Coming of the Europeans
The first Portuguese sailors came ashore at Danang in 1516 and were soon followed by a proselytising party of Dominican missionaries. During the following decades the Portuguese began to trade with Vietnam, setting up a commercial colony alongside those of the Japanese and Chinese at Faifo (present-day Hoi An). The Catholic Church eventually had a greater impact on Vietnam than on any country in Asia except the Philippines (which was ruled by the Spanish for 400 years).
LORDING IT OVER THE PEOPLE
In a dress rehearsal for the tumultuous events of the 20th century, Vietnam found itself divided in half through much of the 17th and 18th centuries. The powerful Trinh Lords were later Le kings who ruled the North. To the south were the Nguyen Lords, who feigned tribute to the kings of the north but carried on like an independent kingdom. The powerful Trinh failed in their persistent efforts to subdue the Nguyen, in part because their Portuguese weaponry was far inferior to the Dutch armaments supplied to the Nguyen. For their part, the Nguyen expanded southwards again, absorbing the Khmer territories of the Mekong Delta.
THE LAST OF THE NGUYENS
Emperor Gia Long returned to Confucian values in an effort to consolidate his precarious position. Conservative elements of the elite appreciated the familiar sense of order, which had evaporated in the dizzying atmosphere of reform stirred up by the Tay Son Rebels. Gia Long's son . Emperor Minh Mang, worked to strengthen the state. He was profoundly hostile to Catholicism, which he saw as a threat to Confucian traditions, and extended this antipathy to all Western influences. The early Nguyen emperors continued the expansionist policies of the preceding dynasties, pushing into Cambodia and westward into the mountains along a wide front. They seized huge areas of Lao territory and clashed with Thailand to pick apart the skeleton of the fractured Khmer empire.
THE FRENCH TAKEOVER
France's military activity in Vietnam began in 1847, when the French Navy attacked Danang harbour in response to Emperor Thieu Tri's suppression of Catholic missionaries. Saigon was seized in early 1859 and, in 1862, Emperor Tu Duc signed a treaty that gave the French the three eastern provinces of Cochin china. However, over the next four decades the French colonial venture in Indochina was carried out haphazardly and without any preconceived plan. It repeatedly faltered and, at times, only the reckless adventures of a few mavericks kept it going. The next saga in French colonization began in 1872, when Jean Dupuis, a merchant seeking to supply salt and weapons to a Yunnan’s general via the Red River, seized the Hanoi Citadel. Captain Francis Gamier, ostensibly dispatched to rein in Dupuis, instead took over where Dupuis left off and began a conquest of the North. A few weeks after th e death of Tu Duc in 1883, the Fr ench attacked Hue and imposed the Treaty of Protectorate on the imperial court. There then began a tragi-comic struggle for royal succession that was notable for its palace coups, mysteriously dead emperors and heavy-handed French diplomacy. The Indo-Chinese Union proclaimed by the French in 1887 may have ended the existence of an independent Vietnam es e state, but active resistance continued in various parts of the country for the duration of French rule. The expansionist era came to a close and the Vietnamese were forced to return territory seized from Cambodia and Laos. The French colonial authorities carried out ambitious public works, such as the construction of the Saigon-Hanoi railway, the government taxed the peasants heavily to fund these activities , devastating the rural economy. Colonialism was supposed to be a profitable proposition, so operations became notorious for the abysmal wages paid by the French and the subhuman treatment of Vietnamese workers. Out of the 45.000 indentured workers at one Michelin rubber plantation, 12,000 died of disease and malnutrition between 1917 and 1944. Shades of King Leopold's Congo.
INDEPENDENCE ASPIRATIONS
Throughout the colonial period, a desire for independence simmered under the surface. Seething nationalist aspirations often erupted into open defiance of the French. This ranged from the publishing of patriotic periodicals to a dramatic attempt to poison the French garrison in Hanoi. The imperial court in Hue, although quite corrupt, was a centre of nationalist sentiment and the French orchestrated a game of musical thrones, as one emperor after another turned against their patronage. This comical caper culminated in the accession of Emperor Boa Dai in 1925, who was just 12 years old at the time and studying in France. Ultimately, the most successful of the anti colonialists were the communists, who were able to tune into the frustrations and aspirations of the population - especially the peasants - and effectively channel their demands for fairer land distribution. The story of Vietnamese communism, which in many ways is also the political biography of Ho Chi Minh, is complicated. Keeping it simple, the f irst Marxist grouping in Indochina was the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League , founded by Ho Chi Minh in Canton, China, in 1925. This was succeeded in February 1930 by the Vietnamese Communist Party. In 1941 Ho formed the League for the Independence of Vietnam, much better known as the Viet Minh, which resisted the Japanese and carried out extensive political activities during WWII . Despite its nationalist programme, the Viet Minh was, from its inception, dominated by Ho's communists. But Ho was pragmatic, patriotic and populist and understood the need
