Hanoi Hanoi Thành Pho Vietnam

Vietnamese historians regard Trieu Da as a defender of their homeland against an expanding Han empire.

In 111 BCE, however, the Chinese armies of Emperor Wu Di defeat the successors of Trieu Da and incorporate Nam Viet into the Han empire.

The Chinese are anxious to extend their control over the fertile Red River Delta, in part to serve as a convenient supply point for Han ships engaged in the growing maritime trade with India and Indonesia.

Wudi’s Han Chinese forces arrive at Nam Viet’s Red River delta in 113 and conquer the kingdom within two years, annexing the Dong-son homeland of Tonkin to the Chinese empire.

The conquered Nam Viet, divided into nine military administrative districts, becomes the Chinese province of Giao Chi.

The empire dispatches Chinese peasant-soldiers to set up villages and build forts in the region, which the Chinese call Annam (“Pacified South”).

Vietnam is governed leniently during the first century or so of Chinese rule, and the Lac lords maintain their feudal offices.

In the first century CE, however, China intensifies its efforts to assimilate its new territories by raising taxes and instituting marriage reforms aimed at turning Vietnam into a patriarchal society more amenable to political authority.

In response to increased Chinese domination, a revolt breaks out in Giao Chi, Cuu Chan, and Nhat Nam in CE 39, led by Trung Trac, the wife of a Lac lord who had been put to death by the Chinese, and her sister Trung Nhi.

The insurrection is put down within two years by the Han general Ma Yuan, and the Trung sisters drown themselves to avoid capture by the Chinese.

Still celebrated as heroines by the Vietnamese, the Trung sisters exemplify the relatively high status of women in Vietnamese society as well as the importance to Vietnamese of resistance to foreign rule.

In order to facilitate administration of their new territories, the Chinese build roads, waterways, and harbors, largely with corvée labor (unpaid labor exacted by government authorities, particularly for public works projects).

Agriculture is improved with better irrigation methods and the use of plows and draft animals, innovations which may have already been in use by the Vietnamese on a lesser scale.

New lands are opened up for agriculture, and settlers are brought in from China.

After a few generations, most of the Chinese settlers probably intermarry with the Vietnamese and identify with their new homeland.

Chinese rule over the Vietnamese becomes more direct following the ill-fated revolt, and the feudal Lac lords fade into history.

Ma Yuan establishes a Chinese-style administrative system of three prefectures and fifty-six districts ruled by scholar-officials sent by the Han court.

Although Chinese administrators replace most former local officials, some members of the Vietnamese aristocracy are allowed to fill lower positions in the bureaucracy.

The Vietnamese elite in particular receive a thorough indoctrination in Chinese cultural, religious, and political traditions.

One result of Sinicization, however, is the creation of a Confucian bureaucratic, family, and social structure that give the Vietnamese the strength to resist Chinese political domination in later centuries, unlike most of the other Yue peoples who are sooner or later assimilated into the Chinese cultural and political world.

Nor is Sinicization so total as to erase the memory of pre-Han Vietnamese culture, especially among the peasant class, which retains the Vietnamese language and many Southeast Asian customs.

Chinese rule has the dual effect of making the Vietnamese aristocracy more receptive to Chinese culture and cultural leadership while at the same time instilling resistance and hostility toward Chinese political domination throughout Vietnamese society.

The Chinese census shows nearly one million people living in Vietnam.

The Trung sisters, soon to become famous as rebel leaders against Chinese and eventually regarded as national heroines of Vietnam, had been born into a military family in a rural Vietnamese village.

Their father was a prefect of Mê Linh, a rural district (huyện) of present Hanoi; therefore the sisters had grown up in a house well-versed in the martial arts.

They have also witnessed the cruel treatment of the Viets by their Chinese overlords.

The Trưng sisters have spent much time studying the art of warfare, as well as learning fighting skills.

When a neighboring prefect came to visit Mê Linh, he had brought with him his son, Thi Sách, who met and fell in love with Trưng Trắc during the visit, and they were soon married.

With Chinese rule over the region of resent northern Vietnam growing extremely exacting, and the policy of forcible assimilation into the Chinese mold, Thi Sách had taken a stand against the Chinese, conspiring with other nobles to throw off the yoke of the Han dynasty, whose bureaucratic rule threatens indigenous Vietnamese feudalism.

The response of the local Chinese official was to execute him as a warning to all those who contemplate rebellion.

His death spurs his wife to take up his cause and the flames of insurrection spread.

After successfully repelling a small Chinese unit from their village in CE 39, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị had assembled a large army.

Within months, they have taken back many (about 65) citadels from the Chinese, and have liberated Nam Việt.

They become queens of the country, and manage to resist subsequent Chinese attacks on Nam Việt for over two years.

The Trung sisters’ rebel forces have seized about sixty-five Chinese strongholds by 40 and forced the Chinese commander to flee.

The sisters declare themselves queens of a large independent state approximating the region of present northern Vietnam.

The Trung sisters’ poorly trained troops, unsupported by the peasantry, are overwhelmed in 43 by invading Chinese forces under General Ma Yuan.

Routed near present Hanoi, the sisters withdraw to Hat Mon (Son Tay), where General Ma decisively defeats them.

Disgraced, the Trung sisters drown themselves at the confluence of the Red and Day Rivers, and the Chinese regain control of the area.

A Han-Viet ruling class owning large tracts of rice lands arises in the first and second centuries CE.

More than one hundred and twenty brick Han tombs will be excavated in northern Vietnam, indicating Han families that, rather than returning to China, had become members of their adopted society and were no longer, strictly speaking, Chinese.

Although they brought Chinese vocabulary and technical terms into their new culture, after a generation or two, they probably spoke Vietnamese.