Champa

Champa was not a single centralised empire but a long-lived collection of Cham polities, a maritime, trade-oriented civilisation of Austronesian-speaking peoples that flourished along the coast of central and southern Vietnam for more than sixteen centuries.

Its conventional starting point is 192 CE, when a local leader known as Khu Liên led a revolt against Han Chinese authority in the commandery of Rinan and founded the polity the Chinese called Linyi (Lâm Ấp); recognisably Cham, deeply Indianised kingdoms, however, emerged more clearly from the fourth century, so early Linyi is often regarded as a precursor. Politically, Champa is best understood through the mandala model: rather than a state with fixed borders, it was a fluid network of semi-autonomous principalities and trading ports, such as Amaravati, Vijaya, Kauthara, and Panduranga, loosely unified under a paramount overlord during periods of strength and fragmenting at other times. Cham culture was profoundly shaped by Indian influence: Sanskrit served as a learned language, Shaivite Hinduism was the dominant state religion (with significant Islamic influence in later centuries), and the Cham built distinctive red-brick Hindu temple complexes, most famously the sanctuary of Mỹ Sơn. The Cham prospered as seafarers, traders, and at times raiders, exporting forest products and engaging in the wider maritime commerce of the South China Sea. Champa reached the height of its influence between the ninth and twelfth centuries, when it engaged in fierce rivalry with the neighbouring Khmer Empire, even sacking the Khmer capital of Angkor in 1177, while contending throughout its history with the Vietnamese state of Đại Việt to the north. From the later medieval period Champa was steadily eroded by Vietnamese southward expansion. A catastrophic defeat at Vijaya in 1471 reduced it to the small southern principality of Panduranga, which survived as a Vietnamese vassal until it was finally annexed by the Nguyễn emperor Minh Mạng in 1832.

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