(2001 pop. 3.3 million). Located on the southern coast of Vietnam near the Mekong Delta, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is a bustling and fast-growing city that has a long and storied history. Bordered by the Ben Nghe Channel to the south, the Thi Nghe Channel to the north, and the Saigon River to the east, the city has been fought over by many groups over the past two thousand years. The area was first settled in the second century BCE by the Khmer empire of Funan (second century CE–sixth century CE), which used the forested area as a trading post and called it Prei Nokor, meaning "Land of Forests." Over the next centuries the trading post attracted merchants from Japan, India, China, the Middle East, Malaysia, and Champa (now part of modern day Vietnam). Over seven centuries, Prei Nokor slowly grew into a small market town and administrative center. Earthen walls were built as protection from the occasional Cham raids on the growing city. By the fourteenth century, Prei Nokor became part of the Angkor empire of the Khmer, sister empire to the kingdom of Champa. In 1674 the Nguyen lords, rulers of southern Vietnam who had defeated the Cham, established a customs post in the city. The Vietnamese, who called the city Saigon, dug a four-mile trench in 1772 on the western edge of the city and, in effect, transferred control of Saigon from the Angkor to the Nguyen. Beginning in 1778, Cholon, the Chinese part of the city, was developed as a second commercial hub in the area. In 1789, the Nguyen moved their government base from Hue to Saigon to escape the Tay Son rebels. In 1802, with French assistance, the Nguyen, under General Nguyen Anh (reigned as emperor 1802–1820), defeated the Tay Son, reunited Vietnam, and moved the capitol back to Hue. The French, after demanding territorial concessions in Vietnam for their assistance to the Nguyen dynasty during the rebellion, attacked and seized Saigon in 1859 and made it the capital of their new colony. After defeat at the hands of the Viet Minh in 1954, the French abandoned Saigon. The city then became the capital of the new Republic of Vietnam (RVN) and remained so throughout the Second Indochinese War between the United States and the Democratic Socialist Republic of Vietnam (DSRV). By 1975, the DSRV had defeated both the Americans and the RVN; when they took over Saigon, they renamed it Ho Chi Minh City after the leader of the Vietnamese independence movement who had died in 1969. Today Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's largest, is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, both economically and in population, and remains a city of diverse cultures and influences. The city celebrated its three-hundred-year anniversary in 1998.
