Vietnamese Early History
Hồ Hữu Tường and the Origins of the Vietnamese Nation(ality)
I just came across the following article: Hồ Hữu Tường, “Đi tìm nguồn gốc của dân tộc” [Searching for the origins of the nation(ality)], Bách
Âu Cơ and Crocodiles
The Annan zhiyuan/An Nam chí nguyên 安南志原 by Gao Xiongzheng 高熊徵 (1636-1706) is an important source for premodern Vietnamese history which very few scholars have
A White Pheasant and the Sino-Vietnamese Tributary Relationship
This is another story from the Arrayed Tales of Selected Oddities from South of the Passes (Lĩnh Nam chích quái liệt truyện). This story is
Xian Daughters and Trưng Sisters
One thing which is clear to me is that when Vietnamese started to write histories after their kingdom had become autonomous from Chinese rule, they
The Last of the Hundred Việt/Yue?
On numerous occasions I have had Vietnamese state to me that of all the Hundred Việt/Yue (Bách Việt) which lived in antiquity throughout the area
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
Talking Turtles in Ancient Vietnam
Have you ever heard a turtle talk? Probably not. In the fifteenth century, the Vietnamese historian, Ngô Sĩ Liên, had never heard a turtle talk
The Invention of Lý Ông Trọng
In the previous entry I suggested that the Tang Dynasty administrator, Gao Pian, may have been responsible for transforming a local spirit into the spirit
Early Lạc Collaborators
[I just realized that there is a problem with my ideas here. I’ll leave this for now, but I will update it soon.] I talked
Were There “Lạc” Kings or “Hùng” Kings? Or Neither?
The question of whether the earliest people to rule over the area of what is today northern Vietnam were called “Lạc” Kings or “Hùng” Kings
Why is Lạc Long Quân “Lạc” Long Quân?
Why do we call Lạc Long Quân “Lạc” Long Quân? The character in his name which we transcribe as “lạc” is 貉. In Chinese today
Hà Văn Thùy and Ancient Việt Races (Has the BBC Gone Mad?)
So I read an unbelievable opinion piece in Vietnamese on the BBC website. It was “unbelievable” in both the sense that it contained information that
The Trưng Sisters and Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism had a very big influence on many places in Asia in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This was a time when many peoples
Ngô Thì Sĩ and Distant Antiquity
The other day I came across this passage in a nineteenth-century Vietnamese geographical text, the Lê triều cống pháp 黎朝貢法 (A.53, pages 1b-2a). This is
