Is There a Purpose to this Blog?
Is there a purpose to this blog? I guess I would say “sometimes.” If there is a purpose to this blog it would be to counter the negative effects of…
The Origins of Patriotic Education in Vietnam
Following the ideas of the previous two blog entries below, one of the main elements of the dominant paradigm of Vietnamese history is that Vietnamese have always felt patriotic towards…
Patriotism and History in Malaysia and Hong Kong
There have been a couple of related news events recently that are quite interesting. A few days ago media in Malaysia reported that a new history curriculum is being developed…
Paradigm Shifts in Vietnamese History
The term “paradigm shift” is often used by academics. It is a term that was created by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. While the…
The Problem of the Term “Việt” In a National History
Many people today write histories of nations. They create a narrative about the origins of a nation and then follow its development through time. That is one way to write…
Nationalist Victim Narratives in China and Vietnam
Recently there have been anti-Japan demonstrations in China, and anti-China demonstrations in Vietnam. These demonstrations in both instances are related to issues about certain uninhabited islands (“rocks in the sea”…
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…
The Geo-Body of Vietnam
In 1983, Benedict Anderson argued in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism that nations are “imagined,” and that one of the ways they are…
On Not Theorizing the Nation in Vietnam
The nation (dân tộc) is a critical concept in Vietnamese scholarship. It is a concept which is ubiquitous in Vietnamese writings, and yet it is extremely under-theorized. In the 1950s,…