You’re having altogether too much fun with map software lately, sir.

Guilty as charged, Nathan.

Kelvin, I’ve no idea. Perhaps someone else can chime in. I’m just relying on my trusty atlases, but there’s no guarantee that they’re correct (and after all, we are looking at one thousand years ago).

ohh cochin china (not cochin), sorry.
the area around Ho Chi Minh City. it is mapped under Khmer in Curzon’s map. (south of Champa)

Going from impersonal memory, the Viets began moving into the Delta in the 1600s, and colsolidated their hold on it in the 1700s. That would coincide with their long march south, and is generally contemporary with their taking of the Cham city-states of Qui Nhon, Nha Trang, Phan Rang, and Phan Thiet. This year, Khanh Hoa (capital, Nha Trang) was celebrating it’s 350th year of existence as a Vietnamese province, anthough the town of Nha Trang wasn’t established until the French era. (The Yersin and Khanh Hoa provincial museums are farily close together, if you get to Nha Trang). Supposedly, the Cham held on near Nha Trang until the 1820s, when the last “Cham king” fled to Cambodia. (Note: possible, but my problem with this is that the nearby Dien Khanh (1945 – “Khanh Hoa”) citadel was built in 1793.) The fact that there are sizable numbers of Khmer in the Meking Delta today is partially due to the difference in Khmer and Viet settlement patterns. The Viets (or Kinh) traditionally settle in hamlets, dividing up the farmland adjacent to the hamlet. The Khmers tend to live in isolated farms, much like U.S. farmers, and are thus spread all over. Travel the Tonkin Delta before seeing the Mekong, and you will understand the difference. Thus large numbers of ethnic Khmer remained on their lands even after the Viets moved in. Their identity, and loyalty, was traditionally to Phnom Penh. The French, in fact, are probably a major reason that Cambodia survives as a state today, and is not otherwise divided up between Vietnam and Thailand. In the wake of Ho Chi Minh’s delcaration of independence in Sep 45, the Cambodian government was quick to offer the man-power strapped French their assistance. Draft orders were sent out to Khmer communities both within Cambodia and Vietnam, resulting in two battalions of troops being raised which were incorporated into the “Brigade de Marche d’Extreme Orient” (the Far Eastern Provisional Brigade). The unit’s third battalion was raised around Ban Me Thuot. Ho Chi Minh’s vision of a “greater Indochina” was viewed by the then Cambodian government as confirmation of any idnependent Vietnam’s designs on Cambodia. During the “American War” the 5th Special Forces Group recruited heavily among Vietnam’s ethnic Khmer. Among the elite units raised were five parachute brigades, termed “MIKE Forces”. The Delta based “IV Corps MIKE Force” was recruited largely among the Khmer Kampuchea Krom (KKK), while the “III Corps MIKE Force” was mostly recruited among the Khmer Issrai. In 1970, most of these troops entered the Cambodian Army’s parachute brigade. Even the largest of these MIKE forces, the II Corps MF (5 battalions), counted a large number of “Khmer Lieu” among its members. While the Rhade, Jarai, and Raglai are all Malayo-Polynesians, the Koho, M’nong, Stieng, Bahnar, Sedang, Halang, Rengao, Jeh, and Katu are classed as Mon-Khmer groups, essentially tribal, highland, Khmer, or “Khmer Lieu”. Ah yes, Vietnam’s “2,000 year struggle for independence” so beloved of the Left. How interesting that they fail to detect even a hint of Vietnamese colonialism. It’s only evil if westerners do it.