Việt Nam Hồn
I haven't had much time recently to post anything new here. I'm still busy, but I thought I would post a document which some people might find interesting. It's a…
A Việt View of Savages and Aborigines
I posted a while ago (here) about a geographical text which was produced in the late nineteenth or (more likely) the early twentieth century which was unique in that it…
The Red Chinese Colonization of North Vietnam
Did you know that the Communist Chinese colonized North Vietnam? That is what the Vietnam Press (Việt Nam Thông Tấn Xã) in South Vietnam reported in 1960. The report was…
Tobralco-Clad Siamese in the 1930s
The post below (from yesterday) contains images of “modern women” in Burma in the 1960s. They are wearing synthetic-fiber clothes made by the Toyo Rayon Company. Well close to 30…
The Feel of Modernity on One’s Skin in 1960s Burma
In the early 1960s, before the army overthrew the civilian government, Burma maintained good ties with Japan. Prime Minister Ikeda visited Burma in the fall of 1961, and then in…
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #4 continued yet again
I want to thank blogger Quach Hien for investigating this issue of why modern Vietnamese translations of the [Đại] Việt sử lược mention “Hùng vương” when the original mentions “Đối…
Vietnam Mapped
I have absolutely no desire to get involved in the Trường Sa/Hoàng Sa debate. Why? Because I’m an historian and as an historian I can't stand listening to the historians…
The Absence of Historical Memory in Early “Vietnam”
When medieval Việt scholars wrote the first histories of the Red River Delta region, they structured their histories around the political principle of an “orthodox line of succession” (正統, chính…
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #4 continued again
Blogger Quach Hien has a nice response to this issue of how modern Vietnamese translations of the [Đại] Việt sử lược do not note that the original has the character…
Evils of Quốc Ngữ #6
Yet another problem with Vietnamese translations of classical Chinese writings is that translators have left out parts of old texts which they do not like. Take, for instance, the case…