ABSTRACT
During the brief period of disunity, a Ch’in general in command of what are now the provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi took it upon himself to march further south still into modern North Vietnam. The geographical character of North Vietnam was peculiarly suitable for the importation of a Chinese pattern of society. For Chinese civilization was originally a product of the plains traversed by the Yellow River, and it showed its nativity in a hundred ways. Modern Vietnam has been compared in shape to a pair of rice baskets, fastened to opposite ends of a coolie’s carrying-pole. The Vietnamese language showed only trifling differences of dialect, and the same method of administration, through a mandarinate recruited as in China by public examination, was found in North and South. In 1804 a Chinese mission journeyed south carrying letters patent proclaiming to the world at large that Nguyen Anh was henceforward King of Vietnam.
