Hanoi

I

Introduction

Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, located along the Red River near the middle of the fertile river delta of the same name. This region constitutes the historic and contemporary focus of northern Vietnam and has had a dense wet-rice growing population for more than two millennia. With the settlement of the Mekong River delta in the south and the rise of the new port-city of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in the 19th and 20th centuries, Hanoi lost its position as the largest urban centre in Vietnam. In the 1990s, Hanoi trailed Ho Chi Minh City in population, commerce, and standard of living. Nevertheless, Hanoi dominates the north and is the national political centre. Population 3,734,000 (2000 estimate).

II

Economy

Hanoi is an important manufacturing centre, but it also has had considerable competition from other urban centres under both colonial and Communist party rule. Manufactured goods include processed food, textiles, electrical equipment, cement, bricks and tiles, and chemicals. A variety of handicrafts is also produced here. It is the major transport centre for the north and for international air connections. Unlike most other major capitals of South East Asia, Hanoi is not a significant international port.

III

Places of Interest

Hanoi is divided into a spacious sector containing government buildings and cultural institutions, and two predominantly residential districts. Near the centre of the city is the scenic lake Hõ Hoàn Kiẽm, which contains two islands, on one of which stands the Mountain of Jade Pagoda. Other places of interest in Hanoi include the 11th-century One Pillar Pagoda and the Great Buddha Pagoda.

Hanoi is the site of the leading institutions of higher education in the northern region, with at least 19 universities and colleges—it was also a major site of Vietnam's periodic Confucian civil service examinations from 1442 until the late 19th century. Hanoi is the principal site of libraries and museums, including the Central Library (built during colonial times), the Museums of the Revolution and the Army (the latter with relics of the Vietnam War), and numerous pagodas and archaeological sites.

IV

History

The city was probably founded in the 6th century, when it served as the capital of a short-lived Vietnamese state. The region of Hanoi was intermittently a Chinese administrative centre under the colonial rule imposed from the Han dynasty onwards. The founder of the autonomous Ly dynasty of Annam selected Hanoi as his capital in 1010. Its former name, Dong Kinh, was corrupted by Europeans to Tonkin and used to refer to the whole region. Under Vietnamese rule, and under the colonial control that followed, both the landscape and society of Hanoi were deeply divided. In the 1770s, a Chinese and Vietnamese merchant quarter occupied the densely-built triangular section between the river and the Vietnamese administrative centre located in the Citadel to the west. With the royal capital relocated at Huê after 1802, northern regional administration was in the hands of a viceroy in the Citadel. At the insistence of the French, administration of the city was split in 1874 between the major area of Vietnamese control and a new French “concession” just to the south. In 1888, the French took effective control of the entire urban area and rebuilt the city as they saw fit. A large French Quarter of government buildings, shops, and residences quickly emerged just south of the merchant quarter. The Citadel was obliterated—only a masonry flag tower, the Cot Co, remains. From the 1880s to World War II, Hanoi developed as a French colonial capital, becoming, in 1897, the seat of the government of Indochina.

Hanoi's population growth since World War II has been impressive, but frequently interrupted. The city did not escape the 30 years of misfortunes during World War II, the war against French colonialism, and the Vietnam War—the last two seen in Hanoi as wars of independence and national liberation-reunification. The city was not badly damaged in the Japanese invasion, but at the end of World War II it was occupied by Chinese troops and inundated by starving refugees during the great famine that resulted. It was also the centre of the August 1945 revolution of Vietnamese nationalists—the Viet Minh. The temporary reassertion of French military control over the delta (1946-1954) entailed considerable fighting in the city itself during 1946-1947. Immediately afterward, the urban population may have been only 10 per cent of the 120,000 recorded in 1943. Under the artificial military service economy that ensued, the city rapidly became swollen with migrants and refugees, passing 400,000 in the metropolitan area by 1954.

In the transition to revolutionary rule after 1954, Hanoi became the centre of aggressive plans to develop the city as the political, industrial, and cultural capital of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The city reached perhaps 750,000 by 1966. Then the devastating new weapons brought to bear against urban targets by the United States in the Vietnam War caused widespread destruction and forced various periods of extreme evacuation, with a third to half of the population resettled during 1966-1968. The bombing of transport infrastructure also led to a decentralization of manufacturing. Recovery and growth were followed by another period of mass evacuation during 1972-1973. Still, by 1974 the population of the metropolitan area had reached 1.3 million, with 700,000 in the inner city. In 1976 Hanoi became the capital of reunified Vietnam. Recent liberalization of the rules governing economic activity and labour markets in Vietnam—including a welcome for foreign investors—have combined with rural poverty to produce a period of particularly rapid urbanization.

Hanoi's populace is overwhelmingly Vietnamese, and northern dialect of Vietnamese is the common language. Hanoi was also long the site of a regionally important Chinese commercial minority (reduced by repatriation in 1978), but much smaller than the half million ethnic Chinese in Saigon-Cholon in the 1950s. Hanoi was and remains the concentrated residence of other foreign communities in the north (French 1875-1954, Japanese 1941-1945, subsequently Russians, and now several thousand Asian and European diplomats and businesspeople). In some milieux, such as academic circles or among those who have resided abroad, one can find individuals conversant in French, Russian, and English. Recent rapid and uncontrolled migration into the city, and the arrival of numerous foreigners, has created severe housing problems as well as the economic and social problems of absorbing poor work-seekers. The result, since the late 1980s, has been speculation in private buildings and a construction boom.