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Vietnam Partition and the Advent of the Europeans
The degenerated Le dynasty, which endured under ten rulers
between 1497 and 1527, in the end was no longer able to maintain
control over the northern part of the country, much less the new
territories to the south. The weakening of the monarchy created a
vacuum that the various noble families of the aristocracy were
eager to fill. In 1527 Mac Dang Dung, a scholar-official who had
effectively controlled the Le for a decade, seized the throne,
prompting other families of the aristocracy, notably the Nguyen
and Trinh, to rush to the support of the Le. An attack on the Mac
forces led by the Le general Nguyen Kim resulted in the partition
of Vietnam in 1545, with the Nguyen family seizing control of the
southern part of the country as far north as what is now Thanh
Hoa Province. The Nguyen, who took the hereditary title
chua (see Glossary), continued to profess loyalty to the
Le dynasty. By the late sixteenth century the Trinh family had
ousted the Mac family and had begun to rule the northern half of
the country also in the name of the Le dynasty. The Trinh, who,
like the Nyuyen, took the title chua, spent most of the
seventeenth century attempting to depose the Nguyen. In order to
repulse invading Trinh forces, the Nguyen in 1631 completed the
building of two great walls, six meters high and eighteen
kilometers long, on their northern frontier. The Trinh, with
100,000 troops, 500 elephants, and 500 large junks, were
numerically far superior to their southern foe. The Nguyen,
however, were better equipped, having by this time acquired
Portuguese weapons and gunpowder, and, as the defending force,
had the support of the local people. In addition, the Nguyen had
the advantage of controlling vast open lands in the Mekong Delta,
wrested from the Khmer, with which to attract immigrants and
refugees from the north. Among those who took up residence in the
delta were an estimated 3,000 Chinese, supporters of the defunct
Ming dynasty, who arrived in 1679 aboard fifty junks and set
about becoming farmers and traders. The Nguyen, aided by the
Chinese settlers, succeeded in forcing the Khmer completely out
of the Mekong Delta by 1749.
After major offensives by the Trinh in 1661 and 1672
foundered on the walls built by the Nguyen, a truce in the
fighting ensued that lasted nearly 100 years. During that time,
the Nguyen continued its southward expansion into lands held, or
formerly held, by the Cham and the Khmer. The Trinh, meanwhile,
consolidated its authority in the north, instituting
administrative reforms and supporting scholarship. The nobility
and scholar-officials of both north and south, however, continued
to block the development of manufacturing and trade, preferring
to retain a feudal, peasant society, which they could control.
The seventeenth century was also a period in which European
missionaries and merchants became a serious factor in Vietnamese
court life and politics. Although both had arrived by the early
sixteenth century, neither foreign merchants nor missionaries had
much impact on Vietnam before the seventeenth century. The
Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French had all established
trading posts in Pho Hien by 1680. Fighting among the Europeans
and opposition by the Vietnamese made the enterprises
unprofitable, however, and all of the foreign trading posts were
closed by 1700.
European missionaries had occasionally visited Vietnam for
short periods of time, with little impact, beginning in the early
sixteenth century. The best known of the early missionaries was
Alexandre de Rhodes, a French Jesuit who was sent to Hanoi in
1627, where he quickly learned the language and began preaching
in Vietnamese. Initially, Rhodes was well-received by the Trinh
court, and he reportedly baptized more than 6,000 converts;
however, his success probably led to his expulsion in 1630. He is
credited with perfecting a romanized system of writing the
Vietnamese language (quoc ngu), which was probably
developed as the joint effort of several missionaries, including
Rhodes. He wrote the first catechism in Vietnamese and published
a Vietnamese-Latin-Portuguese dictionary; these works were the
first books printed in quoc ngu. Quoc ngu was used
initially only by missionaries; classical Chinese or chu
nom continued to be used by the court and the bureaucracy.
The French later supported the use of quoc ngu, which,
because of its simplicity, led to a high degree of literacy and a
flourishing of Vietnamese literature. After being expelled from
Vietnam, Rhodes spent the next thirty years seeking support for
his missionary work from the Vatican and the French Roman
Catholic hierarchy as well as making several more trips to
Vietnam.
The stalemate between the Trinh and the Nguyen families that
began at the end of the seventeenth century did not, however,
mark the beginning of a period of peace and prosperity. Instead
the decades of continual warfare between the two families had
left the peasantry in a weakened state, the victim of taxes
levied to support the courts and their military adventures.
Having to meet their tax obligations had forced many peasants off
the land and facilitated the acquisition of large tracts by a few
wealthy landowners, nobles, and scholar--officials. Because
scholar--officials were exempted from having to pay a land tax,
the more land they acquired, the greater was the burden that fell
on those peasants who had been able to retain their land. In
addition, the peasantry faced new taxes on staple items such as
charcoal, salt, silk, and cinnamon, and on commercial activities
such as fishing and mining. The disparate condition of the
economy led to neglect of the extensive network of irrigation
systems as well. As they fell into disrepair, disastrous flooding
and famine resulted, unleashing great numbers of starving and
landless people to wander aimlessly about the countryside. The
widespread suffering in both north and south led to numerous
peasant revolts between 1730 and 1770. Although the uprisings
took place throughout the country, they were essentially local
phenomena, breaking out spontaneously from similar local causes.
The occasional coordination between and among local movements did
not result in any national organization or leadership. Moreover,
most of the uprisings were conservative, in that the leaders
supported the restoration of the Le dynasty. They did, however,
put forward demands for land reform, more equitable taxes, and
rice for all. Landless peasants accounted for most of the initial
support for the various rebellions, but they were often joined
later by craftsmen, fishermen, miners, and traders, who had been
taxed out of their occupations. Some of these movements enjoyed
limited success for a short time, but it was not until 1771 that
any of the peasant revolts had a lasting national impact.
Data as of December 1987
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