Engaging With Vietnam (EWV) is excited to announce the publication of an edited volume, called Vietnam Over the Long Twentieth Century: Becoming Modern, Going Global.
This book was edited by Liam C. Kelley (EWV) and Gerard Sasges (National University of Singapore) and was published as part of our “Global Vietnam: Across Time, Space and Community” book series with Springer Nature. The volume was generously sponsored for open access by Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
All but one of the chapters in this volume (Chap. 6) were first presented as papers at the 12th Engaging With Vietnam, held 24–28 August 2021. This conference was organized in conjunction with the 12th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) conference and was scheduled to be held at Kyoto Seika University in Japan; however, due to the pandemic, the conference was moved online.
Over the past century, Vietnam has undergone a remarkable series of transformations, from an early modern kingdom to a European colony, to a divided land with opposing ideologies, to a unified country in a globalized world.
At each stage in this long century of changes, there were Vietnamese who sought to mold their society into some vision of “modernity.” Some of these multiple modernities are documented in this volume.
Further, the authors do so by bringing together the strengths of “traditional” language-based Area Studies scholarship with the insights that an awareness of trans-national and global perspectives provides.
Therefore, in this volume, we sought to highlight that transnational/global element but at the same time to also recognize the degree to which these chapters, like much of the recent scholarship on Vietnamese history, is still deeply grounded in traditional Area Studies language-based research. We feel that this combination is a great strength, and we wished to highlight and celebrate it here.
Finally, we should note that many of the authors in this volume are at the early stages of their careers. As such, not only does the scholarship here indicate where research on Vietnamese history currently stands, but also it points toward an exciting future for the field.
In what follows, we present the abstracts for each chapter, as well as “Liam’s take,” which is a very brief comment on something that stood out to Liam as co-editor. The chapters are of course much richer than his brief comments can capture, so be sure to investigate them for yourselves.
Again, the entire volume is available to download for free here.
Introduction: Documenting Vietnam over the Long Twentieth Century – Becoming Modern, Going Global
Liam C. Kelley (Universiti Brunei Darussalam) and Gerard Sasges (National University of Singapore)
In the world of “international” scholarship, starting in the 1990s, there was a move away from traditional area studies, with its focus on individual societies, to the study of trans-national and global topics.
This transformation has been accompanied by, in many cases, a move away from scholarship that is deeply based on primary sources in local languages to a reliance on English secondary sources.
The chapters in this volume, like much scholarship on Vietnam, remains grounded in primary sources, but the authors approach their topics from trans-national or global perspectives, thereby blending the strengths of both the area studies and trans-national or global approaches to the study of the past.
We originally wanted to have the term “documenting” in the title, however, in the end, the publisher wanted a simpler, more direct title, and so that term was dropped. However, one of the strengths of this volume, we believe, is its grounding in “documents,” as should be the case with solid historical scholarship. Further, what we found fascinating about the chapters in this volume is the wide range of “documents” that they are based on, from writings in classical Chinese to French, to Vietnamese, to Polish, to German, to English, and Japanese.
In other words, the documentation for the studies in this volume mirrors the global contacts that modern Vietnam has engaged with, and again, by basing their studies on such documents and taking into account the larger contexts in which their sources were created, the authors blend the best of the area studies and trans-national/global approaches.
Liam’s take: Arguably the most profound and insightful introduction to an edited volume ever written. . . but I may be a bit biased.
Pursuing Văn Minh: A Study of Civilizational Discourse in the Historical Narratives in Colonial Vietnam (1900-1915)
Ran Tai (University of Groningen)
Scholars in Vietnamese history usually link the rise of Vietnamese nationalism to anti-colonial activism at the turn of the twentieth century. This paper, however, considers how the discourses of pro-French colonization are integrated into the nationalist historiography in colonial Vietnam. It places particular emphasis on the interactions of Vietnamese intellectuals with their counterparts in China and Japan in their formation of pro-French nationalist discourses.
Through close readings of the writings that pro-French Vietnamese literati-officials, such as Hoàng Cao Khải and Ngô Giáp Đậu, composed during the Duy Tân Reform Movement (Phong trào Duy Tân) in the early 1900s, this chapter demonstrates how the key elements in the notion of modern civilization (văn minh) were translated, interpreted, appropriated, and internalized by the Vietnamese pro-French reformists in their conception of a new Vietnam.
This chapter argues that the tropes of modernity that these Vietnamese intellectuals used in constructing their pro-French nationalist historiography were not derived directly from the Western concepts but generated in a complex process of cultural interaction and knowledge production that began in late nineteenth-century East Asia.
Liam’s take: The period from the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth centuries in Vietnam is incredibly important, and yet it remains seriously understudied. What has been repeated over and over is a “revolutionary” story (the Cần Vương movement, Phan Bội Châu and the Đông Du movement, the Đông Kinh nghĩa thục, etc.). However, non-revolutionaries also played a critical role in bringing about intellectual change, and this article provides some of the evidence for that under-told story.
An Educational Regime of Truth for Social Reform in Late Colonial Vietnam: The Journalistic Art of the Possible in Phụ nữ tân văn’s “Travel Stories” and “Letters for You”
Thanh Phùng and Đăng Minh Vũ (University of Languages and International Studies, VNU, Hanoi)
This chapter examines the presentation of the woman question in Vietnamese journalism in the 1920s–1930s. It spotlights how two columns in the paper Phụ nữ tân văn (Women’s News), “Du ký” (Travel Stories) and “Thơ cho bạn” (Letters for You), fabricated, in a journalistic manner, internationally minded and socially engaged woman figures for a modern Vietnam through authorial modalities of openness and female impersonation.
Based on an analysis of the columns and their context, the chapter identifies what can be called an educational regime of truth for social reform in late colonial Vietnam in these journalistic works.
Liam’s take: There isn’t a lot of scholarship in English on early-twentieth-century Vietnam, but in that relatively small body of writings, the debate over the role that women should play in a modern society that was carried out in print publications in the 1920s and 1930s is a topic that has been addressed. That said, this chapter still brings a fresh view to that topic by questioning whether some of the female authors involved in these debates were in fact female, and if they were not, what exactly the impersonator authors were attempting to achieve.
Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa (1896-1982): A Woman Who Wrote to Change Vietnamese Society
Phuong Ngoc Nguyen (IRASIA, Aix-Marseille Université)
For centuries, women in Vietnam had to respect the three obediences of Confucian morality. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, a radical change took place: women went to school, wrote in the press, gave lectures, published novels and books, led associations and campaigned for the status of women.
In this chapter, we examine the life of a woman who lived during this time. Mrs. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, born in 1896, is known for her activities on behalf of women, as well as for her account of a trip to the mountains near Da Nang, her essay on the kingdom of Champa and her novel telling the story of a Vietnamese man who was enlisted to fight in France during the First World War and who married a French woman.
Through an examination of her biography, we will gain a better understanding of the life of an educated woman in Vietnam at the beginning of the 20th century. We will then analyse her novel “The Western Beauty” published in Saigon in 1927 to gain a deeper sense of Mrs. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s views on the place of Vietnamese women in colonial Vietnam.
Liam’s take: I knew nothing about Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa before hearing Nguyen Phuong Ngoc present on her research at EWV, and immediately became fascinated with this woman and her life. This is a very interesting chapter!
Between the Sacred and the Secular: Publishing, Books, and Everyday Life in Colonial Cochinchina
Vy Cao (Aix-Marseille Université)
The records of the colonial “legal deposit” of published materials allows us to reconstruct the rapid rise of print culture in late colonial Indochina. Between 1922 and 1945, 257 printing and publishing houses produced more than 25,000 periodicals and non-periodicals.
Using data from the Indochinese collection of the French National Library, this chapter traces the landscape of publishing in colonial Cochinchina. It then focuses on the multiple meanings of the book, and in particular the practice of book donation to explore how print culture transformed local relations to reading, trading, and devotion.
While books are often understood as a vector of modernity, attending to their materiality reminds us they were also an everyday consumer good. In the case of donated books, they could even serve as a kind of religious currency, creating social ties and confirming readers’ participation in a shared traditional cosmology.
Liam’s take: In recent years, the French National Library has digitized a massive number of Vietnamese publications from the colonial period. This chapter is an important attempt to start coming to terms with that massive quantity of “data” by creating a database, mapping it out, and interpreting it.
Multiple-Agents Involved in the Localization Our Lady of La Vang: From a Mythic Figure to the Mother of Vietnam
Duong Van Bien (University Brunei Darussalam; Institute of Religion, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences)
Our Lady of La Vang is a version of the Virgin Mary that was first worshipped over a century ago at a place called La Vang in what is now Quảng Trị province. Today she is sometimes called the “Mother of Vietnam,” is represented wearing Vietnamese robes and is said to symbolize a supposed essential element of Vietnamese culture, the reverence of women. In other words, Our Lady of La Vang has been fully “localized.” However, the ways in which this happened are complex.
In this chapter, we discuss how scholars have explained the localization of Our Lady of La Vang and Catholicism in Vietnam more generally, and then proceed to make our own analysis of this issue. In the end, we demonstrate that there have been multiple agents and agendas involved in the localization of Our Lady of La Vang. Further, these agents extend beyond Vietnam and include the Catholic church as well as members of the Vietnamese diaspora.
Liam’s take: The concept of “localization” is used quite simplistically in a lot of scholarship in Vietnam. Scholars have argued that there is an environmental and/or cultural essence that automatically “localizes” whatever comes in contact with it. By contrast, in this chapter Duong Van Bien attempts to make an historically more specific argument for how Marian devotion was localized.
Another Kind of Vietnamization: Language Policies in Higher Education in the Two Vietnams
Le Nam Trung Hieu (Duy Tan University)
The reform and expansion of higher education was a priority for both of Vietnam’s postcolonial regimes, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in the nation’s north and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) in the south. “Vietnamization,” or the adoption of Vietnamese as the language of instruction, was seen as a central part of that reform. However, the two regimes pursued Vietnamization by different means and on different timelines.
This chapter argues that the history of the Vietnamization of higher education reflects the different political systems of the two regimes. In the DRV, Vietnamization would be initiated by the central authorities and carried out by decree. By contrast, in the south Vietnamization was shaped by the efforts of individual educators and linguists, associations, and student participation.
Exploring the process of Vietnamization thus sheds light on a crucial aspect of the process of decolonization and highlights the divergent paths to independence taken by the two Vietnams after 1945.
Liam’s take: The fact that education in Vietnam takes place in Vietnamese is something that I think we take for granted. However, there was an enormous transformation that took place not that long ago from French to Vietnamese, and in this chapter, Le Nam Trung Hieu shows the different ways that this transformation unfolded in the North and South.
Not So Honest Relations: Top Level Polish-Vietnamese Contacts 1965-1970
Jarema Słowiak (Jagiellonian University)
At the beginning of May 1970, the First Secretary of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, Le Duan, met in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart, Władysław Gomułka. During the meeting, numerous topics were discussed, including the American invasion of Cambodia, which had begun only a few days earlier. The meeting did not take place in a vacuum; it had been preceded by several visits to Warsaw by Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Le Thanh Nghi and was chiefly centered on Polish support for embattled North Vietnam.
Gomułka’s meeting with Le Duan and previous visits by Le Thanh Nghi serve as an interesting case study that reveals the dynamics between smaller communist states, hidden from the outside world. While they showed outward unity and mutual support, there was a much more complex, and sometimes tense, relationship.
Liam’s take: The examination of the historical relations between socialist states has been given a boost ever since the end of the Cold War and the opening of archives to researchers. Jarema Słowiak has been deeply involved in researching that topic and this chapter is a good example of the type of perceptions that emerge from a deep examination of the archival sources.
New Voices in a New World – Media Portrayal of the Experiences of German Reunification in 1990 by Vietnamese Contract Workers in East Germany
Julia Behrens (VLab, Berlin) and Nicolai Okunew (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam)
The chapter uses media reports to explore how Vietnamese migrant workers in East Germany experienced German reunification. The article shines a spotlight on the kaleidoscopic meaning of this year, integrating the experiences of a neglected community into the historiography of 1990.
By analyzing the radio program “Tiếng quê hương,” a Vietnamese-language radio program, along with East German print media and TV reports, we show that displacement, citizenship, and democracy were topics of concern for Vietnamese labor migrants. For these workers 1990 became a year of deep-rooted transformation characterized by insecurity and fear but also by agency. We furthermore show how reporting changed in 1990 as programs like “Tiếng quê hương” for the first time addressed issues of racial discrimination in East Germany.
Liam’s take: Like the chapter on Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, this is a topic that I knew nothing about, and unless you read German, you probably did not know about it either. It’s a fascinating look at a “liminal” time period after the fall of the Berlin Wall when Vietnamese migrants in East Germany were not sure of the future or even of their legal status, and how a radio program tried to address their concerns and needs.
JICA’s Legal Technical Assistance Projects in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos since the 1990s
Nobumichi Teramura (Universiti Brunei Darussalam)
Many have written in English about the legislative and judicial systems of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Fewer English writing commentators have investigated the modern legal histories of these jurisdictions. In particular, scant attention has been paid to a common feature in their recent development, the arguably pervasive influence of Japanese private law.
Since the 1990s, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has played a major role in the modernization of law in the region. Through its legal technical assistance projects, JICA has provided support for the reform of codes and the training of lawyers in the use of those codes.
This research critically examines JICA’s contribution to the rule of law in the former French Indochina region. It considers whether Japanese soft power (as manifested by JICA) complements or is at cross-purposes with projects of other organisations and initiatives (such as Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank). It evaluates the extent to which JICA’s work is currently attuned to or might be made more responsive to the social and economic aspirations of the relevant countries.
Liam’s take: In the 1990s and early 2000s, I would often read or hear about Japanese, or Swedish, or (name a country) advisors assisting Vietnam with one issue or another. However, that was always the extent of my knowledge. In this chapter, Nobumichi Teramura takes us a level deeper and gives a sense of what actually went on in some such advisory projects. The insights that he provides are very interesting.