Dai Viet

Dai Viet was a kingdom of what is now Vietnam. It had broken from China in 939 CE, and governed the Red River Delta but eventually collapsed internally by the 14th century; until the Chinese retook control.

Kingdom of Dai Viet
Later, the area of Dai Viet, widely called Annam, came back under Vietnamese leadership, initially warlords, beginning with the Ngo (939-968), and then the Dinh (968-979) was even more ephemeral, which did defeat warlords and pacified the Chinese with tribute but did not establish independence.

Independence
This period was known as the pre-Le Dynasty. It was known for establishing military dominance, first over the Chinese Sung in 981, and then, also under General Le Hoan, invaded the Kingdom of Champa and conquered its capital Indrapura (now in Quang Nam Province), securing the southern border.

Ly Dynasty
The Ly Dynasty reigned between 1010 and 1225, with nine kings, King  Ly Thai To, ordered the transfer of the capital to Thang Long, the ancestor of today's Hanoi, which was to remain the capital until the 19th century revolt that established the Nguyen Dynasty. His successor, Ly Thanh Ton, established the name Dai Viet in 1054.

This dynasty was the first to build extensive irrigation works, long before the French hydraulic engineering of the Mekong Delta in the 19th century.

This dynasty, however, had to keep fighting. It attacked the Kingdom of Champa and ravaged its capital in 1044 and 1069. The Chinese were defeated after a war lasting from 1057 to 1061. IA second Chinese invasion was defeated after a four-year war (1057-61). And the long feud with Champa was renewed.

Champa tried, in 1128 and 1132, to recover their losses to Dai Viet, but then lost a war to the Cambodian Khmers. The Khmer eventually recovered Cham provinces taken by Dai Viet.

Tran Dynasty
A peak of cultural development came in the 13th and 14th centuries, under the Tran Dynasty.

Ho Dynasty
Eventually, a peasant revolt, in the late 14th century, sapped the strength of the Trans. A Tran mandarin, Ho Quy Ly rose high in the court, and took effective control as civilian leader between 1396 and 1400. In 1400, he declared himself king.

After dethroning the Trans, he built defenses against the Ming Chinese. Economic reforms improved the lot of the central government, and weakened the remaining Tran family. Nevertheless, Ho did little for the peasantry. Ho Quy Ly was king for only a year, and then replaced by his son, Ho Han Thuong, who ruled until 1407, when the Ming invaded and took control until 1427.

Le Dynasty
Le Loi, however, led a successful revolt, becoming king, and, not repeating the mistake of leaving the Tran family strong, confiscated all Ming and Tran assets. The Le Dynasty was to last until 1527. It was to fight many internal ethnic conflicts.

Tay Son Dynasty
The Le dynasty collapsed into civil war and Chinese Qing invasion. Eventually, the Tay Son dynasty, under Nguyen Hue, regained control in 1789.

Fall of Dai Viet
Nguyen Hue's Tay Son Dynasty, somewhat confusingly, was eventually overthrown by the final Vietnamese empire, the Nguyen Dynasty. The last Nguyen emperor was Bao Dai, whom the French would use as a symbolic leader.

Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang
Named after the classical kingdom, Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang was a nationalist political party of the 1940s.