Cochinchina
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- Cochin China is also a type of domestic fowl.
During the French colonial period, it was called Cochinchine in French, and its capital was at Saigon. The two other parts of Vietnam at the time were Annam and Tonkin.
Pre-colonial history
The conquest of the south of present-day Vietnam was a long-process of territorial acquisition by the Vietnamese. It is called Nam Tien by Vietnamese historians. Vietnam (then known Dia Viet) nearly doubled its territory in 1470 under the great king Le Thanh Tong, at the expense of the Champa. The next two hundred years was a time of teritorial consolidation and civil war with only gradual expansion south.
As a result of a civil war which started in 1520, the Emperor of China sent a commission to study the political status of Annam in 1536. In consequence of the report received he declared war against the Mac Dynasty. The nominal ruler of the Mac died at the very time that the Chinese armies passed the frontiers of the kingdom in 1537, and his father, Mac Dang Dung (the real power in any case) hurried to submit to the Imperial will, and declared himself to be a vassal of China. The Chinese declared that both the Le Dynasty and the Mac had a right to part of the lands and so they recognized the Le rule in the southern part of Vietnam while at the same time recognizing the Mac rule in the northern part, which was called Tunquin (i.e. Tonkin). This was to be a feudatory state of China under the government of the Mac.
However, this arrangment did not last long. In 1592 Trinh Tung, leading the Royal (Trinh) army, conquered nearly all of the Mac territory and moved the Le kings back to the original capital of Hanoi. The Mac only held on to a tiny part of north Vietnam until 1667, when Trinh Tac conquered the last Mac lands.
In 1623 Nguyen Phuc Nguyen, the lord of the (then) southern provinces of Vietnam, established a trading community at Saigon with the consent of the king of Cambodia. Over the next 50 years Vietnamese control slowly expanded in this area but only gradually as the Nguyen were fighting a protracted civil war with the Trinh Lords in the north.
With the end of the war with the Trinh, the Nguyen were able to devote more effort (and military force) to conquest of the south. First the remaing Champa territories were taken; next the areas around the Mekong river were placed under Vietnamese control.
At least three wars were fought between the Nguyen Lords and the Cambodian kings in the period 1715 to 1770 with the Vietnamese gaining more territory with each war. The wars all involved the much more powerful Siamese kings who fought on behalf of their vassals, the Cambodians.
In the late 1700s, Vietnam was briefly unified under the Tay Son. These were three brothers, former peasants, who succeeded in conquering first the lands of the Nguyen and then the lands of the Trinh. But final unification came under Nguyen Anh, a remarkably tenacious member of the Nguyen noble family who fought for 25 years against the Tay Son and ultimately conquered the entire country in 1802. He ruled all of Vietnam under the name Gia Long.
Gia Long and his successors (see the Nguyen Dynasty for details) conquered more lands from Cambodia and even annexed Phnom Penh and surrounding territory. However, the Vietnamese were forced to relinquish these conquests in the later part of the 1800s.
Creation of colonial Cochinchina
For complex reasons, the French government of Napoleon III decided to take over the southern part of Vietnam. In September 1858 France occupied Da Nang (Tourane). On 18 February 1859 they conquered Saigon and three southern Vietnamese provinces: Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh and Dinh Tuong; on 13 April 1862 the Vietnamese government was forced to cede those territories to France.In 1867 the provinces of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and Vinh Long were added to French controlled territory. And in 1864 all the French territories in southern Vietnam were declared to be the new French colony of Cochinchina.
In 1887 it became part of the Union of French Indochina. In 1933 the Spratly islands were annexed to French Cochinchina. On 28 July 1941, imperial Japanese troops were based in French Cochinchina (de facto occupation), followed on 9 March 1945 by formal Japanese occupation till 15 August 1945. 16 May 1945 - 1946 it was nominally part of the Empire of Vietnam.
On 14 June 1949 Cochinchina became part of the (Associated) State of Vietnam.
Summary
Cochinchina was not a natural entity but an instable creation of powers deciding the fate of Indochina. The Nguyen Lords ruled the southern provinces of Vietnam from the city of Huế (in what was later called Annam by the French, though Annam historically refers to the northern part of modern Vietnam). The Tay Son also ruled the south but not from Saigon, instead they ruled from Da Nang. Nguyen Anh ruled the united country of Vietnam from his ancestor's capital of Hue. Cochinchina was never a single united administrative unit until the French sized it in the 1850s. It ceased to exist in 1949 and the short-lived state of South Vietnam (1953 - 1975) was not a recreation of Cochinchina as it controlled half of the former French administrative unit of Annam in addition to Cochinchina.Note
Cochin was named after the Indian port city Kochi, which was earlier known as Cochin. The reason for this name (given by the French) is unknown.
Sources and references
- Encyclopedia of Asian History, Volumn 4 (Vietnam) 1988. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
- Vietnam - A Long History by Nguyễn Khắc Viện (1999). Hanoi, Thế Giới Publishers
- [ArtHanoi Vietnamese money in historical context]
- [WorldStatesmen- Vietnam]
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