An 1830 Vietnamese Voyage to Calcutta
In 1830, Emperor Minh Mạng of the Nguyễn dynasty sent two ships on a voyage to Bengal. The purpose of the voyage was not to engage in trade, but instead,…
Do AI Systems Have Scholarly Cultures?
The more I work with LLMs in my research, the more it seems to me that we need to think more carefully about what exactly we are interacting with when…
Chen Ching-ho’s “On the ‘Official Missions to Hạ châu’ (下洲公務) in the Early Nguyễn Period”
In 1990, Taiwanese historian Chen Ching-ho (Chen Jinghe 陳荊和) published an article in Japanese entitled “On the ‘Hạ-châu Missions’ (下洲公務) conducted during the early Period of the Nguyen Dynasty.”This was…
Phan Bội Châu’s “The Righteous Cat”
In the previous post, I wrote about how there is a body of writings that was produced by a small group of Vietnamese, including revolutionary Phan Bội Châu, who in…
“The Country of the Apes” and other Phan Bội Châu Writings You’ve Never Heard Of
Have you ever heard of Vietnamese revolutionary Phan Bội Châu’s fictional writing “The Country of the Apes”?No, you haven’t.In fact, there are numerous writings by Phan Bội Châu that you…
LLMs Can Now Conduct Research
Yet another milestone has been reached. ChatGPT (and Claude) can now conduct archival research in a digitized archive.A month and a half ago, I tried to get ChatGPT to investigate…
The Founders of Indonesia and AI Video History
I don’t spend much time on Instagram, but I like what the algorithm there sends me. My “dream world” is one where aesthetics and history merge, and that is definitely…