Vietnamese Independence (950 - 1859)

In 965, Dinh Bo Linh, a man of peasant background, proclaimed himself King of Northern Vietnam, taking the title of Emperor in 968. Dinh Bo Linh attempted to bring together Chinese and Vietnamese political theory by using both Vietnamese and Chinese titles and incorporating both Buddhist and Daoist rituals and priests into court life. His court facilitated the fusion of Buddhism with the animist and mystical teachings of Daoism, appealing to the people of the village. Dinh Bo Linh also established the 10 Circuit Army, an army of 100,000 men that is the predecessor of today's Vietnamese Army. The dynasty founded by Dinh Bo Linh survived only until 980 when Le Dai Hanh overthrew it and inaugurated the short-lived Early Le Dynasty (980-1009).

From the 11th to 13th centuries, the independence of the Vietnamese Kingdom (Dai Viet) was consolidated under the emperors of the Ly Dynasty, founded by Ly Thai To in 1009. The emperors of this dynasty reorganized the administrative system, founded the nation's first university (The Temple of Literature in Hanoi), promoted agriculture and built the first embankments for flood control along the Red River. During the Ly Dynasty, the Chinese, Khmers, and Chams repeatedly attacked Vietnam, but were repelled, most notably under the renowned strategist and tactician Ly Thuong Kiet (1030-1105), a military official of royal blood who is still revered as a national hero.

The Ly dynasty fought wars against the weakening Champa state and the eventual conquest of Cham territory greatly increased size of the emerging Vietnamese state. This conquest accompanied by an aggressive policy of colonization that imposed northern social and political structures onto the newly settled territories, destroying the Cham civilization. A chain of homogenous villages was built that stretched from the Chinese border to the Gulf of Thailand and consolidated the area under Ly dynasty rule.

By the 13th Century, the Ly dynasty was weakened and was overthrown by rebels who founded the Tran dynasty in 1226. By 1260, however, the Tran's found themselves fighting again against a far greater threat, Kublai Khan and the Mongols from China. Eventually, Kublai Khan was defeated and aggression between Champa and Vietnam resumed as the Chams took advantage of the turmoil brought by the mOngol invasions to revolt. By the end of the 1300s, the Tran Dynasty had succeeded in checking the advances of the now weakened Chams, only to face its own internal problems.

In 1400, Ho Qui Ly, the regent of the child king, usurped the throne and established the Ho Dynasty. In 1407, when the ousted Trans asked for assistance from the Ming Dynasty of China, the Chinese used this request as an excuse to invade the Red River Delta and set up a Chinese administration which lasted for 14 years. During this time, they destroyed all libraries and archives.

Le Lo, a member of the large and wealthy Le family organized the Lam Son uprising against Chinese rule in 1418 After his victory in 1428, Le Loi declared himself emperor beginning the Later Le Dynasty (1428-1788), which became the longest lived dynasty in Vietnamese history.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Vietnam was divided between the Trinh Lords, who ruled in the North under the titular kingdom of the Later Le monarchs, and the Nguyen Lords, who controlled the South and also nominally recognized the Later Le dynasty. Each ruling family and its bureaucracy had built up its wealth while paying little attention to the plight of the peasant farmers and villagers. By 1739, there was no more land for peasants in the north to acquire because the wealthy families had enlarged their estates and employed the peasants as tenant farmers. An edict passed in 1711 to stop wealthy families from amassing more land did not remedy the situation. Many peasants were reported to have left their villages in search of food, often dying along the roadside. According to one source, the price of rice was so high that peasants were forced to eat rats and snakes. As a result, four major, but unsuccessful, insurgencies erupted in the Red River Delta during this period.

In the south, the Nguyens of the Le Dynasty were having similar problems, By 1613, landowners had been warned about accumulating large tracts of land, and by 1669, the situation had become a crisis. At the same time, taxes were imposed on all agricultural, handicraft, and trade activities to pay for the 50-year war against the Trinhs and the excesses of the bureaucracy. One Nguyen lord was reported to have a harem of concubines and 146 children. At the time of the Tay Son Rebellion, the Trinh monarchy was controlled by a 6 year old boy, the son of the deceased emperor and his concubine.

The Tay son Rebellion began when three brothers, Nguyen Hue, Nguyen Nhac, and Nguyen Lu first took Binh Dinh Province in southern Vietnam by defeating the Nguyen family of the south. They then fought the Trinh family of the north. They had fought in the name of the Le Dynasty, however, they then turned against the Le emperors and took the country for themselves. Nguyen Hue took the name Quang Trung and declared himself Emperor first of the south, then the central part of Vietnam, and finally the north. The Tay Son Dynasty was praised for reuniting the country.

Once in power, members of the Tay Son Dynasty abolished the old tax systems which had caused villagers so much stress. They created a new system which was based on a Vietnamese, rather than a Chinese, model. Women were not only given more rights, some even became generals in the army. The village education was improved to try and alleviate the gap between the rich and the poor. They Tay Son brothers were especially harsh towards the bureaucracy, which they felt was at the root of all problems in Vietnam.

Dissension over who should rule developed in the Tay Son Dynasty. After he died in 1792, Quang Trung left the throne to his 10 year old son, rather than to his brother. Realizing the dynasty was weakening, the Prince Nguyen Anh of the defeated Nguyen clan, asked for assistance from the French who were only too eager to help.

In 1802, Nguyen Anh, with the help of the French, proclaimed himself Emperor Gia Long (1802-1820) of the Nguyen Dynasty and established his capital at Hue. His first goals were to return to an absolute monarchy and to revive the bureaucratic system. As a reaction against the Tay Son Dynasty, all rights were taken away from women and villagers were taxed in the old ways once again. The Confucian system reached new heights of complexity and excess. There were now 18 levels of bureaucrats, each with a different style of clothing, per-requisites, salaries, and degrees of access to the imperial court. Resentment in the villages grew in intensity. Pockets of resistance were found throughout the Tonkin Delta, and the emperors who followed Gia Long found themselves expending most of their energy trying to control their own people. Meanwhile, the French began an invasion of some Vietnamese cities.

After Gia Long died, the throne was taken over by Minh Mang (1820-1841), who was stricter in his adherence to Chinese Confucianism. As a result of his training, Minh Mang was brilliant in matters of history and Chinese writing, while he had no idea what was happening outside of the imperial city. One of his main goals was to develop a troop of elephants to insure his military superiority. Thus, he ordered searches into Cambodia and Laos for elephants during the 1820s and 1830s while peasants in his capital were rioting over a lack of food and Europeans were making headway with far more sophisticated weaponry. Minh Mang had two major problems: increasingly fierce opposition of the rebels in the Tonkin Delta, and the growing influence of foreign missionaries and traders. His response was to turn down all requests for trade treaties with different countries and to issue decrees against the French religious and missionary activity.

The next emperor, Thieu Tri (1841-1847), followed the same pattern of leadership. Resistance in the north grew even stronger. At the same time, Thieu Tri continued to resist foreign trade and jail missionaries. Frustrated, the French eventually moved to direct aggression by taking over Danang. However, the Emperor did not change his position to trade or missionary activity and the French eventually left Danang and moved south to Saigon.

The major thrust of the French takeover of southern Vietnam occurred during the reign of Tu Duc (1848-1883), the last emperor of independent Vietnam. His reign saw, a continuation and escalation of the problems of his predecessors. Instead of trying to change the Confucian style of leadership, Tu Duc tried to understand where, within Confucianism, he had failed. However, the answers were no longer to be found in the tenets of this doctrine. Rather than facing the problem of the French directly, Tu Duc, like Thieu Tri before him, put his energy into fighting the peasant uprisings directed against him all over northern Vietnam and even closing in on the capital at Hue.

The French had their own plan for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, a region which they later termed Indochina. Within Vietnam, they had already attracted a serious religious following of Catholic Vietnamese who considered themselves martyrs and were willing to help the French. At the same time, French explorers were mapping the region and developing a trade network between Indochina and Europe. With knowledge of strife occurring in the north, the French concentrated their efforts on the south which they easily invaded in 1859. They forced Tu Duc to sign a series of treaties which gave away much of the emperor's power. When he died, the French placed themselves in power, a place they remained for the next half-century.