What is Southeast Asia?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrP7dnpwfiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqcnPHmTvC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM8TXAfGIao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN5rfMyShWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7COUibbcs
Who Were the Ancient Yue/Việt?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXKkw8l87wE The above video is meant to introduce a new book - Erica Fox Brindley’s Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE-50…
“Ancient China and the Yue” Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPAuceLXsR8 This is a very brief introduction to the following new book: Erica Fox Brindley’s “Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE-50…
Large (Chinese) Rats, the Father of Modern Anthropology, and Vietnam’s Greatest (unknown/unrecognized) Historian
Last summer I wrote a blog post on the South Vietnamese philosopher, Lương Kim Định, that I entitled “Vietnam’s Greatest (unknown/unrecognized) Historian.” Although a philosopher by training, Kim Định wrote…
Holy Mother (Thánh Mẫu) Spirit Writing (Giáng Bút) in the Early 20th Century
One among the many topics in Vietnamese history which scholars have not examined in much detail is a spirit writing (giáng bút) “movement” which took place in northern Vietnam at the turn of the 20th century. This was a complex phenomenon. It was an outgrowth of earlier practices associated with a type of text known as morality books (thiện thư).
Movie Theaters in 1951 French Indochina
I came across a document that contains a list of movie theaters in French Indochina in 1951. The distribution of theaters is predicatable: 14 in Hà Nội, 12 in Sài…
Lý Đông A, Kim Định and a Mid-20th–Century Unorthodox Version of Early Việt History
I’ve written quite a lot on this blog about the South Vietnamese philosopher, Lương Kim Định, and his ideas about history. What was Kim Định’s view of the past? In…
Tạ Chí Đại Trường on the Tale of the Hồng Bàng Clan (Hồng Bàng thị truyện)
I was saddened to learn yesterday that South Vietnamese historian Tạ Chí Đại Trường has passed away. I never had the good fortune of meeting Tạ Chí Đại Trường, but…
Trần Trọng Dương: In His Own Words (Part 1)
Last summer (2015) at the Engaging With Vietnam conference that was held in Hanoi, scholar Trần Trọng Dương gave a keynote presentation on “The Utility of History: The Case of…
Trần Trọng Kim, Hu Shi (Hồ Thích) and the Yijing
I’ve long wondered why the Yijing (the Classic/Book of Changes) is so important for ultra-nationalist ideas in Vietnam. Extreme nationalists in Vietnam today regard the Yijing and its ideas as…