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Vietnam under Chinese rule or ''Bắc thuộc'' (北屬, lit. "belonging to the north") (111 BCE–939 CE, 1407–1428 CE) refers to four historical periods when several portions of modern-day Northern Vietnam was under the rule of various
Chinese dynasties For most of its history, China was organized into various Dynasty, dynastic states under the rule of Hereditary monarchy, hereditary monarchs. Beginning with the establishment of dynastic rule by Yu the Great , and ending with the Imperial Edic ...
. ''Bắc thuộc'' in Vietnamese historiography is traditionally considered to have started in 111 BC, when the
Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...
conquered
Nanyue Nanyue ( zh, c=南越 or 南粵, p=Nányuè, cy=, j=Naam4 Jyut6, l=Southern Yue, , ), was an ancient kingdom founded in 204 BC by the Chinese general Zhao Tuo, whose family (known in Vietnamese as the Triệu dynasty) continued to rule until ...
(Vietnamese "Nam Việt") and lasted until 939, when the Ngô dynasty was founded. A fourth, relatively brief, 20-year rule by the
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...
during the 15th century is usually excluded by historians in their discussion of the main, almost continuous, period of Chinese rule from 111 BC to 939 AD. Historians such as Keith W. Taylor, Catherine Churchman, and Jaymin Kim assert that these periods and stereotypes enveloped the narrative as modern constructs, however, and critique them as tools for various nationalist and irredentist causes in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
,
Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
, and other countries.


Geographical extent and impact

The four periods of Chinese rule did not correspond to the modern borders of Vietnam, but were mainly limited to the area around the
Red River Delta The Red River Delta or Hong River Delta () is the flat low-lying plain formed by the Red River and its distributaries merging with the Thái Bình River in Northern Vietnam. ''Hồng'' (紅) is a Sino-Vietnamese word for "red" or "crimson". T ...
and adjacent areas. During the first three periods of Chinese rule, the pre-Sinitic indigenous culture was centered in the northern part of modern Vietnam, in the alluvial deltas of the Hong, Cả and Mã Rivers. Ten centuries of Chinese rule left a substantial genetic footprint, with settlement by large numbers of ethnic Han, while opening up Vietnam for trade and cultural exchange. Elements of
Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the Cradle of civilization#Ancient China, world's earliest cultures, said to originate five thousand years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia called the Sinosphere as a whole ...
such as language, religion, art, and way of life constituted an important component of traditional Vietnamese culture until modernity. This cultural affiliation with China remained true even when Vietnam was militarily defending itself against attempted invasions, such as against the
Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Div ...
.
Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
remained the official script of Vietnam until French colonization in the 20th century, despite the rise in vernacular
chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented by new characters ...
literature in the aftermath of the expulsion of the Ming.


Historiography


French historiography

History of Vietnam being invaded and ruled by China rule has had substantial influence from French colonial scholarship and Vietnamese postcolonial national history writing. During the 19th century, the French promoted the view that Vietnam had little of its own culture and borrowed it almost entirely from China. They did this to justify European colonial rule in Vietnam. By portraying the Vietnamese as merely borrowers of civilization, the French situated themselves in a historical paradigm of bringing civilization to a backwards region of the world. French scholar Léonard Aurousseau argued that not only did Vietnam borrow culturally and politically from China, the population of Vietnam was also directly the result of migration from the state of Yue in China. This line of thought was followed by Joseph Buttinger, who authored the first English language history book on Vietnamese history. He believed that to fight off the Chinese, the Vietnamese had to become like the Chinese.


Vietnamese national historiography

Another narrative, the national school of Vietnamese history, portrays the period in "a militant, nationalistic, and very contemporary vision through which emerged a hypothetical substratum of an original Vietnam that was miraculously preserved throughout a millennium of the Chinese presence." The national Vietnamese narrative depicts the Chinese as a corrupt and profit-driven people and merely the first of the foreign colonizing empires that were eventually driven from Vietnam. According to Catherine Churchman, this is not an entirely new historical tradition, but a rewriting or updating of it, and has roots in
Dai Viet Dai may refer to: Names * Dai (given name), a Welsh or Japanese masculine given name * Dai (surname) (戴), a Chinese surname * Bảo Đại (保大), Emperor of Vietnam from 1926 to 1945 Places and regimes * Dai Commandery, a commandery of ...
, which portrayed itself as the Southern Empire equal to the Northern Empire (China). Dai Viet literati of the
Trần Trần (陳) or Tran is the second most common Vietnamese surname after Nguyen. More than 10% of all Vietnamese people share this surname. History The Tran ruled the Trần dynasty, a golden era in Vietnam, and successfully repelled the Mongol ...
and dynasties sought an ancient origin for their autonomy prior to Chinese rule and traced their genealogy to
Triệu Đà Zhao Tuo (), rendered as Triệu Đà in Vietnamese, was a Qin dynasty Chinese general and first emperor of Nanyue. He participated in the conquest of the Baiyue peoples of Guangdong, Guangxi and Northern Vietnam. After the fall of the Qin, ...
or the semi-legendary
Hồng Bàng dynasty The Hồng Bàng period (), also called the Hồng Bàng dynasty,Pelley, p. 151 was a legendary ancient period in Vietnamese historiography, spanning from the beginning of the rule of Kinh Dương Vương over the kingdom of Văn Lang (initia ...
. They recorded that the Northern Empire suffered defeat for not respecting these views. However, scholars such as Nhi Hoang Thuc Nguyen argue that "the trope of a small country consistently repelling the China’s cultural force is a recent, postcolonial, mid-20th-century construction". Works by Japanese scholars in the 1970s as well as in the English language in the 1980s have taken on elements of the national school. Katakura Minoru's ''Chūgoku shihaika no betonamu'' emphasizes the innate characteristics of the Vietnamese people. Keith Taylor's ''The Birth of Vietnam'' (1983) asserts a strong continuity from the semi-legendary kingdoms of the Red River Plain to the founding of Dai Viet, which was the result of a thousand-year struggle against the Chinese that culminated in the restoration of Vietnamese sovereignty. Jennifer Holmgren's ''The Chinese Colonisation of Northern Vietnam'' uses ''Sinicization'' and ''Vietnamization'' as terms to refer to political and cultural change in different directions. Works following the national school of Vietnamese history retroactively assign Vietnamese group consciousness to past periods ( Han- Tang era) based on evidence in later eras. The national school of Vietnamese history has remained practically unchanged since the 1980s and has become the national orthodoxy.


Anachronisms

The argument for an intrinsic, intractable, and distinctly Southeast Asian Vietnamese identity in the Red River Plain throughout history has been categorized by Catherine Churchman as ''context'', ''cultural continuity'', and ''resistance''. ''Context'' refers to the downplaying of similarities between Vietnam and China while emphasizing Vietnam's Southeast Asian identity in the postcolonial period. ''Cultural continuity'' refers to an intrinsic Vietnamese "cultural core" that has always existed in the Red River Plain since time immemorial. ''Resistance'' refers to the national struggle of the Vietnamese people against foreign aggressors. Proponents of this historical narrative, such as Nguyen Khac Vien, characterize the history of Vietnam under Chinese rule as a "steadfast popular resistance marked by armed insurrections against foreign domination", while opponents such as Churchman note the lack of evidence, anachronisms, linguistic problems, adherence to Chinese political and cultural norms, and similarities as well as differences with other peoples under Chinese rule. The Vietnamese national narrative has introduced anachronisms in order to prove a unified Vietnamese national consciousness. The word Viet/Yue is often used to refer to an ethnic group when it had various meanings throughout history. There was no terminology to describe a Chinese-Vietnamese dichotomy during the Han-Tang period nor was there a term to describe a cohesive group inhabiting the area between the
Pearl River The Pearl River (, or ) is an extensive river system in southern China. "Pearl River" is often also used as a catch-all for the watersheds of the Pearl tributaries within Guangdong, specifically the Xi ('west'), Bei ('north'), and Dong ( ...
and the Red River. During the Tang period, the indigenous people of Annan or
Jinghai Circuit Jinghai District () is a district of the municipality of Tianjin, People's Republic of China, located in the southwest portion of the municipality, bordering Hebei province to the south and west, Xiqing District to the north and northeast, and Bi ...
were referred to as the ''Wild Man'' (Wild Barbarians), the ''Li'', or the Annamese (Annan people). In addition, the national history tends to have a narrow view limited to modern national boundaries, leading to conclusions of exceptionalism. Although it is true that the political situation in the Red River Plain was less stable than in Guangzhou to the north, such circumstances were not restricted to the area. The Vietnamese national narrative retroactively assigns any local rebellions, the rise of local dynasties, and their local autonomy with the motive of seeking national independence. These early moves toward autonomy in the 10th century were fairly tame compared to the activities of people who cushioned them from more direct contact with
Southern dynasties The Northern and Southern dynasties () was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered as ...
empires. Previously orthodox views in Vietnamese history were changed to fit a modern nationalist ideology. The rulers of
Nam Việt Nanyue ( zh, c=南越 or 南粵, p=Nányuè, cy=, j=Naam4 Jyut6, l=Southern Yue, , ), was an ancient kingdom founded in 204 BC by the Chinese general Zhao Tuo, whose family (known in Vietnamese as the Triệu dynasty) continued to rule until ...
(Nanyue), referred to as the
Triệu dynasty The Triệu dynasty or Zhao dynasty (; ; 茹趙) ruled the kingdom of Nanyue, which consisted of parts of southern China as well as northern Vietnam. Its capital was Panyu, in modern Guangzhou. The founder of the dynasty, Zhao Tuo (Triệu Đ� ...
(Zhao dynasty), were reclassified as foreigners in modern Vietnamese historiography. While traditional Vietnamese historiography considered the Triệu dynasty to be an orthodox regime, modern Vietnamese scholars generally regard it as a foreign dynasty that ruled Vietnam. The oldest text compiled by a Vietnamese court, the 13th century ''
Đại Việt sử ký The ''Đại Việt sử ký'' (, vi-hantu, 大越史記, ''Annals of Đại Việt'') is the official historical text of the Trần dynasty, that was compiled by the royal historian Lê Văn Hưu and was finished in 1272. Considered the first ...
'', considered Nanyue to be the official starting point of their history. According to the ''Đại Việt sử ký'', Zhao Tuo established the foundation of
Đại Việt Đại Việt (, ; literally Great Việt), was a Vietnamese monarchy in eastern Mainland Southeast Asia from the 10th century AD to the early 19th century, centered around the region of present-day Hanoi. Its early name, Đại Cồ Việt,(ch ...
. However, later historians in the 18th century started questioning this view. Ngô Thì Sĩ argued that
Zhao Tuo Zhao Tuo (), rendered as Triệu Đà in Vietnamese language, Vietnamese, was a Qin dynasty Chinese general and first emperor of Nanyue. He participated in the conquest of the Baiyue peoples of Guangdong, Guangxi and Northern Vietnam. After ...
was a foreign invader and Nanyue a foreign dynasty that should not be included in Vietnamese history. This view became the mainstream among Vietnamese historians in
North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; ; VNDCCH), was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty fully recognized in 1954 Geneva Conference, 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it o ...
and later became the state orthodoxy after reunification. Nanyue was removed from the national history while Zhao Tuo was recast as a foreign invader.Yoshikai Masato, "Ancient Nam Viet in historical descriptions",
Southeast Asia: a historical encyclopedia, from Angkor Wat to East Timor
', Volume 2, ABC-CLIO, 2004, p. 934.
Language has also been used as evidence for a distinct Vietnamese identity in the Han-Tang period. However, some research points to the formation of a Vietnamese language only afterward as the result of a creolization and language shift involving
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
.


Linguistic influence

The periods of Chinese rule over Vietnam also saw the linguistic transformations of several lects in Northern Vietnam, including Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Muong and many other languages. These languages are often referred to as a regional sprachbund known as
Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighb ...
. Vietnamese and Muong, under heavy linguistic influence from Chinese and Tai-Kadai languages, have completed
tonogenesis Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis ...
,
monosyllabic In linguistics, a monosyllable is a word or utterance of only one syllable. It is most commonly studied in the fields of phonology and morphology. The word has originated from the Greek language Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Ind ...
ization, and
grammaticalization Grammaticalization (also known as grammatization or grammaticization) is a linguistic process in which words change from representing objects or actions to serving grammatical functions. Grammaticalization can involve content words, such as noun ...
of Chinese loan words to become classifiers and aspect markers; while at another extreme, the Southern Vietic languages have robustly polysyllabic
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
s and derivational or inflectional
morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...
much like conservative
Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority popu ...
.


Periods of Chinese rule

The four periods of Chinese rule in Vietnam:


Census data


See also

*
China–Vietnam relations Relations between Vietnam and China ( zh, 中越关系, p=, pinyin: ''Zhōng-Yuè Guān Xì''; ) had been extensive for a couple of millennia, with Northern Vietnam especially under heavy Sinosphere influence during historical times. Despite their ...
*
Chinese expansionism Territorial expansion took place during multiple periods of Chinese history, especially under the dynasties of Han, Tang, Yuan, and Qing. Chinese expansionism as a motivation or even coherent phenomenon has been contentiously discussed in re ...
*
Sinicization Sinicization, sinofication, sinification, or sinonization (from the prefix , 'Chinese, relating to China') is the process by which non-Chinese societies or groups are acculturated or assimilated into Chinese culture, particularly the language, ...


Notes


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Vietnam under Chinese rule on Encyclopædia Britannica
{{Foreign relations of China China–Vietnam relations Historical regions of China History of Imperial China 1st millennium in Vietnam 15th century in Vietnam