The Lê dynasty, also known in historiography as the Later Lê dynasty ( or , , ), was the longest-ruling Vietnamese dynasty, having ruled ÃÂại Viá»Ât () from 1428 to 1789 with an interregnum between 1527 and 1533. The Lê dynasty is divided into two historical periods: the Initial Lê dynasty ( or , , ; 1428âÂÂ1527) before the usurpation by the Mạc dynasty, in which emperors ruled in their own right, and the Revival Lê dynasty ( or , , ; 1533âÂÂ1789), in which the emperors were figures who reigned under the auspices of the powerful Trá»Ânh family. The Revival Lê dynasty was marked by two lengthy civil wars: the LêâÂÂMạc War (1533âÂÂ1592) in which two dynasties battled for legitimacy in northern Vietnam and the Trá»ÂnhâÂÂNguyá» n Wars (1627âÂÂ1672, 1774âÂÂ1777) between the Trá»Ânh lords in North and the Nguyá» n lords of the South.
The dynasty officially began in 1428 with the enthronement of Lê Lợi after he drove the Ming Chinese army from Vietnam. The dynasty reached its peak during the reign of Lê Thánh Tông and declined after his death in 1497. In 1527, the Mạc dynasty usurped the throne; when the Lê dynasty was restored in 1533, the Mạc fled to the far north and continued to claim the throne during the period known as Southern and Northern Dynasties. The restored Lê emperors held no real power, and by the time the Mạc dynasty was finally eradicated in 1677, actual power lay in the hands of the Trá»Ânh lords in the North and Nguyá» n lords in the South, both ruling in the name of the Lê emperor while fighting each other. The Lê dynasty officially ended in 1789, when the peasant uprising of the Tây Sán brothers defeated both the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n, ironically in order to restore power to the Lê dynasty.
The Lê dynasty continued the Nam tiến expansion of Vietnam's borders southwards through the domination of the Kingdom of Champa and expedition into today Laos and Myanmar, nearly reaching Vietnam's modern borders by the time of the Tây Sán uprising. It also saw massive changes to Vietnamese society: the previously Buddhist state became Confucian after the preceding 20 years of Ming rule. The Lê emperors instituted many changes modeled after the Chinese system, including the civil service and laws. Their long-lasting rule was attributed to the popularity of the early emperors. Lê Lợi's liberation of the country from 20 years of Ming rule and Lê Thánh Tông's bringing the country into a golden age was well-remembered by the people. Even though the restored Lê emperors' rule was marked by civil strife and constant peasant uprisings, few dared to openly challenge their power for fear of losing popular support. The Lê dynasty also was the period Vietnam saw the coming of Western Europeans and Christianity in early 16th-century.
During the Fourth Chinese domination of Vietnam, Lê Lợi led an uprising against the rule of the Ming dynasty in 1418, after resistance forces of two Trần dynasty princes Trần Ngá»Âi and Trần Quý Khoáng were crushed by the Ming army. He joined a secret Taoist swearing commentary in Là ©ng Nhai, Thanh Hoá in winter 1416, with other 18 men, who all swore they would fight against the Ming Chinese and restore Vietnamese independence and sovereignty.
The Lam Sán ("blue mountain") campaign began on the day after Tết (Lunar New Year) in February 1418. In November 1424, the Lam Sán captured the Nghá» An citadel in a surprise attack from their base in Laos, leading to the retreat of the ethnic-Vietnamese Ming commander Lðáng Nhữ Há»Ât (Liang Juihu) to the north. From their new base in high-density population Nghá» An, Lê Lợi's rebel forces captured the territory in modern-day central Vietnam, from Thanh Hoá to ÃÂàNẵng. By August 1426, the Lam Sán rebellion launched an offensive to the north with new forces against a fresh Ming army commanded by Wang Tong in charge of defending northern Vietnam. The new Ming ruler, the Xuande Emperor, wished to end the war with Vietnam, but his advisors urged one more effort to subdue the rebellious province. Consequently, the Ming sent a large army of approximately 100,000 men to Vietnam. After the pivotal Battle of Tá»Ât ÃÂá»Âng â Chúc ÃÂá»Âng in October 1426, the Ming dynasty withdrew by 1428. By early 1427, Lê Lợi's forces had controlled most of northern Vietnam, advancing as far as the southern tip of modern-day Guangxi. Following negotiations with the Ming, Lê Lợi selected Trần Cảo as a puppet king of Annam who nominally ruled from 1426 to 1428.
In 1428, Lê Lợi established the Lê dynasty and took the reign name Lê Thái Tá»Â, receiving recognition and formal protection from the Ming dynasty in a tributary relationship.In 1429, he introduced the ThuáºÂn Thiên code, largely based on the Tang Code, with severe charges for gambling, bribery and corruption. Lê Lợi granted a land reform in 1429 that took lands from people who collaborated with the Chinese and distributed them among landless peasants and soldiers. He distrusted many of his former generals, resulting in the 1430 execution of the two generals Trần Nguyên Hãn and Phạm VÃÂn Xảo that is considered by Vietnamese historians as a political purge.Lê Lợi's reign would be short-lived, as he died in 1433.
Lê Thái Tông (, ruled 1433âÂÂ1442) was the official heir to Lê Lợi. However, he was just eleven, so a close friend of Lê Lợi, Lê Sát, assumed the regency of the kingdom. Not long after he assumed the official title as Emperor of Vietnam in 1438, Lê Thái Tông accused Lê Sát of abuse of power and had him executed. In December 1435, Thái Tông ordered general Tð Mã Tây to subdue the Tày chief Cầm Quý who having a ten-thousand army of raiders in the northwest region.
In January 1436, the emperor ordered to make roads and canals from northwest region to the capital for showing the superior power of the Imperial court to the local tribes men. From 1437 to 1441, tribe men from Ai-Lao crossed the Annamite Range, raided in Thanh Hóa and southern Hðng Hóa (now Sán La province) with the help of the local raiders led by Nghiá» m Sinh Tðợng were suppressed by the Imperial army. The Lê dynasty started treating hostilely to the ethnic minorities in western region. On a stone monument that was carved in 1439 under Thái Tông's reign said "Bá»Ân-Man (Muang Phuan) barbarians were against our assimilation, they need to be exterminated to their roots, and with the Sán-Man (Mðá»Âng and Chứt) barbaric raiders, we need to eliminated all of them,..."
According to a MạcâÂÂTrá»Ânh version of Complete Annals of ÃÂại Viá»Ât, the new Emperor had a weakness for women. He had many wives, and he discarded one favorite after another. The most prominent scandal was his affair with Nguyá» n Thá» Lá»Â, the wife of his father's chief advisor Nguyá» n Trãi. The affair started early in 1442 and continued when the Emperor traveled to the home of Nguyá» n Trãi, who was venerated as a great Confucian scholar.
Shortly after the Emperor left Trãi's home to continue his tour of the western province, he fell ill and died. At the time the powerful nobles in the court argued that the Emperor had been poisoned to death. NguyỠn Trãi was executed as were his three entire relations, the normal punishment for treason at that time.
With the Emperor's sudden death at a young age, his infant heir Bang Co was made emperor - although he was the second son of his father, his older brother Nghi Dân had been officially passed over due to his mother's low social status. Bang Co assumed the throne as Lê Nhân Tông (é»Âä»Âå®Â) but the real rulers were Trá»Ânh Khả and the child's mother, the young Empress Nguyá» n Thá» Anh. The next 17 years were good years for Vietnam â there were no great troubles either internally or externally. Two things of note occurred: first, the Vietnamese sent an army south to attack the Champa kingdom in 1446; second, the Dowager Empress ordered the execution of Trá»Ânh Khả, for reasons lost to history, in 1451. In 1453 at the age of twelve, Lê Nhân Tông was formally given the title of Emperor. This was unusual as according to custom, youths could not ascend the throne till the age of 16. It may have been done to remove Nguyá» n Thi Anh from power, but if that was the reason, it failed and the Dowager Empress still controlled the government up until a coup in 1459.
In 1459, Lê Nhân Tông's older brother, Nghi Dân, plotted with a group of followers to kill the Emperor. On October 28, the plotters with some 100 "shiftless men" infiltrated the palace and murdered the Emperor (he was just 18). The next day, facing certain execution the Dowager Empress committed suicide. The rule of Nghi Dân was brief, and he was never officially recognized as a sovereign by later Vietnamese historians. Revolts against his rule started almost immediately and the second revolt, occurring on June 24, 1460, succeeded. The rebels, led by Lê Lợi's surviving former advisors Nguyá» n Xàand Dinh Liêt captured and killed Nghi Dân along with his followers. The rebels then selected the youngest son of Lê Thái Tông to be the new Emperor, who they proclaimed to be Lê Thánh Tông.
Quang ThuáºÂn Hoàng ÃÂế (å Âé ÂçÂÂå¸Â), whose reign was named Há»Âng ÃÂức Thá»Ânh Thế (洪德ä¹ÂçÂÂæ²», "Prosperous reign of Há»Âng ÃÂức"), instituted a wide range of government reforms, legal reforms, and land reforms. He restarted the examination system for selecting men for important government positions. He reduced the power of the noble families and reduced the degree of corruption in the government. He built temples to Confucius throughout the provinces of ÃÂại Viá»Ât. In nearly all respects, his reforms mirrored those of the Ming dynasty. Thánh Tông was strongly influenced by his Confucian teachers and he resolved to make Viá»Ât Nam more like the Ming dynasty with its Neo-Confucianist philosophy and the key idea that the government should be run by men of noble character as opposed to men from noble families. This meant that he needed to take power away from the ruling families (mostly from Thanh Hóa province) and give power to the scholars who did well on the official examinations. The first step on this path was to revive the examination process, which had continued sporadically in the 1450s. The first examination was held in 1463 and, as expected, the top scholars were men from elsewhere- usually from the river delta surrounding the capital, not from Thanh Hóa.In 1467, Lê Thánh Tông changed the name of the state to "Thiên Nam" (Heavenly South) to make the parallel position with their northern neighbor and shared classical culture more explicit.
Thánh Tông encouraged the spread of Confucian values throughout Vietnam by having "temples of literature" built in all the provinces. There, Confucius was venerated and classic works on Confucianism could be found. He also halted the building of any new Buddhist or Taoist temples and ordered that monks were not to be allowed to purchase any new land.
Lê Thánh Tông introduced reforms designed to replace the Thanh Hoá oligarchy of Dai Viet's southern region with a corps of bureaucrats selected through the Confucian civil service examinations. Following the Chinese model, he divided the government into six ministries: Finance, Rites, Justice, Personnel, Army, and Public Works. Nine grades of rank were set up for both the civil administration and the military. A Board of Censors was set up with imperial authority to monitor governmental officials and reported exclusively to the emperor. However, governmental authority did not extend all the way to the village level. The villages were ruled by their own councils in Vietnam.
With the death of Nguyá» n Xàin 1465, the noble families from Thanh Hóa province lost their leader. Soon they were mostly relegated to secondary positions in the new Confucian government of Thánh Tông. However, they still retained control over Vietnam's armies as the old general, ÃÂinh Liá»Ât, was still in command of the army. In the same year, Vietnam was attacked by Ryukyuan pirates from the northeast. This was dealt with by sending additional forces to the north to fight the pirates. Thánh Tông also sent a military force to the west to subdue the Ai-lao mountain tribes that was raiding the northwest border.In 1469, all of Vietnam was mapped and a full census was taken, listing all the villages in the Empire. Around this time the country was divided into 13 dao (provinces). Each was administrated by a Governor, Judge, and the local army commander. The emperor Thánh Tông also ordered that a new census should be taken every six years. Other public works that were undertaken included building and repair of granaries, using the army to rebuild and repair irrigation systems after floods, and sending out doctors to areas afflicted by outbreaks of disease. Even though the emperor, at 25, was relatively young, he had already restored Vietnam's stability, which was a marked contrast from the turbulent times marking the reigns of the two emperors before him.
Article 344 of the Nguyen dynasty code and Article 305 of the Le dynasty code both forbade self-castration and castration of Vietnamese men. Self-castration of Vietnamese men was banned by Lê Thánh Tông, the emperor, in 1464.
The Vietnamese under Emperor Le Thanh Tong cracked down on foreign contacts and enforced an isolationist policy. A large amount of trade between Guangdong (Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan) and Vietnam happened during this time. Early accounts recorded that the Vietnamese captured Chinese whose ships had blown off course and detained them. Young Chinese men were selected by the Vietnamese for castration to become eunuch slaves to the Vietnamese. It has been speculated by modern historians that Chinese who were captured and castrated by the Vietnamese were involved in regular trade between China and Vietnam instead of being blown off course, and that they were punished after a Vietnamese crackdown on trade with foreign countries.
A 1499 entry in the Ming Shilu recorded that thirteen Chinese men from Wenchang including a young man named Wu Rui were captured by the Vietnamese after their ship was blown off course while traveling from Hainan to Guangdong's Qin subprefecture (Qinzhou), after which they ended up near the coast of Vietnam, in the 1460s, during the Chenghua Emperor's rule (1464âÂÂ1487). Twelve of them were enslaved to work as agricultural laborers, while the youngest Chinese man, Wu Rui (å³çÂÂ) was selected by the Vietnamese court for castration since he was the only young man in among the thirteen and he became a eunuch at the Vietnamese imperial palace in Thang Long for nearly one fourth of a century. After years of serving the Vietnamese as a eunuch slave in the palace, he was promoted to a position with real power after the death of the Vietnamese ruler in 1497 to a military position in northern Vietnam as military superintendent since his service in the palace was apparently valued by the Vietnamese. However the Lạng Sán guard soldier Dðáng Tam tri (Yang Sanzhi) (æ¥Âä¸ÂçÂÂ¥) told him of an escape route back to China and Wu Rui escaped to Longzhou after walking for 9 days through the mountains. The local ethnic minority Tusi chief Wei Chen took him into custody, overruling objections from his family who wanted to send him back to Vietnam. Vietnam found out about his escape and sent an agent to buy Wu Rui back from Wei Chen with 100 Jin in payment since they were scared that Wu Rui would reveal Vietnamese state secrets to China. Wei Chen planned to sell him back to the Vietnamese but told them the amount they were offering was too little and demanded more however before they could agree on a price, Wu was rescued by the Pingxiang magistrate Li Guangning and then was sent to Beijing to work as a eunuch in the Ming palace at the Directorate of Ceremonial (silijian taijian å¸禮ç£太ç£). The ÃÂại Viá»Ât sá» ký toàn thð records that in 1467 in An Bang province of Dai Viet (now Quảng Ninh Province) a Chinese ship blew off course onto the shore. The Chinese were detained and not allowed to return to China as ordered by Le Thanh Tong. This incident may be the same one where Wu Rui was captured.
Several Malay envoys from the Malacca sultanate were attacked and captured in 1469 by Vietnamese navy as they were returning to Malacca from China. The Vietnamese enslaved and castrated the young from among the captured.
A 1472 entry in the Ming Shilu reported that some Chinese from Nanhai escaped back to China after their ship had been blown off course into Vietnam, where they had been forced to serve as soldiers in Vietnam's military. The escapees also reported that they found out that more than 100 Chinese men remained captives in Vietnam after they were caught and castrated by the Vietnamese after their ships were blown off course into Vietnam in other incidents. The Chinese Ministry of Revenue responded by ordering Chinese civilians and soldiers to stop going abroad to foreign countries. These 100 men were taken prisoner around the same time as Wu Rui and the historian Leo K. Shin believes all of them may have been involved in illegal trade instead of being blown off course by wind. The over 100 Chinese men who were castrated and made into eunuchs by the Vietnamese remained captives in Vietnam when the incident was reported. Both the incidents of the young Chinese man Wu Rui and the more than 100 Chinese men being castrated and used as eunuchs point to possible involvement in trade according to historians John K. Whitmore and Tana Li which was then suppressed by the Vietnamese government instead of them really being blown off course by the wind. China's relations with Vietnam during this period were marked by the punishment of prisoners by castration.
Under the order of Lê Thánh Tông, the official historical text of the Lê dynasty, ÃÂại Viá»Ât sá» ký toàn thð (大è¶Âå²è¨Âå ¨æ¸), was compiled and finished in 1479. The 15-volume book covered the entirety of Vietnamese history at that point, from the Há»Âng Bàng dynasty to the enthronement of Lê Thái Tá»Â.
In 1471, Lê Thánh Tông conquered Champa and captured the Cham capital Vijaya, ending independent Cham rule in the south. The Kingdom of Champa was reduced to a small enclave near Panduranga (modern day Phan RangâÂÂTháp Chàm) and Kauthara (now Nha Trang) with many Chams fleeing to Cambodia. Lê Thánh Tông created a new province out of former Cham land and allowed ethnic Vietnamese settlers to settle it. The conquest of the Cham kingdoms started a rapid period of expansion by the Vietnamese southwards into this newly conquered land. The government used a system of land settlement called ÃÂá»Ân ÃÂiá»Ân ().
From 1478 to 1480, Lê Thánh Tông led an expedition against the kingdoms of Lan Xang and Lanna in today Laos and Northern Thailand. Laotians were overwhelmed, their capital Luang Prabang was captured. Laotians retreated to the jungles, where they waged two-years of guerrilla warfare against the Vietnamese. King of Lan Xang Chakkaphat Phaen Phaeo sought refuge in Lanna. Some of the Vietnamese army had reached the kingdom of Ava. The expedition ended inconclusively, many Vietnamese soldiers died because of the hostile climate and rampant diseases; The Vietnamese forces were unable to suppress the Laotian guerrillas, and then the Laotians were able to recapture their capital. As the Vietnamese withdrew their army through the kingdom of Muang Phuan in December 1479, they annexed and incorporated it into Ninh Protectorate (Trấn Ninh) in 1480.
With the death of Lê Thánh Tông, the Lê dynasty fell into a swift decline (1497âÂÂ1527).
Prince Lê TÃÂng, the eldest of Lê Thánh Tông's 14 sons, succeeded his father as Lê Hiến Tông (é»Âæ²å®Â). He was 38 years old at the time of his father's death. He was an affable, meek and mild-mannered person. Due to his short period of rule and that he didn't pass many significant reforms, his reign is considered to be an extension of Lê Thánh Tông's rule. The new emperor was known to historical annals as Lê Hiến Tông. In early 1499, several high-ranking officials including Lê Vénh and Lê NÃÂng Nhðợng persuaded Hiến Tông to choose an heir in order to maintain the dynasty's and the nation's security and sustainability. Hiến Tông agreed; and although the emperor had two elder sons: Lê Tuân and Lê Tuấn, Lê Thuần was designed as crown prince due to his deep interest in intellectuality and Neo-Confucianism, which caused Hiến Tông to perceive him as being far superior to his two older brothers. He chose his third son, Lê Túc Tông (é»Âè å®Â) to be his successor. In 1504, Lê Hiến Tông died at 44 years old. The 17 year old Lê Thuần inherited the throne. The Confucian annalists portrayed him as a relatively good emperor who released many prisoners, stopping several construction works that posed heavy burden on his subjects, as well as reducing tributes from vassals and holding high-ranking officials in high regard. He was also said to have maintained harmony in the court and the whole country. In the other hand, the annals also recorded a revolt broke in Cao Bằng, led by ÃÂoàn Thế Nùng against the government. Lê Thuần sent troops to Cao Bằng, defeating and killing ÃÂoàn Thế Nùng along with 500 rebels. However, he fell gravely ill and died just six months after assuming the throne.
Lê Uy Mục (é»Âå¨Âç©Â) was the second son of Emperor Lê Hiến Tông. In 1505, as older brother of Emperor Lê Túc Tông, he succeeded the throne, later known under posthumous name Uy Mục hoàng ÃÂế (å¨Âç©ÂçÂÂå¸Â). Lê Uy Mục was portrayed by Neo-Confucianist chroniclers as being deeply contrasted to his predecessors Lê Thánh Tông, Lê Hiến Tông and Lê Túc Tông, who closely followed Neo-Confucianist principles in governing the nation. The first thing the new emperor did was to take revenge against those who had barred him from the throne by having them killed. Among his victims were the former emperor's mother â which was considered a shocking display of evil behavior. Lê Uy Mục was described by a Ming ambassador â as a cruel, sadistic, and depraved person, who wasted the court's money and finances to indulge his whims. Well aware that he was detested by his subjects, Lê Uy Mục protected himself by hiring a group of elite bodyguards to surround him at all times. Among them was Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung, who became very close to the emperor and eventually rose to the rank of general. Despite his precautions, in 1509 a cousin, whom Lê Uy Mục had put in prison, escaped and plotted with court insiders to assassinate the emperor. The assassination succeeded and the killer proclaimed himself emperor under the name Lê Tðáng Dá»±c.
Lê Tðáng Dá»±c (é»Âè¥Â翼), posthumous name Tðáng Dá»±c Hoàng ÃÂế (è¥Â翼çÂÂå¸Â), proved to be just as bad a ruler as Lê Uy Mục. He reigned from 1510 to 1516, all the while spending down the imperial treasury, and doing nothing to improve the country. He was heedless to the reaction that his taxes caused throughout the country. Later in his reign, he spent extravagantly in building many colossal palaces in the imperial capital, ThÃÂng Long. The most notable of those places was one known to the Vietnamese as Cá»Âu Trùng ÃÂài (ä¹ÂéÂÂèº, trans. "Nine-Leveled Tower"), designed by the emperor's favoured architect Và © Nhð Tô. He also spent much time enjoying sexual activities with his concubines, many of whom were former concubines of Lê Hiến Tông and Lê Uy Mục. According to court chroniclers, he ordered the build of special boats for his nude concubines to row on large artificial lakes. As the result of the emperor's luxurious lifestyle and ignorance of state affairs, the people suffered considerable hardships. Many soldiers committed to build imperial palaces died due to diseases. As the government became increasingly unpopular, many rebellions broke out. The largest of them was that of Trần Cảo, a northerner who claimed to be an heir of the House of Trần. His rule ended in 1516 when a group officials and generals led by Trá»Ânh Duy Sản stormed the palace and killed him.
At 14 years old, nephew of Lê Tðáng Dá»±c, prince Lê Y, was enthroned as the new emperor Lê Chiêu Tông (ruled 1516âÂÂ1522). Factions within the court vied with one another for control of the government. One powerful and growing faction was led by Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung, a military leader who rose through the ranks. His growing power was resented by the leaders of two noble families in Vietnam: the Nguyá» n, under Nguyá» n Hoàng Dụ and the Trá»Ânh, under Trá»Ânh Duy ÃÂại and Trá»Ânh Duy Sản. After several years of increasing tension, the Nguyá» n and the Trá»Ânh left the capital Hanoi (then called ÃÂông ÃÂô) and fled south, with the Emperor "under their protection".
In 1524, Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung forces captured and executed the leaders of the revolt (Nguyá» n Hoàng Du, Trá»Ânh Duy ÃÂại, and Trá»Ânh Duy Sản). The revolt by the Trá»Ânh clan and the Nguyá» n clan was defeated for the moment. This was the start of a civil war with Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung and his supporters on one side and the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n on the other side. Thanh Hóa Province, the ancestral home to the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n, was the battle ground between the two sides. After several years of warfare, Emperor Lê Chiêu Tông was assassinated in 1522 by Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung's supporters. Not long after, the leaders of the Nguyá» n and the Trá»Ânh were executed. Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung was now the most powerful man in Vietnam.
The degenerated Lê dynasty, which endured under six rulers between 1497 and 1527, in the end was no longer able to maintain control over the northern part of the country, much less the new territories to the south. The weakening of the monarchy created a vacuum that the various noble families of the aristocracy were eager to fill. Soon after Lê Chiêu Tông fled south with the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n in 1522, Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung proclaimed the Emperor's younger brother, Lê Xuân, as the new Emperor under the name Lê Cung Hoàng. In reality, the new Emperor had no power. Three years after Mạc's forces killed his older brother Lê Chiêu Tông, Lê Chiêu Tông was pressured by Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung to hang himself on 18 June 1527 in Bắc Sứ garden. Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung, being a scholar-official who had effectively controlled the Lê for a decade, murdered all the Lê imperial family members then proclaimed himself the new Emperor of Vietnam on 15 June 1527, ending (so he thought) the Lê dynasty (see Mạc dynasty for more details).
Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung's seizure of the throne prompted other families of the aristocracy, notably the Nguyá» n and Trá»Ânh, to rush to the support of the Lê loyalists. With the usurpation of the throne, the civil war broke out anew. Again the Nguyá» n and the Trá»Ânh gathered an army and fought against Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung, this time under the leadership of Nguyá» n Kim and Trá»Ânh Kiá»Âm. The Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n were nominally fighting on behalf of the Lê emperor but in reality, for their own power.
The Lê loyalists under Lê Ninh, a descendant of the Imperial family, escaped to Muang Phuan (today Laos). Marquis of An Thanh Nguyá» n Kim summoned the people who were still loyal to the Lê emperor and formed a new army to begin a revolt against Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung. Subsequently, Nguyá» n Kim returned to ÃÂại Viá»Ât and led the Lê loyalists in a sixty-year-long civil war. In 1536 and 1537, Nguyên Hòa sent two envoys to Beijing to ask the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming dynasty to send an army to fight against the Mạc to restore the Lê dynasty. Many Ming officials like Mao Bowen showed strong support for the Lê loyalists and urged Jiajing Emperor to prepare a military campaign. The Ming Emperor agreed.
In 1527, the Và © VÃÂn clan in HàGiang and northern Hðng Hóa rebelled against Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung and set up their own government. Vu Van Uyen and his family were called Bầu lords. In 1534, after Nguyá» n Kim forces recaptured Thanh Hóa, Và © VÃÂn Uyên allied with Lê loyalists and the Ming army to fight against the Mạc dynasty. But Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung himself in 1540 went and surrendered the Ming army, wishing for peace. Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung ceded the northeast Vietnamese coastal to the Ming dynasty in exchange for the promise that the Ming dynasty would never invade Vietnam again. The Chinese now recognized both Mạc and Lê legitimacy over ÃÂại Viá»Ât and withdrew their army. Bầu Lords showed strong support for the Lê dynasty and refused to accept Trá»Ânh family at the early stage of Trá»ÂnhâÂÂNguyá» n War. Later, they cooperated with the Trá»Ânh. Bầu Lords lasted for nearly 200 years from 1527 to 1699.
In 1542, Lê army from Muang Phuan recaptured Nghá» An. Mạc general Dðáng Chấp Nhất surrendered. After capturing the region of Thanh Hóa and Nghá» An, the Revival Lê dynasty eventually recaptured three-quarters of their former kingdom. Inasmuch as the Mac dynasty ruled the northern portion of ÃÂại Viá»Ât while the Lê dynasty ruled the remainder of the country, this time became known as the period of Northern and Southern dynasties.
In 1545, Nguyá» n Kim was poisoned by Dðáng Chấp Nhất, a surrendered general of the Mạc dynasty. The power of imperial court was then passed to Nguyá» n Kim's son-in-law Trá»Ânh Kiá»Âm who became the founder of the Trá»Ânh lords. Since then the emperor had only become a figurehead, Trá»Ânh Kiá»Âm and his successors were the de facto rulers of the country and continued the war with the Mạc. The war had three actual fighting periods: 1533âÂÂ1537, 1551âÂÂ1564 and 1584âÂÂ1592. During the early confrontation period, the Lê dynasty introduced personal firearms like matchlocks into their army and surprised the Mạc army.Trá»Ânh Tùng succeed his father in 1570, established the Trá»Ânh lords and launched a large-scale offensive against the Mạc army in January 1592. Unable to resist the forces of the Lê loyalists, in December 1592 the Mạc dynasty retreated to the north and established a new capital at Cao Bằng Province allying with the Ming dynasty of China as a tributary nation against the Lê dynasty.
In 1597, the Ming dynasty recognized the legitimacy of the Lê monarch. However, the Ming recorded that the Lê rulers were very dissatisfied with the Ming Empire because the Chinese also concurrently supported the Mạc dynasty. In 1589, Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent envoys to the Lê court in Thanh Hoá, asking the Vietnamese to join Japan's alliance against Ming China and Joseon Korea. Hideyoshi hoped that a three-pronged attack on the Ming dynastyâÂÂwith Japan from the north, Vietnam to the south, and other Southeast Asian nations to the southwestâÂÂwould weaken the Ming army and allow the attackers to prevail. Although some officials supported the plan, the Lê emperor Quang Hðng and his ministers recognized the overwhelming strength of the Ming empire; the Lê ministers further viewed Japan and other Southeast Asian nations as "barbarians" and formally refused the Japanese lord's invitation.
The Ming loyalist Chinese pirate Yang Yandi (Dðáng Ngạn ÃÂá»Âch) and his fleet sailed to Vietnam to leave the Qing dynasty in March 1682, first appearing off the coast of Tonkin in north Vietnam. According to the Vietnamese account, Và © Duy Chàæ¦æÂÂå¿Â, a minister of the Vietnamese Lê dynasty came up with a plan to defeat the Chinese pirates by sending more than 300 beautiful Vietnamese singing girls and prostitutes carrying red handkerchiefs to the Chinese pirate junks on small boats. The Chinese pirates and northern Vietnamese girls had sex but the women then wet the gun barrels of the Chinese pirates ships with their handkerchiefs. They then left in the same boats. The Vietnamese navy attacked the Chinese pirate fleet who were unable to fire back with their wet guns. The Chinese pirate fleet, originally 206 junks, was reduced to 50âÂÂ80 junks by the time it reached south Vietnam's Quang Nam and the Mekong delta. The Chinese pirates having sex with north Vietnamese women may also have transmitted a deadly epidemic from China to the Vietnamese which ravaged the Tonkin regime of north Vietnam. French and Chinese sources say a typhoon contributed to the loss of ships along with the disease. The Nguyá» n court allowed Yang (Duong) and his surviving followers to resettle in ÃÂá»Âng Nai, which had been newly acquired from the Khmers. Duong's followers named their settlement as "Minh Huong", to recall their allegiance to the Ming dynasty.
In 1620, Nguyá» n Phúc Nguyên officially refused to send taxes to the court in Hanoi. A formal demand was made to the Nguyá» n to submit to the authority of the court, and it was formally refused. In 1623 Trá»Ânh Tùng died and was succeeded by his son Trá»Ânh Tráng. Trá»Ânh Tráng made yet another formal demand for submission, and again Nguyá» n Phúc Nguyên refused. Finally in 1627 open warfare broke out between the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n. For four months a large Trá»Ânh army campaigned against the Nguyá» n army but were unable to defeat them. The result of this war was that Vietnam had effectively been partitioned into northern and southern regions, with the Trá»Ânh controlling most of the north and the Nguyá» n controlling most of the south; the dividing line was the Gianh River in Quảng Bình Province. This border was very close to the Seventeenth parallel (in actuality the Bến Hải River located just to the south in Quảng Trá» Province), which was imposed as the border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam during the 1954âÂÂ1975 Partition of Vietnam.
While the Trá»Ânh ruled over a much more populous territory, the Nguyá» n had several advantages. First, they were on the defensive and as such were more motivated to fight. Second, the Nguyá» n were able to take advantage of their contacts with the Europeans, specifically the Portuguese, to purchase advanced European weapons and hire European military experts in fortifications. Third, the geography was favorable to them, as the flat plains of the North suitable for large organized armies ended at Nguyá» n-controlled territory; the mountains of the central highlands reach almost to the sea.
After the first campaign, the Nguyá» n built two massive fortified lines which stretched a few miles from the sea to the central highlands. The walls were built north of Huế near the city of ÃÂá»Âng Há»Âi. The Nguyá» n defended these lines against numerous Trá»Ânh offensives which lasted till 1672. Tradition holds that the builder of these walls was a Vietnamese general who was hired from the Trá»Ânh court by the Nguyá» n. Under his direction the walls held repeatedly against multiple Trá»Ânh assaults, even when they mustered an army of 100,000 men, 500 elephants, and 500 large ships.In 1633 the Trá»Ânh tried attacking the Nguyá» n by sea to avoid costly assaults on the great walls. However, the Trá»Ânh fleet was defeated by the Nguyá» n fleet at the battle of Nhat-Le. Around 1635 the Trá»Ânh decided to emulate the Nguyá» n and sought military aid from the Europeans. Trá»Ânh Tráng hired the VOC to make European cannons and ships for his army. In 1642âÂÂ43, the Trá»Ânh army attacked the Nguyá» n walls. With the aid of the Dutch cannons, the Trá»Ânh army broke through the first wall but failed to break through the second. At sea, the Trá»Ânh, with their Dutch ships Kievit, Nachtegaels and Woekende Book were defeated at sea by the Nguyá» n fleet with their Chinese style galleys. Trá»Ânh Tráng staged yet another offensive in 1648 but at the battle of Truong Duc, the Trá»Ânh army was again badly beaten by the Nguyá» n. The new Lê emperor died around this time, perhaps as a result of the defeat. This now left the door open for the Nguyá» n to finally go on the offensive.
The Nguyá» n launched their own invasion of northern Vietnam in 1653. The Nguyá» n army went north and defeated the weakened Trá»Ânh army, capturing Quảng Bình and HàTénh Province. In the following year, Trá»Ânh Tráng died as Nguyá» n forces entered Nghá» An Province. Under the leadership of Trá»Ânh Tráng's successor the capable Trá»Ânh Tạc however, the northern army managed to defeat the Nguyá» n army. The Nguyá» n were also further weakened by a division between their two top generals who refused to cooperate with each other. In 1656 the Nguyá» n army was driven back all the way to their original territories. Trá»Ânh Tạc tried to break the walls of the Nguyá» n in 1661 but this attack, like so many before it, failed.
In 1672, the Trá»Ânh army made a last effort to conquer the Nguyá» n. The attacking army was under the command of Trá»Ânh Tạc's son, Trá»Ânh CÃÂn, while the defending army was under the command of Nguyá» n Phúc Tần's son Prince . The attack, like all the previous attacks on the Nguyá» n walls, failed. This time the two sides agreed to a peace. With the Qing dynasty under the Kangxi Emperor serving as mediator, the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n finally agreed to end the fighting by making the Linh River the border between their lands (1673). Although the Nguyá» n nominally accepted the Lê emperor as the legitimate and sole ruler of Vietnam. However, the reality was that the Nguyá» n ruled the south, and the Trá»Ânh, the north. This division continued for the next century. The border between the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n was strongly fortified yet remained peaceful. Despite the de facto partition of the empire, both the ruling families of the two realms claimed to be loyal subjects under the authority of the singular imperial Lê family, and their territories were de jure all under the same empire, ÃÂại Viá»Ât.
The stalemate between the Trá»Ânh and the Nguyá» n lords that began at the end of the 17th century did not, however, mark the beginning of a period of peace and prosperity. Instead the decades of continual warfare between the two families had left the ruists and peasantry in a weakened state, the victim of taxes levied to support the courts and their military adventures. Having to meet their tax obligations had forced many peasants off the land and facilitated the acquisition of large tracts by a few wealthy landowners, nobles, and scholarâÂÂofficials. Because scholarâÂÂofficials were exempted from having to pay a land tax, the more land they acquired, the greater was the burden that fell on those peasants who had been able to retain their land. In addition, the peasantry faced new taxes on staple items such as charcoal, salt, silk, and cinnamon, and on commercial activities such as fishing and mining. The disparate condition of the economy led to neglect of the extensive network of irrigation systems as well.
As they fell into disrepair, disastrous flooding and famine resulted, unleashing great numbers of starving and landless people to wander aimlessly about the countryside. The widespread suffering in North Vietnam led to numerous peasant revolts between 1730 and 1770, notable the peasant rebellion of Nguyá» n Hữu Cầu from 1748 to 1751. Although the uprisings took place throughout the country, they were essentially local phenomena, breaking out spontaneously from similar local causes. The occasional coordination between and among local movements did not result in any national organization or leadership. Moreover, most of the uprisings were conservative, in that the leaders supported the restoration of the Lê dynasty. They did, however, put forward demands for land reform, more equitable taxes, and rice for all.Landless peasants accounted for most of the initial support for the various rebellions, but they were often joined later by craftsmen, fishermen, miners, and traders, who had been taxed out of their occupations. Some of these movements enjoyed limited success for a short time, but it was not until 1771 that any of the peasant revolts had a lasting national impact.
Dissatisfaction against two ruling families Trá»Ânh and Nguyá» n spread throughout the country. In 1771, three brothers Nguyá» n Nhạc, Nguyá» n Lữ and Nguyá» n Huá» in An Khê, Bình ÃÂá»Ânh with local peasants' support, revolted against the Nguyá» n lord. In 1773, the Tây Sán captured Quy Nhán fort in 1773, gave them financial and manpower support, thus made the rebellion and became widespread. In 1774, Trá»Ânh army from the north launched an offensive against the Nguyá» n. Unable to fight two-front war, Lord Nguyá» n Phúc Thuần lost the control of Cochinchina, fled by ship to the Mekong delta. Nguyá» n's capital Phú Xuân was captured by Trá»Ânh lord. Nguyá» n Phúc Thuần later was taken and executed by the Tây Sán in 1777. The remnant Nguyen led by Nguyá» n ÃÂnh with help from the French priest Pigneau de Behaine (Bá ÃÂa Lá»Âc), he soon recruited his army by enlisted French, Cambodian troops and weapons, but mostly were defeated by the superior and more numerous Tây Sán rebels four times, and ÃÂnh went into exile in Siam. The Tây Sán rebellion were not content to simply conquer the southern provinces of the country.
In 1782, Trá»Ânh Sâm died and passed the throne to his 5-year-old son Trá»Ânh Cán instead of his 19-year-old son Trá»Ânh Tông, who was demoted after his failed coup d'état attempt in 1780. Trá»Ânh Sâm assigned Hoàng Tá» Lý (also known as Hoàng ÃÂình Bảo) as Cán's regent. Trá»Ânh Tông allied with the Three Prefectures Army (, ) to overthrow Trá»Ânh Cán and kill Hoàng Tá» Lý. The army then released the emperor's grandson Lê Duy Kỳ (also known as Lê Duy Khiêm) from imprisonment and forced the emperor to appoint him as the next successor. Trá»Ânh Tông feared that the army's power would grow stronger. He secretly ordered governors of the Four Provinces (Kinh Bắc, Sán Nam, Hải Dðáng, Sán Tây) to march into the capital and dismiss the Three Prefectures Army. However the plan was discovered by the army and Trá»Ânh Tông had to cancel it.
Hoàng Tá» Lý's subordinate Nguyá» n Hữu Chá»Ânh, after hearing about Tá» Lý's death, took refuge in Tây Sán.
In 1786, king of Tây Sán Nguyá» n Nhạc wanted to recover the old territory of Nguyá» n lords captured by the Trá»Ânh. He ordered Nguyá» n Huá» and Nguyá» n Hữu Chá»Ânh to undertake the task. Nhạc warned Huá» not to attack Bắc HÃÂ. However, Chá»Ânh convinced Huá» to do so, under the slogan "Destroy the Trá»Ânh and aid the Lê" (, ) that would help them gain support from Bắc Hàpeople. Trá»Ânh army and the Three Prefectures Army were quickly defeated. Trá»Ânh Tông committed suicide. Emperor Cảnh Hðng died of old age shortly after and passed the throne to Lê Duy Kỳ (emperor Chiêu Thá»Âng).
Nguyá» n Nhạc, after having heard of Nguyá» n Huá»Â's insubordination, hastily marched to ThÃÂng Long and ordered all Tây Sán troops to withdraw. However they intentionally left Nguyá» n Hữu Chá»Ânh behind. Chá»Ânh chased after them and then stayed in his hometown in Nghá» An.
After Tây Sán's withdrawal, members of Trá»Ânh clan, namely Trá»Ânh Lá» and Trá»Ânh Bá»Âng, along with their supporters marched into ThÃÂng Long and demanded Chiêu Thá»Âng to reinstall Trá»Ânh lord. Chiêu Thá»Âng, whose father was killed by Trá»Ânh Sâm, reluctantly agreed and assigned Trá»Ânh Bá»Âng as Prince of Yến ÃÂô (, ). Emperor Chiêu Thá»Âng then sent a secret order to Nguyá» n Hữu Chá»Ânh to come and save him. In 1787, Nguyá» n Hữu Chá»Ânh marched North, defeated Trá»Ânh Bá»Âng and his supporters, ended the 242 years rule of Trá»Ânh clan.
In late 1787, Nguyá» n Huá»Â, no longer served under Nguyá» n Nhạc, sent Và © VÃÂn NháºÂm to invade Bắc Hàunder the pretense of punishing Nguyá» n Hữu Chá»Ânh for insubordination. NháºÂm captured and executed Chá»Ânh in January 1788, emperor Chiêu Thá»Âng fled to the east of Hong River. Và © VÃÂn NháºÂm installed Lê Duy CáºÂn as Country Supervisor (, ) without Huá»Â's approval. Nguyá» n Huá» accused NháºÂm of treason and executed him, took over Bắc Hà.
Lê Chiêu Thá»Âng sent envoy to the Imperial court of the Qing Empire to ask for aid against the Tây Sán. The Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Empire under the pretense of restoring Lê dynasty dispatched a large force of 200,000 soldiers, to invade Northern Vietnam, captured the capital ThÃÂng Long.
At the beginning of the war, Nguyá» n Huá»Â's troops retreated to the South and refused to engage the Qing army. He raised a large army of his own and defeated the invader in the Lunar New year Eve of 1789. Chiêu Thá»Âng and the imperial family fled north into China, never to return. The Lê dynasty finally ended after ruling Vietnam for 356 years. He went to Beijing where he was appointed a Chinese mandarin of the fourth rank in the Han Yellow Bordered Banner, while lower ranking loyalists were sent to cultivate government land and join the Green Standard Army in Sichuan and Zhejiang. They adopted Qing clothing and adopt the queue hairstyle, effectively becoming naturalized subjects of the Qing dynasty affording them protection against Vietnamese demands for extradition. From this point on, Lê Chiêu Thá»Âng failed to receive support from the Qing Empire of China any more. He spent the rest of his life in China, and died in 1793. In 1802, when envoys of the Nguyá» n dynasty visited China, Lê dynasty loyalists requested that the Jiaqing Emperor let them bring Lê Chiêu Thá»Âng's remains back to Vietnam and the emperor agreed. The Jiaqing Emperor also freed all the followers of Lê Chiêu Thá»Âng who were imprisoned in China to go back to Vietnam. Lê Chiêu Thá»Âng's remains are buried in Bàn Thạch village, Thanh Hóa, Vietnam. He was posthumously given the title Mẫn ÃÂế (æÂÂå¸Â). Modern descendants of the Lê dynasty live in southern Vietnam.
After ending the Fourth Chinese domination of Vietnam, people of ÃÂại Viá»Ât started to rebuild the country. The dress regulation for emperor and the bureaucracy was learned from the previous dynasties of Vietnam and Ming dynasty of China. In later Lê dynasty, cross-collared robe called áo giao lénh was popular among civilians. An imperial edict was issued by Vietnam in 1474 forbidding Vietnamese from adopting foreign languages, hairstyles and clothes like that of the Laos, Chams or the Ming "Northerners".
Before 1744, people of both ÃÂàng Ngoài (the north) and ÃÂàng Trong (the south) wore giao lãnh y with thðá»Âng (a kind of long skirt). Both male and female had loose long hair. In 1744, Lord Nguyá» n Phúc Khoát of ÃÂàng Trong (Phú Xuân) decreed that both men and women at his court wear trousers and a gown with buttons down the front. Then, the Nguyá» n Lords introduced áo ngà © thân. The members of the ÃÂàng Trong court (southern court) were thus distinguished from the courtiers of the Trá»Ânh Lords in ÃÂàng Ngoài (ÃÂông Kinh), who wore áo giao lénh with long skirts. The partition between two families over the country too long so caused the some major differences in Vietnamese dialect and culture between Northern and Southern Vietnamese.
European missionaries had occasionally visited Vietnam for short periods of time, with little impact, beginning in the early sixteenth century. Khâm ÃÂá»Ânh Viá»Ât sá» Thông giám cðáng mục recorded the first Christian missionary's name Inácio in the first year of Nguyên HoàEmperor (1533) in Nam ÃÂá»Ânh. From 1580 to 1586, two Portuguese and French missionaries Luis de Fonseca and Grégoire de la Motte worked in Quảng Nam and Quy Nhán region under lord Nguyá» n Hoàng. After the LêâÂÂMạc War ended and peace was restored in 1593, more missionaries from Spain, Portugal France, Italy and Poland came to Vietnam to spread Christianity. The best known of the early missionaries was Alexandre de Rhodes, a French Jesuit who was sent to Hanoi in 1627, where he quickly learned the language and began preaching in Vietnamese. Initially, Rhodes was well received by the Trinh court, and he reportedly baptized more than 6,000 converts; however, his success probably led to his expulsion in 1630. He is credited with perfecting a romanized system of writing the Vietnamese language (chữ Quá»Âc ngữ) first developed by Francisco de Pina, which was probably developed as the joint effort of several missionaries, including Rhodes. He wrote the first catechism in Vietnamese and published a Vietnamese-Latin-Portuguese dictionary; these works were the first books printed in chữ Quá»Âc ngữ. Chữ Quá»Âc ngữ was used initially only by missionaries; chữ Hán or chữ Nôm continued to be used by the court and the bureaucracy.
The French later supported the use of chữ Quá»Âc ngữ, which, because of its simplicity, led to a high degree of literacy and a flourishing of Vietnamese literature. After being expelled from Vietnam, Rhodes spent the next thirty years seeking support for his missionary work from the Vatican and the French Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as making several more trips to Vietnam. However, since 1910, Latinized chữ Quá»Âc ngữ was adopted by the French governor as the main writing system of Vietnam, while chữ Hán and chữ Nôm fell into decline. Vietnamese Christianity developed and became stronger before it was cracked down on by Emperor Minh Mạng of the Nguyá» n dynasty in the 1820s.
The Lê period was the continuously flourishing era of Vietnamese scientific thought and Confucianism scholarship. Nguyá» n Trãi was a 15th-century Lê official, author of geography book , also was a Neo-Confucianist scholar. Lê Quý ÃÂôn was a poet, encyclopedist, and government official, author of the geography book Phủ biên tạp lục. Hải Thðợng Lãn ÃÂng was a famous Vietnamese doctor and pharmacist with his full collection 28-volumes about traditional Vietnamese medicine. Matchlock firearms technology also spread from Mughal Empire to ÃÂại Viá»Ât in 1516, and was adopted by the Lê army by the 1530s.
Written Chinese was the predominant writing language in Vietnam throughout the Lê dynasty, although written vernacular Vietnamese using chữ Nôm became increasingly popular in the 17th century. To adapt Chinese writings to fit the Vietnamese language, Chinese ideograms were modified to chữ Nôm. During the Lê dynasty, various forms of Vietnamese literature and art flourished, including poetry, painting, novels, hát tuá»Âng, chèo, cải lðáng, and ca trù. Many writers wrote in chữ Hán or chữ Nôm; for example, Nguyá» n Du's The Tale of Kiá»Âu, ÃÂoàn Thá» ÃÂiá»Âm's Chinh phụ ngâm, and Nguyá» n Gia Thiá»Âu's Cung oán ngâm khúc. Even Lê Thánh Tông wrote in both chữ Hán and chữ Nôm.
The art forms of that time prospered and produced items of great artistic value, despite the upheavals and wars. Woodcarving was especially highly developed and produced items that were used for daily use or worship. Many of these items can be seen in the National Museum in Hanoi.
In late 1426, Lê Lợi held a small Confucian examination in ÃÂông Kinh, graduated 30 tiến sé. From 1431, the court annually held Provincial and metropolitan exams were organized in three sessions. The first session took place in every province, consisted of three questions on the examinee's interpretation of the Four Books, and four on the Classics corpus. Everyone who passed the first session were called ' and '. The second session took place in the capital one year later, and consisted of a discursive essay, a based Tang poetry, five critical judgments, and one in the style of an edict, an announcement and a memorial. Three days after that, the third session was held by the emperor, consisting of five essays on the Classics, historiography, and contemporary affairs.
From 1486, every mandarin candidates must participated both first and second session to approve the chain. The Le's examination system reflected the Ming's imperial examination.
During the period from 1426 to 1527, the Lê dynasty held 26 Imperial examinations in the capital, graduated 989 tiến sé and 20 trạng nguyên. By the 1750s, Neo-Confucianism were declining, the imperial examinations began having surplus graduates, downgrading quality of jinshi and mandarin, corruptions, the court prefer children of noble families to be mandarins that take check, thus made the downfall of Confucian examination system in Vietnam in the late 18th century until the established of Nguyá» n dynasty.
Scholars and administrators who graduated from the imperial examination system during the Lê dynasty include Nguyá» n Bá»Ânh Khiêm, Nguyá» n Thá» Duá»Â, Phùng Khắc Khoan, Lê Quý ÃÂôn, Lðáng Thế Vinh, and .
In 1428, Lê Lợi established a tributary relationship with the Ming dynasty in exchange for the recognition and formal protection of his kingdom. Xuande Emperor gave Lê Lợi the title "An Nam Quá»Âc Vðáng" (King of Annam) and recognized internal Vietnamese independence and sovereignty (which would last until 1526). Also part of the tributary relationship was the responsibility of the Ming to provide external military support to the Lê state. Ming support for the Lê against the Mạc uprising arrived in 1537. After the 1540 surrender of the Mạc to the Ming, the Ming court ceremonially revoked the Mạc dynasty's status as an independent kingdom and reclassified it as a dutongshisi: a category only slightly higher than a chieftaincy. After 1540, the Ming received tribute from both the Lê dynasty and the Mạc, a state of affairs that continued through the Qing dynasty. From 1647, the Southern Ming reclassified Annam as an independent kingdom, giving Lê Duy Kỳ the title "An Nam Quá»Âc Vðáng" (å®ÂÃ¥ÂÂå½çÂÂ) again. In 1667, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing empire gave the title An Nam Quá»Âc Vðáng to Lê Duy Và © through a successful Vietnamese diplomatic mission.
Vietnamese historiography notes that contact between Vietnam and the Holy See or Vatican was established during the reign of emperor Lê Thế Tông (1572âÂÂ1599) through a diplomacy letter in Classical Chinese that is held in a Vatican library in the modern day.
The seventeenth century was also a period in which European missionaries and merchants became a serious factor in Vietnamese court life and politics. Although both had arrived by the early sixteenth century, neither foreign merchants nor missionaries had much impact on Vietnam before the seventeenth century. The Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French had all established trading posts in Phá» Hiá»Ân by 1680. Fighting among the Europeans and opposition by the Vietnamese made the enterprises unprofitable, however, and all of the foreign trading posts were closed by 1800.
Before 1527, the Imperial court restricted people from foreign trade, mainly focused on agriculture and the local market trade. The period from 1505 to 1527 was politically unstable which disrupted the economy. There were a series of severe famines in Hải Dðáng prefecture and Kinh Bắc prefecture (Bắc Ninh, Bắc Giang) that occurred in 1517 to 1521 during the reign of Lê Tðáng Dá»±c. The 16th century political crisis caused severe damage to Vietnam's agriculture and conscription was required by incessant military campaigns; this was compounded by natural disasters, largely contributed to regular crop failures. The number of landless peasants grew quickly, causing a disproportionate surplus of unemployed labourers in Northern Vietnam. After Mạc ÃÂÃÂng Dung gained power in 1527, he sought to restore the economy by encouraging these unemployed peasants into the city and factories, pursuing massive handicraft and industrial manufacture as well as sea trading. This caused a shift in the economy from one mainly on farming to sea trading from the Red River Delta on the Eastern coast.
Vietnamese merchants and sailors formed together and built medium-size ships in Hai Mon port (now Hai Phong) and quickly gained dominance in the South China sea trade route, which mostly sailed from Japan to Malacca to sell silk and ceramics. Some of them eventually reached Egypt and Greece under the Ottoman's rule around the 1570s. After the recapture of ÃÂông Kinh in 1592, the Lê-Trá»Ânh court acknowledged the benefits of oversea trading, and continued to encourage handicraft and industrial manufacture and opened several ports such as Hoi An and ÃÂông Kinh to foreign merchants. About 80% of the population were farmers and peasants; they worked on lands mostly held by ÃÂá»Âa chủ (landlords). The economy was devastated in some regions of the country due to two long civil wars, however, in most parts of the country which were unaffected, peace were maintained for a long time, which saw a rise of urbanization and a pre-capitalism society in Vietnam around the late 16th to 18th century.
In contrast to the overpopulation of the Red River Delta, the Thuan Hoa and Quang Nam region were not as dense. Vietnamese people had begun settling in the conquered Cham region at least since the 15th century. After NguyỠn Hoàng was appointed as governor of the southern provinces in 1572, millions migrated south, resulting in new cities and harbors along the coastline. For centuries the NguyỠn dynasty's economy mostly depended on handicraft and industrial manufacture but also international trade. Until the later 18th century, due to an epidemic, severe flooding in the Red River Delta, the immense corruption of the government and the rise of the Tây Sán rebellion in Southern Vietnam that later spread to the entire country, devastated most of the economy and international trading, it played an important role in the collapse of the dynasty.
ÃÂông Kinh (present-day Hanoi) has been the capital of Vietnam since the 11th century. During the Later Lê dynasty it was divided into 13 districts and 239 wards (with 36 main business-trading wards) and communes. Since the mid-16th century, ÃÂông Kinh became the silk and ceramic manufacturing center of Southeast Asia. Vietnamese merchants exported to the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire, these exports include Tonkinese octagonal bottles with underglaze-cobalt decoration or dishes with peony sprays painted in underglaze-cobalt were considered as good as Chinese products. Vietnamese ceramics from Bát Tràng villages produced famous high-quality pottery and dishes. With Tomé Pires noting in 1515 "They [The Vietnamese] have porcelain and pottery-some of them great value-and these go from there to China to be sold.Chinese and Japanese traders came to ÃÂông Kinh to buy both high quality silk and raw silk. Besides silk textiles that were made in villages, the majority of them were produced in state-owned factories in ÃÂông Kinh, this was produced for the imperial family, noblemen and foreigners.
In 1594, the Imperial court allowed a Western presence in the capital, and encouraged Dutch, Spanish and the British to open trading ports. In 1616, the British established a factory in ÃÂông Kinh, but their business ended in failure due to the pressures from the Lê court, and finally withdrew in 1720. During the 17th and 18th century, Westerners commonly used the name Tonkin (from ÃÂông Kinh) to refer to northern Vietnam, then ruled by the Trá»Ânh lords (while Cochinchina was used to refer to Southern Vietnam, then ruled by the Nguyá» n lords, and Annam, from the name of the former Chinese province was used to refer to Vietnam as a whole). Tonkin had been a major industrial and trading center in Asia until the 1730s.
The prosperity during the Le dynasty was described through the urbanization in Tonkin through Western narratives: "...Cachao (ÃÂông Kinh) probably had 200,000 houses. The city size was some larger than some of the largest cities in Europe but similar in size to other major Asian cities. It lies along the Red river...there are 36 stone-paved major streets, many foreigners such as Chinese, Japanese, English held their business companies, factories and stores here...the Emperor has three small but magnificent palaces, mostly built by red wood and terracotta bricks, surrounded by 15-feet height wall, and its main gate never opens expect when the Emperor wants to go outside. The Trinh lord and his families live in the 30-meter high Ngà © Long castle, near Tạ Vá»Âng lake, which can be seen at its highest from the Red river..."
In 1637, the Dutch successfully established commercial and diplomatic relations with Tonkin and maintained their trading station in ÃÂông Kinh until 1700. The lucrative Dutch âÂÂVietnamese-silk-for-Japanese-silver tradeâ later also attracted the English and the French to Tonkin in 1672 and early 1682 respectively. The British imported Vietnamese silk around the 1670s, but not regularly. The city had a Chinatown, as well as factories owned by the Dutch and English companies along the Red river.
However, by the last quarter of the 17th century, Tonkin was no longer a profitable trading place. Vietnamese silk no longer reaped a handsome profit in Japan and Vietnamese ceramics proved unmarketable in the insular Southeast Asian markets. In Tonkin, trading conditions also deteriorated rapidly. Subsequently, natural disasters ravaged the economy of the country and a wave of successive famines discouraged local craftsmen from producing goods for export. Worse still, after the protracted civil war with the southern Vietnamese kingdom of Quinam (or ÃÂàng Trong) that ended in 1672, the Tonkinese rulers seemed to be more indifferent towards foreign trade as they were no longer in urgent need of a supply of weapons from the Westerners. Bearing in mind their long-term strategy, especially the prospect of opening up trading relations with China, the Dutch still wanted to maintain their Tonkinese trade despite its current unprofitable state, perceiving that it would be extremely difficult to re-establish the relationship with Tonkin once they left the country. Despite Dutch persistence, the relationship between the VOC and Tonkin deteriorated rapidly during the last two decades of the 17th century, especially after Chúa (Lord) Trá»Ânh CÃÂn (r. 1682âÂÂ1709) succeeded to the throne.
The area of the Quảng Nam river was originally part of Champa but was annexed by ÃÂại Viá»Ât by Emperor Thánh Tông. It was opened for foreign merchants for trade and settlement. In 1535 Portuguese explorer and sea captain António de Faria, coming from Da Nang, tried to establish a major trading centre at the port village of Faifo. Há»Âi An was founded as a trading port by the Nguyá» n Lord Nguyá» n Hoàng in 1570. The Nguyá» n lords were far more interested in commercial activity than the Trá»Ânh lords who ruled the north. As a result, Há»Âi An flourished as a trading port and became the most important trade port on the South China Sea. Captain William Adams, the English sailor and confidant of Tokugawa Ieyasu, is known to have made one trading mission to Há»Âi An in 1617 on a Red Seal Ship. The early Portuguese Jesuits also had one of their two residences at Há»Âi An. In 1640, Nguyá» n lord Nguyá» n Phúc Lan ordered to close all Dutch stores and factories in Há»Âi An, ban the Dutch in trading within Cochinchina as he suspected the VOC was allying with the Trá»Ânh lords to the north. In the 17th century, Polish Jesuit missionary Wojciech MÃÂcià Âski was believed to visited Há»Âi An.
In the 18th century, Há»Âi An was considered by Chinese and Japanese merchants to be the best destination for trading in all of Southeast Asia, even Asia. Trading activities and handicraft manufacturing had been shifted from Tonkin to Há»Âi An. The city also rose to prominence as a powerful and exclusive trade conduit between Europe, China, India, and Japan, especially for the ceramic industry. Shipwreck discoveries have shown that Vietnamese and Asian ceramics were transported from Há»Âi An to as far as Sinai, Egypt.
Há»Âi An's importance waned sharply at the end of the 18th century because of the collapse of Nguyá» n rule (due to the Tây Sán Rebellion). Then, with the triumph of Emperor Gia Long, he repaid the French for their aid by giving them exclusive trade rights to the nearby port town of ÃÂàNẵng. ÃÂàNẵng became the new centre of trade (and later French influence) in central Vietnam while Há»Âi An became a forgotten backwater. Local historians also say that Há»Âi An lost its status as a desirable trade port due to silting up of the river mouth. The result was that Há»Âi An remained almost untouched by the changes to Vietnam over the next 200 years.
Beginning in the early 17th century, colonization of the area by Vietnamese settlers gradually isolated the Khmer of the Mekong Delta from their brethren in Cambodia proper and resulted in their becoming a minority in the delta. In 1623, King Chey Chettha II of Cambodia (1618âÂÂ28) allowed Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Trá»ÂnhâÂÂNguyá» n civil war in Vietnam to settle in the area of Prey Nokor and to set up a customs house there. Increasing waves of Vietnamese settlers, which the Cambodian kingdom could not impede because it was weakened by war with Thailand, slowly Vietnamized the area. In time, Prey Nokor became known as Saigon. Prey Nokor was the most important commercial seaport to the Khmers. The loss of the city and the rest of the Mekong Delta cut off Cambodia's access to the South China Sea. Subsequently, the only remaining Khmers' sea access was the south-westerly Gulf of Thailand (that is Kampong Saom and Kep).
In 1698, Nguyá» n Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble and explorer, was sent by the Nguyá» n rulers of Huế by ship to establish Vietnamese administrative institutions in the area, thus detaching the area from Cambodia, which was not strong enough to intervene. He is often credited with the expansion of Saigon into a significant settlement of Kinh and Hoa people. A large Vauban citadel called Gia ÃÂá»Ânh was built by Victor Olivier de Puymanel, one of the Nguyá» n ÃÂnh's French mercenaries. The citadel was later destroyed by the French following the Battle of Kỳ Hòa (see Citadel of Saigon). Initially called Gia Dinh, the Vietnamese city became Saigon in the 18th century. At the time, the population of Gia ÃÂá»Ânh was around 200,000 people with 35,000 households.
Emperors of the Initial Period (Lê Sá) from 1428 to 1527
Emperors of the Restored Period (Lê Trung Hðng) from 1533 to 1789