In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French missionaries, military officials and scholars all asked questions about the Vietnamese that the Vietnamese had never
There are people in Khammouane Province in Laos who speak a language known as Saek (Sek). In the twentieth century, Western scholars struggled to identify
In her Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BC-50 CE, historian Erica Brindley opens the book with
In his 1983 work, The Birth of Vietnam, Keith Taylor argued that Vietnamese “mythical traditions. . . reveal a sea-oriented culture coming to terms with
Not all scholarship is equal. There are books and articles that get published that are flawed. Part of the job of a scholar is to
In the first millennium BC, “Chinese” writers recorded information about various peoples who lived to their south. These people were called by various names such
In his new survey of Vietnamese history, Ben Kiernan attempts to include information on environmental history. As part of that effort, he has a section
In 1282, upon seeing that crocodiles had reached the Lô River (i.e., the Red River), emperor Trần Nhân Tông ordered one of his officials, Nguyễn
I have been trying my hardest not to comment on Ben Kiernan’s recent book, Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present. However,
I spent an enjoyable day last summer (2016) in Đường Lâm village with some friends. These videos were made at that time. They cover many
Dông Sơn bronze drums are today a symbol of Vietnam. The images of bronze drums and the details on them (birds, etc.) can be found
In 2014, as I saw how fast YouTube was transforming the way that so many people access information, I decided to learn how to make
In 1980 a conference was held in Hanoi to mark the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the Institute of History (Viện Sử Học). The
I’ve written a lot on this blog about the South Vietnamese philosopher Lương Kim Định. One thing I like about Kim Định is that he
A friend recently scanned and sent me some pages from a new book by Vietnamese author Tạ Đức on bronze drums in Vietnam called The
One of the earliest texts that contains information about Vietnamese history is a fifteenth-century work known as the Arrayed Tales of Selected Oddities from South
There is a new survey of Vietnamese history that has just been published. It is a book by Yale professor Ben Kiernan called Việt Nam:
Having just read and enjoyed the graphic novel, “Such A Lovely Little War,” but having never heard of its author, Marcelino Truong, I decided to
Over the past few weeks the New York Times has published a series of essays in a series called “Vietnam ‘67” in which “Historians, veterans
For several years now I have admired the work of a young UK scholar by the name of Jonathan Saha. Having started out conducting research
The 1950s in North Vietnam witnessed a great deal of debate in the field of historical scholarship about how to produce a postcolonial history for
Having written extensively over the years about the idea that South Vietnamese philosopher Lương Kim Định promoted that the Yijing (Kinh Dịch) was created by
In North Vietnam in the 1950s there were a few major historiographical debates that took place between scholars, and which were published in two journals:
In the nineteenth century when reformist Japanese scholars sought to learn about the West, they had to come up with many new terms in order
I’ve always wondered what would have happened if someone from the Đông Sơn period (that is, the time at the end of the first millennium
Having spent the past couple of years experimenting with video production, the time has now come to start work on a major video project. In
In the previous post I commented on a recent essay that historian Christopher Goscha published in the New York Times called “The 30-Years War in
Historian Christopher Goscha had an essay published in the New York Times yesterday (7 February 2017) entitled “The 30-Years War in Vietnam.” This essay is
In 1958, North Vietnamese scholar Văn Tân published an article in the journal Văn Sử Địa entitled “Contributing to the Building of a General History
Dr. K. and his friend, the Little Red Monster, respond to a question about the historicity of the idea that Vietnamese history can be characterized
It’s a new year, and we’re getting ready here at Le Minh Khai’s SEAsian History Blog to live life in this new year to its
After the August Revolution in 1945, Vietnamese historian Đào Duy Anh was invited to teach history at a university that was established later that same
Once again Lê Minh Khải was transported in time, this time to Japan where he was asked about historians who had worked for a pro-Japanese
Michelle/Natasha and Lê Minh Khải went to a meeting with an American intelligence official named Hank (a friend of Papa François) where they talked about
Having rescued Lê Minh Khải from Dr. Wu, Natasha takes him to meet her Papa in Tunisia where they talk about the declining influence of
Lê Minh Khải is again transported back in time and forced to answer questions about Vietnamese historian Đào Duy Anh’s scholarship. This time he ends
This video contains some more discussion of some of the conclusions that Đào Duy Anh reaches in his 1938 work, An Historical Outline of Vietnamese
This video contains a discussion of some of the conclusions that Đào Duy Anh reaches in his 1938 work, An Historical Outline of Vietnamese Culture
In his 1938 work, An Historical Outline of Vietnamese Culture (Việt Nam văn hóa sử cương), Vietnamese historian Đào Duy Anh tried to do something
This video relates to this blog post on the influence of the ideas of French geographer Paul Vidal de La Blache on Vietnamese historian Đào
As the previous post demonstrated, while it is clear that in writing his An Historical Outline of Vietnamese Culture (Việt Nam văn hóa sử cương,
This video relates to this blog post on the influence of scholarship from the Republic of China on Vietnamese historian Đào Duy Anh’s 1938 work,
Get ready for a video series on the historical scholarship of the great twentieth-century Vietnamese scholar Đào Duy Anh. . .
One of the (many) problems with the way that modern Vietnamese history has been written about (both by historians inside and outside of Vietnam) is
On the 29th of May in 1906, Emperor Thành Thái issued regulations to reform the education curriculum for students in schools that were meant to
Read any book on modern Vietnamese history, and it will glorify a reformist school that enjoyed a brief existence in Hanoi in 1907 – the
When the final palace exam was held in Huế in 1919, there were questions in both classical Chinese and modern Vietnamese (using the Latin script,
Phạm Quang Sán was a fascinating individual. In 1908 he translated into classical Chinese reformist ideas that were originally written in Vietnamese so that people
In 1909, reformist Nguyễn Dynasty scholar Phạm Quang Sán offered an example of a theoretical civil service exam question and answer that sought to demonstrate
