Some countries in this world have what some
might describe as quite unusual shapes. Some are known for being long and skinny,
one in particular being Vietnam, which strangely I don’t think I’ve ever really talked
about on this channel. So let’s get into it, why does Vietnam have
this peculiar shape? [This video was brought to you by Private
Internet Access] Doctors hate him! A local Southeast Asian Socialist Republic
exposes the secret to keeping your borders effortlessly thin! To best understand Vietnam’s geography,
one might divide the country into 3 pieces: northern, central, and southern. If you’re Vietnamese you might know these
regions as Bắc Bộ, Trung Bộ, and Nam Bộ (yeah shocker, I don’t actually speak
Vietnamese). Meanwhile if you’re more familiar with their
old exonyms, you might have heard of Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina, but I’m not gonna
use those names here. At its narrowest points in the center of the
country, Vietnam’s western border with Laos (yes, it’s pronounced “Lao”) is less
than 50 kilometers from the world’s most controversial sea. From Vinh to Đà Nẵng, 400km of the country
is confined to a corridor not even 100km wide at its widest point. So, why...yyy [crash] oh god that was too
many Y’s! The answer as to why this is the case is rooted
in Vietnam’s tumultuous history, and geography of course, but the history provides us some
good backstory for context. Turn the clock back a couple thousand years,
and Vietnam didn’t look like this but like this. In fact even calling it “Vietnam” would
be a huge misnomer, as this country was called by many different names throughout its history,
so I’ll just call it by the name of whatever kingdom ruled from this general area at whatever
time I’m talking about. The first civilizations here-- yes, we’re
looking back that far-- arose around the Red and Ma river valleys in the north of the modern
country. Modern historians believe the first true,
non-mythical states arose here around 500 BC, but as fascinating as this all is though,
we must now immediately fast forward to the 2nd millennium AD. A large part of this country’s history though
was falling under some form of imperial Chinese rule. First from the Han invasion of Nanyue in 111
BC to the Trung sisters’ rebellion in AD 39, then from 4 years later until 541, then
a third time from 602 to 905, followed by a period of autonomy under Tang China until
938. Side note, Nányuè was a Chinese term meaning
‘Southern Yue’, which in this part was pronounced more like Nam Việt, which eventually
became the country’s name in 1804, except with the morphemes switched around at the
request of the Qing emperor. Anyway, at this point in history, this area
formed a country known as Đại Việt, ruled by a succession of different dynasties. Đại Việt then fell under Chinese domination
for the fourth time for a brief period from 1407 to 1428, where it was taken over by the
Ming Empire. In 1428 Lê Thái Tổ broke the country off
from China and began the Lê Dynasty, or more specifically the Later Lê Dynasty, as the
Lê family had previously been in power centuries earlier. Đại Việt was still mostly centered around
the traditional Vietnamese heartland in the north though, and it was largely in the 1470’s
when Lê Thánh Tông conquered most of Champa to the south. At around this point, Đại Việt could
be said to have adopted a new policy known by the term ‘nam tiến’, literally a
“southward advance”. Thus Thánh Tông had now set his kingdom’s
diplomatic policies to expansionist. Severely oversimplifying everything (because
I’m just an American who only wants to know… why the border all weird), Vietnam’s gradual
expansion south came as a result of a series of wars against their southern neighbors,
the kingdom of Champa. What would later become southern Vietnam was
at this point known as Champa. A union of different polities, this area was
inhabited by the Cham peoples (who are still around today, by the way, just thought I’d
mention so no one’s confused). The Cham had traditionally inhabited what
is now Central and Southern Vietnam, establishing thriving trading relations with outside powers
from powerhouses like Indrapura. Their language, Cham, is of the Austronesian
family, closer to Malay, Indonesian, and Tagalog, whereas Vietnamese is classified as Austro-Asiatic
(anyone else think linguists could’ve maybe differentiated those names a bit more?). As Vietnam sought to expand its influence
and further its development, Vietnamese settlers began to move into lands conquered from Champa,
settling new villages in the area. Vietnam’s southward expansion though was
significantly hemmed in by these mountains here, the Annamite Range. These mountains create a natural border between
Vietnam and Laos, or I guess at this time the Kingdoms of Đại Việt and Lan Xang. However some parts of Vietnam, namely the
Central Highlands, fall on the western side of the range, likely having to do with the
fact that these mountains are only tallest in the northwest in Laos. Somewhat interestingly, the coast did once
extend much further out into modern-day water. With sea levels around 50 meters lower the
coastline once extended more than 150km further than today, exposing now sunken lands like
Nanhailand until as (relatively) recently as around 5000 BC. That doesn’t really help Vietnam all that
much today though so back to the history. Aside from expanding his kingdom southward
though, Lê Thánh Tông also led a campaign westward through these mountains as far as
what is now Eastern Myanmar in the Đại Việt-Lan Xang War of 1479-84. This war turned out a complete failure for
Đại Việt in terms of gaining territory, but it did allow them to largely destabilize
their westerly neighbors and thus firmly secure their western borders. Okay now that explains why Vietnam has such
a tiny, narrow corridor, but Vietnam’s southward expansion didn’t end until it reached the
very bottom of the peninsula, past the Mekong River Delta, which at that point was still
part of Cambodia, or Kampuchea. In the 15th century the Lê dynasty was briefly
ousted by the Mạc dynasty, however just a few years later the Lê were able to come
back to power, but couldn’t quite get the whole country together, with the Mạc still
in power north of the Red River. Later on, the Nguyễn clan were able to carve
out a foothold in the south, rivaling the Lê, who were now essentially puppets of the
Trịnh and the Nguyễn clans, who had helped them defeat the Mạc. The Trịnh-Nguyễn Civil War in the 17th
century in particular caused Viet refugees to seek refuge wherever possible. Cambodian King Chey Chetta II allowed them
refuge in the city of Prey Nokor in 1623, in exchange for aid against Siam. Gradually more and more Vietnamese moved to
the city, causing it to slowly become more and more Vietnamized. It was further into the 18th century however
when various Nguyễn lords sought to expand even further south and conquer the Mekong
Delta for themselves, including Prey Nokor, or as it was known in Vietnamese, Saigon. Hemmed in by mountains and having spent much
of its early history under Chinese influence, the kingdoms which would evolve into modern
Vietnam saw a need to expand in order to develop further, and the only way to do so realistically
was straight south in this narrow corridor. One unfortunate side of all this history though
were periods of genocide between different groups, namely against the Chams in the late
15th century, and later massacres against Vietnamese and Cambodians within each-other’s
empires. I’m not going to elaborate too much on this
since these videos are tedious to make and I would like to still be paid for my work,
but it would’ve been incredibly disingenuous to talk about this history without at least
mentioning this. I want to credit the work of Ben Kiernan,
particularly his book covering the history of Vietnam, as well as the PR team on the
KhAnubis Discord server for helping me research this and *hopefully* not get things incredibly
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