Some countries in this world have what some might describe as quite unusual shapes.
Some are known for being long and skinny, one in particular being Vietnam, which strangely
I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about on this channel.
So let’s get into it, why does Vietnam have this peculiar shape?
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To best understand Vietnam’s geography, one might divide the country into 3 pieces:
northern, central, and southern.
If you’re Vietnamese you might know these regions as Bắc Bộ, Trung Bộ, and Nam
Bộ (yeah shocker, I don’t actually speak Vietnamese).
Meanwhile if you’re more familiar with their old exonyms, you might have heard of Tonkin,
Annam, and Cochinchina, but I’m not gonna use those names here.
At its narrowest points in the center of the country, Vietnam’s western border with Laos
(yes, it’s pronounced “Lao”) is less than 50 kilometers from the world’s most
controversial sea.
From Vinh to Đà Nẵng, 400km of the country is confined to a corridor not even 100km wide
at its widest point.
So, why...yyy [crash] oh god that was too many Y’s!
The answer as to why this is the case is rooted in Vietnam’s tumultuous history, and geography
of course, but the history provides us some good backstory for context.
Turn the clock back a couple thousand years, and Vietnam didn’t look like this but like
this.
In fact even calling it “Vietnam” would be a huge misnomer, as this country was called
by many different names throughout its history, so I’ll just call it by the name of whatever
kingdom ruled from this general area at whatever time I’m talking about.
The first civilizations here-- yes, we’re looking back that far-- arose around the Red
and Ma river valleys in the north of the modern country.
Modern historians believe the first true, non-mythical states arose here around 500
BC, but as fascinating as this all is though, we must now immediately fast forward to the
2nd millennium AD.
A large part of this country’s history though was falling under some form of imperial Chinese
rule.
First from the Han invasion of Nanyue in 111 BC to the Trung sisters’ rebellion in AD
39, then from 4 years later until 541, then a third time from 602 to 905, followed by
a period of autonomy under Tang China until 938.
Side note, Nányuè was a Chinese term meaning ‘Southern Yue’, which in this part was
pronounced more like Nam Việt, which eventually became the country’s name in 1804, except
with the morphemes switched around at the request of the Qing emperor.
Anyway, at this point in history, this area formed a country known as Đại Việt, ruled
by a succession of different dynasties.
Đại Việt then fell under Chinese domination for the fourth time for a brief period from
1407 to 1428, where it was taken over by the Ming Empire.
In 1428 Lê Thái Tổ broke the country off from China and began the Lê Dynasty, or more
specifically the Later Lê Dynasty, as the Lê family had previously been in power centuries
earlier.
Đại Việt was still mostly centered around the traditional Vietnamese heartland in the
north though, and it was largely in the 1470’s when Lê Thánh Tông conquered most of Champa
to the south.
At around this point, Đại Việt could be said to have adopted a new policy known
by the term ‘nam tiến’, literally a “southward advance”.
Thus Thánh Tông had now set his kingdom’s diplomatic policies to expansionist.
Severely oversimplifying everything (because I’m just an American who only wants to know…
why the border all weird), Vietnam’s gradual expansion south came as a result of a series
of wars against their southern neighbors, the kingdom of Champa.
What would later become southern Vietnam was at this point known as Champa.
A union of different polities, this area was inhabited by the Cham peoples (who are still
around today, by the way, just thought I’d mention so no one’s confused).
The Cham had traditionally inhabited what is now Central and Southern Vietnam, establishing
thriving trading relations with outside powers from powerhouses like Indrapura.
Their language, Cham, is of the Austronesian family, closer to Malay, Indonesian, and Tagalog,
whereas Vietnamese is classified as Austro-Asiatic (anyone else think linguists could’ve maybe
differentiated those names a bit more?).
As Vietnam sought to expand its influence and further its development, Vietnamese settlers
began to move into lands conquered from Champa, settling new villages in the area.
Vietnam’s southward expansion though was significantly hemmed in by these mountains
here, the Annamite Range.
These mountains create a natural border between Vietnam and Laos, or I guess at this time
the Kingdoms of Đại Việt and Lan Xang.
However some parts of Vietnam, namely the Central Highlands, fall on the western side
of the range, likely having to do with the fact that these mountains are only tallest
in the northwest in Laos.
Somewhat interestingly, the coast did once extend much further out into modern-day water.
With sea levels around 50 meters lower the coastline once extended more than 150km further
than today, exposing now sunken lands like Nanhailand until as (relatively) recently
as around 5000 BC.
That doesn’t really help Vietnam all that much today though so back to the history.
Aside from expanding his kingdom southward though, Lê Thánh Tông also led a campaign
westward through these mountains as far as what is now Eastern Myanmar in the Đại
Việt-Lan Xang War of 1479-84.
This war turned out a complete failure for Đại Việt in terms of gaining territory,
but it did allow them to largely destabilize their westerly neighbors and thus firmly secure
their western borders.
Okay now that explains why Vietnam has such a tiny, narrow corridor, but Vietnam’s southward
expansion didn’t end until it reached the very bottom of the peninsula, past the Mekong
River Delta, which at that point was still part of Cambodia, or Kampuchea.
In the 15th century the Lê dynasty was briefly ousted by the Mạc dynasty, however just
a few years later the Lê were able to come back to power, but couldn’t quite get the
whole country together, with the Mạc still in power north of the Red River.
Later on, the Nguyễn clan were able to carve out a foothold in the south, rivaling the
Lê, who were now essentially puppets of the Trịnh and the Nguyễn clans, who had helped
them defeat the Mạc.
The Trịnh-Nguyễn Civil War in the 17th century in particular caused Viet refugees
to seek refuge wherever possible.
Cambodian King Chey Chetta II allowed them refuge in the city of Prey Nokor in 1623,
in exchange for aid against Siam.
Gradually more and more Vietnamese moved to the city, causing it to slowly become more
and more Vietnamized.
It was further into the 18th century however when various Nguyễn lords sought to expand
even further south and conquer the Mekong Delta for themselves, including Prey Nokor,
or as it was known in Vietnamese, Saigon.
Hemmed in by mountains and having spent much of its early history under Chinese influence,
the kingdoms which would evolve into modern Vietnam saw a need to expand in order to develop
further, and the only way to do so realistically was straight south in this narrow corridor.
One unfortunate side of all this history though were periods of genocide between different
groups, namely against the Chams in the late 15th century, and later massacres against
Vietnamese and Cambodians within each-other’s empires.
I’m not going to elaborate too much on this since these videos are tedious to make and
I would like to still be paid for my work, but it would’ve been incredibly disingenuous
to talk about this history without at least mentioning this.
I want to credit the work of Ben Kiernan, particularly his book covering the history
of Vietnam, as well as the PR team on the KhAnubis Discord server for helping me research
this and *hopefully* not get things incredibly wrong.
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