Talk:History of Vietnam/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Was Vietnam a "Vassal"?

The quality of this article is not very high. Ther'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?

What about this: http://countrystudies.us/vietnam/9.htm ? I says 300.000 men for the third invasion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dct05 (talk • contribs) 15:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

That's a ridiculous number - that's more troops than Mongke had under his command in China (which nominally was 105,000). Beware of inflated figures when it comes to Mongol history. Primary sources are unreliable, and must be studied and estimated by modern scholars.50.111.19.21 (talk) 14:07, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

5000 men? What did they bring 5000 men to Vietnam for? Hunting quails? Please cite your source, or evidences if you claim your numbers so confidently. And what did you mean by quoting "invasion"? Is military violation into Vietnamese border not an "invasion"?--12.69.86.130 (talk) 08:24, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe that Uryankhadai had 5000-13,000 soldiers. But they were strong enought to sack Hanoi. The Tran resisted the Mongols of the Yuan well. --Enerelt (talk) 14:12, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Probably less than a tumen - or, 10,000. His force was part of a four-pronged attack on Song from the south, not the conquest of Vietnam. Anderson & Whitmore state "several thousand" in their 2014 history. 50.111.19.21 (talk) 14:07, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

"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)

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)

(This was the most relevant section to put this under.) I just wanted to throw out a link to the Ming Shu-Li for others to access more research material. http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/ It's an English translation of the Annals of Ming Dynasty. I haven't read through this 40,000 page monstrosity, but it does include references to Annam. This would help complement the Annals of Dai Viet, though it would be the Chinese version of how things went down. 98.193.90.4 (talk) 00:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

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)

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)

The convention states "The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged"... Frankly, the convention is to use whatever is most commonly used in english, however, for much of Vietnamese history, and especially for historical figures, there will be no 'most common' usage in english. As others have pointed out, unlike other asian languages, vietnamese uses a latin alphabet and should be treated the same as european languages that use those same special characters. If you don't understand what the accents or diacritics mean, you lose nothing, but you can't pronounce the vietnamese words properly without them. (the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(Ireland-related_articles) shows good examples of this being hashed out. 156.34.216.155 (talk) 15:50, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, reading this, I find the extensive use of Vietnamese diacriticals make this HARDER to read and understand, not easier. When we write Chinese names in English, we do NOT include tonal diacriticals. If Vietmanese speakers think they need the diacriticals, why don't they read the article in Vietnamese? ludahai 魯大海 (talk) 13:52, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

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 .

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

The source referenced above is a website. The specific article on that website dealing with caves and cave dwellers is here: [1]. It's a summary of an article called Archaeology of Vietnamese prehistoric caves - perception and orientations (or Khảo cổ học tiền sử hang động Việt Nam, nhận thức và định hướng) from 2006. The article appears to provide an outline of the history of the study of (!) these caves, not necessarily the current understanding of these matters. Thus, I suspect data extracted from that article may be outdated, and not necessarily be in line with 21st century understanding of the subject matter. Alfons Åberg (talk) 20:19, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

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)

Should Second Indochina War be changed to Vietnam War?

'Vietnam War' is used much more widely in the English language than 'Second Indochina War'. 'Second Indochina War' redirects to 'Vietnam War'. Should this section be changed to Vietnam War?

I did some of this research a while back. Google.com hits (Apx.): Vietnam war- 14,000,000, Second Indochina War- 201,000 Google.co.uk (only pages from the UK) hits: Vietnam War- 477,000, Second Indochina War- 6,640 Google.com.au (only pages from australia) hits: Vietnam War- 242,000, Second Indochina War- 3,060 It is appropriate to use the common name as the title of a page or section anyway, as what it is also known as is explained on the main page for Vietnam War. The section 'First Indochina War' Is completely appropriate to stand on it's own, as that is its common name. The Vietnam War is also known as the Second Indochina War, and anyone visiting the Vietnam War main page will see that. Most people know it as the Vietnam War, not the Second Indochina War (not just Americans). What do you think? --Abusing (talk) 18:35, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree per WP:NAME. yellowtailshark (talk) 09:08, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

You need to be careful here about systemic bias. The cultural dominance of America means the War becomes generally known by what they called it. Number of hits on Google doesn't alleviate this bias, it entrenches it, because Google is American and the Vietnamese dont have the same prevalence of computing. I think the Second Indochina War is something of a neutral compromise between the American name and the Vietnamese name which is 'The American War.' Maybe something of a triumvirate name such as "The Second Indochina War (Vietnam War / American War)" There are varous other ways in which you can credit all three names without suggesting any one of them is wrong or better. Mdw0 (talk) 23:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Possible Viet Cong and CCP Propaganda

After April 30th, 1975, unlike the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Vietnamese Communists did not commit a "blood bath" or hastily perform any radical changes. The social order in South Vietnam was relatively well maintained, the occupying force was disciplined, and most technocrats or low ranking government workers were allowed to retain their jobs. The Thống Nhất Railway was quickly restored by Thanh Niên Xung Phong (Young Volunteers Corp) to enable transportation between the North and South. Nevertheless, some North Vietnamese soldiers and cadres began to realize that they had been indoctrinated into thinking that the South Vietnamese people were utterly poor and exploited by the imperialists and foreign capitalists. Contradictory to what they were taught, they saw an abundance of food and consumer goods, fashionable clothes, plenty of books and music; things that were hard to get in the North.

Despite some early successes, the Vietnamese Communists made many serious long-term mistakes and caused an overall decline of the country over many years.

The above two paragraphs sound as though they were written by a Viet Cong apologist. Any ideas?

If there is no comment within a week, I will remove the disputed and unproven paragraphs.

There is also a paragraph that I highly suspect was made up by the CCP or their sympathisers.

In early 1979, China invaded Vietnam to "teach Vietnam a lesson" for persecuting ethnic Chinese and for invading Cambodia. The Sino-Vietnamese War was brief, but casualties were high on both sides.

Unlike, the earlier two paragraphs, this can be easily corrected by changing it to:

In early 1979, China invaded Vietnam to supposedly "teach Vietnam a lesson" for the invasion of Cambodia and the supposed persecution of the Hoa people (it should be noted that the PRC made the later claim for political purposes and that the populace of Mainland China considered the Hoa people to be ethnically Vietnamese at the time). The Sino-Vietnamese War was brief, but casualties were high on both sides.

I am going to insert the new version now. David873 (talk) 05:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've remeoved the fluff about being nice in 1975. But the thing about the Northerners being surprsied is true. Most of them were told that the southerners were enslaved by the US and the RoV was in the stone age with virgin land etc. This is the same in north Korea. Most of them think that the South Koreans have literally been shackled by the US and the land is all desolate. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:39, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Massive deletion

Please examine this massive deletion. Badagnani (talk) 05:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:H 4 ill 639759 cambodia-phnom penh-1979-61.jpg

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• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
• That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --08:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Stalinist dictatorship of the proletariat

"Stalinist dictatorship of the proletariat" is nonsense, almost an oxymoron. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" is Utopian form of government, according to which the supreme power belongs to common workers and peasants — it was attempted to be implemented in the earliest years of the Soviet State, while Stalinism is a form of dictatorship which was implemented later in practice. The expression "Stalinist dictatorship of the proletariat" implies POV but does not provide any sensible information. — Hellerick (talk) 18:11, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Mislabled Image

The caption for File:VietnamChampa1.gif is mislabled. Dai Viet lands are labled as Blue when they are actually yellow. Request that the other colors also be labled. Green is Champa, Blue is Khmer. Wellvrsd (talk) 18:41, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect link

The link for "Duy Tân" should not point to the Emperor Duy Tân. "Phan Chu Trinh, who favored a peaceful, non-violent struggle to gain independence, led the second movement Duy Tân ("Modernization")" WandrerX (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC).

The Little Treaty of Versailles

Doesn't this refer to the Treaty of versailles (1787)? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles_(1787)> The current link goes back to another treaty. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.211.92.217 (talk) 08:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Further Reading

The further reading section, although filled with ample examples of further reading in Vietnamese, has quite a poor selection of works in English, particularly of the early modern period until the Vietnam War. As an amateur historian interested in modern Vietnamese History from aboutt 1600 onwards for its own sake, are there any book whichs can be recommended in a style similar to Jansen's Making of Modern Japan, Spence's In Search of Modern China, Cumings' Korea's Place in the Sun etc? Thanks in advance --79.68.224.55 (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Empire of Vietnam

Shouldn't the article mention the short-lived Empire of Vietnam? More generally, perhaps it could say more about the influence of Japan during WW2.

Yaris678 (talk) 18:16, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Half a million years ago? Sure.

"(...) with archaeological findings showing human settlements as far back as half a million years and a cultural history of twenty thousand years."
As much as I would love to believe that the Vietnamese culture exists for that long, I can't help but think that this is a tad bit funny, as I've always learnt that we were still apes back then. According to this little page, we evolved to the human species about 200,000 years back, so unless those humans have traveled back in time to build those settlements, I feel I should adjust the page, if I get permission from someone who might have a few more sources and a bit more knowledge than I do. However, I do feel I should give a compliment too; this page is very useful, and it taught quite some stuff about the history of the country. FeyBart (talk) 15:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The assertion is supported by a dead-link source which can be seen in internet archives at here. That source says, "In August 1965, in a cave in the area of Tan Van village, Lang Son province, the discovery was made of remains of two anthropoids closely related to Sinanthropus. These remains are still being studied, but the date of their appearance may be put, according to preliminary estimates, at the Middle Pleistocene, about half a million years ago". That is an article with unattributed authorship on a website not devoted to that topic, so you might challenge the reliability of that source. I dug up another source, an article entitled "Homo Erectus" on page 106 of volume 95, no. 1313 (8 July 1982) of New Scientist magazine (see here. That article says that Sinanthropus, shows a time range of 1-5 million years BP up to 400,000 years BP. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:20, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, since the most reliable source we have states humanity only exists for 200,000 years, I think we should take away the sentence. It's really unlikely that this source is true. FeyBart (talk) 16:29, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

See the verifiability policy at WP:V; read at least the initial paragraph. Also see the due weight policy at WP:DUE (this is one section of the neutral point of view policy at WP:NPOV). For some thoughts by individual editors on Truth in Wikipedia, see the essays WP:Truth, WP:Verifiability, not truth, WP:Verifiability, not truth, WP:The Truth. I'm in too much of a rush right now to spend much time on this, but here are some observations & suggestions:

• It seems to me that the lead section of this article ought to be redone with the WP:LEAD guideline in mind. The specific claim about half a million years, along with the Ref of its supporting cite, should probably be removed from the lead, and its supporting source Ref moved to support the initial sentence of the First human vestiges section. I note that this supporting source is a general knowledge source, and the language used there probably contains simplifications from the language which would be used in an academic source.
• The second sentence of the First human vestiges section appears to be supported by an academic source (perhaps the study mentioned in the other general knowledge source), and says Homo erectus, not Human.
• The WP Human article says, "Humans (Homo sapiens) are primates of the family Hominidae, and the only living species of the genus Homo." That article cites supporting sources for that assertion.
• It looks to me as if the author of the cited general knowledge source oversimplified by describing the species Homo erectus as Human. That may have been an intentional oversimplification to avoid complicating the article with distinctions between the two members of the Genus Homo.
• If the general knowledge source is to be used, perhaps a clarifying footnote should be added regarding this use of terminology.

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 21:43, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

The lead has been rewritten to comply with the citation's data and current supporting science on the origin and age of mankind. 67.176.91.3 (talk) 21:15, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in History of Vietnam

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of History of Vietnam's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "MargolinVietnam":

• From History of Vietnam since 1945: Jean-Louis Margolin, "Vietnam and Laos: the impasse of war communism" in The Black Book of Communism pp. 568–569.
• From Land reform in Vietnam: Jean-Louis Margolin "Vietnam and Laos: the impasse of war communism" in The Black Book pp. 568–569.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 23:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Claim of an Early Dynastic Period (2879 - 111 BC) is dubious, must not confuse legends with history

The year 2879 was created to equate the origin of Vietnam to that of ancient China, in order to give the early Vietnamese a sense of pride, that their history was equal to that of their northern "threatening" neighbor. However, that year was purely a product of legends, completely lacking scientific validation.

Instead of mentioning an Early Dynastic period, it would be much more accurate to give the label "Prehistory" as done in the Wiki article for History of China. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.153.138 (talk) 03:52, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Any evidence of indigenous Vietnamese writing before Chu Nom

As far as I know there is no scholarly evidence of indigenous Vietnamese writing prior to the adaptation of ancient Chinese writing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.153.138 (talk) 02:50, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Demographic history of Vietnam (Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic)

http://www.uta.edu/faculty/jerry/pol.pdf

http://www.weilichubanxuezhe.com/LNCO%20sample%20paper.pdf

http://www.himalayanlanguages.org/files/driem/pdfs/2011Rice%20and%20the%20Austroasiatic%20and%20Hmong-Mien%20homelands.pdf

03:10, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Absurd PoV

This article contains a large amount of writing presented in a very biased way, as if someone from the Vietnamese government were using it for propaganda. It cites ancient legends as fact, claims the invasion of Cambodia was defensive, et cetera. It needs to be cleaned up, rewritten in a neutral point of view, with citations, clear explanation of when it's talking about history, when it's repeating myth and legend, it should present the Communist Vietnamese government's history with objectivity, instead of sounding like it's advocating for the author's masters. — Kaz (talk) 17:40, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Support that notion. It's rather ridiculous what is presented as history in this article & should actually be labeled prehistory or legend. History begins with written sources & there was nothing at 2879 BC.

But I'm not deep enough into Vietnamese history (sources) to edit anything myself. bossel (talk) 20:53, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm a user of wikipedia, not an editor beyond occasional grammar and spelling corrections. (I'm sure I'm formatting this comment entirely wrong, sorry.) I'm reading the talk page because I noticed the same thing. This is what pushed me over the edge. "In the late 1970s, Vietnam invaded Cambodia at the common border began in 1975 as famous as Cambodian–Vietnamese War. To neutralize the threat, PAVN invaded Cambodia in 1978 and overran its capital of Phnom Penh, driving out the incumbent Khmer Rouge regime. In response, Vietnam started to invade Chinese Islands in South China Sea..." So Vietnam invaded Cambodia, then, to neutralize the threat, invaded again. In response to those invasions it invaded China? Absurd is the right word. But if I knew enough about Vietnamese history to correct the section, I wouldn't be reading it :-) My thanks to those who do. - ComputerX — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.185.67.106 (talk) 18:11, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Marginalisation of non-Viet parts of Vietnam's history

"During the foreign domination of North Vietnam, several Indianized civilizations flourished in the central and south of what we know as Vietnam, particularly the Funanese and Cham. The founders and rulers of these governments, however, were not native to Vietnam. From the 10th century onwards, the Vietnamese, emerging in their heartland of the Red River Delta, began to conquer these civilizations."

I find that ludicrous. The Funanese and Cham were just as native to their areas as the Viet, not foreign. Yes the Viet expanded south and conquered them, and thus created the combined territory we now call 'Vietnam', with the Viet as the dominant ethnic group. But a 'History of Vietnam' should not only be a history of the dominant ethnic group and its gradually expanding territory but of the whole country including those kingdoms that were within the borders of contemporary Vietnam but were not Viet. Otherwise these kingdoms do not get documented, at least in terms of the country which covers their territory today (I'm sure there are separate articles on Champa etc. But are there separate articles on ancient Tonkin, or are they incorporated into this one?) 82.2.125.203 (talk) 04:59, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Timeline Lists "Republic" starting in 1945?

The failed Marxist experiment started in 1945 and entered full swing in 1975, collapsing in the 1990s. Today, Vietnam is not multi-party republic with a representative democracy, so the timeline is inaccurate in listing Vietnam as a republic since 1945. 67.127.53.183 (talk) 17:45, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Edits

Hello,

The fourth cite-note link seems to be broken. I'm not a Wikitext expert so I do not know how to put a deadlink text in there.

Also, at the 4th line in the fourth paragraph of the opening section, there is a link displaying as Dutch but seems to be leading to Trịnh-Nguyễn War.

Potasmic (talk) 10:35, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

The name "Trong Thuy" only exists in Vietnamese legend

No Chinese record mentioned this person. Vietnamese legends claim he was the son of Zhao Tuo, and some Vietnamese historical records used it reference. The "Trieu Dynasty" section is somehow biased. "Nanyue" is the term used by Wiki, and its ruler was the official of Qin dynasty, so the names should by presented in pinyin. So I had to make some changes to make things clear — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.33.81.62 (talk) 02:10, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

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Issues

I find it sad that a major and ancient country's WP history entry has so many issues. It severely detracts from the credibility of WP as a whole. Hope it can be solved. Juicebaby (talk) 14:07, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

It hasn't yet. This might be one of the most tragic articles I've seen in terms of quantity of content vs quality of content. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 13:23, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

NPOV re China

There is a huge NPOV re China. The history is written from the POV of modern vietnam which viewed China as a foreign dominator since ancient times.

This is not true because in the era of Zhao Tuo for example, Vietnam was as part of China as the southern provinces were. Guandong for example was also home to the Baiyue, a people related to the Viets. Nobody says that Guangdong was under foreign domination in the same era that Vietnam was.

Historicalchild (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Prehistory

Many history articles devote maybe a section or so on prehistoric findings in the area. This article goes all out on it. With all due respect to its history, I agree with the tag at the top that "This article or section may fail to make a clear distinction between fact and fiction." So much of the lead alone concerns Bronze age battles, stories, events etc. Why is this here? History regards written evidence on a subject. The earliest works about Vietnamese history could only have been Chinese from about 722 to 481 BCE, and the earliest Chinese historical work was the Spring and Autumn Annals which covers roughly the same period. Even History of China only claims to go as far back as 1500 BCE. Any further references would have been based on mythology and folklore. This is perfectly fine as far as describing history is concerned - outside of the first sentence of the lead, mind you - but I highly doubt that Vietnam as a country can uniquely say to have (by documented evidence verifiably) existed in 498,000 BCE. The "pre" in pre-history stands for "before", and is not part of history or the scope of this article. Only a small part of it should address it. See also: protohistory. As such I have removed the first sentence about Vietnam having a 500,000+ year old history. But anyway, even a date such as 2879 BCE is insane. There are no written histories on this period anywhere outside of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, and MAYBE the Indian plateau. Maybe. But we can't read Indus script and it would still take over two millennia for any form of advanced writing to really catch on in China. In that case I really want to know, what are the sources? If a poem writes about a period 4000 years prior to its writing then it's almost certainly not a historical work. I want to take a moment to stress that 2879 BCE was around the time the Sumer civilization, one of the world's earliest. Vietnam surely has a rich history but this is stretching it way too much. We know so much about places like Sumer because it already developed a writing system, but there was no writing system in Vietnam and there were no records concerning Vietnam (in any way of the term) until around 3rd century BCE. Anything before that is speculated/hypothesized and should be presented as such. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 14:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

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The quality of the Section 'Vietnamese nationalist historiography'

This section honestly sounds like a mad rambling. It's written so disjointedly that one doesn't know where to start.

There's line after line after line of statements about: Vietnamese connexion to Fujian; bronze drums; Phong Châu; projection of present day animosities; confucianism's place in Viet Nam; immigration to Tran-dynasty Viet Nam by people from the Song; the 'true' meaning of the Bình Ngô đại cáo; how Minh Mang referred to his own state as 'Han'; and, unfortunately, so on and so on.

You may make a case for how the past is being used presently and the assumptions behind this use, but this is not how you do it. It honestly feel like it has been written by a bot, look at this:

'Michael Churchman criticized the fact that modern historians falsely project modern day animosity between Vietnamese and Chinese onto the past history of Vietnam under Chinese rule and falsely portraying past people as "freedom fighters" or oppressors in a made-up narrative of resistance when there was no such ethnic boundary.[68] Professor Liam Kelley criticized O. W. Wolters for doing this.[69] Pre-1500s Vietnam had Confucianism as an integral component according to Liam Kelly.[70] Confucianism influenced traditional education in Vietnam.[71] Confucianism in Vietnam: A State of the Field Essay was written by Liam Kelley while Lost Modernities was written by Woodside and "Annam": A New Analysis of Sino-Viet-Muong Linguistic Contact.[72]'

Liam Kelly criticised an 'O. W. Wolters' whom there has been no talk about what-so-ever before his very brief mentioning. Why is the last sentence a commercial for two pieces of writing? This is not how you usually refer to literature - why isn't the mentioning of those two pieces relegated to and endnote, but instead written as this unconnected sentence?

Oh, and have a look at the reference-list. This section contains 64 citations. 46 of the links in those 64 citations come from one source: Liam Kelly. There's nothing inherently wrong about this. However, whoever wrote this section of wiki-page took a line or two from 46 different articles, ultimately from one source, and threw them together like this. There is no arguement in this entire section, only 'Liam said'.

Any sources? Anywhere?

This whole article from prehistory up to the French colonial period is long, detailed, and almost completely unsourced. The only references that are cited are for minor anecdotal things, mostly related to outside events like Chinese intervention. Where did this all come from? KarlM (talk) 23:05, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

The entire "Vietnamese nationalist historiography" section is someone's un-sourced opinion piece and should be deleted.

This is mad, the entire collection of controversial conspiracies is completely without a source but some disconnected Hawaiian's personal blog. It is all linked to that one person and is probably written by him too. Wikipedia is no place to promote your personal blog. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robstelly (talk • contribs) 17:11, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it's a huge mess. SME's really need to fix this article. It is entirely below standard.50.111.19.21 (talk) 14:40, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

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Mongol invasions

The paragraph on the Mongol invasions is ... how to put this ... "entertaining." It looks like it was written by some ultra-nationalist 14 year old. The entire Mongol military barely reached 250,000 - were ALL of them in Vietnam?? Reliable Sources point to a force of several thousand Mongols and forced-allies in the First Invasion under Subetai's son. The POV of them all being totally repelled is just so much hogwash. The Mongols inflicted such material damage and losses of personnel on Vietnam, that a decision was made to accept vassalage and pay tribute before there was no country left to save. What victories there were would have been Pyrrhic, at best. The whole article is very poorly documented, is full of POV and falsehoods, and needs major work.50.111.19.21 (talk) 14:29, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Rewrite the article

This article probably is considered against the standard of WikiProject:History and society. Does the history of Vietnam contain exclusive only history of the Vietnamese? I think it should not. Laska666 (talk) 03:59, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion about pro-USA propaganda

This article is outrageously and blatantly filled with pro-US propaganda. It omits to mention the vast number of atrocities commited by the US military against the civilian population of Vietnam. Even the most well known war crimes of the US in Vietnam are not alluded to. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered. Entire cities were utterly destroyed. Tens of thousands of women and children were raped by US military. This article is a complete whitewash and in no part implicates the Americans in the mass murders they commited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.45.119 (talk) 13:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Utter rubbish. There were some isolated crimes/massacres, and several trials and convictions of American soldiers that got out of line. But "hundreds of thousands" is pure bunk. 50.111.3.9 (talk) 05:46, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

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

---

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)

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Removal of criticism of Vietnam's supposed "ancient history"

Hello @Laska666:,

I saw that in these edits you removed the following section:

"However, according to researcher Lê Minh Khải, despite all the evidence about the Hồng Bàng period and the Văn Lang kingdom, they are not real and were created by sinicized Confucianist scholars around 1400 AD to make Vietnamese distinct from the Chinese. After the new wave of nationalism revolutions in the 20th century, these folk tales and stories had been solidified in modern Vietnamese history."

I fully agree that the history of the territory we today call "Vietnam" should include more about Champa, the Khmer Krom, and the various mountain peoples. But why remove this criticism that these early periods were likely fake? You didn't explain it then so please explain it. --Donald Trung (talk) 07:44, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Note that you didn't use that many edit summaries, so why did you remove all the things that you did? --Donald Trung (talk) 08:51, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Marxist historiography and "feudalism"

As of the current version of this article only two (2) mentions of "Feudalism" are made, one of these reads:

"However, by 1900 a new generation of Vietnamese were coming of age who had never lived in precolonial Vietnam. These young activists were as eager as their grandparents to see independence restored, but they realized that returning to the feudal order was not feasible and that modern technology and governmental systems were needed."

The Vietnamese Communist Party is known to wish to present their own version of history (as do all Communist Parties, please see: "Historiography in the Soviet Union#Theoretical approaches" and "Chinese historiography#Marxism"). A good example of how they formulate history is this:

• Primitive-communism
• Slave society
• Feudal society
• Capitalist society
• Socialist society
• The world communist society

The official historical view within the People's Republic of China associates each of these stages with a particular era in Chinese history.

• Slave society – Xia to Shang
• Feudal society (decentralized) – Zhou to Sui
• Feudal society (bureaucratic) – Tang to the First Opium War
• Feudal society (semi-colonial) – First Opium War to end of Qing dynasty
• Capitalist society – Republican era
• Socialist society – PRC 1949 to present

Now project this onto Vietnamese history you get:

• Primitive-Communist society - Hồng Bàng dynasty (most of which is invented by North Vietnamese historians) until the Âu Lạc were conquered by Nam Việt.
• Slave society – Northern domination.
• Feudal society (bureaucratic) – Ngô dynasty period to the Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập period.
• Feudal society (semi-colonial) – Pháp thuộc in combination with the Nguyễn Dynasty.
• Capitalist society – French Indochina and South Vietnam.
• Socialist society – Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Republic of South Vietnam, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 1949 to present.

The same applies to North Korean historiography, notice how common the term "Phong kiến" (封建) appears in Communist Chinese, Communist Vietnamese, and Communist Korean historiographies, Joseon is called "Triều Tiên Phong kiến Vương triều" (朝鮮封建王朝) in North Korea. Meanwhile go over any South Korean history text book and look for the term "Phong kiến", it's simply much rarer. The problem with Vietnamese historiography is that the Vietnamese communities in France and the United States aren't producing anything that goes against the Socialist narrative, Chinese historiography has Taiwan (for what that is worth with the strong anti-Chinese sentiment in the Taiwanese nationalist movement that often love to adopt Communist Party frameworks to mis-represent what it means to be "Chinese") and Korean historiography has the much more influential and scientifically based South Korean historiography. Most foreign historians won't criticise Socialist Vietnamese historiography because that would mean losing access to Vietnam and its archives, archaeological sites, and other resources and if you're a historian specialised in Vietnam you would have to follow the party line, Overseas Vietnamese might criticise the historiography but they aren't as influential.

Unlike a lot of (linked) article this article actually surprisingly mentions "feudalism" very little, yet it is found in the above quote, so what "feudalism" is that section of the article defining to? It seems that what this "feudalism" is is actually not ever defined. What is further wrong with this quote is that it presents the modernisation to have been pushed by "the revolutionary youth" but in reality a lot of French collaborators like Hoàng Cao Khải have been pushing for modernisation as well and these were mandarins of the old regime. I think that a revolutionary-centric bias (often also found in Marxist historiography) is present in some of the article, but as a lot of this is more because of the consulted sources than the editors I don't think that it's an issue that is easy to address. But overall this article does quite well to usually not have a lot of Marxist biases I just wonder how this "Vietnamese feudalism" looked like if it actually is something different from European feudalism. --Donald Trung (talk) 09:21, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Criticism of the established historiography by Lê Minh Khải and others

Concerning this edit with the caption of "Delete 2 paragraph (weak argument, unreliable source).", well, if we actually take a look at "Wikipedia:Identifying and using self-published works#Self-published doesn't mean a source is automatically invalid" we would find "Self-published works are sometimes acceptable as sources, so self-publication is not, and should not be, a bit of jargon used by Wikipedians to automatically dismiss a source as "bad" or "unreliable" or "unusable". While many self-published sources happen to be unreliable, the mere fact that it is self-published does not prove this. A self-published source can be independent, authoritative, high-quality, accurate, fact-checked, and expert-approved. Self-published sources can be reliable, and they can be used (but not for third-party claims about living people). Sometimes, a self-published source is even the best possible source or among the best sources." Well, Lê Minh Khải writes on a blog because he admits that it is an easier way to reach wider audiences than through the traditional publishing methods which he claims will only be read by a handful of people will read it and that the internet is searchable and accessible for people all over the world. Is he incorrect? Nope, in fact I would say that a century from now people will call Lê Minh Khải "well ahead of his time", note that he rarely just posts opinion pieces and he almost never posts anything that is unsourced, on his blog he uses and discusses various reliable sources and then goes through them. Had he published this very same information in a book then nobody would have questioned the removed section. In fact, having it easily accessible online should be preferable to a source only a handful of people can check out and verify actually states what the information says, unfortunately it ain't uncommon for people to deliberately re-interpret reliable sources to fit their own narratives. At "Wikipedia:Reliable source examples#Are weblogs reliable sources?" we find the statement: "Weblog material written by well-known professional researchers writing within their field may be acceptable, especially if hosted by a university, newspaper or employer (a typical example is Language Log, which is already cited in several articles, e.g. Snowclone, Drudge Report). Usually, subject experts will publish in sources with greater levels of editorial control such as research journals, which should be preferred over blog entries if such sources are available." I have seen plenty of times that people remove good sources because they misdefine policy. Practice should never take precedent over policy and especially rational thought, I often see people remove expert websites because "Blogs are unreliable" and no other argument is given than "Blogs are bad sources" despite policy actually disagreeing with them.

Now that we've established that a well-sourced work written by an expert isn't automatically "unreliable" because it's a blog let's look at the editor who removed it. About who the 吳 (Ngô) referred to in Bình Ngô đại cáo (Hán tự: 平吳大誥) is always assumed to be "the Chinese" and the removed sections only showcase a different perspective by different experts. If we look at the other contributions of user "Lvhamsntt" we find that they had a total of three (3) edits, with their first edit removes Tăng Tuyết Minh from Hồ Chí Minh's arricle with the caption "Ho's romantic relationships is controversal" (SIC) and their last and third (3rd) edit moving Vietnam up in a list of declaration of independences in Asia, this is based on the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's proclaimed independence rather than the State of Vietnam's, which is an issue when two (2) countries become one (1). Two (2) of these three (3) edits removed content and all of them essentially take the Communist Party of Vietnam's position on these issues. The other source cited at Bình Ngô đại cáo is "https://www.lib.washington.edu/SouthEastAsia/vsg/elist_2010/Question%20about%20Binh%20Ngo%20Dai%20Cao", well the University of Washington is hardly an "unreliable source", they just said "bad arguments" and removed any references to them. This is censorship and that is how Communist Party's tend to handle opinions they don't like. They can't censor his blog but they sure as hell can censor Wikipedia. Note that I am not accusing this user of being a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party, only of having a bias that matches the Vietnamese nationalist historiography promoted by it. I suggest restoring the removed perspectives as they don't claim to be absolute and just showcase a different interpretation by experts which promotes Wikipedia's neutral point of view. --Donald Trung (talk) 08:59, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Furthermore, at "WP:!TRUTHFINDERS" we can read the following: "Wikipedia doesn't reproduce verbatim text from other sources. Rather, it summarizes content that some editor(s) believes should belong in the Wikipedia article in the form of an encyclopedic summary that is verifiable from reliable sources. This process involves editors who are not making claims that they have found truth, but that they have found someone else who is making claims that they have found truth. If there is more than one set of facts or explanations for the facts in the article, there's a guideline for that where multiple points of view (Wikipedia's term for versions of truth) are included." This removal of content did nothing short of violate Wikipedia's neutral point of view in favour of a Vietnamese nationalistic historiography, so I will restore it and ask anyone critical of this to go to this talk page. --Donald Trung (talk) 11:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Copied from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:B%C3%ACnh_Ng%C3%B4_%C4%91%E1%BA%A1i_c%C3%A1o&oldid=1042912966 to showcase why I believe that Lê Minh Khải's SEAsian History Blog should be included, this is separate and supplemental from the section about the content already removed. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:05, 7 September 2021 (UTC)