Dương Bá Trác on the Origins of the Vietnamese Race
Scientists have long noted that there is no biological basis for race. Races of human beings do not actually exist. They are social constructs. People create different categories of human…
Hoàng Cao Khải’s Social Darwinist Ideas
The Nguyễn Dynasty official, Hoàng Cao Khải, is usually regarded today as a traitor for having assisted the French in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in their conquest…
A Việt View of Savages and Aborigines
I posted a while ago (here) about a geographical text which was produced in the late nineteenth or (more likely) the early twentieth century which was unique in that it…
Vietnam Mapped
I have absolutely no desire to get involved in the Trường Sa/Hoàng Sa debate. Why? Because I’m an historian and as an historian I can't stand listening to the historians…
Localizing the Nation in Early Twentieth Century Vietnam
The concept of the nation, or a nationality, as consisting of a single people living within a defined territory speaking a single language and sharing a common culture is a…
Losing Land and Misquoting Tự Đức
At the turn of the twentieth century, Vietnamese intellectual learned a great deal about the West and began to transform the way they thought about themselves and their land. I…
The Traumatic Origins of Modern Thai and Vietnamese Historical Writing
River Books in Bangkok has just published a new volume entitled, Southeast Asian Historiography, Unravelling the Myths: Essays in Honour of Barend Jan Terwiel. The first chapter is an essay…