The Dai Viet

The Dai Viet. Dai Viet ('Great Viet') was the name of the Vietnamese state from the 11th to the 18th century, centered on the Red River delta with its capital at Thang Long (Hanoi). Its classical age began when Ly Cong Uan, a commander of Buddhist temple guards, took the throne in 1009 and founded the Ly dynasty (1009-1225), which gave Vietnam its first stable, independent state structures after a thousand years of Chinese rule: a civil administration on Chinese models, a national capital at Thang Long, and official patronage of Buddhism alongside village cults.

The Tran dynasty (1225-1400), which replaced the Ly by marriage and retirement-arrangement, faced the greatest test in Vietnamese history: three Mongol invasions (1258, 1285, 1287-88). Under the warrior-prince Tran Hung Dao, the Vietnamese twice drove out Kublai Khan's armies - and in 1288 annihilated his fleet at the Bach Dang River, where wooden stakes planted in the tidal channel repeated the victory won on the same river over the Chinese three centuries earlier. It was one of the very few decisive defeats of Mongol arms anywhere in the world.

Classical Dai Viet balanced Chinese forms and local identity: it adopted the civil service examination, Confucian bureaucracy (the Quoc Tu Giam, the 'national university', founded 1076), and tribute diplomacy toward China, while its language, village autonomy, and martial memory remained fiercely distinct. The dynasty even projected power south, beginning the long 'nam tien' (southward advance) with wars and marriage-alliances against Champa.

Weakened by court decay, the Tran were usurped in 1400 by Ho Quy Ly, whose reforms provoked a Ming invasion and occupation (1407-1427); Le Loi's ten-year resistance restored independence and founded the Later Le dynasty, whose ruler Le Thanh Tong (r. 1460-1497) codified the Hong Duc law code and destroyed Champa's power (1471). Classical Dai Viet had fixed Vietnam's territory, institutions and its pattern: Chinese-shaped state, stubbornly Vietnamese nation.

To read more about this topic:

Britannica: Later Ly dynasty Britannica: History of Vietnam World History Encyclopedia: Vietnam Timeline