Author: Le Minh Khai

The Annan zhiyuan, a fifteenth-century gazetteer of the greater Red River Delta region that Ming Dynasty officials created contains a section on “people” (人物), or what it is probably better…

Today I read about Trần Ích Tắc on Wikipedia. Trần Ích Tắc was a Trần Dynasty prince who submitted to the Mongols when they attacked the Red River Delta in the thirteenth century.

The Wikpedia entry refers to this transformation as Trần Ích Tắc’s “defection” (a Cold War term that was used to refer to people like Mikhail Baryshnikov who left the Soviet Union for the West, knowing that he would never be able to return again [until the Soviet Union fell]).

We learn that “Trần Ích Tắc was the most famous prince of Trần Thái Tông [the first emperor of the Trần Dynasty] for his intelligence and broad knowledge.” We also learn that “he was denounced in Vietnamese historical books as a traitor with the derogatory name ‘Ả Trần’ (Hán tự: 妸陳, ‘the woman named Trần’).”

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When it comes to the period of the Ming occupation of the Red River delta in the fifteenth century, there is one source that is important which is very underused,…

I’ve long argued that the 15th century document, the “Bình Ngô đại cáo” (Great Proclamation on Pacifying the Ngô), does not represent a “declaration of independence” by “the Vietnamese” vis-à-vis…