Top Highlights

• Surely, the great ships of India and China had been sailing these waters by 900 BC or earlier. Were there any known port-cities that were visited? What rulers reigned over these islands and rivers? What was their religion and what did these seafarers and kings know of the geography of their area—a vast area of thousands of islands and jungle rivers...
• In central Vietnam, a few miles south of the famous DMZ of the Vietnam War (called in Vietnam the “American War”) was the mysterious capital of the Cham civilization, the impressive megalithic city of My Son. The Cham, or Champa, were a Hindu maritime people, apparently related to the Hindus of ancient Indonesia, whose influence can still be seen o...
• The Cham (pronounced “Kom”) peoples inhabited much of central Vietnam and a group of islands off the coast called the Cu Lao Cham, or Cham Islands. I think that this island base, as well as cities up several rivers in the area, were once the center of an accomplished maritime trading empire—an empire that not only traded with China to the north and...
• Eventually the Cham lost their island territories and there were wars with Cambodia and Sumatra. The Chinese also sacked the Champa cities in Vietnam and the Dai Viet tribes centered around Hanoi annexed all the remaining Champa territories by 1832 as they took over all of southern Vietnam. This migration south of the Dai Viet tribes drove the last...
• The Cham were seafarers and rivermen, going deep into Cambodia (named after the Cham— Khmer in Sanskrit). In fact the larger area of southern Vietnam and Cambodia, including parts of Laos, was certainly controlled by the Cham from an early time, though many historians only acknowledge the Cham or Champa as being in southern Vietnam. The online ency...