At dawn on the Bạch Đằng River in 938, Ngô Quyền set his victory against the Southern Han beside the water, and in 939 the long Chinese domination was broken. From that moment, the story of Vietnam moved between river deltas and empires, with Hanoi in the north and the later rise of Sài Gòn, now Ho Chi Minh City, in the south. It is a country of about 331,000 square kilometres, edged by China, Laos, Cambodia, the Gulf of Thailand, and the South China Sea.

Long before the dynasties, people lived here in the Paleolithic age, and by about 1,000 BC the Red River and Ma River floodplains had given birth to the Đông Sơn culture, with its bronze drums and wet-rice fields. Legends place the Hùng kings in 2879 BC, but the historical arc is clearer: Thục Phán formed Âu Lạc in 257 BC, Zhao Tuo took it in 179 BC, and the Han annexation in 111 BC folded northern and central Vietnam into Chinese rule for centuries.

Independence returned in 939, and the Lý, Trần, and Lê dynasties built a confident Đại Việt. The Trần repelled three Mongol invasions, Mahāyāna Buddhism flourished, and Lê Thánh Tông ruled from 1460 to 1497 at a high point of power. Yet the state kept pushing south in Nam tiến, conquering Champa and Khmer lands, while by the 17th century the Trịnh and Nguyễn lords had split the country into north and south for more than four decades.

The modern name Việt Nam was recorded in the 16th century, and Emperor Gia Long used it officially between 1804 and 1813 after Nguyễn Phúc Ánh unified the country in 1802. Then France arrived with traders, missionaries, and warships. By 1887, Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin had been folded into French Indochina, and resistance flared in movements such as Cần Vương, the Hanoi Poison Plot of 1908, and the Yên Bái mutiny of 1930, where Phan Bội Châu, Phan Châu Trinh, and Ho Chi Minh stood in the wider nationalist struggle.

In 1941, Ho Chi Minh formed the Việt Minh, and in August 1945 they seized Hanoi and Huế before declaring independence on 2 September. France returned, the First Indochina War began in December 1946, and the fall of Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 forced the Geneva Accords, which split Vietnam at roughly the 17th parallel. Ngô Đình Diệm then refused elections, overthrew Bảo Đại in 1955, and made himself president of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Vietnam War drew in the Soviet Union, China, and the United States. Diệm was assassinated in the 1963 coup, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 widened American intervention, and by 1965 more than 500,000 US troops were in combat. The 1968 Tết Offensive failed militarily but shattered American confidence. After the Paris Peace Accords of 27 January 1973 and the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, North and South were merged on 2 July 1976 as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.