Brief Background on Southeast Asia

I mention Southeast Asia in the title of this post because simply talking about French Indochina out of the context of the entire region would do a disservice to people who care to get a clear enough overview of the scene.

Southeast Asia has been historically known as Indo-China, and consists of the peninsula east of the Indian Subcontinent and south of Tibet and China, as well as the large archipelago south of Japan and north of Australia, known generally as the Malay Archipelago.

"Indo-China" as a rough moniker had been used because in general the area had been influenced heavily--in art, in language, in social customs and religious beliefs--by both the cultures of India and China.

Today the countries are lumped into two categories: Mainland Southeast Asia, and Maritime Southeast Asia. The mainland countries tend to have more in common with themselves than with the maritime countries, and the nature of these differences makes the separation all the more natural.

The mainland countries are: Burma, Thailand, Lao, Cambodia and Vietnam. While Malaysia and Singapore are technically on the mainland, both on the end of what's called the Malaysian Peninsula, they are considered closer to the maritime countries like Indonesia and the Philippines (and Brunei and East Timor) and are culturally listed in the maritime section.

1. Language Family Melting Pot

One of the main characteristics folks of white European ancestry will notice about the languages of China and Southeast Asia is their tonal properties. Tonal languages are very difficult for westerners to grapple with quickly or on a short trip because of the wild nuance needed for understanding. In these languages instead of our five vowel sounds, they tend to have between 25 and 30 recognized vowels, as each of our vowel sounds can be effected by voicing any one of five (or six) tonal changes. Think of it like Californian valley-girl speak: "I went to the store today? And the girl? Behind the counter? She to-tuh-lee overcharged me for..." 

That upward lilt in English tends to point to a question, but in tonal languages that changes the vowel and the meaning of the word, sometimes drastically.

One thing I think is cool about all this is that these languages developed independently of one another. The Burmese language is from the Burman-Tibetan side of the Sino-Tibetan language family, the only language in Southeast Asia "directly" related to Chinese. Thai and Lao are in the Tai-Kadai family, which has many hill-tribe languages that are still used today. The Austroasiatic family houses both Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian). The Khmer written alphabet seems to be one of the oldest in the region, is based on the Indian and Sanskrit scripts brought over from India in prehistory (rather than the Chinese pictographs that serve as the visual basis for Korean and Japanese), and is itself the basis for both the Thai and Lao scripts.

2. Under the Thumb for a Millennium

Today a relatively skinny country takes up a very long coastline and goes by the name Viet Nam. We tend to write it as Vietnam, but they use the two words, and the special diacritical marks (that I don't have currently enabled on my blog-host). "Nam", in this instance for them means "south" and Viet is their identity, their people, and so, to them, their country is called "South Viet." 

"Vietnam" as a name became popular in the 1920s during the struggle for independence from the French. For many centuries the land was known as "Annam". That was the name used by the Chinese for the strange and annoying wayward province south of their southern mountains. 

Annam had always been a province filled with tough individuals who didn't take to colonization that well. After enough interbreeding, it was mostly subdued, and for over a thousand years the people of Annam, the Viet people, were under the rule of the Chinese occupation.

A thousand years of occupation.

Eventually, after many failed uprisings, a masterful and decisive victory was had by the Viet, now calling themselves the Dai Viet, or "Great Viet", and things were good. Mostly. For a while.

The millennium of Chinese rule lasted from the first Century BCE to the 1000s CE. Around this time the Burmese and Siamese (Thai) had been battling in the western jungles of this enormous peninsula while the most sophisticated empire, the Khmer, were setting up shop in their new capitol city of Angkor. 

The Khmer were the Mayas to everyone else's Aztecs. They flourished with a taste for the arts, science, and grand building projects.

As the Dai Viet moved south along the coastline from the area surrounding today's Vietnamese capitol city of Hanoi, they battled and pushed the Cham people mostly off of their historical land. 

On a map of today's Vietnam, you have the mountain highlands bordering China and surrounding Hannoi, then the long central coast curve, and the Mekong Delta in the south. When the Dai Viet finally got free of the Chinese, they only really held the top portion around Hanoi. The Cham, an Austronesian people, occupied the central coast, and the Khmer empire held the Mekong Delta.

By the time the Siamese finally and decisively sacked Angkor in the mid-1400s, the Dai Viet had mostly dispatched the Cham and were poised to grab the Mekong Delta from the crumbled Khmer.

Affecting the Cham and the region in between the rise (1000ish) and the fall (1500ish) of Angkor and the Khmer Empire was the Lan Xan kingdom. They were a Tai-Kradai people who were in what's almost exactly today's Lao and the best known example of the last time things not associated with opium or landmines made Lao a place of importance to somebody. (That's heartbreaking, by the way.)

The Vietnamese were insular and protective, the Siamese enjoyed the buffer that the fallen Khmer empire offered between them and the Viet, while they kept a wary eye to the west and Burma. Things were balanced, mostly, (unless you were Cham or Lao) until the French and British and Dutch took an interest in the region.

3. Sometimes it's About Timing and Good Diplomacy

The Thai are very proud and quick to point out that they were the only Southeast Asian country not to be colonized by Western Powers. Sometimes it's about timing.

Again with the Mayans...the Mayans were the intellectual and artistic powerhouse of Mesoamerica, only to be mostly a shell of their former selves by the time the Spanish arrived. Does that imply that they would have been a better fighter against the Europeans than the Aztecs? Of course not.

But in this region, the Khmer were the "premier", if you will, ancient society, and by the time the European powers arrived, they were a shell of their former selves.

The British promptly colonized Burma for their rubber trees and spices, while the French grabbed what they could on the other side, up to the Mekong River, as the region proved harder to subdue than originally wagered. The Dutch took most of the Malay Archipelago.

The Siamese kings and other diplomatic leaders were able to deftly play the insecurities of the British and French off of each other while keeping their own sovereignty intact. Good job, Thai folk.

4. Something Not Even the Nazi War-Machine Could Do

The Vietnamese people were a pain in the ass to the Chinese for a thousand years; they were a headache for the French before the Japanese occupied the region during WWII and they were a pain in the ass for the Japanese occupiers; they were finally successful in ousting the French after the end of WWII, declaring their independence with a document sent to major capitol cities around the world.

One particularly militaristic country decided that the Vietnamese declaration of independence was not acceptable--they had made the wrong choice of choosing a communist government. That country decided they were not going to stand by and witness more people living under communism, and they decided to wage a full-scale military action against the mostly peasant country.

That was us, in case you weren't following.

As a country, the United States military used everything at its disposal, every single thing short of nuclear weapons, against a skinny rural country full of barefoot kids, and failed.

The US used nuclear bombs against the Japanese, but not against the Nazis. So, in a sense, the Vietnamese are the only group that can accurately say: "We said GTFO to the American military, and then made it happen." 

I have not had any close family members involved in the on-the-ground fighting in that conflict, but my in-laws were in the military during the conflict and saw overseas duty, but mostly stationed in Thailand or the Philippines. 

That fact lead, I'm fairly certain, to a peculiar position: I've held the Vietnamese in very special regard for some time now, even to the point of obsessing. 

If I was forced to choose a country that I might call my "hero" country, it would have to be Vietnam. All they ever wanted was to be left to their own devices and choices. They had a will that was stronger than the full military might of the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world. 

To quote the late and great Howard Zinn: "When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won."

That might have tinted the goggles with which I viewed everything during this trip, but hey, that's life, baby.