PEOPLE

TAB Boar Wuple
toiy impul~es of attraction and repulsion that bind it to China. For
a thousand yars (1 11 BC to AD 939) northern Vietnam was governed
as part of a Chinese colony. During that urn the Vittname
thoroughly abswkl Chinese cultural tfpdition while rebelling
whenever they judged the power of a dynasty in China to be weak.
Perhaps the most famous of the rebels were the Trung sisters, who
led Vietnamest armies in a desperate stand against the Chinese in
AD #43 and who had become goddesses in Vietnamese mythology
by the twelfth century. (They were still being honoured in ceremonies
in hh the communist north and the anti-communist south during
the Vieman war,)
After the Viemamest broke China's hold, annits from the north
invaded many times (in 981,1075-77,1250 and 1280,1406-27 and
1788) always ultimately unsucca6fully, This history of rejection of
China, whih at the m e time drawing fram the daepcst resources
of Chinese culture and paying appropriate homage to Peking, fostered
the historial ideal that has sustained Vietnamese nationalism
until taday: that a united Vietnam has always misted, that its
antecedents are as venerable as China's and that its internal harmony
can only be managed by a single ruler. Tfit ideal mler was one who
could mist China while absorbing its &adition.
As they mtablished themselvts in the mow, mountainous
mnay shaped like the letter S, which stretches for 2000 kilometres
nmh to mth and is only 50 kilometres wide at its narrowest point,
the Vietnam= =me into conflict with their southern neighboun.
The Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Chnmp, which hd established
itself on the nneal Vietnamese coast in AD 192 and hd at times
held sway in southern Cambodia (sailing up he Mekong in 1177
to sack Angkw), was eliminated after bitter wars. The Vietnamese
pressed upon the Khmers, who were also h ~ w in d the west by
the Thais. By 1672 the Vietnamese had pushed south to Snigon and
from there they spread to occupy the Mtkong delta. CamMia paid
tribute to the Vietnamese cwrt and for a while was incotpurated into
Vietnam.
The Vietnam also fought among themselves. A struggle for
supremacy between the Trinh family in the north and the Nguyen
Yr3.lily in the south Lted from 1620 until 17?7, during which the
Nguyen built walls across the waist of Vietnam near the seventeenth
parallel which kcme the dividing line between north and south in
1954 (after tht Geneva agreements which brought French rule to
an end). Vietnam was finally united in 1802 with three mdn regions,
Tonkin (capital: Hanoi) in the north, Anmm (capital: Hue) in the
centre and Coehin China (capital: Saigon) in the south.
The Viemamtse mbsorhd little of the Hindu culture of their
neighboun. Some influence of Cham music has been detected and
Vietname generals used elephants, which are potent in Hindu lore,
while the Chinese favoured horses, but this was probably simply
kcause the elephants were more mobile and some accounts suggest
the horses were afraid of them. But the Vietnamcst never adopted
the symbol^ of Hinduism that had kcome established in South-East
Asia - the lingam, the gum, the mountain-temple, Sanskrit, nor,
indeed, religious tolmnce. Their smgth was a village-based
society linked in the mind, especially of the peasant, with a higher
order of values expressed in the Confucian idea of a governing Ctite.
Their method5 were social integrntion, physical mptiw and plitical
unity. They moved relentlessly ams8 the floodad rice fields
of the southern delta and pcninaula, hwd-working and selfsuficienc,
and it is probable, had the French not arrived, that they
would have occupied a substantial pm if not the whole of what
b m e known as Indo-China. On the other hand, of course, if the
Vietnamese had not s t d against China, the Chinese might well
have occupied all of Indo-China thernsclvts. This argument eontinues
today in the contrary claims mmde by kkhg and Hnnoi about
each other's intentions in South-East Asia,
The first Europeans in Viemam (1535) were derb and missionaries
and although the Dutch and the Portuguese meddled
occasionally in the epic Trinh-Nguyen feud, European govmmtnts
did not become interested in Vietn~m until the end of the eighteenth
century. A missionary, Pierre Pigncau (dc Behaine), was respon9iblc
for the first gestures of official French interest, He became a supporter
of Nguyen Anh and journeyed to France in 1787 to plead his
East at the court of Vmaillcs, With him, given as r pledge, was
Nguycn's four-year-old mn and heir, Canh. The court, which was
on the verge of the French revolution, gave little thought to the political
worth of the priest's mission, although the boy cfeatcd excitement
in the salons. However, a treaty was signed between Frana