From Cœdès to Manguin: Srivijaya and the Chinese Sources (Part 5)
In the 1930s, after scholars had investigated the topic of “Srivijaya” for more than a decade, some of the core ideas in George Cœdès’s 1918 article, “Le Royaume de Çrivijaya,”…
From Pelliot to Wade: Jia Dan’s Itinerary Through Maritime Southeast Asia (Part 4)
By this point, it should be apparent to anyone who has read the previous three posts in this series that Paul Pelliot’s 1904 article, “Deux itinéraires chinois de Chine en…
The Tradition of Respecting Women in Vietnam – A 1990s Essentialized Invented Tradition
Recently in a few different conversations that I’ve had with Vietnamese friends the topic of wet rice agriculture and respect for women has come up.Today there is a widely-held belief…
How Vietnamese Genetic Scientists are Erasing the Past
A few months ago a new genetic study that provides information about the early history of the area we now call “Vietnam” was published.The article is entitled “Extensive Ethnolinguistic Diversity…
Essentialism – Or Why Some Vietnamese Scholars Will Struggle to Get Published in International Journals
Recently many Vietnamese universities have started to become interested in rising up in the international university ranking system, and one of the main ways to do this is to get…
Deconstructing Trần Ngọc Thêm’s Nationalist Propaganda
Whenever I feel the need to be reminded of how deceitful nationalist “scholarship” can sometimes be, I open up one of Trần Ngọc Thêm’s books and start to read. It…
Diễn Biến Hòa Bình and Historical Logic
I have often gotten into discussions about history with Vietnamese, and when I try to make a point which a Vietnamese disagrees with, the Vietnamese person will say, “Well that’s…
The “Blank Space” in Vietnamese Historical Scholarship
In the 1950s, historical scholarship in the DRV was part of an international world of scholarship. First and foremost, Vietnamese historians in the DRV were in dialog with their Communist…