Le Dynasty

         1428-1789, Vietnamese dynasty founded by Le Loi, a rich landowner from Thanh Hoa province. Le Loi struggled against the Chinese, who had occupied the area under the Ming dynasty, for ten years before ascending the throne in 1428 under the name of Le Thai To.

During the reigns of the early Le emperors, many reforms were made. These emperors promoted art, literature, education, and agriculture. They also strengthened the mandarin class by holding official examinations every three years, and protected communal lands against the greed of large landowners. Under Le Thanh Tong, Vietnam had the most advanced legal code of Southeast Asia. Externally, the Le continued the policy started under the Tran dynasty and expanded southward at the expense of the kingdom of Champa. This was especially true under Le Thanh Tong, who extended the Vietnamese frontier to the vicinity of Nha Trang. The dynasty suffered a decline after Le Thanh Tong’s death. In 1527 General Mac Dang Dung deposed the Le king and declared himself ruler. The Trinh and the Nguyen families, Le nobles who supported reinstatement of the Le king, led the struggle against Mac Dang Dung and regained control of the entire country by 1592. By that time, however, the Trinh had become dominant in the Le court, leaving the Le rulers in name only. The Nguyen, meanwhile, had been granted a fiefdom in the south, and a rivalry developed between the Trinh and the Nguyen. This effectively divided the country into two quarreling regimes. The country remained divided for more than 150 years, when a peasant rebellion under the leadership of the Tay Son brothers succeeded in overthrowing the Nguyen in 1783 and the Trinh in 1789.

Nguyen Dynasty

         last dynasty of Vietnam, founded by Nguyen Anh, who ascended the throne in 1802 under the name of Gia Long. The Nguyen family first became prominent in Vietnam during the 16th century when Nguyen Kim, an ancestor of the Nguyen, fought to restore the Le dynasty after its power was usurped by the Mac family. Following Nguyen Kim’s death, his son-in-law Trinh Kiem took over power. To avoid an internecine war, Kim’s son Nguyen Hoang proposed himself as governor of the southern province of Thuan Hoa. By the end of the 16th century, Nguyen’s power in the south was sufficiently strong to defy the Trinh, and by 1673 both families had accepted a de facto division of the Vietnamese state.

During the next 100 years, the Nguyen completed the conquest of the kingdom of Champa as well as a large part of Cambodia, before a peasant rebellion in 1771 led by the Tay Son brothers swept away both the Nguyen and the Trinh to reunite the country. However, a young Nguyen prince, Nguyen Anh, survived the rebellion. Eventually, with the help of French mercenaries, he fought and regained control of the whole of Vietnam and installed himself as Emperor Gia Long in 1802. After his death, however, the next few Nguyen emperors pursued xenophobic policies that clashed with the imperial ambitions of the French in Indochina. In a series of wars from 1858 to 1885, France gained control over the whole of Vietnam (and the rest of Indochina) but maintained the nominal power of the Nguyen on the throne in Hue until 1945. Then in March 1945, when the French colonial administration was itself ousted by the Japanese, the Nguyen Emperor Bao Dai proclaimed the nominal independence of Vietnam. He was forced to abdicate five months later following the Viet Minh seizure of power in Hanoi immediately after Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II (1939-1945). With the return of the French, Bao Dai again served as head of state from 1949 to 1955, when he was deposed by Ngo Dinh Diem.