Changes

From SamuraiWiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
5,303 bytes added ,  17:01, 17 July 2015
Created page with "*''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..."
*''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 province|Yunnan]] and [[Guangxi province]]s 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, Vietnam remained a loyal [[tribute|tributary]] to the Chinese court, particularly during the [[Ming Dynasty|Ming]] and [[Qing Dynasty|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==

The [[Ming-Ho War]] ended in [[1406]] with Ming victory,

==Lê Dynasty==

==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|Tokugawa Ieyasu's]] [[1601]] response to Lord Nguyễn Hoang, explaining the [[red seal ship]] system,<ref>That authorized merchants would carry formal licenses marked with red seals, and that everyone else could be regarded as a pirate or smuggler, to be dealt with as the foreign polity (in this case, the Nguyễn court) saw fit.</ref> is considered the beginning of formal relations between the two polities.<ref>Li Tana, ''Nguyen Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries'' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 60-61.</ref>

From about 1590 to 1640, the Quang Nam port town of [[Hoi An]], the largest port in all of Vietnam,<ref>Alexander Woodside, “Central Vietnam's Trading World in the Eighteenth Century as Seen in Le Quy Don's 'Frontier Chronicles” in Keith Taylor and John K. Whitmore (eds.), ''Essays into Vietnamese Pasts'' (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1995), 162.</ref> was home to a major [[Nihonmachi]] (Japantown), where a few tens of independent Japanese merchant families played a prominent role in the local trade. 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.<ref>Chingho A. Chen, ''Historical Notes on Hội An (Faifo)'' (Carbondale, Illinois: Center for Vietnamese Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1974), 13.</ref>

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. Fighting began in earnest between Tonkin and Quang Nam in [[1633]], and lasted until XX. 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.
contributor
27,126

edits

Navigation menu