State of Vietnam in the context of "South Vietnam"

Hanoi (/hæˈnɔɪ/ han-OY; Vietnamese: Hà Nội [hàː nôjˀ] ) is the capital and second-most populous city of Vietnam. The name "Hanoi" translates to "inside the river" (Hanoi is bordered by the Red and Black Rivers). The city encompasses an area of 3,358.6 km (1,296.8 sq mi), and as of 2025 has a population of 8,807,523. Hanoi had the second-highest gross regional domestic product of all Vietnamese provinces and municipalities at US$48 billion in 2023, behind only Ho Chi Minh City.

In the third century BCE, the Cổ Loa Capital Citadel of Âu Lạc was constructed in what is now Hanoi. Âu Lạc then fell under Chinese rule for a thousand years. In 1010, under the Lý dynasty, Vietnamese emperor Lý Thái Tổ established the capital of the imperial Vietnamese nation Đại Việt in modern-day central Hanoi, naming the city Thăng Long [tʰɐŋ loŋ], 'ascending dragon'). In 1428, King Lê Lợi renamed the city to Đông Kinh [ɗoŋ kīŋ̟], 'eastern capital'), and it remained so until 1789. The Nguyễn dynasty in 1802 moved the national capital to Huế and the city was renamed Hanoi in 1831. It served as the capital of French Indochina from 1902 to 1945 and French protectorate of Tonkin from 1883 to 1949. After the August Revolution and the fall of the Nguyễn dynasty, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) designated Hanoi as the capital of the newly independent country. From 1949 to 1954, it was part of the State of Vietnam. It was again part of the DRV ruling North Vietnam from 1954 to 1976. In 1976, it became the capital of the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In 2008, Hà Tây Province and two other rural districts were annexed into Hanoi, almost tripling Hanoi's area.

The national flag of Vietnam, formally the National flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Quốc kỳ nước Cộng hoà xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam), locally recognized as the golden-starred red banner (cờ đỏ sao vàng) or the Fatherland flag (cờ Tổ quốc), was designed in 1940 and used during a failed communist uprising against the French colonialists in Cochinchina that year. The red background symbolizes revolution and bloodshed. The golden star symbolizes the soul of the nation and the five points of the star represents the five main classes in Vietnamese society—intellectuals, farmers, workers, entrepreneurs, and soldiers.

The initial incarnation of the flag was used by the Viet Minh, a communist-led organization created in 1941 to oppose Japanese military occupation and French colonialism. At the end of World War II, Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed Vietnam independent and signed a decree on 5 September 1945 adopting the Viet Minh flag as the flag of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The DRV became the government of North Vietnam in 1954 following the Geneva Accords. The flag was modified on 30 November 1955 to make the points of the star straighter, which became the standard design for the current Vietnamese flag. Until the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the State of Vietnam and later the Republic of Vietnam (South) used a yellow flag with three red stripes. The red flag of North Vietnam was later adopted as the flag of the unified Vietnam in 1976. The flag of Vietnam is the only flag amongst ASEAN that does not contain the colour white, with red and yellow/gold being its historical national colours.

North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; Vietnamese: Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa, (Vietnamese pronunciation: [vîəˀt nāːm zʌ̄n cû kôŋ͡mˀ hwàː]; VNDCCH), was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty recognized in 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it opposed the French-supported State of Vietnam and later the Western-allied Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). North Vietnam launched a successful military offensive against South Vietnam in 1975 and ceased to exist the following year when it merged with the South to become the contemporary Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

During the August Revolution following World War II, Vietnamese communist revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, leader of the Việt Minh Front, declared independence on 2 September 1945 and proclaimed the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The communist-led Viet Minh, cloaked in nationalism, was designed to appeal to a wider population than the Indochinese Communist Party could command.

The House of Nguyễn Phúc, also known as the House of Nguyễn Phước, is a family and a branch of the surname Nguyễn in Vietnam. Its members were the Nguyễn lords (1558–1777, 1780–1802) and emperors of the Nguyễn dynasty (1802–45). Its member Bảo Đại was also emperor of the State of Vietnam (1949–55) and Domain of the Crown (1950–55). Nguyễn Bặc (924–79), an official of the Đinh dynasty, was its founder.

Under Emperor Gia Long, the family's rule was not only restored, but extended to the whole of Vietnam in 1802, thus marking the start of the unified Nguyễn dynasty. The Nguyễn dynasty agreed to French supervision in 1883. In 1887, Vietnam became part of the Indochinese Union, which was administered by a French governor general.

French Cochinchina (sometimes spelled Cochin-China; French: Cochinchine française; Vietnamese: Xứ thuộc địa Nam Kỳ, chữ Hán: 處屬地南圻) was a colony of French Indochina from 1862 to 1949, encompassing the Mekong Delta and adjacent provinces in what is now the southern region of Vietnam, with its administrative capital in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City). In the face of recurring peasant unrest, and of growing political agitation in Saigon, the French operated a plantation economy whose primary strategic product was rubber.

After the end of the Japanese occupation (1941–1945) and the expulsion from Saigon of the Communist-led, nationalist Viet Minh in 1946, the territory was reorganized by the French as the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina, a decision that helped trigger the First Indochina War. In a further move to deny the claims of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam declared in Hanoi by the Viet Minh, in June 1949 Cochinchina was united with the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin under their former de jure emperor Bảo Đại as the State of Vietnam within the French Union.

Annam (chữ Hán: 安南; alternate spelling: Anam), or Trung Kỳ (中圻), was a French protectorate encompassing what is now Central Vietnam from 1883 to 1949. Like the French protectorate of Tonkin, it was nominally ruled by the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty. Before the protectorate's establishment, the name Annam was used in the West to refer to Vietnam as a whole; Vietnamese people were referred to as Annamites. The protectorate of Annam became a part of French Indochina in 1887. The region had a dual system of French and Vietnamese administration. The government of the Nguyễn Dynasty still nominally ruled Annam and Tonkin as the Empire of Đại Nam, with the emperor residing in Huế. On 23 May 1948, the protectorate was partly merged in the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam, which was replaced the next year by the newly established State of Vietnam. The French legally maintained the protectorate until they formally signed over sovereignty to the Bảo Đại and the government of the State of Vietnam in 1950 after the Élysée Accords took over in June 1949. The region was divided between communist North Vietnam and anti-communist South Vietnam under the terms of the Geneva Accord of 1954.

The Treaty of Huế or Protectorate Treaty (Vietnamese: Hòa ước Giáp Thân 1884, or Hòa ước Patenotre, or Hòa ước Patơnốt) was concluded on 6 June 1884 between France and Đại Nam (Vietnam/Nguyễn dynasty). It restated the main tenets of the punitive Harmand Treaty of 25 August 1883, but softened some of the harsher provisions of this treaty. The treaty created the protectorates of Annam (central Vietnam) and Tonkin (northern Vietnam). It formed the basis of French colonial rule in Vietnam during the next seven decades and was negotiated by Jules Patenôtre, France's minister to China; it is often known as the Patenôtre Treaty. The treaty was signed on the Vietnamese side by Phạm Thận Duật and Tôn Thất Phan, representatives of the emperor Tự Đức’s court. The treaty marked the Nguyễn dynasty's second acceptance of French protectorate in central and northern Vietnam, but it was canceled when the Élysée Accords was signed on 8 March 1949.

Despite the government of the Nguyễn dynasty canceling the treaty with the Japanese help in 1945, the French didn't recognise the end of the protectorates until the signing of the Élysée Accords on 8 March 1949. The treaty officially transferred sovereignty over Vietnam to former emperor Bảo Đại and the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam. The treaty also recognized Vietnamese sovereignty over Cochinchina in the South, which would return to Vietnam on June 4. The formal end of the Patenôtre Treaty was proclaimed during a ceremony at the Saigon-Cholon City Hall attended by the high commissioner of French Indochina Léon Pignon, Chief of State Emperor Bảo Đại, and delegates of the government of the State of Vietnam. During this ceremony Pignon officially renounced French sovereignty over Vietnam and recognised the independence of Vietnam, as an associated state within the French Union on June 14. The treaty led to the establishment of the State of Vietnam and would be completed on 2 February 1950.

The Mekong Delta (Vietnamese: Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long, lit. 'Nine Dragon River Delta' or simply Đồng Bằng Sông Mê Kông, 'Mekong River Delta'), also known as the South-western Region (Vietnamese: Tây Nam Bộ) or the Western Region (Vietnamese: Miền Tây), 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 south-western Vietnam, of an area of over 40,500 km (15,600 sq mi). The size of the area covered by water depends on the season. Its wet coastal geography makes it an important source of agriculture and aquaculture for the country.

The delta has been occupied as early as the 4th century BC. As a product of Khmer, Vietnamese, Chinese, and French settlement in the region, the delta and its waterways have numerous names, including the Khmer term Bassac to refer to the lower basin and the largest river branch flowing through it. After the 1954 Geneva Conference, Vietnam was split into two with South Vietnam inheriting the southern half of Vietnam becoming the State of Vietnam and eventually the Republic of Vietnam, also known as South Vietnam, with their own administrative states (see Category:Provinces of South Vietnam). After 1975, the Mekong Delta ceased being a part of the Republic of Vietnam, succeeded by the current Vietnamese nation. The region comprises 4 provinces: Đồng Tháp, An Giang, Vĩnh Long, and Cà Mau, along with the province-level municipality of Cần Thơ.

The declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Tuyên ngôn độc lập Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa) was written by Hồ Chí Minh, and announced in public at the Ba Đình square in Hanoi on 2 September 1945. It led to the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), replacing the Empire of Vietnam under the Nguyễn dynasty and Emperor Bảo Đại, who abdicated on August 25.

This declaration was a declaration of independence from France, but France had initially never recognized the DRV. France formed the independent and unified State of Vietnam within the French Union when the Élysée Accords took effect on 14 June 1949, as an alternative method to solve the Vietnam question. This associated state would become the Republic of Vietnam. The declaration is also considered the foundation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam although this state was actually formed on 2 July 1976.