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why the American program of relocating families and villages offended the Vietnamese, as
relocation severed those ancient ethical and religious ties.
Until the arrival of the French, the Vietnamese used a writing system composed of
patient study with revered and respected teachers. And those who mastered the written lan-
guage were themselves prized and revered. The great achievers in the state-run examina-
tions were honored with memorial tablets, and the very best were co-opted into the man-
darinate, the civil service rulers of the state.
HOW HAS THE SEA AFFECTED VIETNAM'S HISTORY?
Without the tropical waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Vietnam would not be awash
with monsoon rains, and without monsoon rains, there would be no abundant rice crop:
three per year in the South, two per year in the North. Vietnam's coastline, stretching
1,900 miles along the South China Sea, abuts the sea lanes that join the Pacific and Indian
Oceans. Ships have coasted Vietnam since ancient times, and its ship-lane location invited
the predatory attention of Europe from the sixteenth century on.
The Portuguese came first, then the Dutch, English, and French. In 1861 the French
captured Saigon and began extending control west and north. In just over two decades
(1881), France had installed itself in three regions and reduced those regions to protect-
orates and colonies: Tonkin in the north, Anam in the center, and Indochina in the south.
French control expanded to include Laos and Cambodia. By 1900, these two countries,
along with Tonkin, Anam, and the south of Vietnam (Indochina), had fused into French In-
dochina.
Long before French incursions, the Vietnamese had been fighting Chinese invasions
for more than 1,000 years. Sometime in the second century BCE, a renegade Chinese
general created a kingdom in northern Vietnam. In the first century BCE, the armies of
the Chinese emperor created a province extending south to today's Da Nang, called the
province of Giao Chi.
WORLD WAR II
As noted earlier, the name Vietnam was coined from Viet Nam, and it emerged during the
final years of World War II. The French had been cruel colonizers, forcing the Vietnamese
to abandon village self-sufficiency and barter (mostly rice) to serve as poorly paid wage
workers on French-owned plantations. With wages in hand, workers were forced to pay
taxes in support of the colonial government.
When Japanese armies overran Southeast Asia, Japan's alliance with the Vichy gov-
ernment enabled the French to retain administrative control over their colonies. But war
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