Summer is here. It is time for me to take a break from posting to this blog. So I will write this one last blog entry and then will take a break until August.
The past few weeks have been interesting. The PRC has aggressively moved into the “Southeast Asian Mediterranean,” and a debate has taken place over a book about Vietnamese origins. These two events should not be related, but in actuality they are, and that is a problem.
Recently an author by the name of Tạ Đức has written a book about Vietnamese origins that places the origins of the Vietnamese in China, and his book has been criticized by scholars as diverse as Trần Trọng Dương and Hà Văn Thùy, and has received a more politically motivated critique from Bùi Xuân Đính.
I agree with Tạ Đức’s criticisms of Hà Văn Thùy’s ideas, but I also agree with Trần Trọng Dương’s criticisms of Tạ Đức’s scholarship.
Ultimately, Tạ Đức and Hà Văn Thùy are two authors who 1) do not have the ability to read primary sources (in classical Chinese = Hán) and 2) also do not have the ability to understand sources in foreign languages – French, English, etc. And by “understand,” I mean that they cannot read sources in foreign languages and evaluate the degree to which those sources are reliable (Tạ Đức has pointed this out for Hà Văn Thùy and I think I have pointed this out for Tạ Đức).
There are therefore problems with the scholarship of both Tạ Đức and Hà Văn Thùy, but the real problem is that there is no serious alternative to their scholarship.
The “official” view of the Vietnamese past has not changed since the early 1970s. The interpretation of Vietnamese history that was produced at that time was produced during wartime and had the purpose of mobilizing people to unite together to defend and build the nation.
That was a very important task, and the historical interpretations from that time served that purpose exceptionally well.
The problem now is that Vietnam is no longer at war, and the nation has already been established. What is more, thousands of its citizens have now studied abroad and have been exposed to more complex ways of viewing the world and the past. As a result, the “same old story” doesn’t satisfy the younger generation.
More importantly, the orthodox version of the past is not sophisticated enough to deal with the complexities of the present.
The past is complex and the present is complex. When the past is presented in simplistic ways (as Tạ Đức and Hà Văn Thùy have done and as the official history does) then it makes it very difficult for people to be able to conceptualize effective ways to deal with the present.
Unfortunately for Vietnam, no one is attempting to conceptualize the past in complex ways. Unofficial historians like Tạ Đức and Hà Văn Thùy make their ideas known, but professional historians remain silent (as Nguyễn Hòa has noted), or simply repeat the same ideas that have existed since the early 1970s.
The problem is that it’s 2014 already, and the world is a lot more complex now than it was back then.
So having said that, I’m now going to celebrate 2014 by going to Borneo and getting a tattoo in order to “thoát Tàu” (escape China) and experience “real” Southeast Asian culture.
Thank you everyone for reading and commenting (either here or on fb). I hope you have learned as much from me as I have learned from you. And I look forward to continuing the conversation in August.
LMK: “Unfortunately for Vietnam, no one is attempting to conceptualize the past in complex ways. Unofficial historians like Tạ Đức and Hà Văn Thùy make their simplistic ideas known, but professional historians remain silent (as Nguyễn Hòa has noted), or simply repeat the same ideas that have existed since the early 1970s.”
It is, therefore, particularly fortunate that even highschool students in Vietnam have recognized this and have acted accordingly… You may want to sign off for holiday on this high note…
http://vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/cong-dong/video/hoc-sinh-xe-giay-mung-khong-thi-tot-nghiep-mon-su-2652946.html
That’s an amazing video. 🙂 There is a comment from a teacher who says “Tôi xin trích lời của vị GS sử học đầu ngành ‘chương trình lịch sử ở phổ thông hiện nay chỉ phù hợp với giai đoạn đất nước có chiến tranh , cần có một nội dung chương mình mới phù hợp với hoàn đất nước đang hội nhập với quốc tế.’ Như vậy học sinh chán ghét môn lịch sử là đúng, tôi nghĩ các em phản ứng rất hay.”
That’s exactly what I just wrote here! 🙂 I’m glad that we agree.
The same teacher says that “Tôi nghĩ đã đến lúc Bộ giáo dục cùng với các nhà sử học nên ngồi lại với nhau nhìn nhận vấn đề một cách nghiêm túc.” Ah, but that’s the real problem. Does anyone actually have any good ideas about how to write history in a way that will help people flourish as “the country integrates internationally”?
When people re-write high school textbooks in the US (there is no national curriculum in the US, so there are many different textbooks that are used), they base their ideas on new academic works and ideas that have become prominent. Are there new ideas in the history profession in Vietnam? I think there are studies on economics that have showed ways in which (at least parts of) the Vietnamese economy have been part of a wider world for a long time. But if economic history is the most exciting new thing that high school students will learn, then I would be willing to bet that even if textbooks are re-written, we’ll see more videos like this in the future.
Another way that new textbooks get written is by people who teach courses in innovative ways. So for instance, someone might teach a course on world history for several years and discover interesting themes to use to present the information. That person might then write a textbook based on her/his years of teaching experience. Still, a lot of the innovation in a course like this would come from the fact that the teacher also reads new books that present new approaches and interpretations of the past.
The bottom line – academics (everywhere) have to produce new insights and new knowledge.