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Brief history of Vietnam |

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BRIEF HISTORY OF VIETNAM:The Vietnamese first appeared in history as one of many scattered peoples living in what is now South China and Northern Vietnam just before the beginning of the Christian era. According to local tradition, the small Vietnamese kingdom of Au Lac, located in the heart of the Red River valley, was founded by a line of legendary kings who had ruled over the ancient kingdom of Van Lang for thousands of years. Historical evidence to substantiate this tradition is scanty, but archaeological findings indicate that the early peoples of the Red River delta area may have been among the first East Asians to practice agriculture, and by the 1st century BC they had achieved a relatively advanced level of Bronze Age civilization. |

CHINESE INFLUENCE:In 221 BC the Ch'in dynasty in China completed its conquest of neighboring states and became the first to rule over a united China. The Ch'in Empire, however, did not long survive the death of its dynamic founder, Shih Huang Ti, and the impact of its collapse was soon felt in Vietnam. In the wreckage of the empire, the Chinese commander in the south built his own kingdom of Nam Viet (South Viet; Chinese, Nan Y?the young state of Au Lac was included. In 111 BC, Chinese armies conquered Nam Viet and absorbed it into the growing Han Empire. The Chinese conquest had fateful consequences for the future course of Vietnamese history. After briefly ruling through local chieftains, Chinese rulers attempted to integrate Vietnam politically and culturally into the Han Empire. Chinese administrators were imported to replace the local landed nobility. Political institutions patterned after the Chinese model were imposed, and Confucianism became the official ideology. The Chinese language was introduced as the medium of official and literary expression, and Chinese ideographs were adopted as the written form for the Vietnamese spoken language. Chinese art, architecture, and music...