Hanoi (Hà Nÿi) History

Due to its location in the middle of the Red River delta, Hà Nÿi has always been a social and commercial center. Archaeological discoveries indicate that the area was inhabited by the end of the Paleolithic Period, some 20,000 years ago. However, about three millennia later, the Gulf of Tonkin flooded the delta, forcing the inhabitants to flee to the mountains. The area was uninhabited during the Neolithic period, and it wasn’t until the beginning of the Bronze Age that settlements sprung up again in the Hà Nÿi area.

The first recorded history of Hà Nÿi concerns the resistance of the Hùng Dynasty against the invading Qin Chinese in 258 BC. Thc Ph=n established his capital in C% Loa, about 15km north of what is now Hà Nÿi, where he constructed a spiral citadel. However, he and his capital fell in 207 BC when he was defeated by Tri_u à, general of the Chinese Hán Dynasty. During the ensuing millennium of Chinese occupation, Hà Nÿi lost its import as a geographical hub.

In AD 1010, King L• Thái T% of the L• Dynasty, believing he saw a dragon rise from Hoàn Ki\m Lake, moved his capital there and named it Thng Long, “City of the Soaring Dragon.” In Vietnamese culture, Ddragons bring rain, and therefore good luck. It comes as no surprise, then, that during the centuries that followed, Thng Long flourished. Its markets attracted merchants and artisans from as far as Java and India, and a true bourgeoisie formed in what is now the Old Quarter. The Temple of Literature and Royal College were constructed to encourage higher learning, while poetry and the visual arts flourished—Thng Long even developed a trendy nightlife scene. The city spent the next four centuries rebuffing the Mongols and the Chinese, culminating in 1418, when Vietnamese King Lˆ Li expelled the occupying Ming Dynasty. The Lˆ Dynasty, Hà Nÿi’s next rulers, constructed a fortified forbidden city where the Hà Nÿi Citadel is now. Confucianism was adopted as the official religion, and the Temple of Literature was expanded to include official doctorates. The Lˆ kings tried to kick out the many foreigners and unemployed from their capital, but the city’s population grew nevertheless.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Thng Long’s population reached almost 20,000 households, in a time when several dynasties ruled the Red River Delta and the urban centers of the region grew and prospered. Many pagodas and palaces were constructed in and around the capital, and demonstrations of naval battles were held in Hoàn Ki\m Lake. Though an important economic center, the city still relied largely on agriculture and small merchants and achieved only regional importance. Then, in 1788, the Chinese Qing Dynasty again invaded northern Vietnam and took control of Thng Long for a year. In response, Vietnamese King Quang Tr™ng decided to move the capital to the more secure Hu\. In 1805, the royal citadel was demolished to make space for a new one, the basis of the present-day Hà Nÿi Citadel. Until the French occupation, the city served primarily as a growing economic center. In 1831, as part of an administrative reform, Thng Long was given the name Hà Nÿi, meaning “City in a Bend of the River.” The imperial magic, for the moment, was gone. The Old Quarter began to take its present shape, as the shores of Hoàn Ki\m Lake become an important civil and economic area.

In 1873, French troops under Francis Garnier arrived in Hà Nÿi, promptly conquering it. Sporadic periods of resistance ensued, during which Garnier was assassinated and the Black Butterflies (an anti-French armed resistance group) was formed; these lasted until 1884, when all of Vietnam was officially declared a French protectorate. The French renamed the city Tonkin (from the Vietnamese ®ng Kinh, or Eastern Capital) and reshaped it, constructing broad boulevards through its neighborhoods, large colonial administrative buildings in the French Quarter, and churches in the Old Quarter and West Lake area. As a result, Tonkin lost much of its Chinese character and became distinctly French. In 1902, it became capital of French Indochina.

In September 1940, the Japanese invaded Tonkin, beginning a five-year period of exploitation and starvation all over Vietnam. When they withdrew in 1945, French authority was weak, enabling the Communists to exert their influence. That same year, H· Chí Minh proclaimed an independent Vietnam on the spot where he now rests, and in 1946 the Communists began armed resistance against the French. Tonkin was not much affected, as most of the combat took place in the mountains, but when the French surrendered in 1954, H· Chí Minh’s Communists were enthusiastically received in the new country’s capital—once again renamed Hà Nÿi.

During the American War, US planes bombed Hà Nÿi repeatedly, but relative to the rest of the country, the northern capital was practically unscathed. With the aid of foreign powers like the Soviet Union, the northern government managed to keep the capital and the military functioning. The Long Biçn Bridge was reconstructed after each bombing (which stopped when rumors spread that POWs were forced to rebuild it), and ™ng Thanh Niˆn was constructed by young volunteers to facilitate military transport. Although much of the offensive action of the NLF took place in southern Vietnam and a fair amount of organization took place secretly in HCMC, Hà Nÿi served as the government capital from which H· Chí Minh and his Communist party controlled the action.

Following the war, aid from the Soviet Union decreased and the Chinese attacked (and we repelled yet again), leading to the expulsion of all Chinese from Hà Nÿi. In response to dire economic and diplomatic straits, the government implemented the Œ%i møi market reforms in 1986. The trade and influx of cash that followed benefited Hà Nÿi greatly, especially after US President Clinton lifted the American trade embargo in 1994. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, however, curbed the city’s prosperity. Subsequently, the government lifted a number of restrictions on tourism, and the economy has turned around. The future, at least for now, seems bright for the charming lakeside capital.