Vietnam historical timeline

Origins

The Đông Sơn culture was casting enormous bronze drums in the Red River delta by 600 BC. From 111 BC China ruled the north for roughly a thousand years — the Trưng sisters’ revolt in 40 AD is the first name in the national story — and independence came in 938 with a victory on the Bạch Đằng river, won by planting iron-tipped stakes in the riverbed and letting the tide impale the invading fleet. The same trick was used again, successfully, against the Mongols in 1288. Vietnamese dynasties then expanded steadily southward, absorbing the Cham kingdoms and eventually the Mekong delta.

Turning points

France began its conquest in 1858 and ran the territory as part of French Indochina. Japan occupied it during the Second World War, and on 2 September 1945 Hồ Chí Minh declared independence in Hanoi, quoting the American Declaration in the opening line. The First Indochina War ended with the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 and a partition at the seventeenth parallel. The war that followed, against the south’s government and the United States, ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, and the country was reunified the following year. What came next is less well known abroad and matters more to daily life here: the economy was close to famine by the mid-1980s, and the Đổi Mới reforms from 1986 opened it to markets and foreign investment. Relations with the United States were normalised in 1995 and Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization in 2007.

Influential people

The Trưng sisters, who raised a rebellion against Chinese rule and are honoured in temples across the country. Trần Hưng Đạo, who beat the Mongols twice. Nguyễn Trãi, poet and strategist of the fifteenth-century independence war. Hồ Chí Minh. And Võ Nguyên Giáp, a former history teacher who commanded at Điện Biên Phủ.

Cultural evolution

Vietnamese is written in a Latin-based alphabet devised by missionaries and adopted as the national script in the twentieth century, which makes it the only mainland Southeast Asian language written this way. Ancestor altars stand in most homes regardless of stated religion. The food is regional and specific — phở from the north, the imperial dishes of Huế, the sweeter cooking of the south — and bánh mì is a French baguette reworked entirely. Ca trù and quan họ singing are both UNESCO-listed. And Vietnamese coffee, robusta brewed through a metal filter over condensed milk, is its own tradition rather than a variation on anyone else’s.

Present-day significance

Vietnam has become one of the main manufacturing centres for electronics, footwear and clothing, benefiting substantially from companies diversifying away from China. It is also the world’s second-largest coffee exporter and among the largest rice exporters. The Mekong delta, which feeds much of the country, is sinking and salting as upstream dams cut the sediment flow, and that is the most serious long-term problem the country faces.