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, to investigate the conditions in that British-controlled territory and to gain navigational experience.
The two ships that were dispatched on this mission were copper-sheathed Western-style ships (西洋裹銅船) that had recently been constructed by Vietnamese shipbuilders. As such, the voyage was also meant to test these new ships.
One of the men who participated in this mission was a Nguyễn dynasty official by the name of Lý Văn Phức 李文馥, who compiled an account of this voyage entitled A Brief Record of Things Seen and Heard on a Journey to the West (Tây hành kiến văn kỷ lược 西行見聞紀略).
As far as I know, that text has never been published or translated. It only exists in manuscript form. I have never seen that manuscript, but in 2022, Taiwanese scholar Cheng Wing-Sheung 鄭永常 published an article on it, having received a copy from a colleague.
This article was published in the Journal of Viet Nam Hoc, a journal published in Taiwan (https://cvs.twl.ncku.edu.tw/jovnh/issues/JOVNH_v3n1_2022open.pdf).
It is a very interesting article, and it provides fascinating information from Lý Văn Phức’s text. I therefore worked with Claude to translate the article into English in the hope that it will gain a wider readership, as it definitely deserves to be read.
The translation follows the page numbers in the original Chinese-language article. Citation information is as follows:
Cheng Wing-Sheung 鄭永常. (2022). 1830 nian Yuenan shuishi qianwang Xiaoxiyang caoyan jianwen lu 1830 年越南水師前往小西洋操演見聞錄 [Records of Vietnamese navy’s military exercises in Bay of Bengal in 1830]. Journal of Viet Nam Hoc, 3(1), 44–59. https://doi.org/10.6928/JVNH.202201_3(1).0003
Finally, this is not an “official” translation, nor have I checked every single sentence closely. Someone who is really serious about citing the work should check the translation against the original. However, I would say that it’s 99+ % there, so this translation should be helpful for anyone wishing to learn about this topic.
The text is mentioned here:
Salmon, Claudine. “Bengal as Reflected in Two South-East Asian Travelogues from the Early Nineteenth Century.” In Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800, edited by Om Prakash and Denys Lombard, 383–402. New Delhi: Manohar; Indian Council of Historical Research, 1999.
Fn 6: They [the manuscripts] consist of later copies which are presently kept at Han Nôm Institute in Hanoi, under the code nos. A 243 and A 2550; for other copies, see Trần Nghĩa and Fr. Gros, eds., Di San Han Nôm Việt Nam thu mục de yêu/Catalogue des livres Han Nôm, Publications de l’Institut Han Nôm et de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient, Hà Nội, Nha xuất bản khoa học xã hội, 1993, vol. 3, pp. 93, 95.
Thanks for pointing this out.