Đại Việt

Đại Việt, "Great Viet", was the name of the Vietnamese kingdom for most of the period from the eleventh century to the early nineteenth, ruled from Thăng Long, today's Hanoi. Under a succession of dynasties it resisted repeated Chinese and Mongol invasions and expanded south along the coast.

After a thousand years of Chinese rule, Ngô Quyền defeated a Southern Han fleet at the Bạch Đằng river in 938, using stakes planted in the riverbed at high tide to impale the enemy ships as the tide fell. In 968 Đinh Bộ Lĩnh unified the country after a period of warlords and named it Đại Cồ Việt. The Early Lê dynasty repelled a Song invasion in 981.

The Lý dynasty, founded in 1009 by Lý Công Uẩn, moved the capital to Thăng Long, "ascending dragon", in 1010, and from 1054 used the name Đại Việt. The Lý built a centralised state on the Chinese model, with a Confucian bureaucracy, and founded the Temple of Literature in 1070 and the first examinations in 1075. Buddhism was strongly supported, and the One Pillar Pagoda was built in 1049. The general Lý Thường Kiệt defeated a Song invasion in 1076–1077, and a poem attributed to him, declaring that the southern land belongs to the southern emperor, is sometimes called Vietnam's first declaration of independence.

The Trần dynasty, from 1225, faced three Mongol invasions, in 1258, 1285 and 1287–1288. The prince and general Trần Hưng Đạo used guerrilla tactics, abandoning cities and attacking supply lines, and in 1288 destroyed the Mongol fleet at the Bạch Đằng river with the same stake tactic used in 938. He is revered as a national hero. Under the Trần, Vietnamese literature in chữ Nôm, a script adapted from Chinese characters to write Vietnamese, developed.

In 1400 Hồ Quý Ly seized the throne and introduced reforms, such as paper money. The Ming used this as a pretext to invade in 1407, ruling Vietnam as a Chinese province for twenty years, taking books and craftsmen to China.

Lê Lợi, a landowner from Thanh Hóa, led a ten-year war of resistance and drove out the Ming in 1427, founding the Later Lê dynasty. His adviser Nguyễn Trãi wrote the Great Proclamation upon the Pacification of the Wu, a statement of Vietnamese independence. Lê Thánh Tông, who ruled from 1460 to 1497, issued the Hồng Đức law code, which gave women some property rights, reformed the administration and examinations, and conquered the Cham capital of Vijaya in 1471.

In 1527 the general Mạc Đăng Dung seized the throne. Supporters of the Lê fought back, and from the late sixteenth century the Lê emperors were figureheads, while two families held power: the Trịnh lords in the north and the Nguyễn lords in the south. They fought a long war from 1627 to 1672, and the Nguyễn built walls near today's Đồng Hới. The Nguyễn expanded south into the Mekong delta, taking land from the Khmer, and Saigon grew as a trading centre. European missionaries, such as Alexandre de Rhodes, who developed the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet, quốc ngữ, worked in both regions.

In 1771 three brothers from Tây Sơn led a rebellion that overthrew both the Nguyễn and the Trịnh. In 1789 Nguyễn Huệ, Emperor Quang Trung, defeated a Qing invasion at Đống Đa, near Thăng Long. The surviving Nguyễn prince, Nguyễn Ánh, with French and Siamese help, defeated the Tây Sơn and in 1802 became Emperor Gia Long, ruling a united country from Huế, renamed Việt Nam in 1804.

Our maps show Đại Việt from 1100 to 1800, entirely within today's Vietnam. Its largest outline, about 290,000 square kilometres on the 1783 map, covers most of the modern country. Hanoi lies inside it throughout, and Ho Chi Minh City's site from 1783. Before and after, the basemap uses the name Annam.