On the Road in Early 1970s Malaysia
Oh it must have been great to live in Malaysia in the early 1970s and to find out that “The Imp is here!!!” Was everybody a really talking about the…
Guy Phon’s Letter to the US Government (17 August 1945)
It is well known that Hồ Chí Minh sent some letters to American President Truman seeking his country’s support for Vietnam’s independence. It is also well known that Truman never…
The 1948 Burmese Olympic Team
The Nation reported on 12 August 1948 that members of the Burmese Olympic team were entertained at Buckingham Palace by none other than Their Majesties the King and Queen themselves.…
Meeting Hồ Chí Minh in December 1945
I came across a document that a British military officer, Lieutenant Colonel P. J. F. Chapman-Walker, wrote after visiting Hanoi in December 1945. The document was later given to a…
Guo Shoujing and China’s Indisputable Sovereignty over the Korean Peninsula
So I have long avoided the issue of “those rocks in the sea” because I’ve long felt that the things that people have been saying are just too idiotic to…
Chen Jinghe’s Notes on the Gia Định thành thông chí
Not long after the French obtained control over the area around Saigon, Louis Gabriel Galderic Aubaret published a French “translation” of an early-nineteenth-century gazetteer of the region, Trịnh Hoài Đức’s…
Representing Minorities in North Vietnam
These are some images from the early 1960s from the North Vietnamese magazine Viet Nam. The above pictures seem to represent the happy and idyllic traditional lifestyle of minority peoples.…
Masaharu Homma and José Laurel
Today I came across some documents from the office of José Laurel when he was “commissioner” of the Philippines in 1942. In 1942 the Philippines had just come under Japanese…
Competing Representations of the Nation in 1970s Vietnam
In the 20th century, the governments of many countries produced glossy magazines in foreign languages which were used to promote the nation’s image overseas. Recently I was looking at two…
Dương Bá Trác on the Origins of the Vietnamese Race
Scientists have long noted that there is no biological basis for race. Races of human beings do not actually exist. They are social constructs. People create different categories of human…