Cham People - History

History

The ancestors of the Cham probably migrated from the island of Borneo. Records of the Champa kingdom go as far back as 2nd century AD. At its height in the 9th century, the kingdom controlled the lands between what is now modern Huế, to the northern reaches of the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam. Its prosperity came from maritime trade in sandalwood and slaves and probably included piracy.

Cham tradition claims that the founder of the Cham state was Lady Po Nagar. She originated from Khanh Hoa province, in a peasant family in the mountains of Dai An. Spirits assisted her when she sailed on a drift piece of sandalwood to China, where she married an heir to the royal family with whom she had 2 children with, and then became Queen of Champa.

Al-Dimashqi (1325) states that "the country of Champa... is inhabited by Muslims and idolaters. The Muslim religion came there during the time of Caliph Uthman... and Ali, many Muslims who were expelled by the Umayyads and by Hajjaj, fled there."

The Daoyi Zhilue documents Chinese merchants who went to Cham ports in Champa, married Cham women, to whom they regularly returned to after trading voyages. A Chinese merchant from Quanzhou, Wang Yuanmao, traded extensively with Champa, and married a Cham princess.

In the 12th century AD, the Cham fought a series of wars with the Angkorian Khmer to the west. In 1177, the Cham and their allies launched an attack from the lake Tonlé Sap and managed to sack the Khmer capital. In 1181, however, they were defeated by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII.

Between the rise of the Khmer Empire around 800 and Vietnam's territorial push to the south, the Champa kingdom began to shrink. In the 1471 Vietnamese invasion of Champa it suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese, in which 120,000 people were either captured or killed, and the kingdom was reduced to a small enclave near Nha Trang. Between 1607 and 1676 one of the Champa kings converted to Islam, and during this period Islam became a dominant feature of Cham society.

The Cham were matrilineal and inheritance passed through the mother. Due to this, the Vietnamese in 1499 enacted a law banning marriage between Cham women and all Vietnamese males, regardless of class. The Vietnamese also issued instructions in the capital to kill all Chams within the vicinity.

When the Ming dynasty in China fell, several thousand Chinese refugees fled south and extensively settled on Cham lands and in Cambodia. Most of these Chinese were young males, and they took Cham women as wives. Their children identified more with Chinese culture. This migration occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Further expansion by the Vietnamese in 1720 resulted in the total annexation of the Champa kingdom and dissolution by the 19th century Vietnamese king, Minh Mạng. In response, the last Champa Muslim king, Pô Chien, gathered his people in the hinterland and fled south to Cambodia, while those along the coast migrated to Trengganu (Malaysia). A small group fled northward to the Chinese island of Hainan where they are known today as the Utsuls. Their refuge in Cambodia where the king and his people settled still bear the name of Kompong Cham (literally Cham landing); others scattered in communities across the Mekong Basin. Those who remained the Nha Trang, Phan Rang, Phan Rí, and Phan Thiết provinces of central Vietnam were absorbed into the Vietnamese polity.

In the 1960s various movements emerged calling for the creation of a separate Cham state in Vietnam. the Liberation Front of Champa (FLC – Le Front pour la Libération de Cham) and the Front de Libération des Hauts plateaux dominated. The latter group sought greater alliance with other hilltribe minorities.

Initially known as "Front des Petits Peuples" from 1946 to 1960, the group later took the designation "Front de Libération des Hauts plateaux" and joined, with the FLC, the "Front unifié pour la Libération des Races opprimées" (FULRO) at some point in the 1960s. Since the late 1970s, there is no serious Cham secessionist movement or political activity in Vietnam or Cambodia.