn captured him, and wrote to Japan to ask what to do with him; Tokugawa Ieyasu's 1601 response to Lord Nguyễn Hoang, explaining the red seal ship system, is considered the beginning of formal relations between the two polities.

From about 1590 to 1640, the Quang Nam port town of Hoi An, the largest port in all of Vietnam, was home to a major Nihonmachi (Japantown), where a few tens of independent Japanese merchant families played a prominent role in the local trade. Some, such as Araki Sotaro, married daughters of the Nguyễn family. On average, more than ten Japanese ships visited the port every year during the period of the "red seal ships," that is, between roughly 1590 and 1635; this represented fully a quarter of all Japanese maritime economic activity, more than that of any other individual port. Vietnam was likely the second most major source of silk imports into Japan during this period, after China.

Some of these merchants married into the Nguyễn family, and the Nguyễn lords exchanged formal diplomatic correspondence with the likes of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shogunate, in XX and 1601 respectively. When war broke out between Tonkin and Quang Nam in 1627, the Nguyễn, along with members of the local Japanese community in Quang Nam, wrote to the Tokugawa shogunate, requesting that trade and formal relations with Tonkin be cut off. As a result, though Tonkin also saw some Japanese trade & settlement, it was to a considerably lesser degree. Suminokura Ryôi is likely the most famous of the traders who were active in Tonkin. Fighting began in earnest between Tonkin and Quang Nam in 1633, and lasted until 1673, when the two made peace and defined borders between them. Members of the Quang Nam community served, at times, as interpreters, translators, and advisors to the Nguyễn lords, and the Nihonmachi was permitted to be self-governing to an extent. Funamoto Yashichirô was one such head of the Japanese community, holding that position beginning in 1618. Formal envoys from Quang Nam also traveled to Japan on a handful of occasions.

The Dutch East India Company first appeared in Hoi An in 1633; for the remainder of that decade, before Tokugawa kaikin (maritime restrictions) policies cut off Japanese overseas trade, the Japanese continued to dominate the port's local economy, leaving the Dutch with second-choice of the remaining goods (mainly textiles), and at higher prices due to the diminished supply after Japanese merchants bought their fill each season. From 1640 onwards, however, the Japanese trade shrank and eventually died, and the Japanese community in Hoi An, as elsewhere throughout Southeast Asia, assimilated into the local Vietnamese community and effectively disappeared.

The English East India Company closed its factory in Vietnam in 1697. The Dutch similarly closed their factory in Hanoi, in Trinh territory, in 1700, but remained active in Nguyễn territory for some time after that.

Mining was quite important in the northern territory of Tonkin, and Chinese merchant organizations were heavily involved in there. As of the 1760s, taxes on Chinese mines accounted for roughly half the annual income of the Trinh lords.

The Lê Dynasty fell in 1788 to the Tay Son Rebellion. Though Qing Dynasty China attempted to intervene (or interfere), the Vietnamese pushed the Qing forces out of their territory as early as the following year. The Tay Son state lasted only a few decades; like the Ly-Tran dynasties of earlier times, and quite unlike the Le-Nguyen dynasties it overthrew, the Tay Son state rejected political or cultural closeness to China, and embraced a more strongly Southeast Asian identity.

Nguyễn Dynasty

The Nguyễn Dynasty began in 1802, marking an end to the short-lived Tay Son state.

Colonization

Vietnam sent its last tributary mission to Beijing in 1882.

The Sino-French War ended in 1885 in French victory, and China was forced to renounce any claims to Vietnam.

References

• Alexander Vuving, "Operated by World Views and Interfaced by World Orders: Traditional and Modern Sino-Vietnamese Relations," in Anthony Reid (ed.), Negotiating Asymmetry, NUS Press, 2009, 73-92.