ABSTRACT
Much of Viet-Nam's history before 200 B.C. is shrouded in legend—but so is much of Europe's past beyond the Mediterranean basin. Viet-Nam became a Chinese protectorate ruled by a governor and subdivided into military districts. In 40 A.D., the Vietnamese, much to their own surprise, found themselves free from foreign domination for the first time in 150 years and the Trung sisters were proclaimed queens of the country. Slowly, Vietnamese rice farmers peacefully occupied the unfilled northern plains of the Champa kingdom, very often with the consent of the Chams, who felt that this process would serve their own enrichment. Vietnamese intervention in Cambodian affairs had begun in 1623, when Chey Chettha II, a king of Cambodia who had married a Vietnamese princess, attempted to shake Siam's overlordship with the help of the Nguyen. The Vietnamese themselves, for all their cultural and social homogeneity, suffered politically from their own overrapid growth and their separation from the Tonkinese homeland.
