Concepts
The “Truth” about the Mandala
Like any field, the field of Southeast Asian history maintains certain “truths” which the people in the field learn and teach others about. One such
Bản Sắc Văn Hóa = Ideological Position
I wrote a piece earlier (here) about how the term “bản sắc” is often translated as “identity” but that the way the term is used
Diễn Biến Hòa Bình and Historical Logic
I have often gotten into discussions about history with Vietnamese, and when I try to make a point which a Vietnamese disagrees with, the Vietnamese
The Geo-Body of Vietnam
In 1983, Benedict Anderson argued in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism that nations are “imagined,” and that one
In the Darkness of a Colonial Singaporean Prison Cell
In the nineteenth century, colonial officials in Singapore were proud of their prison system, and particularly proud of their “convict prison.” This was a place
O. W. Wolters and the “Reading” of Angkor Wat
Academic fields have paradigms or themes which serve to focus scholarship and define the field. For instance, in the middle of the twentieth century, the
The Futility of “Open” Scholarship in Vietnam
I was talking to a scholar from Hanoi yesterday who was telling me that scholarship in Vietnam is “open” (mở cửa). I then mentioned a
Numbers and Lists in Vietnamese Scholarship
When I read contemporary Vietnamese historical scholarship about the premodern period, that is, scholarship which is supposedly based on sources in either classical Chinese or
The Absence of Historiography in Vietnam
The term “historiography” has a couple of meanings. One refers to the study of the various methodologies used to examine the past, such as empiricism,
Scientific Oral Tales and Cheap Literature
One aspect of Vietnamese history which is problematic is the fact that there are sources which contain information about events which supposedly occurred many centuries
Bản Sắc and Identity
Anyone who has studied a foreign language knows that words in one language do not always have exact equivalents in another, and that therefore much
Discourses, Vietnamese Intellectuals and the Changing History of the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship
To understand history, you have to understand discourses. A discourse can be defined as all of the knowledge and information about a certain topic. There
The Problems with “châu” and Phong Châu
Vietnamese historical sources record that the earliest kingdom in the area of what is today Vietnam, that of the Hùng kings, had a capital at
