Principality of Thuận Thành, commonly known to the Cham as Pänduranga or Prangdarang, neologism Panduranga Champa, was the last Cham state that centered around the modern day city of Phan Rang in south-central Vietnam. Both Thuận Thành of Vietnamese perspectives and Panduranga were mutually used to refer to the last Cham polity. The decline and fading of Champa did not happen in a short period. Instead, for a long period from the late 17th century to 1832, Panduranga had been confined as an ad hoc client state of various Vietnamese dominions, but still maintained its faint independence. After a Cham revolt in 1692–94 and pressures from Cham king Po Saktiraydapatih, Southern Vietnamese lord Nguyễn Phúc Chu abolished his annexation of Panduranga and revived the Champa kingdom under the byname of Trấn Thuận Thành or the Principality of Thuận Thành, effectively made it a client state of the Nguyễn domain throughout the 18th century. Constant upheavals, social unrest, and the Tay Son rebellion in Dai Viet overthrew the ruling Nguyen and Trinh domains and Le dynasty during the late 18th century, and as long civil wars between Vietnamese factions raged, the principality of Thuận Thành continued to survive until summer 1832 when Vietnamese emperor Minh Mang annexed and incorporated the kingdom of Thuận Thành into his territory, decisively marking the final demise of the millennial Champa Kingdoms.
Thuận Thành from 1695 to 1774
Panduranga Champa under Nguyen suzerainty (1695–1774)
In 1712, the Nguyen lord Nguyễn Phúc Chu and king Po Saktiraydapatih signed a five-term treaty, stamping the last stage of Champa as it had become a client state of the Nguyen kingdom. Under the twilight of dominance by the Nguyen, Panduranga disoriented from a maritime-based to an all-isolationist kingdom, tangled to the Nguyen dictation. Champa lost its thriving religious and trading network apparatus with the extra Malay-Islamic world. Malay influences in Champa dissipated rapidly. Cham seafaring traditions were gradually fading away. Following the break between Panduranga and the Islamic world, Islamization in Panduranga Champa progressed in its way of localization.
The Nguyen embraced settler colonialism, opening paths to (Vietnamese) Kinh settlement in Panduranga. Vietnamese were subjected to the Nguyen court while the Cham royal court was barely granted management over the Cham people. Among this new settler minority group was the sense of egoistic cultural superiority toward non-Kinh peoples after the subjugations over Panduranga and indigenous tribes as they looked down on the Cham and non-Kinh subjects. Some of them were filibusters and could conduct their own business above Cham laws without being prosecuted by the Cham judiciary. Even the Cham king had no authority over them. Life in Panduranga gradually turned into dismalness for the Cham.
By 1695 Kinh villages and loosely-governed hamlets with no definitive border inside Panduranga popped up in An Phước, west of Phan Rang; Hàm Thuận (Phan Thiết, where the headquarters of Bình Thuận was placed); Hòa Ða (east of Phan Rí), and scattered across the Cham rural, approximately 200 villages in total. Lands and alms were wildly dispossessed away from the original inhabitants. Under the political protection of the Nguyen court, the Kinh settlers did everything to seize assets from the Cham. It was common for nefarious Kinh dealers to carry out usury with an interest rate of 150% per annum for either Cham officials or Cham folks, leading to many local families who could not afford falling into malicious debt traps and misery while the Kinh settlers benefited and strengthened their economic acquisition and financial dominance. Also, after the 17th century onward information about the highland indigenous peoples became more abundant. This may be the result of expanding Vietnamese political dominance in the area. At the same time, the Cham were hired by the Viet as bureaucrats to administrate the indigenous peoples; collecting tax; providing precious products and corvée labor to the Vietnamese overlords, as the Cham had extensively experienced in relationship with the indigenous highland peoples before.
In 1728, a Cham revolt against Nguyen oppression in Panduranga was quickly overrun. Another Cham rebellion led by Dương Bao Lai and Diệp Mã Lăng erupted in 1746 but was quickly put down by Vietnamese garrison troops from Nha Trang.
Beginning of Cham communities in the Mekong Delta
Cham Muslims who fled the Nguyen occupation and ought to continue the disrupted Cham-Malay-Islamic connection and refugees from the Vietnamese, migrating to the Mekong Delta and coastal Cambodia. Cham-Malay settlers in Cambodia and the western corners of the Mekong Delta of the 18th century began establishing communities and religious networks around Chau Doc and Ha Tien. They maintained strong links with Cambodian Chams, whose majority had switched to Perso-Arabic Jawi script for writings.
Today, the Mekong Delta Chams use both Jawi, Cham variant of Arabic, and Latinized Cham for their vernacular writing. Also nowadays, the Cham Sunni/Western Cham jama'ah (communities) of An Giang, Mekong Delta, and Cambodia often express a notion to the Bani that the Sunni are more positively educated, scientific, and religiously superior because of their orthodox faiths and upholding the teachings of Islam correctly, while the Cham Bani often rebuke the Cham Sunni for their neglect of traditional Cham culture and Cham history, abandonment of traditional akhar thrah Cham script and rejection of the muk kei (ancestor spirits) ritual, the basis of Cham ethnic identity. In the Mekong Delta, practicing Islam likely makes a person a Cham, unambiguously, more important than being of Cham descent. In his tome, Nakamura suggests that the ethnic identity of Cham in the Mekong Delta is constructed and legitimized around the religion of Islam.
The leader of the ruling Mac dynasty of Ha Tien, Mac Cuu, a vassal of Cambodia, housed a strong orthodox Sunni Muslim community of Cham and Malays, including elements of Sufism and Shafi. Gradually, the Mekong Delta Cham intermingled themselves with Cambodian Cham communities. Cambodian Chams retain a unique Islamic tradition that had fused Cham, Khmer, and Malay influences. In 1757, Buddhist lord Nguyễn Phúc Khoát launched a persecution against the overwhelming Christian population of Saigon, burning several churches, and forced the Christians to flee to Ha Tien and Siam. Ha Tien was occupied by the Tay Son in 1777–1789. In 1794–1795 Ha Tien was raided by a Malay fleet consisting of 17 junks of Siak Sultan Sayyid Ali. Ha Tien still had a Malay presence till the mid 19th century.
Thuận Thành during the Tay Son period
During the Tayson rebellion (1771–1789) as the Nguyen were overthrown, discord among the Cham elites soared, with one faction advocating for a pro-Tayson position, and one opposite arguing for pro-Nguyen. Panduranga was engulfed in a battleground of intra-Vietnamese civil war. The Tay Son briefly invaded Panduranga in 1773, then pushed further south in 1777. From 1783 to 1786, the pro-Tay Son faction leader prince Po Cei Brei was bestowed the governor of Panduranga by the Tay Son. His brother Po Tisuntiraidapuran switched allegiance to the Tay Son rebels, ruling as king of pro-Tayson Panduranga from 1786 to 1793.
In 1792-93 during the subsequent Tay Son–Nguyen war, Nguyen Anh and his loyalists retook Panduranga from the Tay Son. King Po Tisuntiraidapuran was captured by the pro-Nguyen Cham forces led by Po Ladhuanpuguh, then was convicted for anti-Nguyen behavior and received death sentence in Ðồng Nai. Many Cham refugees fled to Cambodia. Tuan Phaow, a Muslim leader, allegedly originating from Makah, Kelantan, led an anti-Nguyen rebellion in 1795–1796. Amid rampant instability and perturbed, he reportedly having brought many Sunni Muslim fighters (jawa-kur) from Cambodia back to Vietnam.
Further Vietnamese colonization of the Mekong Delta: Cham-Malay settlements
During the latter half of the 18th century, to extend their economic capability and development on the frontiers, the Nguyen brought many Cambodian Cham émigré and Malays to settle in their military plantations (đôn điên) in the Mekong Delta, particularly at Tây Ninh and Châu Đốc. Nguyen documents often regarded them as Chàm or Chàm Chà Và (藍爪哇, Cham-Java/Chvea) with implications of them being Cambodian Cham exilarchs that had fled Champa in the past to Cambodia rather than directly came from Champa. There was no clear difference to address the Malay in Cambodia and Malay came from the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago; they were just simply referred to as Đô Bà (闍婆). These transnational Cham and Malay settlements played crucial roles in the later Vietnamese annexation of Cambodia during the 1810s-1840 cause they were deemed to be used by the Vietnamese to consolidate Nguyen control over Khmer areas and the Mekong Delta generally.
Last years of Panduranga
The Satrapy of Panduranga
In 1793, king Tisuntiraidapuran was demoted and then executed, replaced by a pro-Nguyen official Po Ladhuanpuguh (r. 1793–1799). Since then, the Cham monarchy had been reduced to a quasi-satrapy with an appointed ruler instead of being ruled by a hereditary dynasty. After defeating the Tayson and having conquered the whole of Vietnam, Nguyen Anh was enthroned as Emperor Gia Long of Vietnam's newly Nguyen dynasty. He reconstituted his kingdom's administration and appointed his loyal military comrades of Cham ethnicity to rule Panduranga autonomously. Panduranga was given an extraterritorial status. The Cham court was obligated to provide privileges to ethnic Kinh settlers in Panduranga and must give military assistance to the Huế court, once being requested. Panduranga's resources were chief subjects of exploitation by the Vietnamese court in many ways.
Also, the Cham ruler had to provide the Vietnamese court with corvee labors to the Huế court just like Gia Long's every year, despite Gia Long having imperative declared that Panduranga was not a Vietnamese province or part of his kingdom.
Thuận Thành under Gia Long (1802–1820)
Under the domination of the first ruler of new Vietnam, Panduranga saw a significant change in its political direction and status. Although retaining their autonomy from the Vietnamese benefactor, the Cham political elites had increasingly collaborated with and pledged unquestionably loyalty to the Vietnamese Huế court, helping to expand Vietnamese influence beyond Panduranga-Champa's politics and society. The Cham ruling class and aristocracy, Mohamed Effendy comments, were unable to make a change that would affect their social status, were more willing to be subservient to the Vietnamese overlordship rather than endeavoring to struggle against the new order. Through this way, Panduranga Champa was rapidly melting away per se.
In 1799, Ladhuanpuguh died. Po Saong Nhung Ceng (r. 1799–1822), a minor official and early comrade of Gia Long, was assigned as king of Panduranga and received the appellation Chưởng Cơ (Ceng Kei – lord).
Minh Mang versus Le Van Duyet (1820–1832)
Gia Long was succeeded by his fourth son, Minh Mang (or Ming ni Mang in Eastern Cham dialect). He was an admirer of Chinese culture, a Confucian student, and a sadistic machiavellian autocrat. His ruling style is characterized by a repressive policy against foreigners (especially from Europe), and intolerance against the diversity, dissent, and minority groups in his own realm. The Nguyen neo-Confucian fundamentalist court shut off nearly all trade activities and diplomacy between Vietnam and the outside world. The reign of Minh Mang over Vietnam was also poisoned by incessant waves of stagnation, epidemics, rebellions, social upheavals, and wars across Vietnam and with neighboring Siam, mainly underlying by his rigid principiums.
Premodern Vietnam during the early 19th century was not a centralized kingdom by any mean. Minh Mang’s first procedure was readministrating Vietnam and increasing centralization. He had personal and political detest for Hanoi and Saigon Viceroys and Viziers Le Chat and Le Van Duyet, but was not outspoken. The grand governors were skeptical of Minh Mang and tried to prevent his expanding authority, virtually dragging Champa in between Minh Mang-Le Van Duyet political confrontation. In the south, Viceroy Duyet of Saigon proved to be much more influential and powerful over Panduranga and Mekong Delta, his sphere of influence and his ties with Chakri Siam and Catholic missionaries frightened Minh Mang, who was very concerning about his absolute power and ready to consolidate the administrative section and remove the Viceroyalties and other competing factions.