Annam and Tongking

Abstract

The Vietnamese, as they now prefer to be called, are today the most numerous of the peoples of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. They occupy the valleys of the Red and Black rivers of Tongking, the coastal belt of Annam and the Mekong delta region of Cochin China. At the beginning of the Christian era they occupied Tongking and northern Annam only. They pushed southwards at the expense of the Chams, whose kingdom they conquered in the fifteenth century. Under the leadership of the Nguyen of Hué the last remaining independent Cham districts were absorbed during the seventeenth century. In the same century the Vietnamese began to plant colonies in the Mekong delta region in what was then Cambodian territory, and from that time onwards their steady penetration into Cochin China has been continuous.