We read all the lead to present a different history.
When it comes to neighboring Vietnam, many people must have mixed emotions. Historically, Vietnam has been inextricably entangled with China. As early as the Qin Dynasty, parts of Vietnam were ruled by the Central Plains Dynasty and belonged to Xiang County, and Chinese civilization was also introduced to the area with the Qin Dynasty army. Although the rebellion at the end of the Qin Dynasty caused Lingnan Shou to divide Zhao Tuo (赵佗) as king, the Han Dynasty eventually brought the area under its rule and made it Jiaotong Commandery (Jiaotong County), with the governor appointed by the emperor. It was not until the end of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms that this land, which had been ruled by China for a thousand years, was separated and established as a country. In the hundreds of years since then, from the Song Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, many emperors have thought of recovering their homeland, but due to the collapse of the Zhao and Song Dynasties' military equipment, they gradually acquiesced to the independence of the Annam Kingdom, resulting in the deeper and deeper separation of the two sides, leaving infinite regrets for future generations.
▲ Vietnamese Gaotai believers dressed in Confucian and Taoist robes
When the Mongols rose from the steppes, they embarked on the road to conquer the world. During this period, countless states were destroyed under the iron hoof, but for Vietnam, even the Mongol cavalry known as the "Whip of God" could not do anything, and the three southern expeditions ended in failure. During the Ming Dynasty, the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di was so ambitious that he sent the general Zhang Fu to conquer Vietnam, and then set up the Jiaotong Cloth Envoy Department. However, because the Vietnamese region had been separated for hundreds of years, the aristocratic class and the local people were very resistant to the rule of the Central Plains Dynasty. They used the terrain of mountains and rivers to conduct guerrilla warfare and resist the bureaucracy set up by the Ming Dynasty, which forced the Ming Dynasty to place a large number of troops to guard the town. Over the past few decades, the Ming Dynasty gradually could not afford to pay the expenses, so it abolished the Diplomatic Department of Jiaofu, and Vietnam was no longer a Chinese territory, but a vassal state with independent governance.
▲ Mongol cavalry stills
From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, the French began to invade Vietnam. In the eleventh year of Guangxu (1885 AD), after the end of the "Sino-French War", the Qing Dynasty officially gave up its suzerainty over Vietnam, and Vietnam completely became a French colony. From this point on, France embarked on a protracted colonial rule, plundering countless fortunes from Vietnam. This can't help but be confused, when the Yuan and Ming dynasties did not surrender Vietnam at great cost, why did the Vietnamese region quickly fall in the face of the invasion of the French colonists, and the people were willing to be slaves of the French for decades. In Ziyuan's view, the main reason is that the French colonists made full use of religious and cultural tools, while adopting a strategy of gradual encroachment.
▲ Churches built during the French colonial era
Since the French mainland was far away in Europe, the colonial team arrived in Southeast Asia with fewer personnel, so it did not have the strength to take the form of military conquest. Therefore, the French colonists decided to first cultivate some submissive people to help them occupy the land and grab profits. Therefore, in the beginning, the French opened the way with religious culture, arranged western missionaries to go deep into the grass-roots level of Vietnam, provided free medical treatment, opened schools, taught the people to read, spread the teachings of Western religion among the people, and cultivated many people close to the West. These people became the "leading party" of the French colonists, taking the initiative to inform the colonists of the geographical trend of the mountains and rivers and some confidential military deployment information. With the help of these locals, the French were naturally able to take over the whole territory of Vietnam without much effort.
▲ Postcards from the French colonial period in Vietnam
Second, the French side learned the lessons of the failure of the Central Plains Dynasty and formulated a more prudent strategy. For Vietnam, the method of the Yuan and Ming dynasties was to send a large army to directly attack the Yellow Dragon, take the capital and then conquer the land of the four sides, which was "from the center to the edge". France, on the other hand, fought steadily and slowly, "from the edge to the center", and embezzled Vietnamese land little by little. During the colonial period in Vietnam, every time the French occupied a city, they would consolidate the fruits of victory as soon as possible - quickly set up a colonial administration, and then send officials and shunmin to appease the local people, and distribute food to help the victims of the war to buy the hearts and minds of the people. Under this gradual encroachment, the Vietnamese court had no way. With several large-scale attacks organized by the imperial army being defused by the French, the Vietnamese could no longer put up effective resistance and could only slowly fall.
▲Interior view of the Royal Palace of the Nguyen Dynasty in Vietnam
More importantly, when the French consolidated their rule, they began to enslave the Vietnamese people to accept and obey Western culture. At that time, Vietnam, although it had been separated from China for nearly a thousand years, was deeply influenced by Chinese culture, and Confucianism was deeply rooted in the hearts of Vietnamese. To this end, the French colonists used coercive means to ban the use of Chinese characters by the Vietnamese, then forcibly brought Vietnamese children to school, taught knowledge in Latin, and created new scripts spelled and written in the Latin alphabet. On the other hand, the French colonists continued to encourage and support missionaries to penetrate deep into Vietnam and occupy the spiritual world of the Vietnamese people. In this way, in just a dozen years, Vietnam's cultural system was completely changed, and under the enslavement education of the French colonial authorities, a large number of people who were willing to accept colonial rule appeared in Vietnam, and the French colonists no longer had any worries.
Resources:
Chronicles of Nations: Vietnam, General History of Vietnam