Vietnamese

The Vietnamese, or Kinh, are Vietic people of the Red River Delta, whose Đông Sơn ancestors, the Lạc Việt, formed Văn Lang under legendary Hùng kings. Millennium-long Chinese rule began with the Han conquest of 111 BCE, bringing Confucian learning, Chinese administration and Sinitic vocabulary, though the vernacular tongue survived. Ngô Quyền restored independence in 938, defeating a Chinese fleet on the Bạch Đằng; Đinh Bộ Lĩnh founded Đại Việt in 968, capital Thăng Long under the Lý and Trần; the Trần repelled three Mongol invasions by 1337.

Ming China reconquered it in 1407, but Lê Lợi expelled them in 1427, and Lê Thánh Tông crushed Champa in 1471.

From the sixteenth century it split between the northern Trịnh and southern Nguyễn, who pushed settlement south in the Nam Tiến; missionaries came and Alexandre de Rhodes printed the romanized quốc ngữ in 1651. The Tây Sơn uprising briefly reunited it before Gia Long founded the Nguyễn dynasty at Huế in 1802.