ABSTRACT

Introduction Throughout the course of history, three major processes have shaped the political geography of Vietnam. Since the start of its civilisation, the Vietnamese continuously struggled to defend their fatherland from northern invaders. After gaining independence from the northern empire in the tenth century, the Vietnamese gradually marched southward. From their original villages in the Red River Delta, they overrode the Champa Kingdom and land in the rich Mekong River Delta and eventually reached the shore of the Gulf of Thailand by the mid-eighteenth century. A seventh-century conquest nearly tripled the length of the country and gave it the modern-day shape like a “starving sea horse.”