Nguyễn lords
Following the fall of the Ming dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century, Ming loyalists began to migrate across East and Southeast Asia, including towards Kampuchea Krom. Historian Claudine Ang argues that this migration of Ming loyalists into the Mekong delta, or Kampuchea Krom, and their alliance with the southern Vietnamese rather than the Khmer or the Siamese, "gave the Nguyễn lords of the southern Vietnamese state the support that they needed to lay claims on the delta lands", enabling the aggressive southward territorial expansion of the Nguyễn lords in the mid-eighteenth century.