Hello, and welcome to Western SIEV. In this bonus author interview, I
sit down with Christopher Gusha and we discuss his new book, Vietnam A New
History. Vietnam is spoiler and lord more than just the war that would engulf
the region and the United States of America for a twelve year period in the
nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. It's a lot more. It's in many ways
the nexus of a number of different cultures and movements. His book is very
thorough and we'll give you a total understanding of everything that you would need to
know about this region and the people who inhabited. It's a rich history.
We delve into the distant past, connections with Western civilization and more. The
book, as always, is available for purchase right now. There's a link
in the show notes. You can click it to get to it. It's
available anywhere. So with further ado, here's the interview. All right,
As I mentioned moments ago, I'm sitting down here with historian Christopher Goosha,
and we're talking about his new book, Vietnam a New History, and that
word, if you're in America, brings up certain feelings most Americans when they
hear the word Vietnam, think of the war that cut the nation almost in
half. Yet, as you begin in the beginning pointing out in your book,
America was hardly the first imperial power to intervene in Vietnam. And I'm
maybe using that term anachronistically at that point, but I'm going to use it
for simplicity. What was it and what makes it still? That makes Vietnam
still such an enticing and essential prospect for imperial powers looking to expand. Yeah,
well, Adam, thank you first of all for inviting me to your
podcast. It's a real pleasure and it's a real honor. I think you're
right though, Americans, they know Vietnam by the war. They know what
is kind of this s shaped country which was divided in half in the middle
of the twentieth century. After the French got out of their war with the
Vietnamese led by Ho Chi Ming, the government that was led by Ho Chimin,
then the Americans took over and supported a southern Vietnam against Ho Chi Ming's
Northern Vietnam. So, yeah, it's this s Vietnam that we know divided
in half during the Vietnam War and has only been united back into its kind
of s form since the fall of Saigon fifty years ago. This year,
by the way, in a couple of months, we'll celebrate that anniversary.
So yeah, it does occupy an important place in the American imagination. And
you know, let's be honest, a lot of folks, you know,
they have fathers, grandfathers who were involved in the war as well. Your
question is a great one. It's something that interests me greatly. Is what
is it that made this small s like country divided in half or not so
interesting for so many people? And it is true if we start in the
twentieth century, it clearly was important for the Americans, and then before the
America, it was the French. Before the French, it was the Japanese.
And then we can even go back in time. And so if we
go back in time, and I'm gonna try to answer your question this way,
I think that there are places in the world for the better and for
the worst, that are gateways. And because they're gateways, they're coveted because
they're on the edge of one empire. For example, Vietnam is on the
edge of this massive empire, which, unlike the Roman Empire, still exists.
It's called China. It's it's kind of a gateway. So if you
you know your listeners, they might want to take a look at a map
after we're done, perhaps, and you can see that Vietnam is in this
unique position where it's between East Asia and Southeast Asia. It's between the Indian
Ocean world. You know, that goes all the way, you know,
beyond Southeast Asia to the Middle East, across this massive ocean. So it's
it's it's it's it's linked to the Indian Ocean world. But at the same
time it's linked to the Pacific Ocean as well, which is what brought it
into contact with the Americans. So what's interesting is that I do believe,
and I tried to show in the book, that Vietnam was coveted. It
was in a place that was coveted by big empires that touched up against each
other. If I could just go on for one more second, what I
find fascinating is that you have the Americans, the French, and the Japanese.
It's in the twentieth century. I think most of our listeners, you
know, they kind of know about a little bit of that. Certainly,
the Americans. But what they might not know is that when the Mongols,
yes, the Mongols in the thirteenth century got rolling and they went all the
way to Bagdad across Eurasia the Silk Road. They also went all the way
to the border with Vietnam, the northern border when the Mongols overthrew the Chinese
in the late thirteenth century. What I knew but didn't really understand that well
was Kublai Khan, who ruled the China for the Mongols. He wanted Vietnam
and he invaded it three times at Lee and each time the Vietnamese beat them
back. But why did he want it? And this is really interesting is
that Kublai Khan he knew that Vietnam was linked to the Indian Ocean world and
to its riches, so he went by the Silk Road overland, but he
wanted to go by the Maritimes Silk Road as well. So you can see
that Vietnam has been in this position for centuries and just to it's a very
long answer to your very short question. But when the Chinese finally threw out
the Mongols and created their own empire, and it's the Ming Empire, Minng,
and that was in thirteen sixty eight. What's interesting is that the third
emperor of the Ming dynasty, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, he
invaded occupied Vietnam for twenty years, and the Vietnamese fought him back again in
a very violent war. But why did the Ming do this? In part,
they did it because they wanted to get to the Indian Ocean. And
again it was at exactly that time, the early fifteenth century, that the
china Ese came rolling into Vietnam that they also sent their eight seven or eight
expeditions all the way into the Indian Ocean. That's a long answer to a
short question. I really apologize for that, but I want to make the
argument, and it's kind of the argument I'm making the book, is that
this country, for better or worse, maybe a little bit like Ukraine as
well on the western side of Eurasia. It's a gateway. It's a gateway.
Ukraine, we know, is a gateway between kind of Central Asia and
Western Europe. And I would say that Vietnam, to a certain extent is
something of a gateway between kind of eastern Eurasia, China, and the Indian
Ocean and when the Americans come rolling in the Pacific Ocean. As well as
a long answer, I apologize for that, but you asked me an interesting
question. By all means, I mean, I think the other thing I
think is interesting about that is we think of the Mongols as these terrific conquerors,
this war machine that really has only stopped at a couple of places they
make it, I believe to it attempts to invade Japan, and you could
argue that it's really the ocean that turns them back both of those times.
But you can't make that same argument in Vietnam. There's no sort of divine
intervention. I think what they learned is what a lot of people are going
to learn, which is there are some places in the world that are are
gateways. Then there are also some places in the world that are really hard
to conquer and hold on to. And a lot of modern people are going
to find that out too about Vietnam. You know, Afghanistan is one of
those places too, where it's just ooh, that is a tough place.
If you're going to try to set up shop and dominate the people there,
you're in for it. And maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that
later on, But I had another sort of broad question, and that is
I got this idea when I was reading the book that we do tend to
think about nation states like Vietnam, and I really mean states that were colonized
at some point. We're part of someone's colonial apparatus. And you'll see this
a lot of times in textbooks. We're all say pre colonial, post colonial
history, and it'll kind of draw that line down a map. And as
I was reading the book, I just kept thinking like, Yeah, this
is this is definitely a mistake as we're doing this. And I wondered if
you could talk about that a little bit because it was so clear to me
as I was digging into the book. Sure, well, it's another great
question. When I was asked to write the book, it was kind of
basic books in Penguin before they asked me to write kind of a general history
of Vietnam. So it could in my case, it's a general history of
Vietnam. It could be a general history of Egypt. It could be a
general history of China, Great Britain, any country that you like. But
if it is one of these countries that, as you say, would fall
into a colonial apparatus run by the Westerners. It does, and it has
led those of us writing these general textbooks on countries, for example, to
have to choose, and we always have to choose when we're right. I
think you would agree with that. We always have to set up some sort
of a periodization that we're going to use. When I was conceiving my book,
though, I wanted to be careful because there's there's a danger in picking
eighteen fifty eight for Vietnam when the French came knocking on the door. There's
a danger in picking eighteen forty two for China when the British with the Opium
Wars came knocking on the Chinese door. As you know, and I'm sure
many of your listeners do as well. Just to pick maybe another example,
how about seventeen ninety eight in Egypt when Napoleon Napoleon, when Napoleon came rolling
into to Egypt, and when we set up our books, a lot of
us, I can understand, to some extent, we saw those dates as
that's when the modern period began, That's when the West came. A lot
of the books they have the West opened up, you know, opened up
the China opened up, Vietnam opened up, Egypt brought in modernization, all
those things that we associate with modernity. I won't name them, but I
think, you know, our listeners will know what they are. And we
have to pick again, you know, dates at which we start our books.
But I wanted to be careful in my book to say, be careful
when you pick these dates, because they they black out a lot of other
stuff that happened before, and a lot of those things can really help us
to better understand that which would happen after. And so I know we're talking
about Vietnam, but you can't talk about China without talking about the remarkable modernity.
For example, of the Song dynasty between the ninth and the twelfth century,
you got if you start in eighteen forty two, you missed the Ming,
that's for sure. And I think you can make an argument that had
the Ming kept on trucking, if I can put it that way, in
the Indian Ocean, you know, had they not pulled their ships back,
and these were big expeditions during the first half to fifteenth century, the map
of the world could have been a lot different. So that's important, and
it's the same for Vietnam. If you choose eighteen fifty eight to start everything,
you miss a lot of what became before. And maybe to answer your
question, you miss certain levels of modernity that existed in Vietnam before eighteen fifty
eight. You missed the fact that Vietnam was an empire itself, like the
ming Ware as well. And it's not just a French empire, but there
was actually a Vietnamese empire. And believe me, the Cambodians, Alloosians,
the chim they're as much aware of the Vietnamese Empire as they are of the
French Empire, you know what I mean. So those are two examples of
things you can miss. You can miss pre Western forms of modernity, and
you can miss pre and non Western forms of Yeah, and I think it
is a Western history podcast obviously, but you know, try not to define
everything in terms of you know, West are in definitions. You know.
That's the problem when a lot of times when when you know, different textbooks
will talk about like, well this is progress. Now, well they mean
progress from a Western standpoint, and that's not necessarily fair. But I would
just say I'm someone I have absolutely nothing against teaching Western civilization or Chinese civilization
or Eastern civilization. But I would I would actually add to what you say
is that it makes history more interesting when we can compare the fact that there's
different forms of imperialism, different forms of modernity that we can talk about.
So my book, I think you might recall, is that it's not really
hostile to the West, it's just trying to open it up to the rest,
if I may, Yeah, it's a perfect way of putting it,
and I think that's a great way of understanding history. To be honest with
you, Let's talk a little bit more about Vietnam specifically. Now, I
want to start, and I am using these terms anachronistically because of course there
was no thing is with quotes around it China or Vietnam at this time.
But I wonder if you could start to talk about the relationship between we could
say, at least the Chinese and the Vietnamese in the third and second centuries
BCE, sort of when we're going back, we're really kind of starting the
interaction between those two cultures. You know, what did that look like?
And I guess I will say for listeners, if you're if you're not familiar
with the topography and geography. You know, it is actually a little helpful
to take a quick glance at a map and just just see the physical relationship
between the two, because it's it's kind of obvious that there's going to be
an interaction. Sure well, I would I would say, you know,
at the time which the Roman Empire was coming into being on the western end
of Eurasia, in the Mediterranean obviously in Rome, I call it the third,
fourth, fifth, sixth century before the Common Era, but when it
really started to to take off, as you know, I don't know,
let's call it the third century before the Common Era. You have something similar
going on on the eastern side of eur Asia. You have something similar going
on in what we call China today. Between the Yellow River if you look
on that map and the Yangxi River, you've got a core a little bit
like Rome and the Mediterranean was a core. There's a core group here as
well in China. And it's in that area between those two huge rivers that
cross all of China that you have the birth of the Qing dynasty qi N.
You have the birth of the Han dynasty h N and the Han dynasty,
you know, third century before the Common era to the third century of
this era, you know, it coincided with the Roman Empire more or less.
You know, the days aren't quite the same, but the two communicated
with each other, the two on both ends of your Asia. We have
these huge empires that came into being, or that it got bigger and bigger.
They communicated with each other by the Silk Road, as I think most
of your listeners will know. But again, I'm very favorable to you know,
the West and the rest, and it's interesting to put them on kind
of a parallel in a parallel framework. So to answer your question, in
the far East, in what we call China today, you have the birth
of the Han dynasty, and the Han dynasty will slowly but surely move to
the south and it will move into what we call southern China today, and
eventually we'll move into what we call northern Vietnam today. So you have this
core empire, let's just call it China. We have to give them names,
you know, we have to call it something. And so you have
this Chinese Empire which is moving southward, just like kind of the Roman Empire
moves all around the Mediterranean and towards the east. So to speak. At
the same time, you have a lot of small polities, you have tribes,
just like you have the goals you know in Western what we call Western
Europe today. So you have the tribes, small polities, small kingdoms in
southern China and north in Vietnam, and the name that the Chinese would give
to them would be well, one would be Barbarian, much like the Romans
would do as well, but another would be the one y U a n
which we translate as kind of the Viet people. So you have these Viet
people and they're situated to the south of the of the Chinese Empire. So
you have the emergence, for example, of a southern Kingdom of Vietnam,
which would be in the second century BC. You also have a little bit
before that, in the third century, before the Common era, you have
near Hanoi, the birth of a state that's called the the I don't want
to get in too many words, but the Kolowa, the Kolowa or al
Viet Kingdom. So you have two small kingdoms in northern what we call Northern
Vietnam today that briefly existed independently. Like other politics in Western Europe did as
well. Until the Han came moving in, just like the Romans came moving
in and conquered them for the better or for the word, and it was
often violent. There's no need to paper that over. It was often violent
because that's what conquerors do. And the Vietnamese, I'll say that that word.
The viet would enter into the Han Empire, which would be taken over
by the Tang dynasty later and for a thousand years, those brief Vietnamese kingdoms
that existed before the Common Error disappear. They're integrated into the Roman Empire,
much like the Goal were integrated into the Roman Empire as well, until the
Western Empire fell, you know, in the fourth century or the fifth century,
depending on how you wanted to find the end of the end of the
Western Empire in Rome. So you have something similar that's going on, you
know, the Goal who will eventually become let's say the French. They owe
a lot to this big empire, the Roman Empire, just as the Vietnamese
were part of the Chinese Empire until the tenth century. We'll get to that
in a moment if you want, but that's a long time that they were
in it. I think what's maybe interesting for your listeners to keep in mind.
And we get back to this kind of this geopolitical question that you posed
in the beginning, Why is this place always so coveted? I think it's
important maybe for your listeners to remember that if the Western Roman Empire fell in
the third or fourth century, and if it never came back, we can't
say the same about what happened in East Asia. The Haden Empire would fall,
but for better or for worse, not without a lot of fighting between
the states. The Chinese Empire would piece itself back together again. So in
Western Europe people tried to rebuild a Roman Empire. You could argue that Hitler
was the latest to try to do it. It didn't work. The Chinese
Empire is there to this very day. And so even when the Vietnamese left
the Chinese Empire when the Tong dynasty fell apart in the ninth and tenth centuries,
and the Vietnamese will regain their independence if you want, in the tenth
century, they always had to deal with this massive empire with which they shared
a border. Huh. And this I think is something that's that's really important.
Again, another long answer Adam to a very short question. Sorry about
that, No, perfectly, okay, I mean it is worth remembering that.
And I'm going to use the word China. Throughout the centuries, its
borders have changed, the names have changed, you know, but you could
you could always see it. And there are reverses, of course, there
are there are times when the kingdom is in retreat, you know, but
even up through the Qing, the last imperial dynasty, you know, you
have additions to China that dramatically increase its size to what it really is today,
to its modern borders. If you kind of look at China preaching,
you know, there's no Tibat, you know, there's not a lot in
the north. So it is those that ever growing threat. It's right.
It'd be like if suddenly, I'm just going to say, like suddenly in
the you know, ninth century, you know, Charlemagne is able somehow to
piece back together the entirety of the Roman Empire and it has a new name.
The world be very different if that were the case. Believe me,
the world would be a very different place today. And obviously a lot of
people dreamed of that happening, not least of all Charlemagne. But but I
think your point is extremely well taken. But as I think you're saying,
it never happened. So the French, France never had to deal with,
you know, a big Roman empire neighbor, so to speak, or the
British never had to deal with, you know, a little island over there,
like the Vietnamese in a way having to deal with a continental empire that
reconstituted itself like the Chinese did. Sorry, Adam, I cutch off because
because I think you're making a parallel that I find absolutely a conversation. That's
what I enjoy about it. But let's so let's talk about Vietnam for a
little bit. After after China begins a little bit of a retreat, so
it goes into this period of decline ninth tenth century ish and it it it
isn't able to maintain as much control over the peripheries anymore as it once was,
and that will change again. But during that time period, what happens
in Vietnam is do we have a series of kingdoms? Do we have one
kingdom? Like Well, if we were to sort of take a snapshot in
history as China's fading away temporarily, what would what would we see. So
you mean after the enemies obtain their independence in the tenth century, right,
Yeah, So, I mean it's true what they would see would be the
fading away of the Tong dynasty had been going on for a good hundred years
or so, which created opportunities for them for various people who were within the
Chinese Empire who wanted to take advantage of its falling apart in order to create
this post colonial state, which we're going to call naive. It was the
name. We can call it Vietnam if you want. But the thing that's
important is that the Vietnam that we see today did not exist in that s
form at this time, in the tenth eleventh centuries and all the way until
later. As we'll see, maybe it was Vietnam was Northern Vietnam. Vietnam
was centered on its capital in Hanoi. So what did they see. Well,
on the one hand, they had to create an increasingly effective, centralized
monarchical state. That was the first thing they had to deal with civil wars.
I'm going to be honest with you, as classic whenever an empire breaks
up, there's obviously different people who go after power. That happened, but
let's just say by the beginning of the eleventh century, we do have a
unified, independent Vietnam that exists. So it's going to try to improve agriculture,
improve commerce, tap into this international trade in the Indian Ocean that I
mentioned briefly a moment ago, in order to solidify its state. They'll be
already the Vietnamese will start to look towards the south, to the Cham people.
This is a people who dominated what we call central Vietnam, even parts
of southern Vietnam. They had been there since the beginning of the Common era.
So the idea that Vietnam was only ethnic Vietnamese is problematic, just like
China wasn't just the Han people. Nonetheless, we could go into other examples
as well. But they were tempted by the south, they were tempted by
the poll of the Indian Ocean, they were tempted by the lands of others.
And the Vietnamese were conquerors from an early period. It didn't really get
going till a little bit later on, but nonetheless that was where they looked
as well. They always kept their eye on what was going on in the
north with the Chinese. You know, that was important and of course the
Mongols came rolling in as well well in the thirteenth century in particular, So
there was a lot going on for this coveted part of the world, as
I mentioned a moment ago, so state craft, state building, tapping into
the international commerce, a little bit of colonial movement towards the south. But
oh my goodness, we got to watch out with what's going on in the
north. The Mongols, and then the Chinese would come as well. After
the Mongols. Yeah, let's talk about that, because I want to talk
about the Ming dynasty then becomes expansionist once again in the fourteenth century, and
so how did the Vietnamese and is very aggressive kingdom, So how did the
Vietnamese fare I think it's thirteen sixty eight or so is the year after that
point? How did they manage this new very aggressive Chinese came from to the
north. Yeah, well, as I think some of your listeners will know,
the Mongols will start to pull out and the Chinese will push them out
of China. Excuse me. In the fourteenth century, it gets rolling in
the thirteen forties, thirteen fifties, we get to the thirteen sixties, and
you have the future emperor hong Wu Hnngwu, who will defeat the Mongols,
drive them out, and he creates his capital in the city of Nanjing in
the south, and later he will move it to Beijing in the north.
So he comes to power as you said in thirteen sixty eight, now the
first emperor, he will die in thirteen ninety eight. For the first thirty
years, he was not interested in Vietnam. He was interested in the southwestern
part of what we call China today. So as you said about the Qing
dynasty, later on they would add different blocks to China, for example Tibet.
What's interesting is that the Ming dynasty Hong Woo, this is the Ming.
When he won in thirteen sixty eight, he created the Ming dynasty.
His name is hong Wong. He will colonize what we call Unan Province today,
and so he adds that actually the Mongols had conquered it before, and
he keeps it. The Mongols gave it to him and he will keep it
what we call u Non Province. Now, what's interesting, Adam, is
that he warned his sons don't overreach, fellas, don't overreach, don't overreach
into the Indian Ocean. I know that Kubla Khan and the Mongols wanted to
do that and don't overreach in David or in Vietnam, in northern Vietnam today,
So he warned them. The third emperor who took over were in fourteen
oh two did not listen. And his name is Jonglei Yonngle, And this
is someone who had dreams of expansion, and he went to work on them.
He went to work on him in the southwest as well, like his
father had done. But he's going to do two things, as I mentioned
a moment ago. On the one hand, he's going to send seven sometimes
we say eight huge expeditions into the Indian Ocean to get to the west,
not to Europe, but to the western side of the Indian Ocean. So
this is a century before the Portuguese, you know, go around Southern Africa,
et cetera and get to Malacca. But he wants to get there for
the same reason as the Portuguese and the Spanish and everybody else later, the
richest of this part of the world. So that's really really important. And
what we've learned over the last ten to fifteen years from some amazing research is
that these were in part military missions. So the Iberians Portuguese weren't the only
ones using force, gunpowder, weapons, and soldiers. So were Jungle's ships.
So this is important. Second thing that he did is he decided to
invade Vietnam. I won't go into the details. They're kind of complicated,
but in the end he said, let's go, We're going in. Diviet
was part of China before, it will be part of China today. So
he got rid of the word Vietnam or Diviet as it was called then,
and he made it again the province of Shaoshi. I won't give you the
spelling for that, but let's just say the idea was, it's not Vietnamese,
it's not Diviet Vietnam, whatever you want. It's Chinese now. And
so he would go in. And what's interesting, I think there's two things.
There's a lot going on here, but just to answer your question,
one, he went in because he saw it as a platform for getting into
the Indian Ocean trade, just like the Mongols tried to do before him.
So he wants to control. It's quite interesting. You can see that the
Chinese, and you know, you can see a little bit of it's going
on today. As well. They want this coast, and they want to
control the coast in order to project the overland Silk Road, if you like.
But also, and perhaps more importantly, the over the seaborn Silk Road
across the Indian Ocean. That's one thing why he wanted Vietnam. The second
thing, and this is important, is that unlike in southwestern China, unlike
his father, he said no to indirect rule. He said no to relying
on kings and families and chieftains. You know what I mean. And we
kind of you guys. You know, I run the show, but we'll
let you keep your little kingdoms. And I don't say that in the majority
of the way. You keep your little kingdoms here and Yunn, you know,
in the south. But you can do what you were doing before.
In Vietnam he does something different assimilation direct rule, and this creates if you
go too hard with direct rule as a colonizer, it can get you in
trouble. And I'm sure you and I can find some examples across the whole
world where that happens. But when you hit people hard saying you are no
longer Vietnamese, you must learn Chinese. When you burn their books, and
that's what the Ming would do. This is all proven. You create resistance,
you create identity as well. Call it whatever you want, but the
Ming contributed to kind of a reinforcement of a Vietnamese identity, you know,
the hostile to the Chinese. There were Vietnamese at the beginning who were saying,
you know what, we can work with you, we cooperate with you.
But when the Chinese really adopted very very harsh measures against the Vietnamese,
it created resistance. I won't go into the details, but there's a man
who would rise up. His name is Leili. He would be the founder
of the Lay dynasty and he would drive the Chinese out in the final in
game would be in fourteen twenty seven and fourteen twenty eight. The invasion would
happen, excuse me, in fourteen o six and fourteen oh seven, twenty
years. It's a twenty year war if you don't mind, Adam. There's
some new research and this might interest your your listeners. You know, you're
working on the western side of your Asia, Western civilization, which is great.
One thing that some new research has shown is that contrary to what we
thought about the military revolution and gunpowder The idea was, yeah, the Chinese
invented gunpowder, but it was the Europeans who developed it because they were warring
a lot. They had the science, they had the application, etc.
Etc. And that's true, that's true. The thing that we didn't realize
until the last ten or fifteen years, which just some amazing research, is
that actually the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Japanese, the Koreans, they
also beat up on each other and they had and they also created gunpowder weapons,
cannons, handguns, grenades. I could go on, but what is
really perhaps interesting, I kind of cheated. A third thing about the Sino
Vietnamese War, the China Vietnam War with the Ming, is that it was
a gunpowder war. It was a gunpowder war, and towards the end of
the war it's a little bit like Ho Chi Ming getting artillery and using it
against the French at DNB and Fuu in nineteen fifty four. This man named
Leiloui would get his hands on Chinese modern gunpowder and he would turn it on
the colonizers and he would defeat them, not in a guerrilla battle, but
in a siege battle, similar to what was going on in Western Europe in
the fifteen sixteenth century, and that would happen in fourteen fourteen twenty seven.
I believe it would be lasted for five or six months something like that.
Anyways, I thought that might be of interest for your listeners, is that
what's going on the western side of Eurasia and Europe. There's some similar things
going on, and you see it in the Ming Diviet War of the early
fifteenth century. Well, I'm always interested in it. I know that this
is not necessarily talking about Chinese history today, but I'm always interested in looking
at sort of the pace of civilizations throughout history and the idea of they used
to be called, I think the Treasure Fleets, but those the eight fleets
that were sent around to the Indian Ocean, and you know that is I
mean, that's not too far from when Europe is going through the Black Death
essentially in thirteen forty eight thirteen forty nine. So this is this very much
still medieval Europe. You know, they're going to be fighting one hundred years
war still for a long time with log bows and swords and picks, and
you're talking about sign out Vietnamese War where gunpowder is being used effectively at this
point. So the French did use the French did use in the Battle of
Castillon, they did use gunpowder weapons to put an end to the war with
the English. What was it, fourteen fifty three, if I'm not wrong,
And they did that thanks to gunpowder weapons as well. So what's interesting,
I agree totally with what you just said. But what's interesting too is
the parallel uses of gunpowder technology in warfare and state consolidation and in state craft
as well. So I agree that you know, it's kind of dark still
in the Middle Ages, but it's quite clear that things are moving across all
of Eurasia from the thirteenth, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeenth centuries,
you know, and the fact that the Ming sent their expeditions west to the
west and then the Iberians sent them towards the east. It's quite clear that
everybody you know, there was they knew what was going on. Even in
the Middle Ages in Europe, they had good information. They knew. You
know, Marco Polo, he went to Vietnam. You know, he went
to China, of course, but he went to Vietnam, Ibn Batuta,
he we know, he went to China, but he also went to Vietnam.
I'm just saying the world was a very interconnected place, and it's interesting
to see kind of the similar things happening on both ends, at least at
that time fifteen sixteen seventeenth, and after that things do change in the West,
There's no doubt about it. Yeah, I think that the you're you're
exactly right, and fourteen fifty three is actually one of the to me,
it's actually one of those quintessential dates in the world history because while you have
the French, you're correct, finally using small scale canons to finish off the
bedeubling longbows of the English, at the same time, you have the Ottoman
Turks using cannons that same year to put an end once and for all to
the Byzantine Constantinople, to the to the Roman Empire, to the Roman Empire,
the eastern half of the Roman Empire. You know, So that one
half fell as we know, you don't need me to tell you that,
But that other half was there. But as you say, the Ottomans,
you know, I don't know if it's meant the second or not, But
anyways, he had some pretty big cannons that he was using that were,
you know, similar to what the Chinese the ming we're putting together as well.
Yeah, that's pretty interesting, but so kind of thinking about globalizing forces
for a second. You did write in the book as interested in this,
wrote in short, religions like Empire are globalizing forces because you know, as
weapons are moving around, religions and ideas are moving around. During this time
period, especially Christian missionaries are starting to get their feet under them, and
so I'm curious as to what role Christianity and Christian missionaries starting in about the
fifteenth century plays in Vietnam. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm gonna
it's true that that question is one that I'm very much interested in. And
it gets back to what I said a little bit earlier to your question about
Vietnam for the better and the worst being linked to the rest of the world,
and you can see it in religious terms. You can see it in
religious terms. It was linked by maritime roots from the early the Common era
to the Indian Ocean. So what does that mean religiously And I'm going to
get the Catholicism. Sorry I'm setting up for another long answer here, but
you have the exchanges over the seaborne exchanges between Vietnam and the Indian Ocean,
which brought what Hinduism. We think of Vietnam. Oh, it's like China.
Well not quite, because it's this kind of this platform, this crossroads,
you know. So that central part where the Chim people were until the
fifteenth sixteenth century, that's where Hinduism came into Vietnam. So if you were
your listeners, go to Vietnam, go to a place like Way, Go
outside of Way. Yes, it was the imperial capital. We'll maybe get
to that, you know, in a little bit. It was for a
time the Vietnamese imperial capital, but it was a Chim capital before that.
And you have Vish News and you have Shiva's that sort of thing. You
have Buddhism, which came into southern and central Vietnam. Obviously went into Cambodia
as well, brought in by traders. They were bringing the missionaries. So
that's another type of religion that was linked to Vietnam. Third example, this
might surprise you, but it's really true. Islam. Why because the Persians,
but the Arabs in particular from the ninth tenth and they really got rolling
during the Song dynasty. Tenth, eleventh, twelfth century, when the Song
was a major economic powerhouse. They were doing all the transit trade between the
Middle East and China, and they would stop over in Central Vietnam and they
brought Islam with them. So if you go again to Chapa, Central Vietnam
today, you will see vestiges of Islam. You will know you have mosques,
and even in Vietnam you have mosque even in southern China. Chinese don't
always like to talk about that, but it's true. So if we look
at Vietnam then from the north. Sorry for the long answer, but Vietnam
was part of this Chinese empire for one thousand years. We know that a
certain type of Buddhism came via the overland Silk Road, went into China,
went to Japan, went to Korea, and it went to northern Vietnam in
particular. So you have two strands of Buddhism, the big vehicle and the
small vehicle. I won't go into the details, but one came by the
seaborn roots and one came by the overland roots through the imperial connection with China.
So that's that's another example my point now to your question. Sorry,
is that Christianity, Catholicism. It came like Islam, it came like Buddhism,
it came like Hinduism to Vietnam, and it was by the seaborn roots.
So once the Ming pulled back their ships, income the Iberians, the
Spanish, you know, through the Philippines, the Portuguese, you know,
they're they're coming across from from Southern Africa, India, Malacca, and then
they'll get to Japan, as you know, in Macau, which they'll they'll
they'll create a colony. And so the the Iberians in particular were very Catholic.
They're going to bring Catholicism with them. So you have Jesuits who come
in particular to Vietnam. I won't go into the details. They'll be in
China as well. I think most of your listeners will probably know that.
But I guess my answer to your question is Religions move, but they take
root because people on the ground too are interested in them. So the Vietnamese,
like the Chinese, like other people as well in Europe, they find
something that they want, that they need, that they believe in, that
helps them get through the day, that helps them get through their work.
You know all these things that we know about religions, the Vietnamese were no
different than anyone else. So yes, Catholicism came. It came early sixteenth
century, seventeenth century in particular. You know, you will have Portuguese French
Catholics. They will go to the northern part of Vietnam in particular. I
won't go into the details, but they will find a fertile ground for preaching,
just like other missionaries before them, Muslims, Buddhists, Hinduists, if
you like, had found converts as well. And it's just again kind of
comes back to the original point that we started with of why Vietnam is geographically
in such an important place that it becomes this just almost natural melting pot for
different ideas and cultures because everybody has to move through it or around it if
you want to take advantage of these lucrative trade routes, which of course everyone
does, and so you have to stop there. And so it's interesting how
that is very different from some of the more isolated regions of the world.
You know, you might think of a place like Tibet, or maybe a
place like, oh, I don't know, Switzerland or something like that.
That's hard to get to. But kind of moving on, I wanted to
talk a little bit about I was reading the section about the seventeenth century in
Vietnam where you're talking about how there's effectively like almost three major military families,
a series of military families were kind of in charge. One of them,
the new En kind of are instrumental in starting to push northern Vietnamese colonization into
the south into around what is eventually going to become psychon and so I'm interested
in that process where it starts to look like maybe this is going to look
like something around unification, but not so much. So I think explain that
a little bit. I thought it was really interesting. Well, well thanks,
it's it's it's an important question and there's a lot of work that's still
being done on it. It's incredibly detailed, so I don't want to go
into too many details. I'm going to simplify just a bit in order to
hit on the important point that you made. And by the fact that there
were three military houses who will contest for power, let me just back up
real quick, is that this this man whose name was Les Luay, he
defeats the ming. He created the Lay dynasty in fourteen twenty eight. Let's
just say for a century the Lay dynasty. It works well. He centralizes
the state, he borrows a lot from the colonizer, from the Chinese,
obviously gunpowder weapons, he'll use those against the chim and to increase the size
of Vietnam, which starts to occupy much of central Vietnam. Now he will
adopt Confucianism to build a strong monarchical state. Now, as is so often
the case, whether it be in Europe, Asia, wherever it might be
in the world, there's always problems of succession. There's always problems of backstabbing,
you know, palace intrigue and this sort of thing. It happens in
Vietnam like it happens everywhere. So what happens is that we get to the
beginning of the sixteenth century, a century after having defeated the Chinese, and
the Lay dynasty kind of fades away. They can't control competing factions, military
groups. And there's three houses that kind of affirm their power at that time.
One is called the Mac Mac, the second is called the Qing Trii
n H, and the third, who will be the most important eventually,
is the Win n g U y E n And basically the two most important
families are the king and the Win and they leave the Lay dynasty. The
emperor he remains there, but he becomes a figurehead at him a little bit
like the emperor in Japan. Remember when Japan, if you've studied Japanese history,
you have kind of a warring period and then you have a military government
that finally comes to power, and it's the military government. They keep the
emperor there because he legitimates their power, but he's isolated. And the same
thing happens in Vietnam. There's the emperor. The Lay dynasty obviously hits his
kids and grandkids and all of that, so they leave him in Hanoi.
But the real problems begin between the Qing Tri n H and the Win again
n g U ye and they want to run the show. They want to
run the show, and this really gets started in the sixteenth century. They
don't really start fighting during the sixteenth century. What happened is that the Win
family, it's a warlord family. They say, you know what, let's
not fight, will head south. So they head south for Hui and they're
going to set up shop in the What will become the imperial capital, their
imperial capital eventually a century later. But the two families, the Ching and
the Win, they disagree. They solve the problem at the beginning by the
Win heading south in the sixteenth in the middle of the sixteenth century. The
thing is is that they still consider this to be one state. The problem
is that the king they want to run the show from Hanoi because they see
themselves as kind of the real leaders with the lay behind them. And what
they will do is try to you know, it's like the American Revolution.
Taxes. They will impose heavy taxes on the Wind dynasty, not the Wind
dynasty, sorry, but the Wind family in the South. And we get
to the early seventeenth century and the Wind say, you know what, We've
had enough of this. We're going to go on our own. And that's
very simplified, but I really do believe what I've said is very true.
You have this southern Win family that moves southward a little bit like you know,
after the Americans obtained their independence from the British, they started moving westward.
And as you move westward, other possibilities open up. You see things
differently in the north as you move to the west, you see things differently
in the south. I'm not going to get into slavery and all of that,
but I'm just saying that you have a movement of part of the Vietnamese
towards the south, and we get to the seventeenth century and then when they
say, you know what, that's enough, we're going our own civil war
breaks out. Adam, it does break out in the sixteen twenties. There's
going to be fighting that goes on for about sixty years. Finally there's a
stalemate in sixteen seventy two, and excuse me, and then about fifty years
later or so, the Wind in the South declare their own dynasty and they
set up their imperial capital in Way. So you have in the northern delta
of the Red River you have the Qing with the Lay as a figurehead,
and in the south now you have this kind of colonial state led by the
Win dynasty now and a king, and they all kind of play the game,
oh, we're all still one happy family. But it was a lie,
and everybody knew it was a lie. There was two states from that
time. So that is I think the best way to explain the fact that
before the French came, there was a history of two Vietnams. So what
we see during the Vietnam War. You opened up our podcast today saying most
Americans know Vietnam as it was divided into two halves. Well, actually a
lot of Vietnamese in the past they also knew Vietnam as being divided into two
halves as well. Well. I think that that's so important for understanding the
context and the background to that conflict and to so many other aspects of culture
and history, which again is a good reason why it's smart not just label
something pre colonial and move past it as though it's not going to have relevancy
later on. Well, I think we have time for one more question,
so I want to jump forward a little bit because I do want to ask
about, you know, does Vietnam become unified before the French get there?
Specifically in eighteen oh two, does Vietnam and I'm not going to get this
name correctly, but under Guylong does it become unified or is that just a
mirage? It? Is it a paper regime that makes it look like it's
a unified country but it's not really. I think that's we've kind of talked
about this idea of different parts of Vietnam. So I think to kind of
bring it to a close today, let's talk about does it get to the
point where it is politically unified before a colonial power gets there. The answer
to that question is yes, but not without great difficulty. Of course,
you can make an argument for the United States as well. At the end
of the nineteenth century it almost came unraveled on the Americans, and I'm sure
you and I can find other examples where civil war is a very important thing
to take into consideration. So Vietnam is no exception to that rule in world
history that it's important to know how difficult it is to create operational unified nation
states or whatever type of state you want to talk about. But again,
it did become unified in eighteen o two when the leader of the Gwynn dynasty,
Zalom, he won a thirty year civil war. I won't go into
the details, but it just goes to show that you have that first civil
war I talked about in the seventeenth century, and you'll have another one at
the end of the eighteenth century. It will last for thirty years, and
it's a fight kind of between Southerners, Centrallers and Northerners. I'm going to
simplify like that. But the leader of the Wynn family about which I spoke
a moment Ago Zalom Gia l O Nng, he was indeed able to unify
the north, the center in the south in the s form we recognize to
this day on the map that represents Vietnam with Hanoi in the north way,
let's say, in the center, and Saigon or Hochi Min City in the
south. It was, however, a fragile affair, it really was.
He would go lightly until his death. I believe he died around eighteen twenty
eighteen twenty one, eighteen twenty two. Sorry I can't quite remember. But
anyways, during that period he would go lightly because he didn't want to annoy
anybody. He wanted to kind of pay off people who had collaborated with him
during the Civil War. They could kind of do what they wanted. They
could have their own kind of thiefs or sets, if you like, the
Chinese could do what they wanted, you could have kind of He didn't impose
a kind of a direct assimilationist type of rule like the Ming. Did you
know what I mean. So he was more indirect rule. He had good
relations with the ethnic minorities. He didn't try to gobble up, you know,
their lands or stuff like that. He was he went lightly with the
northerners who kind of lost, and he's like, okay, it's okay,
well, you know, we can work this out. That would, however,
change when his son came to power in the early eighteen twenties. His
name was Ming mag and he adopted a kind of heavy duty, more of
an assimilationist direct rule approach, which created enemies and which kind of he did.
He was revolutionary in the sense that he was able to centralize Vietnam politically
and economically. He did create a lot of enemies, and in particular he
created a lot of enemies among the Catholics who had supported the Catholics, including
the French missionaries, had supported the win during the Civil War. But Zaalum's
Sun would go after the Catholics, and of course that would allow the French
to find a way to get in in the well, mainly in the eighteen
fifties, when the French would attack in eighteen fifty eight and begin the colonization
process, and they would claim to be doing that to protect French Catholics,
which of course, to some extent they were, but it was a pretext.
It was a pretext for colonization. So again I come back to the
way I answered your question. It's hard to answer real quick, but yes,
he did unify Vietnam. His son helped advance that, but not without
difficulties which would come back to haunt them. And the example I give is
that the Catholics would look to the French to help them against this kind of
heavy handed policy that was used by Mgman Well, and I think that that's
a perfect teaser for where to leave it, because that gets us right up
to the point where many audiences are now kind of starting to get familiar with
the story. And now there is a tremendous amount that we did not discuss
in the book, even prior to the time period that we have to have
a full and complete discussion of this book would take several days of continuous talking,
and that's why it's so good. But we don't have time for that,
and I don't think I have enough storage space for that either. So
but I wanted to thank you so much for coming out. The book's available
now, it's great. It's for anyone especially, I would say, especially
if you are going to be traveling to Vietnam, which is a beautiful country
to visit. Now, I would highly recommend reading it. It will give
you such a deeper cultural appreciation of the land that you're going into, other
than just a land that was a chartelehouse in the nineteen six these in nineteen
seventies for a period, it's a lot more than that, and I think
that this does a great way of explaining that in some some real detail and
the details what makes it good. Let's be honest. But thanks so much
for coming on. It was a fantastic conversation. Thank you, Adam,
Thanks very much. I really appreciate it.