A “Word Cloud” of This Blog
I just tried out "Wordle" (http://www.wordle.net/). It's a "toy" which creates "word clouds" of text. You input the text (or a link to a web page) and the program creates…
Forging Maps to “Prove” Sovereignty in Vietnam
The Voice of Vietnam just published an article (here) by PGS.TS. Phạm Thị Thùy Vinh in which she introduces a nineteenth century text that she claims contains a map which…
Nationalist Victim Narratives in China and Vietnam
Recently there have been anti-Japan demonstrations in China, and anti-China demonstrations in Vietnam. These demonstrations in both instances are related to issues about certain uninhabited islands (“rocks in the sea”…
Indian Nationalists and the Vietnamese Women who Loved Them
I posted an entry here recently on the visit to Hanoi in December 1945 by British military officer, Lieutenant Colonel P. J. F. Chapman-Walker. In particular, I wrote about what…
Japanese Archival Materials on the Paracel Islands
Someone mentioned to me today that a lot of Japanese government documents that relate to Asian history are available online through a web page managed by the Japan Center for…
Vietnam War Fashion in 1960s Thailand
Richard A. Ruth’s In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War is a fascinating study of Thailand’s involvement in Second Indochina War. There is a good review of the…
March 9, 1945 – The Day of Vietnam’s Liberation
I love reading historical documents because they never fail to demonstrate how so much of what people think today is a recent invention/construction. I was reading a history that was…
The Khmer Rouge Ambassador to China
In August 1976, a message was sent presumably from the Australian Embassy in Beijing back to Canberra concerning the Khmer Rouge ambassador to China. The memo stated that “For a…
Mân People and Đại Việt
Everyone knows that “Vietnam” supposedly gained “independence” from “Chinese” rule in the tenth century CE. After that, however, we run into problems. There are Chinese historical sources which indicate that…