Seminar in Modern Southeast Asian History: Thinking Big (Week 3)

This week in the seminar we looked at “big history,” that is, history that is large in scope, be that temporal (i.e., looking at a society over the longue durée) or spatial (looking comparatively at a topic across a large geographic area).

The most famous work on Southeast Asian history that falls into this category is undoubtedly Victor Lieberman’s, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, a work that examines the trend toward state centralization in Southeast Asia over a long period of time, and then places that history in a global context.

Strange Parallels, is thus “big” in its examination of the past at both the temporal and spatial levels.

I’ve assigned Strange Parallels in seminars before, but this time we decided to look at a series of articles that take a “big” approach to the past in various ways by another scholar, historian Eric Tagliacozzo of Cornell University. My intent here was to try to give students a sense of not only what different forms of “big” history can look like, but to also give a sense of what “big” scholarly output looks like as well, as Tagliacozzo has been extremely productive, and in the academic world that is important.

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The First Vietnamese Killed by Americans in Vietnam

I just tried to watch the first episode of The Vietnam War, a new multi-episode documentary by American filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novik. I didn’t expect this documentary be good, but I am actually surprised now at how bad it really is.

The core of the problem of (at least the first episode of) this documentary is that it is entirely America-centric. It is based on a fantasy that the American government can determine the fate of world affairs, and that individual Americans can influence US government policy.

The “lesson” that the documentary seeks to teach is then that there are times when world affairs do not follow the standards of American ideals, and that this is because the US government does not listen to the good ideas of individual Americans.

Let’s call this the “Americans are so stupid” self-loathing narrative.

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The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War

There is a major new documentary about the Vietnam War that is about to be broadcast on TV in the US. It is called The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick.

Burns and Novick have made some very successful documentaries together, but they are not experts on Vietnamese history, and while experts were consulted during the making of this documentary, I think it will be safe to assume that this documentary will essentially be a documentary about “what the Vietnam War means to a certain segment of the American population.”

That is fine. As long as educated viewers understand what this documentary is, and what its perspective is, then they can appreciate it for what it is.

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Modern Southeast Asian History Seminar: Water (Week 2)

This is a video summary of a weekly seminar that I am teaching (Fall 2017) on modern Southeast Asian History.

The readings from this week are listed below.

Peter Boomgaard, ed., A World of Water: Rain, Rivers and Seas in Southeast Asian Histories (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2007).

Jonathan Rigg, ed., The Gift of Water: Water Management, Cosmology and the State in South East Asia (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1992).

Lindsay Lloyd-Smith, Eric Tagliacozzo, “Water in Southeast Asia: Navigating Contradictions,” Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia Vol. 4, No. 2 (2016): 229-238.

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Chainsmokers “Closer” Covers in Southeast Asia

I read an article last week by Ariel Heryanto called “Popular Culture for a New Southeast Asian Studies?” [in The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies; Korea and Beyond, edited by Park Seung Woo and Victor T. King (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013), 226-262.]

Essentially what Heryanto argues in that article is that popular culture is a topic that scholars have traditionally not focused on, but that if we examine what kind of popular culture is popular in certain areas we can gain an interesting perspective on “what is Southeast Asia.”

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Revisiting the Vietnamese Annexation of Cambodia (8): Who Exactly was Fighting Whom?

There is an extremely important text for the conflict in the 1830s between “Vietnam,” “Siam” and “Cambodia” that I have never seen an historian use before, and that is the The Strategy for Pacifying the Siamese Raiders and Thuận Bandits (Tiễu bình Tiêm khấu Thuận phỉ phương lược 勦平暹寇順匪方略).

This text contains very detailed information about the conflict between “Vietnam,” “Siam” and “Cambodia” in the early 1830s; much more detailed information than the Nguyễn Dynasty chronicles, The Veritable Records of Đại Nam (Đại Nam thực lục 大南寔錄), contains.

And from those details, one can gain very interesting insights into that conflict.

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Revisiting the Vietnamese Annexation of Cambodia (7): Opium and Gambling

One very interesting aspect about what historians have labeled “the Vietnamese annexation of Cambodia” in the 1830s is that from the perspective of the values that a lot of us uphold today one can see both “bad” and “good” elements in this period.

On the one hand, Nguyễn Dynasty emperor Minh Mạng did indeed have a long-term goal of incorporating Cambodia into his empire, and today we see such an effort to take over the sovereignty of another country/kingdom as “bad.”

On the other hand, Ming Mạng also ordered the implementation of certain policies that we value today, such as eliminating excessive taxes, establishing a government based on the concept of meritocracy rather than nepotism, and banning opium and gambling. In other words, some of the things that Minh Mạng wanted accomplished in Cambodia were things that we would today consider “good.”

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Revisiting the Vietnamese Annexation of Cambodia (6): A Siamese Report on Clothing

Following up on the previous post, there is another source that mentions Cambodian officials and people wearing Vietnamese clothing – a Thai source known as The Battle between An Nam and Siam (Anam Sayam yut อานามสยามยุทธ).

This work was first published in 1907, and then republished in 1971, and was compiled by K. S. R. Kulap Kritsananon, a writer and publisher.

Kulap was a unique figure in that he was a commoner who wrote about history at a time when most historical writings were produced by people in the royal government. However, Kulap supposedly had access to the documents that had been earlier collected by Chao Phraya Bodindecha, one of the main Siamese military officials in the first half of the nineteenth century, and a figure who played a major role in the conflicts between Siam and the Nguyễn Dynasty at that time. (For more on this, see Craig Reynold’s “The Case of K.S.R.Kulap: A Challenge to Royal Historical Writing in Late Nineteenth Century Thailand.”)

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