History of the Hmong

Hmong are an ethnic group that lives in several countries of Indochina, who are believed to come from the Yangtze River basin, in the area around Hunan, China. The Hmong are known in China as Miao, a designation that encompasses several different ethnic groups. Other theories say they come from Tibet. They are a population that wants to remain independent about what belongs to a country. After a period of turmoil in nineteenth-century China, when the Chinese dynasties Ming and Qing tried to impose new fiscal systems and expand their empire, the Hmong rebelled and many of them were expelled from China. Many of the Hmong began their journey to other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Laos or Burma.