Dangerous Books
I came across this image from Sài Gòn giải phóng (1 June 1975). The kid says, “Mom, those books are really beautiful!!” And the mother responds, “Truly beautiful, but those…
What “Folk” Created the Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái?
The study of “folk literature” (văn học dân gian) first began in Vietnam in the North in the 1950s. The approach that Vietnamese scholars at that time employed in studying…
The Art in Southeast Asian History Archives
There is a web page I liked called “The Art of Google Books.” Basically what the person who produces this page does is to look through books that have been…
Southeast Asian History Through Ngrams
In 2010, Google released its “Ngram Viewer” which allows people to search through many of the millions of books that it has scanned and to chart word usage over time.…
The Sultan of Johor’s Place in the Victorian Ecumene
In an article that she wrote in 1989 on India in world’s fairs, Carol A. Breckenridge coined the phrase “Victorian ecumene” to refer to a transnational cultural world that “encompassed…
King Chulalongkorn’s Letter to Grover Cleveland
During the Fifth Reign (1873-1910) in Siam, the royal family became very interested in photography and a lot of pictures were taken at that time. These photographs are now fascinating…
The Empire of Siam
Anyone who has ever been to Thailand or read anything about Thailand has undoubtedly heard that Thailand is “the only country in Southeast Asia that has never been colonized.” On…
The Place of “Ta” in “Khoa Học”
I still don’t understand what the term “khoa học” means to Vietnamese scholars. It is how the term “science” was originally translated into Vietnamese, but today I don’t know anyone…
The Cham-Việt Frontier as a “Middle Ground”
One of the most important books written about the history of North America in recent decades is Richard White’s The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes…
On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Vietnam
Yesterday I re-read John Smail’s 1961 article, “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia,” Journal of Southeast Asian History 2.2 (1961): 72-102. This article was published…