In reading writings from the world of the Nguyễn Dynasty in early twentieth century Vietnam the one thing that becomes clear is that there was
In the previous post I introduced a book that Nguyễn Dynasty official and reformist scholar Phạm Quang Sán published in 1909 that sought to introduce
In 1909, a year after he had published a textbook that was aimed at modernizing elementary education, Nguyễn Dynasty official and reformist scholar Phạm Quang
I’ve long had a problem with the general narrative about the history of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Vietnam. Over and over you read in books
In the nineteenth century there were Chinese scholars who realized that China needed to catch up with the technological advances of Western nations. This was
The arrival in East Asia in the nineteenth century of people in steamships from the industrializing West was a shock to the educated elite there,
The civil service examination was of course an extremely important institution in Vietnamese history, but it is a topic that has yet to be researched
I was reading a newspaper from Republican China today called the Central Daily (Zhongyang ribao 中央日報). On 19 May 1946 it published a brief article
In 1976, Edward Schafer published a book about “the South” in the medieval Chinese imagination called The Vermilion Bird: T’ang Images of the South. Filled
There is a wonderful book by Catherine Churchman coming out in a couple of weeks called The People between the Rivers: The Rise and Fall
There at it again. For the past few days Vietnamese cyberspace has been filled with articles and discussions about whether Chinese characters (chữ Hán) should
The video below aired on ThinkTech Hawaii and covers a range of topics that the Engaging With Vietnam conference series deals with, from knowledge production
I love the early twentieth century, as that is when the Vietnamese worldview started to change dramatically, and the documents from that period make that
This is a video about a book that was published in South Vietnam in 1974 about the origins of the Vietnamese people.
In the 1950s, students in America were taught that Thomas Jefferson was a great man because he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all
The term “Ngô” is one which scholars have long debated about. As we saw earlier, Ưng Quả explained the term “Ngô” as a general name
So Nguyễn Trãi wrote about “southern people” and “northern people” in a letter to the Ming officers who were occupying Bắc Giang citadel. He then
In the previous post we saw that Nguyễn Trãi wrote to the Ming soldiers who were defending Bắc Giang citadel 北昌城 (also referred to as
In the opening passage of the “Bình Ngô đại cáo” there is a section which states that: “Our kingdom of Đại Việt is truly a
Because I’ve always realized that the history of the Ming occupation of Đại Việt is not a simple story of “the Vietnamese” fighting “the Chinese,”
After defeating the Ming army that had occupied Đại Việt for some 20 years, Lê Lợi faced a new problem, one that he was unprepared
Shortly before he died in 1043 BC, King Wu of the Zhou (周武王 Zhou Wuwang) succeeded in overthrowing the Shang Dynasty and establishing a new
Does the “Bình Ngô đại cáo” represent a decision to break away from an empire and to enter “a pre-existing international order” as “equal to
Let’s now look at the “Bình Ngô đại cáo” to see to what extent we can find evidence that it was created by “representatives of
On July 4, 1776 a group of representatives from thirteen British colonies in North America, known collectively as the Continental Congress, met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’ve written many posts over the years about a fifteenth-century Vietnamese document known as the “Bình Ngô đại
Responding to a call from “Jacques from France,” Dr. K. and guest The Midnight Dreamer discuss the question of “Who were the Ngô?” on the
There is a fifteenth-century document that is today very famous in Vietnam. It is called the “Bình Ngô đại cáo” (The Great Proclamation on Pacifying
The above video is a discussion of Nguyễn Đăng Thục’s essay “The Origins of the Vietnamese People,” which was published in either the 1960s or
In my ongoing effort to experiment with ways in which digital media can enhance the efforts of historians to examine and talk about the past,
This is a meditation on the “Nam quốc sơn hà,” strangeness in history, Benedict Anderson, language learning, the “Bình Ngô đại cáo,” Soviet soldiers, Tạ
I spent some time today looking at a magazine that was published in the US in the 1930s and 1940s under the name of Asia
A few weeks ago I drove through a town in northern Vietnam that sold local milk products. As someone who grew up on a dairy
There is a book that was compiled in fifteenth century Vietnam called the Treatise on the Territory (Dư địa chí 輿地誌). This work was supposedly
There is an art exhibition being held at BLANC Art Space in Saigon at the moment which displays a series of photographs taken by artist
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of seeing the film Công Binh: La longue nuit Indochinoise. Created by French director Lam Lê (Lê Lâm), this
Summer is here and it’s time again to take a break for a few weeks. Thank you for reading and viewing. Le Minh Khai’s SEAsian
In making the video of Trần Trọng Dương’s discussion of Lý Ông Trọng, I was reminded of something I wrote about Lý Ông Trọng years
In this video Trần Trọng Dương talks about the effort of some Vietnamese scholars to interpret the past in ways that they hope will distance
In this video Trần Trọng Dương talks about the image of traitors in the writing of history.
In this video Trần Trọng Dương talks about the ways in which the past has been used to promote the image of people who have
In this video Trần Trọng Dương talks about a (mythical) figure known as Lý Ông Trọng. This person was supposedly from the Red River Plain
In this video Trần Trọng Dương talks a little bit about himself and about doing field work.
This is the second part of a conversation that I had in the summer of 2015 with artist Nguyễn Phương Linh about art and history,
The video below is a continuation of our conversation with TS Trần Trọng Dương after the Engaging With Vietnam conference last summer about the utility
The topic of the importance (or non-importance) of South Vietnamese philosopher Lương Kim Định has come up again and this has forced me to think
In 1831 the Nguyễn Dynasty official, Lý Văn Phức, escorted some stranded Chinese sailors back to Fujian province. When he arrived there, the guesthouse where
I guess this is self-promotion. . . but there is an interview with Le Minh Khai that the journal Da Màu has published which covers
I changed my mind. I was going to “digitize” a class that I teach on modern Southeast Asian History, but I’ve decided not to do
