Vietnam

Vietnam (Vietnamese: Việt Nam, [vîət nāːm] (About this soundlisten)), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,[n 3] is a country in Southeast Asia. Located at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, it covers 311,699 square kilometres. With a population of over 96 million, it is the world’s fifteenth-most populous country. Vietnam borders China to the north, Laos and Cambodia to the west, and shares maritime borders with Thailand through the Gulf of Thailand, and the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia through the South China Sea. Its capital is Hanoi and its largest city is Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).[n 4]

Vietnam was inhabited as early as the Paleolithic age. The first known Vietnamese nation during the first millennium BC centred on the Red River Delta, located in modern day northern Vietnam. The Han dynasty annexed and put the Vietnamese under Chinese rule from 111 BC, until the first independent imperial dynasty emerged in 939. Successive imperial dynasties absorbed Chinese influences through Confucianism and Buddhism, and expanded southward to the Mekong Delta. The Nguyễn—the last imperial dynasty—fell to French colonisation in 1887. Following the August Revolution, the nationalist Viet Minh under the leadership of communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh proclaimed independence from France in 1945.