How Did Vietnam Transform from a Lateral-Aristocratic Ethnie into a Modern Nation?
In 1980 a conference was held in Hanoi to mark the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the Institute of History (Viện Sử Học). The topic of the conference was the question of when the Vietnamese nation formed (vấn đề hình thành dân tộc Việt Nam).
The opening address of this conference noted that this was an issue that had been discussed since 1955, and had been viewed in two main ways over that period of time.