AN ALTERNATIVE VIETNAM - THE NGUYEN KINGDOM IN THE 17TH-CENTURY AND 18TH-CENTURY

The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nguyen kingdom was known as Da ng Trong to Vietnamese, and Cochinchina by the Westerners. In just 200 years it won control over three-fifths of the territory in modern Vie tnam. The experiences of this expanding southern frontier area seem to suggest an image of Vietnam that is very different from the north, op ening a door to an alternative world in which diversity was tolerated, and indeed exploited, for Vietnam's own development.