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The Legendary National Pride of the Vietn

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flyingzone View Drop Down
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  Quote flyingzone Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Legendary National Pride of the Vietn
    Posted: 11-Nov-2006 at 20:38
For most of the period from 111 BC to the early 10th century AD Vietnam was under the rule of successive Chinese dynasties. Sporadic independence movements were attempted, but were quickly suppressed by Chinese forces. In 939 AD the Vietnamese defeated Chinese forces at the Bach Dang River and finally gained independence after 10 centuries under Chinese control. They gained complete autonomy a century later.
 
China's conquest had arrested the independent evoluation of one of the earliest Southeast Asian polities. Imperial Chinese policy had been to assimilate the Vietnamese and implant Chinese values, customs and institutions. But while the Vietnamese did indeed adopt enough of these patterns and while Chinese influence on Vietnamese history had not been entirely negative, the Vietnamese sustained a hatred of Chinese rule and resisted cultural genocide for 1000 years. It's an astonishing display of national pride and determination practically unparalleled in world history, as expressed by Lockard (1995). Some historians have noted an ancient and perhaps unprecedented sense of nationhood that facilitated resistance to absorption, as one put it:
 
"The Vietnamese will to independence was too strong to permit it; and that will to independence could never have existed without some intuition, reaching through all social classes right down to the seemingly crustacean politics of the bamboo-walled villages, that there was a special Vietnamese collective identity of some sort. The Vietnamese nation is, to put it bluntly, one of the longeest enduring acts of faith in human history."
 
Very powerful words indeed for a nation that has been attacked, conquered, and colonized successively by the Chinese, the Mongols, the French, the Japanese, and the Americans.
 
 
 
Reference:
 
Lockard, C. A. (1995). Integrating Southeast Asian into the framework of world history: The period before 1500. The History Teacher, 29(1), 7-35.
 
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Omar al Hashim View Drop Down
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  Quote Omar al Hashim Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Nov-2006 at 22:42
Imperial Chinese policy had been to assimilate the Vietnamese and implant Chinese values, customs and institutions. But while the Vietnamese did indeed adopt enough of these patterns and while Chinese influence on Vietnamese history had not been entirely negative, the Vietnamese sustained a hatred of Chinese rule and resisted cultural genocide for 1000 years. It's an astonishing display of national pride and determination practically unparalleled in world history, as expressed by Lockard (1995).

I think that this situtation is paralleled in Ireland. They were under occupation for 800 years. Once you have done 800, 1000 isn't that much more.
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malizai_ View Drop Down
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  Quote malizai_ Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Nov-2006 at 18:33
I think it is ongoing in Chechnia, but have a long time to go before matching the vietnamese. Close to 400 years, but when u consider only a million people, their isolation, it makes it all the more astonishing. If truly there was a case for annihilation over assimilation, this is it.
 
Anatol Lieven
"It is rather as if the entire Vietnam war had been restricted to the province of Hueand the Americans had still been beaten"
 
Anatol Lieven. Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. xii + 436 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $37.50 (cloth), ISBN 0-300-07398-4; $16.95 (paper), ISBN 0-300-07881-1. Reviewed for H-Russia by Thomas M. Barrett <tmbarrett@osprey.smcm.edu>, St. Marys College of Maryland
 


Edited by malizai_ - 14-Nov-2006 at 18:40
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TranHungDao View Drop Down
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  Quote TranHungDao Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Jun-2007 at 04:01
Originally posted by flyingzone

It's an astonishing display of national pride and determination practically unparalleled in world history, as expressed by Lockard (1995).
 
Reference:
 
Lockard, C. A. (1995). Integrating Southeast Asian into the framework of world history: The period before 1500. The History Teacher, 29(1), 7-35.


Lol, the Afghans might fit this category.  Although they were defeated by the Mongols whereas the Vietnamese were not.  They however did not bow down to British colonialism as the Vietnamese did with the French.  Of course, I myself wonder what if the Nguyen Dynasty had tried to fight off the French instead of caving into them...  Perhaps Dien Bien Phu would have occurred in 1858 instead of 1954.

The Afghans also defeated the Soviets as the Vietnamese defeated the US, albeit by guerilla warefare rather than outright frontal battles.

And for the life of me, I can't remember if Alexander was able to defeat the Afghans or not?!?


Edited by TranHungDao - 01-Jun-2007 at 04:03
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