Le Minh Khai's SEAsian History Blog (+ More)

There was a theory that emerged in the early twentieth century which argued that at the end of the first millennium BC, Vietnamese migrated to the Red River delta from an original homeland in what is today southeastern China.

This idea was suggested first by Edouard Chavannes in 1901, and was then developed further by Leonard Aurousseau in 1923. Today this theory is no longer upheld, although one can still find it mentioned. Nonetheless, I don’t think that many people are aware of why this theory does not make sense.

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A reader asked where the idea that the millennium when the Red River Delta was part of various “Chinese” empires can be seen as something like “1000 years of Chinese…

I was reading an essay by the late Trần Quốc Vượng in which he talked about Vietnamese and Chinese culture. Trần Quốc Vượng states at the beginning of the essay…