I’ve seen it written countless times before that after the Han Dynasty extended its empire into into the area of what is now Vietnam, that
The Han Chinese who lived in the area of what is today Vietnam during the time of the Han Dynasty were afraid of something. This
I’ve been reading a recent (2017) PhD dissertation from China that is on Han tombs in Vietnam. The dissertation is entitled “Archaeological Research on Han
In the first century AD there were a couple of Han Dynasty officials who reportedly tried to change certain cultural practices of some people in
In the early twentieth century, French scholar Henri Maspero came up with an undocumented theory about Han migration into the Red River delta in the
Oh no! I did it again. While reading a work on Vietnamese history, I asked myself, “How does this author know that?” And once again
The way that many of us view the past today is the product of scholaship that has been produced in the post-colonial era, and that
When I started this blog 10 years ago, one of the first posts I wrote was a critique of an article on Vietnamese prehistory I
Before we can examine the latest information on Vietnamese prehistory, we have to address a couple of important issues: “race” and the “knowledge divide.” The
I recently published an article that dealt with the topic of the prehistory of the area of what is today Vietnam. The articled is entitled
I recently published a paper entitled “Taxation and Military Conscription in Early Modern Vietnam: Nguyễn Đàng Trong in Comparative Perspective.” While taxation and military conscription
This latest installent of “Vietnamese Poetry 4.0” is of a poem by Phan Lê Hà entitled “Câu Chuyện Hoa Ngọc Lan/The Story of Champaca Flowers.”
My colleague, historian Rommel Curaming of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), has recently published a new book
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Rui Oliveira Lopes, an art historian in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at Universiti Brunei
Chinese sources have been important for the writing of Southeast Asian history. In the colonial period, for instance, several scholars turned to Chinese historical materials
One of the many things that I like about my work is that there are several historians who I can learn from, and I get
Engaging With Vietnam is pleased to announce the call for proposals for the 12th Engaging With Vietnam conference to be held 15-18 October 2020 in
After spending years thinking about how to adapt what I do (teach History) in a way that can fit with the world that the Digital
My BA degree was in Russian language and literature. As an undergraduate student, I read thousands of pages of Russian novels (in English translation), and
One of the first posts that I ever wrote for this blog was called “Hà Văn Thùy and Ancient Việt Races (Has the BBC Gone
The other day an article appeared in my Facebook feed called “Being South-East Asian.” It was written by historian, political scientist and public intellectual Farish
I came across a Vietnamese newspaper from the late 1930s-early 1940s called the “Tràng An Báo.” This name is interesting. “Tràng An” is usually written
I can’t read fiction anymore. When I was young, I found novels to be a great means to “travel” to places (both in the literal
For a long time now I’ve been witnessing a decline in interest in area studies, the Humanities, the field of History, etc., all of the
The late archaeologist Wilhelm Solheim would probably be very surprised to find that statements he made way back in 1971 are cited today as “evidence”
One of the great joys of my work is making videos of conversations with scholars who research about Southeast Asia. It was my great pleasure
In 1971, archaeologist Wilhelm “Bill” Solheim made some comments in the magazine National Geographic about the origins of agriculture. His comments were premature, and turned
For the past half century or so there has been an idea circulating in the Vietnamese world that holds that the ancestors of the Vietnamese
This is my first attempt at making a video in Vietnamese. . . You gotta start somewhere. . . In recent years some Vietnamese people
Following up on the ideas in the previous post about how valuable it is to try to understand what “users” of a product/service actually think,
I keep thinking about the times we are living in, about how dramatically technology is transforming our lives, and about how the professional world I
I’ve been in conference-organization mode, but the conference is now ready for takeoff. For anyone interested, the program for the 11th Engaging With Vietnam conference
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “Vietnam” was under the rule of a single dynasty, the Lê Dynasty, but the land was actually divided in
According to the official chronicles of the Nguyễn Dynasty, the Đại Nam thực lục (hereafter ĐNTL), in 1744 Nguyễn Đăng Thịnh, an official in Đàng
In 1744 Nguyễn Đăng Thịnh, an official in Đàng Trong, presented a letter to his ruler, Nguyễn Phúc Khoát, the “Nguyễn lord” of Đàng Trong,
Following on the previous two posts, it is time to start looking at the documents relating to the 1744 event where Nguyễn Phúc Khoát, the
As I stated in the previous post, in 1744 Nguyễn Phúc Khoát, the “Nguyễn lord” of Đàng Trong (the southern half of the Lê Dynasty
In the world of English-language scholarship on Vietnamese history there is a subfield that has focused on “Đàng Trong” (also known as Nam Hà, Cochinchina,
I’ve been reading a new, and very interesting, book called The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies (Duke 2017) by Fabio Lanza.
One of my responsibilities in my current position is to make videos of discussions with scholars. The latest video is of a discussion that I
It is well known that Vietnamese emperors in the past saw themselves as the “Son of Heaven” (Thiên tử 天子), that is, as the main
The 11th Engaging With Vietnam conference will be held this July 15-16 in Leiden, the Netherlands, in conjuction with the 11th ICAS (International Convention of
The period from 1883-1885 was a dramatic time in Vietnamese history. The troubles began with the passing of Nguyễn Dynasty Emperor Tự Đức, an emperor
I have been trying to figure out the chronology of events that led to the establishment in 1896 of the Quốc học, a school in
In 1896, the Nguyễn Dynasty established a school at the royal capital in Huế for teaching French. Known in Vietnamese as the Quốc học, its
I recently came across a fascinating text from the early twentieth century that contains a critique of the Dông Kinh Nghĩa Thục. The Đông Kinh
One major “blind spot” that exists in our understanding of modern Vietnamese history concerns what happened at the Nguyễn Dynasty court in the late nineteenth
I’ve recently been doing some research using a nineteenth-century geography called the Đại Nam nhất thống chí 大南一統志 (Unified Gazetteer of Đại Nam). As usual,
Engaging With Vietnam is very delighted to announce its 11th “Engaging With Vietnam: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue” conference (EWV 11), which is going to be held
When people write about the history of Southeast Asian Studies (or the history of scholarship on Southeast Asian history), they often state that there were
