Đàng Trong

Dang Trong, the Inner Circuit, was the southern Vietnam of the Nguyen lords from 1558 to 1802, the Cochinchina of European maps. In 1558 Nguyen Hoang, pleading illness, begged the northern court for the poor frontier south of the Gianh River and stayed two centuries: his heirs built Phu Xuan at Hue into a court that rivalled Hanoi. While the Trinh lords ruled the north, the Nguyen pushed the southern frontier year by year against Champa and the Khmers, taking Saigon's plain and the Mekong mouth. Hoi An became the great fair of Asia, where Japanese red seal ships and Chinese junks traded under the lord's customs house. Seven Trinh invasions broke on the twin walls of Dong Hoi. The regime taxed trade, not land, and ran on soldiers and mandarins of its own. The Tay Son rebellion of 1771, three brothers from the hills, toppled both north and south within twenty years; but the surviving Nguyen prince, Nguyen Anh, took French guns and bishops' loans, retook Hue in 1801, Hanoi in 1802, and as Gia Long founded the dynasty that rules Vietnam's maps to this day, ending the two Vietnams' two centuries.