U.S. Navy in Vietnam War: Bombing and Missile Strikes, Mekong Delta River Assault (1967)
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The Mekong Delta (
Vietnamese: đồng bằng sông
Cửu Long "Nine
Dragon river delta") is the region in southwestern
Vietnam where the
Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of distributaries. The Mekong delta region encompasses a large portion of southwestern Vietnam of 39,
000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi). The size of the area covered by water depends on the season.
The Mekong Delta has recently been dubbed as a 'biological treasure trove'. Over 10,000 new species have been discovered in previously unexplored areas of
Mekong Delta, including a species of rat thought to be extinct.
The Mekong Delta was likely inhabited long since prehistory; the empire of Funan and later
Chenla maintained a presence in the Mekong Delta for centuries. Archaeological discoveries at
Oc Eo and other Funan sites show that the area was an important part of the
Funan Kingdom, bustling with trading ports and canals as early as in the first century CE and extensive human settlement in the region may have gone back as far as the
4th century BCE.
The region was known as
Khmer Krom (lower
Khmer, or lower
Cambodia) to the
Khmer Empire, which likely maintained settlements there centuries before its rise in the 11th and
12th centuries.
The kingdom of
Champa, though mainly based along the coast of the
South China Sea, is known to have expanded west into the Mekong Delta, seizing control of
Prey Nokor (the precursor to modern-day
Ho Chi Minh City) by the end of the
13th century.
Author Nghia M. Vo suggests that a
Cham presence may indeed have existed in the area prior to Khmer occupation.
Beginning in the 1620s, Khmer king
Chey Chettha II (1618--1628) allowed the
Vietnamese to settle in the area, and to set up a custom house at Prey Nokor, which they colloquially referred to as
Sài Gòn. The increasing waves of Vietnamese settlers which followed overwhelmed the Khmer kingdom—weakened as it was due to war with
Thailand—and slowly Vietnamized the area. During the late
17th century,
Mac Cuu, a
Chinese anti-Qing general, began to expand Vietnamese and Chinese settlements deeper into Khmer lands, and in 1691, Prey Nokor was occupied by the Vietnamese.
Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the
Nguyễn Lords of Huế by sea in 1698 to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the area. This act formally detached the Mekong Delta from Cambodia, placing the region firmly under Vietnamese administrative control. Cambodia was cut off from access to the South China Sea, and trade through the area was possible only with Vietnamese permission. During the
Tay Son wars and the subsequent
Nguyễn Dynasty, Vietnam's boundaries were pushed as far as the Cape of
Ca Mau. In 1802,
Nguyễn Ánh crowned himself emperor
Gia Long and unified all the territories comprising modern Vietnam, including the Mekong Delta.
Upon the conclusion of the
Cochinchina Campaign in the
1860s, the area became Cochinchina,
France's first colony in Vietnam, and later, part of
French Indochina. Beginning during the
French colonial period, the
French patrolled and fought on the waterways of the Mekong Delta region with their Divisions navales d'assaut (Dinassaut), a tactic which lasted throughout the
First Indochina War, and was later employed by the
US Navy Mobile Riverine Force. During the
Vietnam War—also referred to as the
Second Indochina War—the Delta region saw savage fighting between
Viet Cong (
NLF) guerrillas and units of the
United States Navy's swift boats and hovercrafts (PACVs).
Following independence from France, the Mekong Delta was part of the
Republic of Vietnam and eventually the country of Vietnam
. In the 1970s, the
Khmer Rouge regime attacked Vietnam in an attempt to reconquer the Delta region. This campaign precipitated the
Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and subsequent downfall of the Khmer Rouge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekong_Delta