August 1966
I was looking at an August 1966 issue of the magazine China Reconstructs. The first two articles in that issue dealt with Vietnam, and were entitled as follows: “China’s aid…
History and Anti-Foreign Discourses
The temperature is rising in Asia these days, and it has a lot to do with two countries that are very closely related but that pretend not to be –…
Forging Maps to “Prove” Sovereignty in Vietnam
The Voice of Vietnam just published an article (here) by PGS.TS. Phạm Thị Thùy Vinh in which she introduces a nineteenth century text that she claims contains a map which…
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”…
Japanese Archival Materials on the Paracel Islands
Someone mentioned to me today that a lot of Japanese government documents that relate to Asian history are available online through a web page managed by the Japan Center for…
Guo Shoujing and China’s Indisputable Sovereignty over the Korean Peninsula
So I have long avoided the issue of “those rocks in the sea” because I’ve long felt that the things that people have been saying are just too idiotic to…
Sovereignty, Maps, etc.
To understand the past we have to know the history of ideas. If we do not know when the ideas we have about the world emerged, then we can easily…