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4 Jul 2008, 11:38:56 PM
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| SaigonToday: Your Guide to News, Events, Entertainment, Travel, Shopping, Picture Gallery and more ... |
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Before history, there was a
vast forest which covered the area north of the Mekong Delta. On the
southern tip of this forest by the banks of a deep tidal river, was the last
high ground, free from the floods of the mighty Mekong. A few aboriginal
people lived in the area, as it was a good place to catch fish and there was
plenty of firewood, fauna and fresh fruit for the picking. The aborigines
were a peaceful people, living in a garden of Eden. About the time that
Pharaoh's armies were drowning, the first of two migrating waves of people
moved through the area from China. |
| The
Melanesians, followed by the Indonesians, left few traces of their passage,
mostly traveling by sea. It was not until the second century BC that the
Khmer (Cambodians) arrived and settled in the area. The name of their empire
was Funan. At its height of power 600 years later, it extended from Thailand
to the Delta, and included the high piece of land on the edge of the forest.
This piece of ground was surrounded on three sides by water, the deep river
and two minor streams, so it was easily defendable. Being the closest dry
land to the sea, a small outpost of Funan was established here, and the area
was called Prei Nokor, meaning "Land of Forests." The first Khmers brought
the art of rice cultivation and started to clear the forest. The original
aboriginal inhabitants melted back into the highlands, where they remain to
the present day. |
As well as being wet rice cultivators, the Funanese were a trading people.
Their largest port, Oc Eo, was near present day Rach Gia on the Gulf of
Siam. From here and other ports, including Prei Nokor, they traded with
places as far away as China, Japan and India. In 261 AD, a Chinese trader
described Funan as a "...land of walled cities where the people are naked."
But the Chinese, who were shaping the culture of theVietnamese in the Red
River Delta far to the North, did not have much influence on Funan. Rather,
the Funanese culture borrowed from India. They worshipped Shiva and Vishnu.
They were a slave owning society, and in trial by ordeal, walked their
defendants over hot coals to determine their innocence or guilt. |
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| For seven
centuries, Prei Nokor slowly grew into a small market town and
administrative center. Earthen walls were built as protection from the
pirates who lived to the north, the Chams, who occupied thecentral coast of
Vietnam between the vast forest and the Red River Delta. The Chams would
make periodic raids from the sea, preying on the peaceful people who had
settled around Prei Nokor. By the 7th Century, Funan was old and weak. A
young Khmer power to the north, Chenla, took over with ease. Nothing much
changed - irrigation works got more complex, trade continued to develop, and
there was peace with Champa to the north. Then, soon after Charlemagne
stopped the advance of the Moors in Spain, an Indonesian from Java took over
the rule of the Khmer people, and the Ankorian dynasty was founded.
Expansion followed, resulting in a three hundred year war with Champa. This
war ended by mutual consent when the Khmers were attacked from the west by
the Thais and the Chams were attacked from the north by the Vietnamese, who
had finally thrown off the 1000 year rule of the Chinese and had started
their expansion southward. |
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During this period, Prei Nokor continued its slow growth. The walls of the
citadel were expanded, finally reaching a length of 14 kilometers, enclosing
some 14 villages. More forest was cleared, more rice paddies constructed.
Prei Nokor became an important outpost anchoring the eastern flank of the
Angkor Empire. It was furthest from the Thais, protected on land by the vast
forest, only having to worry about pirates from the sea.
For the next four hundred years, both Champa and the Angkor Empire kept
shrinking. In 1444, the great capital city of Angkor fell to the Thais, and
the Khmer capital was reestablished in Pnomh Penh. By 1620, as the pilgrims
were landing in Plymouth, the Khmer Empire was on its last legs, and asked
the Vietnamese for help against the Thais. The Vietnamese agreed, in return
for which the Cambodians allowed the Vietnamese to settle in the Prei Nokor
area. The Vietnamese, who called the area Ski Gon, "Woods of Kapok Trees"
wasted no time, and started sending settlers to the area. By 1698, The Cham
Empire ceased to exist, the remainder of the Chams taking to the highlands
where they can still be found today. In 1679, the Vietnamese, now
effectively controlling the area, allowed 3000 Chinese Ming soldiers,
refugees from Quang Si Province, to settle on the Dong Nai river at what is
now Bien Hoa. Four years later, the Chinese started a market at Cho Lon
(Market Big), two kilometers from the Vietnamese market and settlement of
Ben Thanh (Wallow of Buffalo-calves). |
| The remaining
Khmers were squeezed out. The area continued to grow. More Vietnamese
pioneers arrived from the north, spreading out along the waterways in the
delta and clearing more of the forest. The Vietnamese settlement became an
administrative center for the region, a base for trade and tax-collecting.
A small citadel which housed the area governor and his administrators was
built back from the river within the walls of the larger citadel. The name
of the citadel became Gia Dinh. As the Vietnamese settlers moved further
south away from the imperial capitol of Hanoi, the ruling Le Dynasty lost
control. In 1620, the Nguyen family had broken from the empire and
established their own dynasty, with their capitol at Hue. There was constant
warfare between the two. By 1772, the rule of both dynasties had become so
oppressive that the peasants were ready for a revolution. Three brothers
from the town of Tay Son in central Vietnam seized the opportunity and led
the rebellion. (Nguyen Hue Avenue is named for one of the brothers). In
1777, their forces captured the fort at Gia Dinh (at that time in District
One), as well as the capital of Hue. The royal family were executed, with
the exception of one prince, Nguyen Anh. The Tay Son brothers went on to
capture the northern provinces, ending the rule of the Le. Nguyen Anh,
however, with the help of the French bishop Behaine, raised an army and
recaptured Gia Dinh in 1788 . He went on to capture the rest of the country,
and in 1802 declared himself Emperor Gia Long of the whole of Vietnam. In
1790, 30,000 people were put to work building a fort in Gia Dinh. The walls
were 12 feet high and 7 feet thick. The fort covered the area between what
is now the zoo and the old Presidential Palace. The walls were surrounded by
holes full of punji stakes, bamboo fences and hedges of cactus. The fort was
built in the shape of an octagon to match the eight trigrams of the Book of
Changes. Inside the fort were the royal storehouses and the offices of the
governor. With the building of the fort, Gia Dinh was established as the
administrative center of the southern third of the country. |
|
The first American visitor of record to Gia
Dinh was Captain John White of Salem, Massachusetts. He arrived in 1820 to
try and trade with the Vietnamese. After two months of dealing with
bureaucracy, he finally left with a shipload of sugar.
By 1835, the peasants were restless again.
Le Van Khoi, a noble, organized a revolution and captured the fort. His
victory was shortlived, his forces quashed by the Emperor Minh Mang. The
octagonal fort was razed, a smaller one a quarter the size being constructed
in its place. The rubble of the old fort forms the hill just to the north of
Le Loi. The French arrived in the Saigon area in force in 1859. There had
already been missionaries active in Vietnam for over one hundred years. The
emperors especially disliked the activities of the missionaries.
Christianity directly challenged the imperial authority as representative of
Heaven on earth. As a result, the emperors blamed the missionaries for such
revolts as the one in 1835. Emperor Minh Mang executed nine priests, which
the French used as an excuse to start the conquest of the country. |
After a brief occupation of Danang, a French force of 2000 troops and eight
battleships started up the Saigon River on 10 February 1859.
Upon reaching Gia Dinh, they used explosives to breach the walls of the
citadel, and captured it on the 17th. The rice cache in the fort was set
afire by the Vietnamese and burned for two years. Counterattacks by the
Vietnamese using elephants were futile, and the population of Gia Dinh,
which had numbered over 200,000, moved out to the country, leaving but
25,000 people. Local organized forces fought for two years before being
crushed. The resistance was then taken over by guerrilla groups who
continued to harass the French. In 1862, having changed the name of the city
from Gia Dinh to Saigon, which had always been the popular name, the French
felt secure enough to start building public works. The Post Office and
Governor's palace were started in that year, as well as the arsenal (now the
Vietnamese Navy Building). Nha Rong was completed in 1863, and Notre Dame
cathedral in 1880. Vietnamese were used as forced labor, having no civil
liberties or rights.
The city began to grow again as French
control became more effective. It became the major port for exports of the
wealth of the interior. Canals which laced the city were filled in to make
roads (Nguyen Hue Avenue used to be a canal). Hotels and villas for the
administrators and businessmen were built. |
There was relative peace, though the rape of the countryside encouraged
regular revolts. In 1940, the Japanese arrived. At first, they were welcomed
as liberators from French rule, but it became quickly apparent that they
were no better, even worse. The Viet Minh was formed by Ho Chi Minh in 1941
to fight the Japanese. In 1942, the first American was killed in Vietnam
when his plane was shot down by the Japanese. At the end of the war,
when the Japanese left, Ho Chi Minh declared independence. President
Roosevelt had been inclined to support an independent Vietnam, but he was
dead, and Churchill, who wanted to hang on to the British Empire, insisted
to Truman that the French be given back their colony. It was done. As a
result, the British troops who liberated Saigon freed the French soldiers
from their prisons and turned them loose on the newly established local
Vietnamese government, which quickly succumbed. Thus started the first
Indochina War, which ended in 1954 with the expulsion of the French and the
division of the country. With no nationwide elections as promised by the
Geneva accords which ended the war, the South became an independent state
under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem. A large influx of Catholics fleeing
the north settled in Saigon, which became the capitol of the new country.
The United States became the supporter of the new regime, seeing it as a
pawn in the global struggle against the perceived Communist menace. Thus
started the second Indochina War. |
One of President Diem's first accomplishments was to neutralize three
private armies. The Cao Dai army, belonging to a sect which has its
headquarters in Tay Ninh, was integrated into the regular army. The Binh
Xuyen, a gang which controlled all the vice and rackets in Saigon, demanded
a share of power, namely control of the police in the city. Wisely Diem
refused, and a battle ensued in the city, in which the regular army
prevailed, but not without much destruction in Cholon and in the vicinity of
the Y Bridge. The Hoa Hao, another religious sect based in the Delta which
had allied itself with the Binh Xuyen, holed up in a citadel on the Mekong
across from Can Tho. entered a depression, and Saigon went to sleep. It was
finally subdued, leaving the Diem administration |
|
| in control of the
country. Being jealous of its power, the administration started to crack
down on all dissent. Diem's brother Nhu, who was in charge of the secret
police, began to see threats, real or imagined, around every corner. The
prisons began to fill up, the peasantry became restless with the lack of any
meaningful land reform, and large groups of people became alienated,
starting a downward spiral of more dissent and harsher crackdowns. Finally,
in 1962, after the Buddhist Pagodas had been raided by the secret police,
the monk Thich Quang Duc immolated himself at the intersection of Nguyen
Dinh Chieu and Cach Mang Thang Tam. After six other immolations, the US
Government woke up to the reality of the political situation in the country.
A military coup resulted, Diem and his brother were shot dead, and Saigon
and the South came under the rule of the military.
The new governments could do little better politically or militarily, and
the United States was forced to send troops to avert disaster. At this time,
Saigon entered its wild days, playing host to countless GIs and a roaring
wartime economy.
Finally, in 1975, the house of cards
collapsed, the then President Thieu leaving the country with a planeload of
gold, mocking American support of his regime. The Communists took over,
finally bringing reunification to the country. But with the halt in the flow
of dollars feeding the economy, little outside help from other sources, and
less experience in running an economy, the country.
In 1979, Vietnam liberated Cambodia,
driving the murderous Khmer Rouge from power, but also provoking China into
a short border war in the North. These actions only intensified the
depression which gripped the city. It was not until 1988, with the Cambodian
war nearly over, economic mistakes recognized, a liberal investment law
codified, and a new open door policy implemented, that the city began to
show signs of life again. Now, nine years later, with the American Embargo
finally lifted, Saigon is booming again, and regaining her position as one
of the premier cities of the Orient. |
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