User talk:Lệ Xuân/Archive/2

Review

Đoàn Ngọc Hải Bắc Ẩm Cuồng Đao (talk) 02:29, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done by MGA73 — Hankiz 20:25, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

What the fuck is this flag?

I actually managed to find the supposed "first Dragon Star Flag" and it's... The flag of the Revival Lê Dynasty???!!!

During my research I went through Vietnamese sources, French sources, I went through Gallica for hours a day, I really couldn't find any evidence attributing the supposed "Gia Long flag" to the Nguyễn Dynasty... Then I found this image on Wikimedia Commons, what the fuck?! This flag was recorded in 1757 as the flag of "Tonkin, China" by the (Northern) Dutch, this is literally half a century before this flag is supposed to exist and over a century before it actually did exist. What am I even looking at here? --Donald Trung (talk) 21:53, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I never really trusted these "sources". During that time, the Europeans mostly drew exotic, strange things from distant countries they never set foot on from imagination. The Portugese even depicted the mythical Christian monarch Prester John owning half of Africa on one of their maps 🤷🏻‍♀️. --Hankiz 22:36, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't automatically trust these old sources either, just look at any "flag of China" before 1890, depicting a black wyvern like some colour swapped Tatarstan. The reason why I trust sources from the Dutch Republic more is because they actually had an alliance with the Revial Lê Dynasty during their war with the Nguyễn and had long contact with the "Tonkinese" and judging from Dutch-made cannons for the Trịnh they knew about local symbolism. This illustration just showcases that the flag did exist, it just doesn't how it existed. The design strikes me as a "temple flag" or "battle banner" or "war flag" or "merchant flag". But as Wikipedia isn't the place for original research (Musée Annam should take notes from that page) I didn't put it anywhere as it doesn't prove the Nguyễn Dynasty claims and beyond this I can't find much information about the banners of the Revival Lê Dynasty and its flag culture (which wasn't comparable to that of Europe and Japan). As much as Marxists write about "Vietnamese feudalism" and "Chinese feudalism", actual feudal societies like Europe and Japan developed (near identical) flag cultures in order to differentiate between local lords and differing levels of authority and symbols of alliances, Vietnam didn't do this until the 20th century. --Donald Trung (talk) 23:13, 2 September 2021 (UTC)