In the early nineteenth century, Phan Huy Chú recorded a lot of geographical information. He has a “Treatise on the Territory” section in his massive Cataloged Record of the Institutions of Successive Dynasties (Lịch triều hiến chương lọai chí 歷朝憲章類誌).
That work, however, was never published. Nonetheless, much of the same geographical information that he recorded there was published in 1833 in his Treatise on the Territory of the August Việt (Hoàng Việt địa dư chí 皇越地輿誌).
One thing that Phan Huy Chú did in these works is that he attempted to connect places in the Nguyễn Dynasty realm with ancient place names. What is interesting is that he didn’t see a succession of kingdoms in the same area, but instead, placed different kingdoms in different areas.
One such place was the Việt Thường Kingdom. “Việt Thường/Yuechang” is the name of a clan that presented tribute to the Zhou Dynasty court in antiquity. There is very little early information about these people, but accounts of their mission became increasingly detailed over the centuries, and as such, much that we “know” about these people is mythical.
That, however, did not matter to Phan Huy Chú. As he saw it, the Việt Thường Kingdom had been in the area where Thuân Hóa, Quảng Nam and Nghệ An were in his day.
Phan Huy Chú then says that there had been a Lạc Long Kingdom (obviously the kingdom of Lord Lạc Long or Lạc Long Quân) that had existed in the area of Hà Nội and Tuyên Quang, while there had been “Lạc Long lands” (Lạc Long địa 貉龍地) in the area of Lạng Sơn.
The ancient kingdom of Văn Lang, where the Hùng kings were said to have ruled, had been located, Phan Huy Chú contended, in the area of what was in his day Sơn Tây and Hưng Hóa.
Then there had been an Âu Lạc Kingdom in Thái Nguyên, and a Vũ Ninh Commandery in Kinh Bắc. This final term, Vũ Ninh, appears in works like Ngô Sĩ Lien’s fifteenth-century Complete Book of the Historical Records of Đại Việt (Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư 大越史記全書) where it is listed as one of the fifteenth regions (châu 州) that the kingdom of Văn Lang had supposedly been divided into.
So Phan Huy Chú must have known that works like Ngô Sĩ Lien’s Complete Book of the Historical Records of Đại Việt indicated that most of these kingdoms did not exist simultaneously. So why did they all have to be in different areas?
Phan Huy Chú offered a picture of the ancient geography of the region where he lived that is radically different from what we can find in books today.
Is that because modern scholars discovered “the truth”? Or have modern scholars stayed just as far away from addressing historical reality as Phan Huy Chú did?
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“Is that because modern scholars discovered ‘the truth’? Or have modern scholars stayed just as far away from addressing historical reality as Phan Huy Chú did?”
Perhaps because history is in truth a series of reconstructions, more of a story of (wo)men making stories or even myths which are subsequently canonised as “history”? I tend to agree with Lévi-Strauss who argues in “La pensée sauvage” that “it is vain to go to historical consciousness for the truest meaning”. Socially (and politically) made, there is never a ‘right’ one, “the truth”.
Always thought-provoking 🙂
Thanks for the comment!! It makes me think about a lot of things.
Yea, I agree that history is a series of reconstructions, but those reconstructions are rarely thorough or complete. They usually leave some space open for us to see through, so that we can see what was (re)constructed.
So I think there is a “truth.” But since we can only glimpse it through the spaces left in the reconstructions, we can never see it in its entirety, but we can see it.
In the end I think that what historians and pretty much everyone who tries to make an argument ultimately relies on is “inference to the best explanation.” Based on the evidence that we have, we put forth an explanation, and “the best” explanation, is the explanation that can explain the most and that can endure the greatest number of counter-questions.
I think we can provide Phan Huy Chú and anyone who has written about Lạc Long Quân, Văn Lang, etc. a lot of counter evidence that makes it very difficult to talk about these things as having ever existed. There is a lot of evidence that we can use to show how the stories about the Hùng kings etc. were invented around the fifteenth century. This is one space that we can look through to see a bit of the “truth” of the past. Archaeological remains provide another space through which we can see a bit of the “truth” of the past (but if the people who view those remains have the idea in their heads that there really was a Văn Lang, etc., then that space gets covered and they can’t see any “truth” there).
Saying that there were people in the Red River delta in the first millennium BC but that we don’t know who they were or what kind of polities they had, and saying that around 1500 AD some stories were created (based on and inspired by a lot of extant textual information and in the form of an existing genre of writing) by people who may or may not have had a connection with whoever had lived in the Red River delta 2,000 years ealier – I don’t think a “reconstruction” like that falls into the same category as Phan Huy Chu’s description of the geography of antiquity or the claims in the second half of the twentieth century that “Hùng vương có thật” (the Hùng kings truly existed).
This reconstruction can withstand many more counter-questions than Phan Huy Chú’s or those of scholars in the twentieth century. It is the best explanation that inference can get us at this point in time. It’s not a myth that will get canonized as history, because if a better explanation can get made in the future, then it will get refuted at that time.
This then leads me to another thought. I often find that when I refute the points made by Vietnamese historians, the response I usually get is very “post-modern” – all knowledge is relative, there is no definite truth, etc. – even though no one makes such admissions when they produce their scholarship (and even though none of the people who make these comments have read the works of any post-modern theorists, as far as I know). It’s only when their ideas are refuted that people resort to this post-modern response. That’s very convenient. . .
Why does this happen? I think it is because there just hasn’t been a tradition of academic scholarship in Vietnam yet. I’ve written about Nguyễn Phương on this blog before. I like his scholarship because I think he made an honest effort to “infer to the best explanation” based on what he knew and the information available to him at the time. I’ve also written on this blog about some of the first scholars in Vietnam who tried to use the concept of race. They did so in the early 20th century and concluded that the Viet were part of the “Han race.” Again, that doesn’t make people happy today, but you can see that they were inferring to the best explanation based on what they knew and the information available to them.
However, since about the late 1960s, when the conferences were held to “prove” that “Hùng vương có thật,” I haven’t seen much evidence of people inferring to the best explanation. At first people produced a lot of politicized scholarship (which was very understandable at the time), and now no one tries to move beyond that model. And to “defend” their ideas, they resort to saying that “all knowledge is relative, there is no definite truth” etc.
I don’t believe that. I think that we can always infer to the best explanation, and every new generation can do it better than the one that preceded it. And post-modern ideas don’t negate this. They just provide us with a more sophisticated outlook.
Again, thanks for the comments! Look at what it inspired!! 😉
Thank you for your reply.
“[…] but those reconstructions are rarely thorough or complete. They usually leave some space open for us to see through, so that we can see what was (re)constructed.”
I guess we are all writing provisional stories, stories which are hopefully less clouded than earlier versions, stories which are as honest as the historian – or “storyteller” as I personally prefer – can get with him/herself. The problem is when a specific narrative stays unquestioned and those who are mandated to question it find excuses for its oversights rather than address evidence.
I’m not trained in history; I work on art history, and I really don’t know enough about history as a discipline to identify the differences between the 2 disciplines. At least for art history, I find it more honest to speak of stories of art actually, to see myself as a storyteller of art, rather than an art historian. For me, to say that I’m working on a story rather than history reminds myself as well as my interlocutors that whatever is presented – no matter how convincingly argued and evidenced – is merely an imperfect interpretation by an individual conditioned by a specfic matrix whose manner of operation is beyond the teller of the story. It can never be absolute; it is not the final word.
“So I think there is a ‘truth.’ But since we can only glimpse it through the spaces left in the reconstructions, we can never see it in its entirety, but we can see it.”
I guess what is real is redefined by each society according to evolving needs – what one people refers to as ‘magic’ is possibly absolutely real to another – and with the morphing boundaries of the real, ‘truth’ shifts too. But while I agree that ‘truth’ is relative, that’s not an excuse to conclude that it is necessarily of a nebulous nature. In other words, I agree with you that it is nonetheless necessary to investigate this relative and contextual ‘truth’: if it’s relative, how so within a specific space and time? If historians don’t question and revise history, then what do they do? In fact, I would think it is precisely the reshaping of stories of ‘truth’ across space and time that makes what I prefer to relate to as the (re)telling of stories so exciting. ‘Truth’ shifts and necessarily so too in order to stay relevant and alive, and it’s the historian’s job to make sure that it doesn’t asphyxiate.
“I often find that when I refute the points made by Vietnamese historians, the response I usually get is very ‘post-modern’ – all knowledge is relative, there is no definite truth, etc. […] That’s very convenient.”
Totally with you on that. I’m not at all for the progeniture of the thesis of “the death of the author”. I think Barthes was just hijacked by a bunch of lazy xxx to advance their own interests; that was not what he meant! For me, it’s a classic example of how even intellectually sound arguments can be pure fallacies (Since I can’t rant like this in my dissertation, I’m doing it here ;p).
“Why does this happen? I think it is because there just hasn’t been a tradition of academic scholarship in Vietnam yet.”
I get that a lot in modern and contemporary art actually, with artists and scholars based in Euramerica. It’s like some foolproof mantra used to save one’s skin in all situations, the alibi for work that ought to have been done but has yet to be done. But the trick’s wearing off – for me at least.
With Burma, I haven’t made the same observation as you do with respect to Vietnam. It could be because the debate hasn’t even commenced where I am. It could also be because I simply haven’t been sufficiently active in the circle to know.
At the end of the day, more important than the stories told or the grand narrative presented as “history” is perhaps the imparting of ways of thinking with and about materials from the past which time has yet to ravage – rigorously, playfully and creatively. Rethinking, revising, asking new and hopefully ‘right’ questions, etc. That’s what makes history meaningful I guess, and it’s probably why I enjoy these entries. Thanks for them!
Wow! These are great comments. Thanks for writing.
I’ve only had a tiny bit of exposure to what it is that “storytellers of art” do, but I think the approach is more or less the same. The difference, as I see it, has more to do with the quantity of supporting information, or the lack thereof in many cases in art history. Archaeology might have it the hardest sometimes in that respect.
“‘Truth’ shifts and necessarily so too in order to stay relevant and alive, and it’s the historian’s job to make sure that it doesn’t asphyxiate.”
I agree, and in addition to the fact that truth shifts, in any generation there are some people who see that shifting truth and some who don’t, and still others who refuse to acknowledge it for one reason or another. So that keeps the storytelling alive as well.
Oh, and go ahead and rant in your dissertation! That’s what dissertations are for!!
Thank you for the exchange : )