History of Vietnam
Chinese Colonization (200BC - 938AD)
From 200 BC to 100AD, many changes took place throughout China, northern Vietnam, and Southeast Asia as peoples migrated, and bases of power shifted and expanded. In China, as the Qin Dynasty lost power to the Han Dynasty in 206 BC, deposed members of the military and government began to trickle into Vietnam's Tonkin or Red River Delta. The people who arrived in this area brought their technology, language, and culture, beginning the Sinicization of Northern Vietnam which continued into the 20th century.
Northern Vietnam was officially annexed and colonized in 111BC by the Han Dynasty. Chinese historians described the Vietnamese people they encountered as barbarian and uncivilized. The Chinese colonists set out to reform Vietnamese culture along Chinese lines but village life did not change substantially. At first, the Chinese only established trading centers so they could conduct business from the coast of Vietnam. In about 100BC two Chinese-run prefectures, Giao Chi and Cuu Chan, were established in the Au Lac Kingdom in the Tonkin Delta.
The aristocracy of the Au Lac kingdom, the Lac Lords, initially accepted the Chinese and worked with them. They looked to the Chinese to help them in maintaining power over their own kingdoms. Chinese colonization and pressure increased with the collapse of the Western Han Dynasty in 9AD which caused a large migration of Chinese aristocrats into Southern China and later into Vietnam. There was a massive immigration of scholars, officers, and wealthy Chinese and many local rulers were replaced by Chinese officials. Some of these officials married into the Vietnamese aristocracy, creating what became a major force in Vietnam-an educated class of Sino-Vietnamese, or people of mixed Chinese and Vietnamese origin. Chinese immigrants built schools and temples, and ordered the construction of major networks of canals, dikes, road ways, and bridges to facilitate the production of rice and the movement of people and natural resources. Gradually the Chinese population of the Tonkin Delta grew, and the two original prefectures were divided into seven, with Chinese prefects appointed for each area. In addition, soldiers from the Han Dynasty were granted land by the Chinese government and began to take up farming in Vietnamese villages... Eager Chinese immigrants were happy to buy up land.
