History

The difficulty of navigating the river means that a country divided, rather than States, people living near him. The first regulation known date 2100 BC, with Ban Chiang is an excellent example of this culture of the Iron Age. The first civilization was recorded on 1 Indianized century culture Khmer of Funan in the Mekong Delta. The excavation of Oc Eo, near modern An Giang, have found coins from as far away as the Roman Empire. This has been replaced by the state of Khmer culture Chenla to the fifth century. The Khmer empire of Angkor was the last great Indianized state in the region. At the time of the fall of the Khmer empire, the Mekong has been the front line between the states emerging from Siam and Tonkin (North Vietnam), Laos and Cambodia, then situated on the coast, torn between her influence.

First meeting in Europe was in the Mekong Portugal, Antonio de Faria in 1540, the European map of 1563 describes the river, although little is known of the river upstream of the delta. European interest only occasionally: the Spaniards and Portuguese mounted some missionary and trade expeditions, while the Dutch Gerrit van Wuysthoff led an expedition along the river to Vientiane in 1641-42.

The French have a serious interest in the region, half of 19 century, the capture of Saigon in 1861 and the creation of protected areas in Cambodia in 1863.

The systematic exploration began with the French expedition led by Ernest Mekong Doudard of Lagree and Francis Garnier, which ascended the river from its mouth to Yunnan between 1866 and 1868. Its main conclusion was that the Mekong had too many falls and rapids to be always useful for navigation. The source of the river is by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov in 1900.

From 1893, the French extended their control over the river to Laos, the creation of French Indochina by the first decade of the 20th century century. This lasted until the First and Second Indochina Wars ended the French and American participation in the region began.

After the Vietnam War, tensions between the pro-American government of Thailand and the new communist governments in other countries prevented cooperation on use of river.

Posted in: Mekong