Anam

Anam, or Annam. a country, sometimes called an empire, which occupies the E. portion of the peninsula that forms the S.E. extremity of Asia, lying between lat. 9° 40' and lat. 23° N. China bounds it on the N. and Siam on the W. It is made up of the provinces of Tonquin to the N., Cochin China to the S.E., and Cambodia to the S.W.; Laos being sometimes included. The French have a footing in these territories at Tonquin in the north, and in Cochin China at the southern extremity. A range of mountains runs along the coast, and the river Mekong or Cambodia holds a parallel course. The area is 106,000 square miles. The soil is rich on the whole and well watered, producing sugar, pepper, teak, sandalwood, cotton, and silk. The mineral wealth is very large. Various independent sovereignties have existed and still exist within this area; but China claimed a suzerainty over all. The French in 1795 began a policy of interference, chiefly on missionary grounds, which led ultimately to their occupation of Cochin China in 1860-2. France, by the treaty of Hue in 1884, practically obtained a protectorate over the whole country, which was recognised by China in the treaty of Tien-Tsin, 1885. The Anamese, that is, the civilised inhabitants of Tonquin and Cochin China, as distinguished from the Moi, or wild tribes of the Uplands, form a distinct branch of the Indo-Chinese family. They are traditionally descended from the Giao-chi of Tonquin mentioned in the early Chinese records, and still possess the physical peculiarity of a distended great toe characteristic of that race. Otherwise they are of a pronounced Mongoloid type, with broad flat features, high cheek bones, small nose, coarse, black and lank hair, rather small oblique eyes, colour varying from a dirty whitish yellow to chocolate, broad bony figures, low stature, averaging about five feet four inches. The moral character is generally described as disagreeable, harsh, unsympathetic, grasping, untruthful, and cruel, yet gentle towards their children, and treating the women with kindness and deference. They are nominally Buddhists, but less religious even than the Chinese, and the lettered classes are mostly sceptics. Yet the early Catholic missionaries were more successful in this region than in any other part of East Asia. Before the persecutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Christian communities numbered nearly half a million, and since the French protectorate conversions have again become frequent. Christianity is professed by nearly all the Franco-Anamese half-breeds, who are a hardy race already acclimatised, of much lighter complexion and finer features than the pure natives. The language, which closely resembles Chinese, belongs like it to the isolating, or so-called "monosyllabic" type of speech, and is spoken in six tones with considerable uniformity throughout Tonquin and Cochin China. It is written with ideographs (each symbol representing not a sound but an idea) based on the Chinese system, but with numerous modifications and additions. The so-called quoc-ngu, or Roman orthography, introduced by the Portuguese, is now adopted in the native schools of French Cochin China. In the south-east extremity of the peninsula there still survives a remnant of the semi-civilised Cham nation, who show Malay affinities, and who formerly ruled over a large part of Indo-China.