Talk:History of Vietnam

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vietnam Portal

This article is part of WikiProject Vietnam, an attempt to create a comprehensive, neutral, and accurate representation of Vietnam on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.
 WikiProject Southeast Asia This article is within the scope of WikiProject Southeast Asia, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Southeast Asia-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
B This article has been rated as B on the Project's quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

Still missing parts of Vietnam's prehistory. I need to start digging.is gay

---

Why this article does not mention the Third Indochina War (1977-1991)?

- Where is the mention of the Van Lang kingdom? Someone help out with this page! I'm too tired right now...

What about Vietnam's non-Han people like the Chams and "Montagnards"?

Removed "non neutral point of view" use of quotation marks to qualify that "democratic" and "religous" advocates are not real advocates but former associates of the SVN government. (Most of the associates of the SVN government are in their 70s and are dying out). This article should be about Vietnam and not about USA politics and historical revisionism. See Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports on Vietnam if you don't believe me.

http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=vietna

http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/vietnam/news.do

Louis

No one is really interested in premodern history are they? In the long run, Chinese character, called Chu Nho in Vietnam, names need to be added too.

To the contrary, for many of us the pre-colonization history of Vietnam is much more fascinating than rehashing the same tired-out, revisionistic, downright boring (by this point) events of the Second Indochina War. --Ryanaxp 16:45, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Was Vietnam a "Vassal"?

The quality of this article is not very high. There're many sentences that fail to reflect facts. Eg, right in the introduction: "Vietnam regained independence in 939 AD, and complete autonomy a century later. While for much of its history, Vietnam remained a vassal state to the much larger China, it defeated three Mongolian attempts of invasion during the Yuan Dynasty, when China was under Mongolian rule. But ruler at the time, King Tran Nhân Tông, would eventually submit as a vassal of the Yuan Dynasty, or face an actual full scale invasion."

First of all, the use of the word "vassal" is misleading. This word, in the context of Medieval Europe, means that a political entity pledge to fight for and be loyal to another entity in return for being given the land. Vietnam, at that time, were fully independent and autonomous (acknowledged by the first quoted sentence). The Vietnamese did not participate in any wars ininiated by the Chinese (or any foreign powers), nor allow their teritory to be used by a foreign power's armed forces. One of the pretext for the Yuan invasions is that the Vietnamese refused to grant free passage for Yuan forces to attack Champa. This fact alone disqualifies Vietnam for the "vassal" status. Vietnam was also completely autonomous in its internal affairs with important decisions such as choosing a successor necessitated only a diplomatic mission informing the Chinese of the event. The Vietnamese did, however, had to pay regular tributes to China to maintain this autonomy. In other words, the Vietnamese prefered to pay money rather than being constrained by military or political obligations. And this was accepted by the Chinese as the status quo for much of the history of the bilateral relationship.

Actually, in the context of what is normally referred to as a "vassal" state in accordance to Mongol domination at that time period, any nation or state that is paying tribute and recognizes Mongols as their "overlord", is considered a "vassal". The Mongols left most of their "vassal" states to operate on their own, granted if they consistently pay tribute. This would include vietnam.
Interesting point. Perhaps a more accurate word is "tributary state"? Yellowtailshark (talk) 13:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Second, the three invasions by the Mongols *were* full scale. The 2nd and the 3rd both involved an invasion force of about half a million men! These invasions seriously strained the economy of China. And after the falling the 3rd attempt, the Yuan reluctantly accepted the status quo as established long before they came to power. (There were some preparation for the 4th attempt, but economic realities forced the Yuan to abandon the plan.) Thus, it cannot be said that King Tran Nhan Tong "would eventually submit" because the end result was the re-establishment of the status quo, which the Mongols tried to change by attempting those invasions! --DNT 10:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The first "invasion" only consisted of 5000 men. The next two were considerably larger, but no where close to "half a million men". Where are you getting your sources?

[edit] "Planned economy" or "Communist political philosophy"

I have changed this phrase back, since "Communist political philosophy" deliberately encompasses much more than just a "planned economy". --WibyLeMoende 1 July 2005 10:25 (UTC)

[edit] Anam

Was Anam a civilization located in modern Vietnam? __earth 12:56, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Annam was a political entity that became a province of China in 111 BC. It was also a name used for one of the three French colonies/protectorates in Vietnam. DHN 16:54, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. No wonder I couldn't find it. missed the n. thanks again. __earth 12:03, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Boat People

The story of the boat people is an important part of Vietnamese history. Unfortunately, there are few hard facts documenting the extent of this event. That is why I believe Nguyen Ngoc Ngan should be mentioned in this article. He is a relatively well known figure and places a human face on this tragedy.

The best document I have found is a United Nations PDF report: The State of The World's Refugees 2000: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action - Chapter 4: Flight from Indochina

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/publ/opendoc.pdf?tbl=PUBL&id=3ebf9bad0

I quote from Box 4.2: Piracy in Southeast Asia is as old as seafaring itself. For the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ it posed an unexpected terror and for those seeking to protect them it was a vexing problem. In 1981 alone, when 452 boats arrived in Thailand carrying 15,479 refugees, UNHCR’s statistics were a study in horror: 349 boats had been attacked an average of three times each; 578 women had been raped; 228 women had been abducted; and 881 people were dead or missing.

What it doesn't say is how many boats left Vietnam for Thailand. The report only says one author estimates 10% of boat people perished. Boat people, including Viets Cambodians and Laotian are estimated to be approximately 2 million in number.

Louisducnguyen 03:58, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnamese characters are not appropriate for wide-spread use in English language Wikipedia articles

Vietnamese has five tonal indicators for every vowel. These characters (such as á Ő û) are not English language characters. No English language Encyclopedia uses these characters in spelling out the names or places in Vietnamese history. There is no reason to write all the names in the English Wikipedia articles using the Vietnamese characters. Look for example at the article on the Kangxi Emperor. Most of the names in this article are Chinese names and could be properly spelled using Chinese characters. But instead we use the English transliteration of the Chinese characters (so we get Kangxi, Xiaozhuang, Yinxiang, etc.). The exact same logic applies. If someone wants to create a Viet language article then of course, that article would use the correct Viet spelling for the names.

Why would we treat articles on historical Vietnamese people differently than articles about other people with names that use non-English characters?

I realize that a lot of work went into making all these names correct but I feel strongly that this is a bad thing and needs to be removed.

  1. It is inconsistant with other Wikipedia article formats.
  2. It is inconsistant with a long established tradition in older Encyclopdias.
  3. It makes such articles essentially impossible for non-Vietnamese speakers to edit.

cglassey April 3 2006

FYI, Ő and û do not exist in the Vietnamese alphabet and thus will not appear in any Vietnamese name. You will notice that in the Kangxi Emperor article, the Chinese characters are written out, presenting a worse problem than the Vietnamese characters since most computers don't support Chinese characters by default whereas any Unicode-capable computer can display Vietnamse fine. However, if you look at any article on Eastern Europeans, you'll see that the correct spelling are written out: e.g. Slobodan Milošević, Paul Erdős. At least the article about Vietnamese personalities don't put them in the article name. I think older encyclopedias' lack of diacritics is due to lack of technological support, not due to lack of effort. At the very least, I think the proper spelling should be written out the first time it is used. I've seen Vietnamese names being haphazardy "converted" to English in enclyclopedias and maps before (see this gazeteer, many names have wrong accents or use characters that don't exist in Vietnamese, such as û) DHN 05:23, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I have no problem with a first time spelling of a name using (or indicating in parens) the correct Vietnamese spelling. This is how articles on Chinese historical figures are done in the Wikipedia. Seems like a good way to do it. I looked at the Milošević article and my objections are the same. Use of non-English characters in English language articles should be discouraged. How are non-Serbian writers supposed to edit such articles? Sorry about the use of wrong diacritical vowels in my example. cglassey April 6 2006
This is the first time I had seen this article and am interested in the discussion on the use of the Vietnamese alphabet and tone marks. So long as this program can support the use of marks, I find it beneficial to the general readership, some of whom might be Vietnamese, albeit English readers, and for those of us who have learned the Vietnamese language and can actually pronounce the words correctly based on the alphabet and tone marks. BTW there are six tones, five have marks and one doesn't, called không dâu (no tone) by which the word is pronounced with no vocal inflection. We all know the common Vietnamese name Nguyên which can be spelled with any tone mark. When I was in VN I once saw a package addressed to a Nguyên Nguyện Nguyễn. It is also nice to know when the character "D" is supposed to be "Đ" pronounced like a romance "D", or the Vietnamese "D" pronounced like a romance "Y". Vậy thì "Đu" is pronounced "Doo" and "Du" is pronounced "Yoo" (southern dialect), or "Zoo" (northern dialect). Magi Media 14:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)Magi Media

It is an unfortunate consequence of the romanization of the Vietnamese written language that Vietnamese words have the potential to be written in a "stripped down" version such as "Nguyen" instead of "Nguyễn" and so many choose to write it in the former out of simplicity. However, it should be written in the latter because it also happens that such romanization has a benefit of allowing the language to be expressed electronically. Indeed it is the only East Asian written language with this benefit (Japanese, Chinese, etc. words must be transliterated, while Vietnamese has a built in transliteration). If the Vietnamese accents are included, English speakers still see the names and Vietnamese words and can choose to read them "stripped down";while Vietnamese speakers can see the actual pronouncian. Everyone wins. --Tecknical 12:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Another issue, besides getting the pronunciation right, is that a Vietnamese word written with the diacritics stripped off is an ambiguous word. A given sequence of Roman characters can take on one of many (unrelated) meanings with the addition of appropriate diacritics. Without the information in the diacritics it is very difficult make yourself understood, written or spoken. Peter9291 17:44, 1 December 2006 (UTC)Peter

Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). The convention stipulates that diacritical marks should not be used. We should abide by that convention, unless we consider ourselves authoritative on English-spelling conventions of the Vietnamese language, in which case we need to spell this out through a Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Vietnamese) page. Yellowtailshark 02:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request Information on Vietnam

I was hoping if anybody could help me with a few question regarding the history of Vietnam.

1) What was the geographic of Vietnam during the Dong Son and the Chinese rule, does anybody have iamge or map of it?

2) The Champa Kingdom existed between 192 AD - 1679 AD, before 192 AD, what was the area belong to?

I would be most regrateful if you could tell me where the information come from. Thank you.

Which period of Chinese rule? And all modern Historical Atlas's show the extent of Chinese rule (including Dai Viet) during the major dynasties (Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming, etc.). As to question 2: I don't think this is known. I would say the territory was "un-organized". cglassey April 6 2006


Before Champa Kingdom, there were many small countries in that area just like Phu Nam (i know only one)

Champa Kingdom only ruled in the Southern Central of Vietnam,it belong to the Cham people. Phu Nam is a so-called nation (still questionable) in the South, it's belong to another ethnic group, may be it's the most ancient nation in South East Asia. this nation misticaly disapeared .

[edit] Challenging POVs

Unfortunately the article clearly uses adjectives which are meant to give the wrong impression and definitely violate the NPOV requirements. Example: "The lucky ones made it to the US" (in the Boat People section), or earlier, some anti-China adjectives. Until this is cleaned up / cleared up its NPOV must be questioned. Jsw663 19:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong map of the disunity period

I have noticed that the map of Vietnam during the disunity period contain errors. It shows that the Quang Binh province belongs to the Trinh, but in fact most of Quang Binh belonged to the Nguyen Lords. Can someone correct this?Tryst Nguyen April 6 2006

[edit] Background Information on the Indochinese Wars

I know of a book that might help you in your search. Title of book: The story of Vietnam Author: Hal Dareff copyright: 1966 Library of Congress Catalog card Number: AC 66-10018. I understand this is an old book and it is written for children. The book is great. It gives the history of Ho Chi Minh and why he changed his name. Some history of the French being in Vietnam and the Americans in Vietnam. Maybe this could help you? Thuy Lan NguyenNeobailey 08:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Small Change to Intro - Revising "some economic growth"

  • Originally, at the end of the introduction, this sentence was given:
Since the mid-80s, Vietnam has enjoyed some economic growth and reduction in political repression though reports of corruption in the country have also risen.
  • If it is okay, I wanted to change this sentence to read:
Since the mid-80s, Vietnam has enjoyed a relatively substantial amount of economic growth and some reduction in political repression though reports of corruption in the country have also risen.
  • I am Vietnamese-American and therefore may have my own biases. However, hopefully this revised sentence will be a little bit more NPOV as well as align with the other Vietnam related articles about Vietnam's economic growth. Most of the Wikipedia articles about Vietnam, as well as data that can be easily found on the Internet and in reference books, clearly state that Vietnam is enjoying one of the largest sustained economic growth rates since 1986 (when the Doi Moi reforms were initiated). However, it order to maintain partially, I am still keeping the part that Vietnam has only allowed some reduction in political repression. Also, the assertion about corruption is true therefore there needs no revision on that part.
  • Hopefully the Wikipedia community approves of my changes. If not please let me know. Particularly if you are concerned about my substantial amount of economic growth revision. Though I, after having read and studied Vietnam's history and economy for most of my life, believe that Vietnam's current growth is quite amazing and substantial, others may disagree with me. Therefore, if you are concerned about these changes, feel free to change them, as long as you remark so on this discussion page so I can be aware of the changes. Thanks.
  • As a last remark, I hope people won't label be as a revisionist of Vietnam's history. I am not trying to portray Vietnam as this awesome, amazing economic powerhouse ... I mean, come on, the growth is good but not that good. I just want the article to be a little bit more NPOV as well as agree with the other pages about Vietnam on Wikipedia.BNgo 21:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
5%->8,5% a year is relatively substantial amount of economic growth? I suggest:

some economic growth and reduction slowly in political repression Magnifier 14:37, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

What's wrong with including more accurate and factual descriptions? i.e. Vietnam has enjoyed economic growth between 5 and 8.5% annually since the 1980s, and some reduction in political repression. Actually the last part of that statement needs some factual evidence, such as ranking on human rights watchdog lists. Yellowtailshark (talk) 18:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Very long; time to split it?

As per WP:SIZE it may be time to break this article into a series of more managable articles or even trim some sections. For example, the Second Indochinan War already has an article. This article should simply provide a brief overview of the war and provide a link to the more detailed main article. Plasticup T/C 19:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed! Yellowtailshark (talk) 18:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Borders in northwest?

Does anyone know of the precise historical conditions of Vietnam's northwest frontier? It shows that the modern-day provinces of Lai Chau and Dien Bien were not traditional part of Vietnam! If that was the case, when were they incorporated into Vietnam? Le Anh-Huy (talk) 09:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The beggining of history of Vietnam?

I want to add this into the artical but cannot.

Archaeological evidence:

Recently, archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of human on Vietnamese territory as early as the Paleolithic age. The presence of Homo erectus in 300.000 year ago was found in caves of Lang Son and Nghe An provinces in the North Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene age. They include mostly isolated teeth from northern Vietnam at Tham Om (250-140 kyr), and Hang Hum (140-80 kyr) (Kha and Bao, 1967, Kha, 1975, Kha, 1976, Long et al., 1977, Cuong, 1985, Ciochon and Olsen, 1986 and Olsen and Ciochon, 1990). Teeth attributed to Homo sapiens are also known from the Late Pleistocene of Vietnam at Dong Can (16 kyr, Cuong, 1986) and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu/Mai Da Nuoc (8.2 kyr, Cuong, 1986), Lang Gao (Colani, 1927) and Lang Cuom (6.44 ± 0.5 kyr, Demeter, 2000). There are some caves with Paleolithic remains typified by the Nguom industry and the Son Vi culture, dating from 30,000BP to 10,000BP. The most important event in Vietnamese Prehistory is the appearance of Hoa Binh and Bac Son cultures - the most typical cave cultures in Southeast Asia. Archeological excavations in Thailand (Spirit Cave, Non Nok Tha) and northern Vietnam (Dongson, Hoabinh) have revealed a major surprise: the first Southeast Asians had agriculture and pottery at the same time as the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia. The finds of the fossils of Homo erectus, Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens sapiens in the cave sites in North Vietnam have confirmed that the evolution of human formation took place the most dramatically in the karst topology, from the late Pleistocene to Holocene (http://english.vista.gov.vn/). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toiyeuvietnam (talk • contribs) 11:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Disputed paragraph

In ancient times, many tribes living south of the Yangtze River called themselves the Yue (Việt in Vietnamese). Most of these tribes were linguistically related to the northern Chinese; even today, Cantonese people and their language are still referred to as Yue. The Lạc Việt, however, were linguistically more closely related to other Southeast Asian peoples. The Văn Lang culture is theorized to have evolved from natives who had settled on the Red River delta since pre-historic times, rather than from migrating tribes from the North, as suggested in some Chinese legends.

The above paragraph is very misleading as it contains untrue facts. For example, the ancient Cantonese peoples spoke languages that were closely related to ancient Vietnamese. Also, the tribes south of the Yangtze did not call themselves Yue (or any variation thereof) during ancient times; in fact it was originally a derogatory term that the Chinese used to describe the said tribes. This is yet another example of anti-Cantonese propaganda that is regularly placed on Wikipedia articles about Vietnam.

It should be noted that modern Cantonese peoples and Vietnamese people are very similar culturally and virtually genetically identical. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.105.145.206 (talk) 01:27, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


Almost two months have now passed and nobody has yet responded to the above concern. Worse still is the fact that the highly offensive paragraph in question still stands in the article. Because the article itself is still semi-protected I urge anyone who is able to edit it to either get rid of the said paragraph or explain clearly in this section why the paragraph should not be deleted.

If nothing is done I am afraid that I will have to request that this article be reviewed in full for factual accuracy and neutrality. Some parts of it (in their current state) are appalling. 122.105.145.175 (talk) 10:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

What's so offensive about it? I don't fully understand the concern; could you please explain further? I've removed it until this is resolved. Thanks, PeterSymonds (talk) 12:41, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
It's not offensive per se (but it is misleading), but offensive in the historical context of Sino-Vietnamese relations, as Vietnam (or whatever it was called at the time, since it changed names many times) was subjugated under imperial Chinese rule on several occasions, spanning several centuries. This imperial Chinese policy of annexing Vietnam, I suspect, has produced a systematic bias in the way the Chinese people view Vietnam (see Sinocentrism), producing misinformed stereotypes, the most common being that Vietnamese people came from China or some variation of that. To a people that have long been oppressed, it's offensive when you stray from the truth and produce propaganda with the aim of having China dominate (not necessarily in a political sense, but a cultural one) Vietnam. Whew, I hope I was objective enough with this comment. Yellowtailshark (talk) 20:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
User Yellowtailshark is on the right track (or at least sort of). Unfortunately, the crucial point was missed. The paragraph is offensive because it portrays Cantonese and other Viet peoples as somehow very 'different' from the 'native' Vietnamese people. Indeed, the paragraph sounds like the sort that a Vietnamese ultra-nationalist might insert (since such a person's conscience would not be troubled should he or she decide to smear the Cantonese and other Viet peoples in the way that the writer of the offending paragraph has done).
I understand that the disputed paragraph has already been removed. I hope that its removal is permanent, given the extreme offense the paragraph has caused. 122.109.98.50 (talk) 07:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Ah, got it, thanks to both for explaining. And yes, the removal will be permanent. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 10:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)