The history of the Vietnamese people during more than a millennium under Chinese rule reveals an evolution toward national identity, which apparently came about as the result of two related developments. The first of these was the introduction into the Red River delta of the more advanced civilization of China, including technical and administrative innovations and the more sophisticated level of Chinese learning, which made the Vietnamese the most advanced people of mainland Southeast Asia. This process was abetted by the efforts of Chinese governors to achieve complete Sinicization through the imposition of Chinese language, culture, customs, and political institutions. The second development during this period was the Vietnamese people’s resistance to total assimilation and their use, at the same time, of the benefits of Chinese civilization in their struggle against Chinese political rule.

Soon after extending their domination over what is now northern Vietnam, the Chinese constructed roads, waterways, and harbors to improve access to the region and to ensure that they maintained administrative and military control over it. They improved local agriculture by introducing better methods of irrigation as well as metal plows and draft animals. They brought with them new tools and weapons, advanced forms of pottery, and new mining techniques. For more than a century after annexing Nam Viet, however, the Chinese refrained from interfering with local administration. In the province of Giao Chau, one of the administrative units into which the Han Chinese rulers had divided the Vietnamese kingdom, local hereditary lords exercised control over the peasant population, just as they had while part of Nam Viet. Thus, although Vietnamese territory was divided into military districts headed by Chinese governors, it remained, in fact, a leniently governed Chinese protectorate.

This form of government changed in the 1st century ce, when an energetic governor realized that the continuing rule of the local Viet lords over the population was an obstacle to Sinicization. The desire to exploit the fertile Red River delta and its mountainous backcountry was certainly one reason why the expansionist Han dynasty wanted to hold on to Vietnam: there were vast forests and precious metals in the mountains, pearls in the sea, elephants with tusks of ivory, and a peasantry that could be taxed and recruited for forced labor. China’s main interest in controlling the Red River delta, however, was to use it as a stopover for ships engaged in the Han dynasty’s nascent maritime trade with the East Indies (i.e., present-day Indonesia), India, and even the Middle East. Vessels from many countries with which China developed commercial relations docked at the harbors along the Vietnamese coast, not only bringing new goods but also establishing contacts with a wider world and thus promoting the development of the country. In this process, which began early in the 1st century ce, economic, political, and cultural functions emerged that the hereditary local lords were unable to discharge—another reason why direct rule by Chinese officials became increasingly important.

As in all regions conquered by the Chinese during the Han dynasty (206 bce–221 ce, with a brief interruption in 8–23 ce), the establishment of direct Chinese rule was accompanied by efforts to transform the people of the Red River delta into Chinese. Local customs were suppressed, and Chinese customs, rites, and institutions were imposed by force. Daoist and Confucian teachings were pressed upon the local people, together with instruction in the Chinese language; even Chinese clothing and hairstyles became obligatory. Many of these elements of Chinese civilization were readily integrated into the indigenous local culture and ultimately benefited the Vietnamese people, but Sinicization never succeeded in reconciling them, especially their leaders, with Chinese political domination. Even the educated Vietnamese who knew Chinese and wrote only in Chinese continued to use the local spoken language.

The first major rebellion against Chinese rule broke out in 40 ce, led by the Trung sisters. Trung Trac was a noblewoman whose husband, a tribal lord, had been executed by the Chinese. She and her sister, Trung Nhi, gathered together the tribal chiefs and their armed followers, attacked and overwhelmed the Chinese strongholds, and had themselves proclaimed queens of an independent Vietnamese kingdom. Three years later a powerful army sent by the Han emperor reestablished Chinese rule; the local aristocracy was deprived of all power, Vietnam was given a centralized Chinese administration, and Sinicization was resumed with increased intensity. The Trung sisters were apparently put to death by their conquerors.

Chinese rule, although challenged several more times, remained secure so long as China itself was effectively controlled by its own emperors. When the T’ang dynasty (618–907) went into decline in the early 10th century, a series of uprisings broke out in Vietnam, which led in 939 to the restoration of Vietnamese independence.

The first period of independence