Temasek is NOT Mentioned in the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư
The other day I was looking for information about “Temasek,” an early name associated with Singapore, and I came across a webpage hosted by the National Library Board (NLB) of…
Việt-Nam Khảo-Cổ Tập-San #1
At the beginning of 1956, the president of the Republic of Vietnam ordered the establishment of the Historical Research Institute (Viện Khảo-Cổ) under the Ministry of Education.
This institute had a broad mission. It was to research about the history and culture of Vietnam from the past to the present and to do so in a multidisciplinary manner.
In 1960 the institute began publishing a journal, the Transactions of the Historical Research Institute (Việt-Nam Khảo-Cổ Tâp-San).
An Important Text for Vietnamese History that Very Few People Read
In 1932, the École française d’Extrême-Orient published in Hanoi a text called the An Nam chí nguyên/Annan zhiyuan 安南志原. This publication contained an introductory study by Émile Gaspardone in which…
The Đại Nam nhất thống toàn đồ and the Mapping of the Mekong
I asked in a post below where the Đại Nam nhất thống toàn đồ (Complete Map of Unified Đại Nam) comes from. I see it a lot, and it is…
Nguyễn Phương’s Lost History
I’ve written briefly about the work of the historian Nguyễn Phương on this blog before. Nguyễn Phương published a book in Vietnamese in Huế in the 1960s called Việt Nam…
Digitizing Cultural Heritage
A few years ago I was extremely pleased to see that the National Library of Vietnam was starting to digitize some of the Hán Nôm manuscripts that it holds. It…
Việt Nam’s Glorious History of. . . Conquest
In the early twentieth century, Vietnamese historical writing changed dramatically. After producing historical scholarship for centuries that highlighted the achievements and failures of monarchs, in the early twentieth centuries some…
Dương Bá Trác on the Historical Evolution of Vietnamese Society
A few months ago I wrote a post on a scholar from the early twentieth century, Dương Bá Trác, and his ideas about the origins of the Vietnamese race as…
Early Vietnamese History Translations
I just saw an announcement on an email listserv that I’m on for a site which has translations of texts that deal with early Vietnamese history. The site has English-language…
Chen Jinghe’s 1950 Study of Kẻ
“Kẻ” is a Vietnamese word which many scholars have attempted to explain. I have yet to hear a convincing explanation. In this post here I am going to provide a…