The Nguyễn dynasty

Picture an imperial city ringed by high walls and moats, a flag snapping atop a massive tower overlooking a slow-flowing river known as the Perfume River (Sông Hương, "song huong"). Palaces with glazed-tile roofs, paved courtyards echoing with the steps of mandarins, red-and-gold gates through which only the emperor could pass. That city is Huế ("hway"), and for more than a century it was the heart of imperial Vietnam under its last dynasty: the Nguyễn ("nguyen"). From 1802 to 1945, thirteen emperors reigned there in succession, carrying the country from a triumphant unification to the twilight of the monarchy, under the growing shadow of French colonization.

Gia Long, the one who reunified the country

At the end of the eighteenth century, Vietnam was torn apart. After decades of division between lords of the north and south, an immense revolt, that of the Tây Sơn ("tay son"), had swept away the old order. In this chaos, a surviving prince of the Nguyễn house, Nguyễn Ánh ("nguyen anh"), waged a long struggle to reconquer power. After many setbacks, exiles, and reconquests, he finally prevailed.

In 1802, Nguyễn Ánh took the throne under the reign name Gia Long ("ya long"). For the first time in a very long while, a single sovereign ruled the whole territory, from the Red River delta in the north to the Mekong delta in the south — that long strip of land we know today. Gia Long was thus, in the fullest sense, the one who unified the country under a single authority.

"Việt Nam": the birth of a name

It was under Gia Long that the name which would designate the country to this day officially appeared: Việt Nam ("viet nam"). In the early nineteenth century, the new emperor sought recognition of his unified kingdom from the great imperial court of China, with which Vietnam had long maintained tributary relations. It was in this context that the name Việt Nam was adopted and consecrated.

The name blends two ancient ideas: Việt, which points to the Viet people and their age-old kingdoms (as seen in "Đại Việt"), and Nam, "the south" — that is, the country of the south, as opposed to the great neighbor to the north. So the name that millions of people pronounce every day, and that our app carries, was officially fixed under the Nguyễn dynasty. A meaningful detail: to name is already to exist fully.

Huế, the imperial city

Gia Long chose to establish his capital at Huế, in the center of the country, midway between the north and south of the long reunified territory. There he had a vast citadel built (Kinh thành, "kinh thanh"), inspired by both Chinese principles and Vietnamese art, ringed by walls, moats, and bastions. At the heart of this citadel nestles the Purple Forbidden City (Tử Cấm Thành, "tu cam thanh"), reserved for the emperor and his household, echoing the one in Beijing.

Huế became the stage for extreme refinement: codified ceremonies, court music, meticulous imperial cuisine, poetry, calligraphy. The court music of Huế (Nhã nhạc, "nya nyak") is recognized today as a precious cultural heritage. Around the city, along the Perfume River, the emperors had sumptuous tombs laid out amid gardens, pines, and ponds, blending architecture, nature, and poetry. To walk through Huế today is to move through the setting of a vanished empire, among weathered stones and the scent of incense.

Thirteen emperors, a century and a half

The Nguyễn dynasty counts thirteen emperors, whose reign names mark the history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After Gia Long came, notably, Minh Mạng ("minh mang"), a great organizer of the state, devoted to Confucianism and rigorous administration; then Thiệu Trị, then Tự Đức ("tu duk"), of long and scholarly reign, yet confronted with a new and formidable danger from the sea.

For it was under the Nguyễn that Vietnam collided with European colonial expansion. From the middle of the nineteenth century, France intervened militarily, invoking among other things the protection of missionaries. Defeats piled up for the court of Huế. Gradually, the country was carved up and placed under French domination: the south became a colony (Cochinchina), while the center and the north (Annam and Tonkin) became protectorates. The whole was folded into French Indochina.

Emperors under tutelage

From the late nineteenth century, the Nguyễn emperors reigned without truly governing: real power passed into the hands of the French colonial administration. The situation was painful and ambiguous. Some sovereigns tried to resist or to preserve what they could; others came to terms with the protecting power. Several emperors who opposed the French were set aside, deposed, or sent into exile far from the country.

This period illustrates the drama of an ancient monarchy caught in the turmoil of modernity and imperialism. The Dragon throne endured, with its rites and its splendor, but it was drained of much of its power. Such is the paradox of the last Nguyễn: emperors real enough on a throne real enough, but whose decisions often depended on a foreign resident. In it one can read, in outline, the story of the Vietnamese people's long struggle to regain their independence.

Bảo Đại and the end of the empire

The thirteenth and last emperor was named Bảo Đại ("bao dai"), a reign name that can be understood as "keeper of greatness." Enthroned between the two world wars after an education partly in France, he embodied a sovereign torn between worlds.

The denouement came in 1945. That year, in the wake of the end of the Second World War and the Japanese defeat — Japan had occupied Indochina — a vast revolutionary movement, the August Revolution (Cách mạng Tháng Tám, "cach mang thang tam"), swept over the country. On September 2, 1945, in Hà Nội, independence was proclaimed. In this context, Bảo Đại abdicated: he renounced the throne, ending not only the Nguyễn dynasty but more than two thousand years of Vietnamese monarchy. The phrase attributed to him — that he would rather live as a plain citizen of an independent country than as king of an enslaved one — has remained famous.

With this abdication, the age of emperors was extinguished. Vietnam then entered a new and long period of struggle for its independence and reunification, a story that lies beyond the scope of this card.

The words and stones of an empire

The Nguyễn dynasty also left its mark on the language and the landscape. It was in the nineteenth century, in the wake of the Western and then colonial presence, that quốc ngữ ("quok ngu") gradually spread — the writing of Vietnamese in the Latin alphabet, the very script you read and learn today. Devised long before by missionaries to transcribe the sounds of the language, it would eventually supplant the old characters. Thus the modern Vietnamese alphabet, with its forest of accents and tone marks, spread during the era of the last emperors.

As for stones, the Nguyễn covered the center of the country with monuments: the citadel and palaces of Huế, of course, but also the great imperial tombs scattered through the countryside, each conceived as a dwelling of eternity in the image of its emperor — one austere and military, another poetic and flowering. These ensembles, now protected, draw visitors from around the world. They remind us that the last dynasty, despite the trials of its time, was also a great builder, mindful of leaving a trace of beauty.

A legacy that still perfumes the present

The Nguyễn dynasty leaves an ambivalent and profound legacy. Ambivalent, because it was under them that the country was both reunified and, later, subjected to colonization. Profound, because it bequeathed us the very name of the country, Việt Nam; an imperial capital of rare beauty, Huế, now a World Heritage site; a cuisine, a music, and a court art of exquisite refinement; and a whole gallery of figures, from Gia Long the unifier to Bảo Đại the last emperor.

When one day you stand before the great Flag Tower of Huế, facing the Perfume River, in the warm scent of incense and frangipani, consider that you are at the threshold of the last palace of Vietnam's emperors — where, after thirteen sovereigns and nearly a century and a half, the thousand-year history of the monarchy came to an end, and the history of contemporary Vietnam began.

Vietnamese to remember

• nhà Nguyễn (nya nguyen) — the Nguyễn dynasty
• Việt Nam (viet nam) — the name of the country, fixed under the Nguyễn
• Gia Long (ya long) — the first emperor, the unifier
• Bảo Đại (bao dai) — the last emperor, who abdicated in 1945
• vua (voo-a) — the king, the emperor
• Huế (hway) — the imperial capital, in the center of the country
• Sông Hương (song huong) — "the Perfume River," in Huế
• Kinh thành (kinh thanh) — the imperial citadel
• Tử Cấm Thành (tu cam thanh) — the Purple Forbidden City
• Nhã nhạc (nya nyak) — the court music of Huế
• Cách mạng Tháng Tám (cach mang thang tam) — the August Revolution of 1945
• độc lập (dop lap) — independence