Vietnam

Partly out of curiosity, and partly because I often hear academics in Southeast Asia talk about their desire to “engage” internationally and to raise the stature of their respective universities…

In 1929, Victor Goloubew, a Russian-born scholar who worked for the French École française d’Extrême-Orient, publshed an article in which he examined some of the materials that had been found by Louis Pajot in his excavations at Đông Sơn.

At that time, it was still not clear to scholars who had originally made the bronze drums. Hirth had argued that they had been created by the Chinese during their expeditions against savages (man 蠻) in the south in the first century CE, whereas De Groot had contended that the bronze drums were created by those very people whom the Chinese had campaigned against.

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The academic world in many parts of Asia has become “English crazy” in recent years. In an effort to “internationalize” education, universities in countries where English is not a native…