In my ongoing effort to experiment with ways in which digital media can enhance the efforts of historians to examine and talk about the past, I am particularly pleased to begin a new series of videos that I will call “Streaming From Saigon.”
The purpose of these videos will be to introduce ideas that were discussed by Vietnamese historians in the 1950s-1970s.
However, these ideas will be presented in a manner that may not seem obvious today, but which would have been “normal” for American media during that time period.
What was “normal” in American media at that time? Well there were many things that were normal such as 1) a serious lack of knowledge about Vietnam, and 2) an unconscious recognition that “Vietnam” was the same as “South Vietnam.”
This video series will in some ways go beyond those limitations, however by presenting the ideas of Vietnamese historians from that time period through this distorted American lens, my hope is that we can better place Vietnamese scholarship in the context of the times.
The ideas that Vietnamese historians expressed in the 1950s-1970s were at times different from the kids of issues that are discussed today. But in fact, a lot of the issues that were raised at that time were legitimate for that era, and to be honest, they have never been fully resolved (and they therefore keep re-appearing). So I think it is worth raising them again to encourage (or provoke) scholars to answer.
Finally, as someone who grew up in the world of media that this video depicts, I am trying to find some way to connect academic history with lived history.
What about this Austronesia business? Anything to it? There is the distribution of bronze drums and gongs. I remember a map showing the distribution of these instruments in Mantle Hood’s book The Evolution of the Javanese Gamelan.
So the thing that is interesting about South Vietnamese historical scholarship, is that there were people there who were totally fine in thinking that “the Dong Son people” were completely different from the Viet, either by blood or culture or both. So they tried to figure out who these earlier people were. Meanwhile, the effort in the North was to say that everything is “Viet” (whatever that means) from the beginning of time to the present. And in making that claim, they took historical scholarship in a different direction, one that avoided thinking about the past.
So. . . Austronesians. . . well the Cham are Austronesians and they got there somehow (Robert Blust says from Borneo). How far north did they settle? I need to read up on this, but I think some archaeologists in VN are claiming that certain archaeological sites far to the north of what we usually see as the “Cham world” were Cham (or ancestral to the Cham, which to me just means “Austronesian). I need to recheck that though.
I’m guessing that the Red River Plain could have been multi-ethnic, but to the south of there, heading into Thanh Hoa/Dong Son land. . . I don’t see why this couldn’t be Austronesian. As far as I know, linguists trace the early Vietic languages to places in the mountains of say Nghe An. So early Vietic speakers could have settled in the plains, but Austronesians could have come along the coasts too. I’m not sure how one would determine who was where, but I do think that seeing this as an unresolved question is important, rather than just calling everyone and everything in this period as “ancient Viet” (Viet co), as you can often find in writings today.
I’m with you there. In earlier posts on southeastasianess you mentioned the practice of enslaving and forcing the migration of the defeated. Combining that with foreign elites and traders who settle in a region that creates an ethnic hodgepodge where certain linguistic and cultural traits might predominate (and then possibly wane) but where there are a variety of sources of identity. In addition to the Austronesian sphere, I could imagine other connection to the peoples of the Indian Ocean region, either through trade or settlement (in addition to the connections with efflorescence to the north). What seems homogenous today’s Vietnam (owing I think to the work of the French in creating a transportation, communication, and administrative infrastructure) probably showed great diversity 150 years ago or more.