What is so Important about Thời Bắc Thuộc?
In many histories of Vietnam, there is a period that is referred to as “thời Bắc thuộc” or “the period of Chinese rule.” This term is meant to refer to…
Cold War Confucian Diasporas
The world we live in influences the way that we look at the past. Before the second-wave feminist movement in the US in the 1960s, the field of women’s history…
“Disquieting Elements” in 1920 Java
I was looking around in the database of the “cabinet papers” digitized by the National Archives of the UK, when I came across a document from 18 June 1920 entitled…
Annamite Montagnards
I was reading an article that a French military officer wrote in the early twentieth century about the various peoples who lived along the basin of the Sông Lô, or…
Gia Long the Ming Descendant
Yesterday a bright young scholar offered me one idea he has as for why the Nguyễn Dynasty referred to themselves and some other people in the kingdom as Han. He…
The Han Style and Power Dressing in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam
I pointed out a long time ago on this blog (here) that there are nineteenth-century Vietnamese texts that refer to Vietnamese as “Hán” 漢. In responding to a question by…
Training Translators and Interpreters in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam
I was looking at the “nhu viễn” 柔遠 (cherishing men from afar) section of the Khâm định Đại Nam hội diển sự lệ 欽定大南會典事例 and I noticed that there is…
Formosan Savages and Southeast Asia
I’ve long felt that the indigenous peoples of Taiwan should be included as members of Southeast Asia. There are clear commonalities between their lifestyles and those of people in places…
Ammunition by Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century Labuan
Having recently read Alfred McCoy’s Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State, I’m interested in pursuing further his claim that the “information…
A Vision of the Coming iHell
Ok, this isn’t really Southeast Asian history, but I came across something today as I was doing some research that I want to relate to Southeast Asian history. That research…