Tonkin
Tonkin, also spelled Tongkin, Tonquin or Tongking, is an
Names
"Tonkin" is a Western rendition of 東京 Đông Kinh, meaning 'Eastern Capital'. This was the name of the capital of the Lê dynasty (present-day Hanoi). Locally, Tonkin is nowadays known as miền Bắc, or Bắc Bộ, meaning 'Northern Region'.
The name was used from 1883 to 1945 for the French protectorate of Tonkin (Vietnamese: Bắc Kỳ 北圻), a constituent territory of French Indochina.
Geography
It is south of Yunnan (Vân Nam) and Guangxi (Quảng Tây) Provinces of China; east of northern Laos and west of the Gulf of Tonkin.
Having the fertile
History
The area was called
According to Vietnamese myths the first Vietnamese peoples descended from the Dragon Lord Lạc Long Quân and the Immortal Goddess Âu Cơ. Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ had 100 sons before they decided to part ways. 50 of the children went with their mother to the snow-capped mountains, and the other 50 went with their father who preferred the four seasons by the sea. The eldest son became the first in a line of earliest Vietnamese kings, collectively known as the Hùng kings of the Hồng Bàng dynasty. The country was called Văn Lang and its people were referred to as the Lạc Việt.
By the 3rd century BC, another Viet group, the Âu Việt, emigrated to the Red River delta and mixed with the indigenous population. A new kingdom, Âu Lạc, emerged as the union of the Âu Việt and the Lạc Việt, with Thục Phán proclaiming himself An Dương Vương.
Âu Lạc was annexed into Nam Việt kingdom of Triệu Đà. After the Triệu dynasty, this region started to be officially under Chinese rule. In pre-Tang times Tonkin was the port of call for ships on the South China Sea, though the center of commerce later moved north to Guangdong.[1]
The victory of Ngô Quyền at the Battle of Bạch Đằng in 938 ushered a new era of independence of Vietnam. The Ngô dynasty was followed by the Đinh, Early Lê, Lý, Trần, and Hồ.
15th and 16th centuries
Lê Lợi (reigned 1428–1433), a notable landowner in the Lam Sơn region, had a following of more than 1,000 people before rising up against rule of the Chinese Ming dynasty. Following his victory he mounted the throne and established himself in the city of Thăng Long ('Ascending Dragon'), present Hà Nội. Thăng Long was also called Đông Kinh 東京, meaning 'Eastern Capital' (東京 is identical in meaning and written form in Chinese characters to that of Tokyo).[2][3]
17th and 18th centuries
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Westerners commonly used the name Tonkin (from Đông Kinh) to refer to
19th and 20th centuries
After
During the
During French colonial rule within
After the end of World War II, French rule returned over French Indochina. The Northern part of Vietnam became a stronghold for the communist
After the French defeat at the
In 1964, the US and North Vietnamese were involved in a battle off the coast known as the
Gallery
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Administrative divisions of Tonkin 1929
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Administrative divisions of Tonkin 1920
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Tonkin in the early 1900s
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1899 Map of Tonkin
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Tonkin in the 1880s
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Military territories of Tonkin 1894
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Capture of Nam Định, 1883
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French zouave officer in Tonkin, Spring 1885
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Hanoi around 1910
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The French General Gouvernor's Palace in Hanoi
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Tonkin woman withblack-painted teeth, ca. 1908
See also
- Cochinchina
- Gulf of Tonkin
- Jiaozhi
- Names of Vietnam
- North Vietnam
- Northern, Central and Southern Vietnam
- Meiji restoration renamed Edo in 1868, with a similar meaning.
References
- ISBN 978-0-520-05462-2.
- ISBN 90-78239-01-8
- ^ Forbes, Andrew, and Henley, David: Vietnam Past and Present: The North (History and culture of Hanoi and Tonkin). Chiang Mai. Cognoscenti Books, 2012. ASIN: B006DCCM9Q.
- ^ Bruce McFarland Lockhart, William J. Duiker, The A to Z of Viêt Nam, Scarecrow Press, 2010, pages 40, 365-366
- ^ Pierre Brocheux et Daniel Hémery, Indochine : la colonisation ambiguë 1858-1954, La Découverte, 2004, p. 78-81
- ^ L'Indochine française pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale Archived 2012-02-05 at the Wayback Machine, Jean-Philippe Liardet
Further reading
- Cooke, Nola; Li, Tana; Anderson, James A., eds. (2011). The Tongking Gulf Through History. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4336-9.
External links
Media related to Tonkin at Wikimedia Commons