Gia Long

Who was Gia Long?

Emperor Gia Long, born Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, often referred to simply as Nguyễn Ánh, was the first Emperor of the Nguyễn Dynasty of Vietnam. Unifying what is now modern Vietnam in 1802, he founded the Nguyễn Dynasty, the last of the Vietnamese dynasties.

A nephew of the last Nguyen Lord who ruled over southern Vietnam, Nguyen Anh was forced into hiding in 1777 as a fifteen-year-old when his family was slain in the Tay Son revolt. After several changes of fortune in which his loyalists regained and again lost Saigon, he befriended the French Catholic priest Pigneau de Behaine. Pigneau championed his cause to the French government—and managed to recruit volunteers when this fell through—to help Nguyen Anh regain the throne. From 1789, Nguyen Anh was once again in the ascendancy and began his northward march to defeat the Tay Son, eventually moving by 1802 to the border with China, which had previously been under the control of the Trinh Lords. When this was over, he had reunited Vietnam after centuries of internecine feudal warfare with a greater land mass than ever before, stretching from China down to the Gulf of Siam.

Gia Long's rule was noted for its Confucian orthodoxy. He repealed Tay Son reforms and reinstated the classical Confucian education and civil service system. He moved the capital from Hanoi south to Huế as the country's populace had also shifted south over the preceding centuries, and built up fortresses and a palace in his new capital. Using French expertise, he modernized Vietnam's defensive capabilities. In deference to the assistance of his French friends, he tolerated the activities of Roman Catholic missionaries, something that became increasingly restricted under his successors. Under his rule, Vietnam strengthened its military dominance in Indochina, expelling Siamese forces from Cambodia and turning it into a vassal state.