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Vietnam Political Resistance to the Chinese
The sixth century was an important stage in the Vietnamese
political evolution toward independence. During this period, the
Vietnamese aristocracy became increasingly independent of Chinese
authority, while retaining Chinese political and cultural forms.
At the same time, indigenous leaders arose who claimed power
based on Vietnamese traditions of kingship. A series of failed
revolts in the late sixth and early seventh centuries increased
the Vietnamese national consciousness. Ly Bi, the leader of a
successful revolt in 543 against the Liang dynasty (502-556), was
himself descended from a Chinese family that had fled to the Red
River Delta during a period of dynastic turbulence in the first
century A.D. Ly Bi declared himself emperor of Nam Viet in the
tradition of Trieu Da and organized an imperial court at Long
Bien. Ly Bi was killed in 547, but his followers kept the revolt
alive for another fifty years, establishing what is sometimes
referred to in Vietnamese history as the Earlier Ly dynasty.
While the Ly family retreated to the mountains and attempted
to rule in the style of their Chinese overlords, a rebel leader
who based his rule on an indigenous form of kingship arose in the
Red River Delta. Trieu Quang Phuc made his headquarters on an
island in a vast swamp. From this refuge, he could strike without
warning, seizing supplies from the Liang army and then slipping
back into the labyrinthine channels of the swamp. Despite the
initial success of such guerrilla tactics, by which he gained
control over the Red River Delta, Trieu Quang Phuc was defeated
by 570. According to a much later Vietnamese revolutionary,
General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese concepts of protracted warfare
were born in the surprise offensives, night attacks, and hit-and-
run tactics employed by Trieu Quang Phuc.
The Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907) instituted a series of
administrative reforms culminating in 679 in the reorganization
of Vietnamese territory as the Protectorate of Annam (or Pacified
South), a name later used by the French to refer to central
Vietnam. The Tang dynastic period was a time of heavy Chinese
influence, particularly in Giao Chau Province (in 203 the
district of Giao Chi, had been elevated to provincial status and
was renamed Giao Chou), which included the densely populated Red
River plain. The children of ambitious, aristocratic families
acquired a classical Confucian education, as increased emphasis
was placed on the Chinese examination system for training local
administrators. As a result, literary terms dating from the Tang
dynasty constitute the largest category of Chinese loan words in
modern Vietnamese. Despite the stress placed on Chinese
literature and learning, Vietnamese, enriched with Chinese
literary terms, remained the language of the people, while
Chinese was used primarily as an administrative language by a
small elite. During the Tang era, Giao Chau Province also became
the center of a popular style of Buddhism based on spirit cults,
which evolved as the dominant religion of Vietnam after the tenth
century. Buddhism, along with an expanding sea trade, linked
Vietnam more closely with South and Southeast Asia as Buddhist
pilgrims traveled to India, Sumatra, and Java aboard merchant
vessels laden with silk, cotton, paper, ivory, pearls, and
incense.
As Tang imperial power became more corrupt and oppressive
during the latter part of the dynasty, rebellion flared
increasingly, particularly among the minority peoples in the
mountain and border regions. Although the Viet culture of Giao
Chau Province, as it developed under Tang hegemony, depended upon
Chinese administration to maintain order, there was growing
cultural resistance to the Tang in the border regions. A revolt
among the Muong people, who are closely related to the central
Vietnamese, broke out in the early eighth century. The rebels
occupied the capital at Tong Binh (Hanoi), driving out the Tang
governor and garrison, before being defeated by reinforcements
from China. Some scholars mark this as the period of final
separation of the Muong peoples from the central.
Vietnamese, which linguistic evidence indicates took place
near the end of the Tang dynasty. In the mid-ninth century, Tai
minority rebels in the border regions recruited the assistance of
Nan-chao, a Tai mountain kingdom in the southern Chinese province
of Yunnan, which seized control of Annam in 862. Although the
Tang succeeded in defeating the Nan-chao forces and restoring
Chinese administration, the dynasty was in decline and no longer
able to dominate the increasingly autonomous Vietnamese. The Tang
finally collapsed in 907 and by 939 Ngo Quyen, a Vietnamese
general, had established himself as king of an independent
Vietnam.
Data as of December 1987
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