Champa

Champa was a network of Hindu and later partly Muslim kingdoms of the Cham people that flourished along the coast of what is now central and southern Vietnam from around the second century AD until its final conquest by the Vietnamese Nguyen dynasty in 1832. Rather than a single centralized state, Champa was typically organized as a loose confederation of regional principalities, among which power shifted over the centuries between centers including Indrapura, Vijaya and Panduranga, and the Cham economy relied heavily on maritime trade across the South China Sea alongside agriculture. Champa absorbed strong Indian cultural influence, adopting Hinduism as its dominant early religion and building numerous brick temple sanctuaries, most famously at My Son, while later centuries saw increasing conversion to Islam among the Cham population, a process that continued after the kingdom's political end. Champa fought a long series of wars with its more powerful neighbor Dai Viet to the north, gradually losing territory in the centuries-long Vietnamese southward expansion known as Nam tien, and its last remaining principality was annexed by the Nguyen dynasty in 1832, ending Cham political independence.