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Updated: July 6, 2025
The countries of the first class comprise Ceylon, Burma and Siam, Central Asia, Nepal, China with Annam, Korea and Japan, Tibet with Mongolia. The Buddhism of the first three countries is a real unity or in European language a church, for though they have no common hierarchy they use the same sacred language, Pali, and have the same canon.
The Tampasuk pirates, belonging to the Rajah of Borneo Proper, aiding and abetting Pangeran Annam against the English, are Datu Akop, Datu Aragut, and Datu Jumbarang, with ten large men-of-war prows: there is also there the Rajah Endut, a Siak chief. Matan is under an independent rajah, who was formerly styled Sultan of Sukadana; but about seventeen years ago the Dutch burnt down his city.
That undertaking was, in the first place, defined to be a protectorate of Annam, and, as the first step in the enterprise, the town of Hanoi, in the delta of the Red River, and the nominal capital of Tonquin, was captured before the end of the year 1882.
The people of Annam then made good their independence, and they still enjoy it, so far as China is concerned; though Annam is now a dependency of the French republic. We cannot doubt that the failure of the emperor's endeavor to popularize his rule was as largely due to the tyrannical acts and oppressive measures of some of his principal ministers as to unpopular and unsuccessful expeditions.
Before it was ended, the Sung tried to extend their influence in the south beyond the Chinese border, and secured a sort of protectorate over parts of Annam . This sphere of influence was politically insignificant and not directly of any economic importance; but it fulfilled for the Sung the same functions which colonial territories fulfilled for Europeans, serving as a field of operation for the commercial class, who imported raw materials from it mainly, it is true, luxury articles such as special sorts of wood, perfumes, ivory, and so on and exported Chinese manufactures.
But because the tribute offered in this case contained no jewels, consisting merely of ivory, rhinoceros-horn, tortoise-shell, etc., which had been picked up in Annam, some have regarded it merely as a trading enterprise, and not really an embassy from the Roman Emperor; Chinese writers, on the other hand, suggest that the envoys sold the valuable jewels and bought a trumpery collection of tribute articles on the journey.
Most of the present people of Tibet belong to this section; the Gurkhas of Hindustan, the people of Burma proper, of Annam, and Cochin China are close relatives of one another and of the more characteristic Mongolians of China proper who make up the vast bulk of the population.
But the love of peace will not avert war when a State has turbulent or ambitious neighbors who are resolved to appeal to arms, and so Kwang Vouti was engaged in almost constant hostilities to the end of his days. Chingtse, the Queen of Kaochi, which may be identified with the modern Annam, defied the Chinese, and defeated the first army sent to bring her to reason.
Strange, strange, for instance, that similarity between the scheme of Europe and the scheme of Asia: each with three southern peninsulas pointing south: Spain corresponding with Arabia, Italy with India, the Morea and Greece, divided by the Gulf of Corinth, corresponding with the Malay Peninsula and Annam, divided by the Gulf of Siam; each with two northern peninsulas pointing south, Sweden and Norway, and Korea and Kamschatka; each with two great islands similarly placed, Britain and Ireland, and the Japanese Hondo and Yezo; the Old World and the New has each a peninsula pointing north Denmark and Yucatan: a forefinger with long nail and a thumb pointing to the Pole.
And for the past thirty years those jaws have been slowly but remorselessly closing. Until 1893 the eastern frontier of Siam was separated from the China Sea by the narrow strip of Annam, at one point barely thirty miles in width, which was under French protection. Its western boundary was the Lu Kiang River, which likewise formed the eastern boundary of the British possessions in Burmah.
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