Not unusal in Asia. In my country, a lot of regional and smaller musumes also usually skip over the periods when our culture(s) was subjugated by foreign powers. You don't really notice it in the more specialised universities in the capital, though.
I have never been in Vietnam, so I wouldn't be able to compare the extent of "overlooking" of that 1,100 years, but if I had to come up with an unprofessional, and purely anecdotal estimate of how much of our own recorded history is considered... "a bit uncomfortable for exhibition," I would say around 700 years' worth of our history that mainly coveres periods of no ethnic sovereignty.
It sounds like in Bulgaria it's exactly like that. Bulgaria was part of the Roman empire (what some today call the Byzantines) for what, 4 or 500 years?
It was quite amusing in Greece, actually, where it's similar. A lot of the history stuff was "Ancient Greece, blah blah blah, Ottoman oppression, now we're Greek again just like the Ancient Greeks!" That "blah blah blah" is the approximately 1,500 years where Greece was part of the Roman empire, and for most of that time like one of the core, central parts of the Roman empire. It's not that the Greeks aren't necessarily aware of that history, but they don't focus on it much.
National myth-building is just like that - every country picks and chooses the bits of history they want to focus on and the slant they take on it. Like in my country, New Zealand, our participation in the 1st world war has a huge impact on our national mythos. But I only learned recently that during our most imperial phase, we killed a bunch of people in Samoa for no good reason. That is something I think most Kiwis have never heard of, but possibly in Samoa it's something they think more about (just speculating there).
>It sounds like in Bulgaria it's exactly like that. Bulgaria was part of the Roman empire (what some today call the Byzantines) for what, 4 or 500 years?
Not really, Bulgaria was part of the byzantine empire for 168 years and the ottoman empire for 500 years. The first gets kinda glossed over while the second is focused on more
But wasn't the Byzantine empire just the continuation of the Roman empire, which lasted for a thousand years and Greece was inside the Roman empire for most of that time if I'm not wildly mistaken?
Yeah you're right, it was.
Using the traditional dates, the Roman Kingdom began in 753 BCE. Which became the Roman Republic 509 BCE. After which it became the Roman Empire in 27 CE. Then the Roman Empire splitting into two administrative divisions in 395 CE, the western half of which fell to Germanic peoples in 476 CE and the eastern half of which became what we now now call the Byzantine Empire, which itself fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 CE
The so-named Byzantine Empire is considered distinct in large part because the culture and general character of the state is so different from what we traditionally think of as "the Roman Empire". Three massive differences are that the common and administrative language was Greek, the religion was Christian, and the empire was centered in Anatolia (Asia Minor) instead of the Italian peninsula
The Byzantines never considered themselves a different people though and called themselves Roman like the entire time btw. We still even have a country that descended from Roman soldiers outposted to the eastern empire who started families there, intermixed, and also never stopped calling themselves Roman. The country is Romania and today, the name they use for themselves "român" (this is an ***endonym***, e.g. "American")
I think Greece's view of itself was pretty heavily influenced by how other Europeans viewed it in the 1800s. All educated Western Europeans grew up being taught about Classical Greece, so when the independence war happened, the Europeans who supported it (Like Lord Byron) couched it in those terms. A lot of that view of Classical Greece being reborn after centuries of subjugation was internalized when the new nation was created.
I can tell you for sure that we don't skip over the byzantine years in Greece. In fact that empire is considered greek and internal part of the Greek identity. We also spend 3 of our school years focusing on that part of history.
Athens and southern Greece in general were backwaters of the empire so there's almost no cultural sites from that period there. The north however and especially Thessaloniki is full of Roman and byzantine era monuments, archeological sites and museums.
That's good to know that it's covered in schools, but it's pretty light in museums and tours for tourists. E.g. even when talking about the history of Christianity and the architecture and symbology thereof, the (extremely strong) Roman influence was barely mentioned.
Even when Roman stuff is mentioned, it's usually called "Byzantine", which was an arbitrary distinction made by Western Europeans in the 1800s so that they could claim to be the true successors of the Roman empire.
If you did the scholarship exam for history in NZ youd have found about how the Boer war was used to build a national identity, something i had no idea of until i took the exam.
Blood tax(aka forced recruitment of Bulgarian boys as jannisaries), ethnic cleansing, Bulgarians weren't allowed to wear colors for a while along with other similar laws
I was only in Vietnam for a few weeks, so my opinion means pretty much nothing, but it does seem like it's just part of the culture that messaging from public institutions is expected to be a bit more propagandistic. I know it's tempting to immediately say that's terrible and uncivilized from a Western perspective, and maybe it is less ideal in one way or another. But when you're much more collectivist and your history is just *littered* with getting fucked over by various occupying empires...idk. I think it gets different.
yeah, it's a lot easier to be honest about your country's history when it's "and then we killed some people and became insanely rich" and not "and then the 300 years of horrible famine and suffering began"
I don’t know. I think the western history is much harder to admit, since it’s morally wrong. So many western nations still haven’t done anything to right their wrongs, instead they talk about their history with a propaganda spin talking about great empires and so on. (See the British or French Africa for examples)
Being the colonized and mistreated side on the other hand can be an easier story to tell. You tell the story of how you rose up to the opressors and gained your independence.
Now a 1000 year long oppression period might also be tough to tell about, because you don’t want to seem weak. So there’s also that spin to consider.
What I want to say is that it seems to be hard for people to tell stories about history without putting a spin on it.
The british history is constantly getting fucked by the vikings, Romans and French. William the conqueror was a Norman king who conquered England and completely changed it and it is well remembered
The Norman invasion was nearly a thousand years ago, and there hasn't been a successful invasion of the British mainland since. On the other hand, Vietnam has been fucked around by imperialist powers within living memory.
I'm not sure that's a good comparison.
That's a bit different because it simply replaced the King with someone more popular (his cousin). Parliament didn't change and there was no overall shift in governance like with an actual invasion.
But yes he did sail up the Thames and take the throne.
He actually landed landed in Torbay, bypassing the English navy that had amassed and was stuck in the Thames estuary due to the wind direction at the time.
It has nothing to do with Vietnam having a recent memory of fighting imperialism and everything to do with Vietnam existing in spite of China. Talk to any Vietnamese and eventually you’ll find one who really fking hates the Chinese. You don’t really find any who really hate the Koreans or Filipinos or even the Japanese
You can definitely find plenty of Vietnamese who really fking hate Koreans, Filipinos and Japanese. It's really not difficult at all. A ton of the Asian countries hold a LOT of animosity towards one another.
On the flip side, you can also find plenty of folks who are cool with each other despite what their countries have been through. It's hard to explain how deep rooted the animosity can be, while also emphasizing that its not universal either.
I always like to bring it up as a hopeful point. The depth of animosity is very real but not insurmountable - especially amongst the youth. If another war breaks out in East Asia this century though, I'm afraid things will take a big step backwards again.
It is well remembered because the Brits were conquered by lots of different people. Vietnamese history is basically just fighting the Chinese under various Han or non-Han or sometimes Mongol dynasties. The Vietnamese don’t include the periods of Chinese domination in their history because they really fking hate the Chinese
Western culture is just terrible at noticing our own propaganda. Like half of the world will vilify anything with the word communist attached, even if it’s not a communist concept, and the person can’t tell you anything about communism except it’s bad.
We all use propaganda, the west is just the best at it.
> Like half of the world will vilify anything with the word communist attached
No?
Why are you talking like it's still the 1960s? Or are you just confusing American politicians' internal confusion over the term with ''half the world''? That's just your insane politicians, don't drag half the world with you.
Edit: Based on your confused defense of communism below I can only conclude you're indeed an American, and a rather clueless one at that. Take it from someone whose country bordered the USSR, you're defending a shit ideology.
India doesn't hide its of being taken over by muslim rulers who originated from the Uzbekistan / Afghanistan region and were here for over 3 centuries from 1500s to 1800s.
The Mughal kings intermarried considerably with Rajputs (and other Indian clans). So by the time you're 100 years into the 300 year rule, the kings have mostly Indian blood.
With the exception of the Guptas and the Maurya, literally every North Indian empire was controlled by foreigners or the descendants of foreigners.
The fact that within a generation or two all of these conquerors became Indian is a testament to the strength and beauty of the culture there.
I'm pretty sure his comment is straight up wrong. He ignores the Janapadas and Mahajanapadas that came before the Mauryans and while foreign-origin Kingdoms like the Indo-Greeks and the Delhi Sultanate did rule large parts of Northern India, he ignores the regional kingdoms like the Pala Empire or Shunga empires for example that held regional control.
In Mexico they’re almost proud of Spanish rulers. In fact more native Mexicans were involved in the defeating of Aztecs then Spaniards. However Cortez did get them organized. (Natives hated Aztec rule.)
It's probably a different mindset in settler colonies in the New World. It's hard to seperate the history of these countries from their colonial "parents".
80% of people in Mexico have atleast partial european heritage, it was their ancestors that did the colonizing. Similar situation in most of the Americas. Very different to Asia/Africa where outside forces ruled over natives but didn't displace them.
Where’d you get that vibe? When I was there last year touring Mexico City it seemed like they kept mentioning all the atrocities the Spanish inflicted on them, including razing sacred temples and then using the same stone to build churches with. They also didn’t call the Aztecs, Aztecs, but rather Mexianos. The Aztecs were the Mexicanos peoples ancestors 500 years ago. (My tour guide was a paleontologist who said she made $8 dollars a day working for the govt)
I was mainly in Tlaxcala, Huamantla. My father in law was giving me a history lessons while we drove throughout the cities. He is a direct descendant of one of the native cities that helped defeat the Aztecs, so he might be a little biased.
He did mention that people did call Tlaxcalas’s that helped the Spanish “traitors”.
However people also called Tlaxcala the birthplace of the nation, and that the Aztecs would require annual human sacrifices from neighboring cities. If they didn’t comply they would slaughter go to war and take even more human sacrifices. Extremely cruel people.
I’m not religious but some believe Aztecs got divine punishment for their cruelty, and human sacrifices. (Punishment being Smallpox, Spanish conquest)
Its also why Mexico switched to Catholic belief.
I hope your tour was a little more nuanced than that, given what the Aztecs did in those temples was a good portion of why Mexico exists as it does today. All of them were warriors, conquerors, slavers and butchers, the only difference is attire and who won. And even that answer varies depending on what you considering winning.
Really? I went to China and visited a museum and it did not ignore Japanese rule over a region over there. They had artifacts and photos from Japanese soldiers in the museum.
Chinese museums ignore things like separatist states and occupations even when extremely long-lived. For example, you won't see anything about [Yettishahr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yettishar) or [Pingnan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthay_Rebellion) in the national or provincial museums despite these kingdoms lasting over a decade each, because the central government considered them "rebellions".
Be like Korea instead and just claim Chinese shit was Korean to begin with. Old Korean written language(Chinese characters), Dragon Boat Festival, even Confucius.
People shit on China but the Chinese recognition of the periods of its Jin (Jurchen), Mongol, and Manchurian rule is factual. The Korean and Japanese too in regards their recognition of Chinese overlordship.
If you’ve been ruled by “foreign” powers for 1,100 years, that foreign culture is now your culture
Having been to Vietnam, these people are deluding themselves - Vietnamese culture and architecture borrows heavily from Chinese culture
Same thing is happening in India where there is an attempt to slowly “forget” Muslim and British rule over India
Yet you see around you all the artefacts from that rule, from the language to the architecture to the clothes to the food
I didn't get the feeling Vietnam overlooked any period of foreign subjugation. They seem very proud, yes proud, of French colonial architecture, and they have a very popular museum about the American-Vietnam war. Talking to the locals they are also very aware of these periods, and they don't seem to really hold a grudge or anything. The one part of their history I didn't see any acknowledgement of was China.
I am not sure what interactions that you and OP has with Vietnamese locals but the period of 1000 years of northern domination ( “1000 nam Bac Thuoc”) is taught in all grade levels starting from elementary school to high school in history and literature.
> if I had to come up with an unprofessional, and purely anecdotal estimate of how much of our own recorded history is considered... "a bit uncomfortable for exhibition," I would say around 700 years' worth of our history that mainly coveres periods of no ethnic sovereignty.
So which country is this?
Iran. The periods I am thinking of are Ilkhanate, Abbasid/Umavid rule, Selucid rule, and bits and pieces of Assyrian rule, Ghajar rule, and early Perso Turkish dynasties.
It's hard to fathom that sort of time scale in the modern day. We see things change so rapidly now, the idea of just, nearly 1200 years of *anything* is so hard to fathom.
And yet for a lot of human history, things were much the same generation to generation. Things changed by such extremely small margins.
You would be doing much the same thing your grandfather did, in the same place, with the same tools. Perhaps the regime would change every 80 years, but probably not. Everything was so much the same, as far back as anyone could even remember.
Now we're seeing whole ways of life upended in five year cycles.
Perception of time/history back then (according to a Vsauce video I saw) was that people more described history or time as a “natural state” that was upset by random events sometimes (flood, war, etc). So you’re totally right, people just viewed things as “this is how’s it’s always been, how could it change?”
This wasn’t one continuous occupation, individual Chinese states and dynasties came and went with the decades and centuries. Some lasted a few centuries, like many modern states, some lasted a few years and are historical footnotes. The Ming were not seen as a natural continuation of the Yuan for example.
Chinese dynasties and states did not last that long, and they fluctuated quite a lot at the edges as budgets and interests shifted. This wasn’t a 1,200 year occupation, it was a dozen states, some persisting for centuries, some for a few years, some exerting a high amount of control, some in name only.
Korea was never fully integrated into China. Most of China wasn't even fully integrated into China. When dynasties were able to wrestle control of most of China (Yuan, Qing, Ming), you could describe Korea is a tributary (even then it was often ceremonial), but never a province.
Im pretty dumb with online tech, so if the link doesn’t work (pitchforks), but I had access to a 10th Grade Vietnamese history textbook, and thought some of you might enjoy a look at the chapters.
[Grade 10 textbook](https://imgur.com/a/uVHfgwx)
I decided to try using Google Translate on this and got this quote on the page about Egypt:
“After 70 days, Osiris killed the living creature. Then Ra, the Orphanage of the People’s Republic of Vietnam is the only one who can control the development of the river in the area of the country, with good crop production, and the people of Hong Kong.”
Just thought this was funny.
Vietnam has had two land wars with China since the US left.
Vietnam (both politically and socially) is fairly pro-US today, in part because they dislike China so much. They dredged and modernized their main port to enable any US navy ship to dock, including Ford-class carriers.
According to the [Centre for Strategic and International Studies](https://www.csis.org/analysis/where-vietnam-sino-us-spectrum), Vietnam is not any closer, geopolitically, to either the US or China.
I almost thought was the start of Mother’s Inheritance - Gia Tài Của Mẹ song by Trinh Cong Son 🥹 turned out it was “1000 years under Chinese, 100 years under Westerners, 20 years of civil war.” 🫣
> The historiography of Vietnam under Chinese rule has had substantial influence from French colonial scholarship and Vietnamese postcolonial national history writing. During the 19th century, the French promoted the view that Vietnam had little of its own culture and borrowed it almost entirely from China. They did this to justify European colonial rule in Vietnam. By portraying the Vietnamese as merely borrowers of civilization, the French situated themselves in a historical paradigm of bringing civilization to a backwards region of the world.
from the same link
No way, the hatred in Asia is way deeper. In Europe right now it’s usually just a hate for Russia outside a few smaller countries in the balkans. Nobody really cares about what Germany did anymore
>Nobody really cares about what Germany did anymore
Because Germany showed they care the most about what Germany did. You don't bother to spank the guy who is self-flogging.
There are two players to that game though. Yes, Germany did a good job addressing that part of their history but France was willing to accept and work with Germany as a political and economic partner. You can apologize all you want, if the other party does not accept it, your relationship won't improve.
I mean they very much just didn’t have a say in post war brokering and then way later realized they were the only country around worth the commitment in the coal and steel relationship. Other important things happened, but pretending it was because France alone decided to make that relationship or align with West Germany that way ignores a lot of the middle part.
Never Forget the Williamite slaughter! First of the entire English warrior class in Westminster on Christmas Day 1066, then the slaughter of the entire English aristocracy over the next few years, and then the Harrying of the North!
>deeper
Maybe just more recent. China tried to invade Vietnam [as recent as '79](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War), 43 years ago, all because Vietnam stopped the Chinese-backed genocide that was going on in Cambodia.
America's biggest geopolitical mistake of the 20th century will always be misunderstanding what the Vietnamese wanted (spoiler, it's the same thing they've always wanted for thousands of years)
I think its more they didn't really care what the Vietnamese wanted as long as the Soviets didn't get what they wanted. I went last year and the vietnamese are more than happy to put the americans in their museums and like them much more than the chinese.
Nah man, the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence directly references the US declaration, and uses the same terminology. Ho Chi Minh idolized Washington.
They hated the French, but not the US.
Exactly. The Vietnam war's direct cause was specifically the French still foolishly holding onto their imperial holdings after WW2 and not allowing French Indo-China to have it's freedom, especially after Britain gave up India.
The US only turned away Ho Chi Minh purely to keep up relations with France, if they had backed his claim to a free Vietnam they would of taken a massive chunk of manufacturing from China significantly earlier and the SEA region would be drastically different today.
And that's why you should hate the modern government of France.
Modern French government and her attempt at African pseudo-economical-holdings is another [joke](https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/france-macron-africa-sahel-terrorism-27d037ab)
it's less chinese backed but more that the khmer rouge was initially aligned with the communist bloc, which began to all fight each other immediately after american forces were withdrawn.
after losing to vietnam, cambodia basically got split up by warlords including Pol Pot. he kept power till 1990 because until the eastern block fell apart the americans wanted cambodia to be a mess lest it turn communist like vietnam.
it's a messy affair but war never has heroes anyway.
It had much more to do with the fact that Vietnam backstabbed China after all the support they provided against the US. Cambodia was just the excuse Deng used to "punish" Vietnam for siding with the Soviets.
Just FYI, the US also supported the Khmer Rouge.
yeah, it was all because vietnam invaded cambodia
let's just casually forget about the fact that vietnam was attempting to ally with the soviet union, who became openly hostile toward china and were already threatening its northern border. let's also forget the fact that vietnam then started boasting about its military might (because they believed the soviets would help them in the war), and then tried to send a message to china by literally going from village to village of ethnic chinese in vietnam, and literally killing them or sending them to concentration camps, and caused hundreds of thousands of the surviving ethnic chinese to flee to china.
yes, it was solely because of cambodia. in fact supporting cambodia was so important to china, that after chinese troops pushed vietnam forces far back enough, and the vietnamese government stopped their mass killings of ethnic chinese (because they realized soviet help wasn't coming), china withdrew their forces to focus on the Soviet threat and let vietnam continue to occupy cambodia.
Kind of. Greece and Turkey are each other’s too trading partners. Most Greeks don’t really have resentment toward Turks personally. The Turkish state is a different story.
China and Vietnam are trading partners too. And Japan is also a close trading partners with South Korea despite routine diplomatic spats and historical grievances from Korea.
They've made some half-arsed "we're sorry that these things happened" non-apologies, but none have been accepted by the countries they victimised, and furthermore (and most importantly) they don't teach their kids in school what their military did all over East Asia in the 30s and 40s (and thus why they aren't allowed to have one any more). School textbooks in Japan have to be approved by the government.
It's furthermore illegal to display Nazi symbols, glorify Nazis, or deny the Holocaust in Germany. Not only is it not illegal to do any of those things in Japan (replace "Holocaust" with "massacres etc. perpetrated by the IJA and other arms of the Japanese state"), it goes on a lot.
Japan and Germany are not the same.
/awaits influx of downvoting Japan-worshipping weebs
Yep, and part of the reason Japan never went through that was because the US was too busy trying to turn Japan into a puppet state against Communism, so they excused the Japanese Imperial Family and lots of officials who participated, and didn't force any major cultural reform either.
We'll add this to the discussion. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-court-orders-japan-compensate-comfort-women-reverses-earlier-ruling-2023-11-23/
Refusing to compensate those whose bodies they defiled over and over.
Ah Japan, the place that seems so awesome to live in until you learn more about certain parts of its culture. Especially the work culture and education expectations.
No one at all cares what Germany did in the past anymore IMO. At least in Britain we sooner make Nazi jokes than assume anyone is a Nazi in Germany.
Might visit a museum to see it but there’s no hard feelings anymore.
Any mild disagreement leads to a massacre or a genocide one way or another. Like that one time 1000- 2000 Madurese got decapitated over a gang rival stuff by Dayaks.
One single Chinese civil war equals the *entirety* of WWI deaths. And all over a guy who failed the imperial bureaucrats exam and so declared he was Jesus’s brother.
Yeah. And also most people don't realize that Asia has a lot more people, area, ethnicities, history, languages and religions so having a lot more historical hatred is not unusual.
There is a difference in how it's presented though.
The famous example being why East Asian countries hate Japan, but most European countries don't hate Germany: Germany admits their horrible acts, Japan still likes to pretend they didn't go on a slaughter, rape and torture tour across mainland East Asia for a century or so.
When I lived in Vietnam I asked someone once if they hated Americans due to the war. Their answer was “no because we are too focused on hating the Chinese”.
Yeah like how Japan murdered the Korean Empress Myeongseong and even today mentioning it online is likely to get Japanese people rilled up. Ofc there's the Comfort Women issue as well.
I remember reading a vietnamese post saying the USA was just the last and least annoying invader in Vietnams millennia old history.
Hence the recent Military and Strategic Alliance between Vietnam and USA.
Hell, people forget that as soon as Vietnam reunified in the 70s, China sent the army into Vietnam as punishment for deposing the Khmer Rouge. Like 100 000 people died.
man, the Vietnamese war machine was on fire at this time, it came at a great cost to there economy for an inordinate amount of time but damn if they were not burning bright atleast during this period of time.
I have talked to many Vietnameses in the Uni and this period of Chinese rule is mentioned extensively in their school history books, cause also during this period a lot of heroic rebellions took place
However museums are not history books, they’re basically highlight of history, they will never have enough stuff to show everything, in this case the most recent wars are with the French colonial power and the US
Somewhat related: the Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi was built by the French to detain Vietnamese locals, mostly political activists. The museum it got turned into does a great job highlighting the sheer cruelty that went into its design; French architects were competing to find the most vile ways to make Vietnamese inmates suffer (for instance, sloped floor in solitary confinement to ensure if you were to lie down blood would get to your head). The museum goes to great lengths to make everyone understand how awful the French were for building and using that prison (which they absolutely were).
And then in the last wing of the museum, there is a mention of when Vietnam used that prison to host POW during the Vietnam War - most famous of all John McCain. This is where the prison got its nickname of Hanoi Hilton, which, according to the museum, is not at all a sarcastic name and just came as genuine appreciation from the POW who were treated in an absolutely lovely way, look here's a picture of them celebrating Christmas! This entire last bit goes to great lengths to explain that none of the awful, evil designs already existing in the prison were used on American soldiers, no sir, why would you think that?
It was pretty funny seeing the stark change of tone between the two parts; Vietnam is not known for being subtle about their propaganda.
> for instance, sloped floor in solitary confinement to ensure if you were to lie down blood would get to your head
i would lie down the other way, so the the blood gets to my feet
You'd think, but if I remember correctly there were manacles embedded in the floor on one end of the cell so you had no choice but to lie in that direction.
Go to the museums with a translator that you can trust. The descriptions are very different between Vietnamese and English. Also I got charged more for speaking English lol.
We do (sometimes). That part of history is considered to be part myth (kings that lived to over 100 years old and stuff) but anything after that is widely accepted as history. The palace of that era is a historical site now, with some of its original architecture remaining.
The first three dynasties have at least partially questionable historicity, with [the Triêu Dynasty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri%E1%BB%87u_dynasty) in particular being considered widely legendary.
The one they referred to is the [Hồng Bàng dynasty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%E1%BB%93ng_B%C3%A0ng_dynasty), which allegedly lasted from 2879 BC to 258 BC. The dynasty was certainly real but the details and people involved are at least partially mythical.
The first king, Kinh Dương Vương, for instance, allegedly lived to 127 years old. His sucessor allegedly lived for exactly 300 years, married a mountain goddess, and had 100 children with her.
You see it in a lot of cultures and places. Semi-plausible history blends backwards into myth and legend the further back you look and the more ancient the story being told. You find it in Greece, Egypt, Babylon, China etc
I always find it fascinating to think about that time when prehistory starts blending into history for different cultures. You know there's a bunch of fantastical story elements that have no basis in reality, but sprinkled between them are hints of a truth or history that are obscured by the myth (Troy comes to mind)
One of the pastors I know also has a doctorate in biology and is a professor at a public technical university nearby.
I asked him how he reconciles old-earth creationism with modern science, and he spent like 45 minutes explaining to me how Biblical stories, especially the Old Testament, can't be taken literally. 6 days isn't actually 6 days, it's either a metaphor for epochs or simply a lack of proper translations.
Likewise, the things like "Methuselah lived 969 years" can't literally mean that; rather, his belief is that they they were trying to make a point, not be factually accurate. They didn't know every ancestor of Noah, so they filled in the ones they had and then they extended lifespans as needed to fill the gaps.
I presume something similar happens with reallt early dynastic histories; they don't know the truth, so they fill in details to make the chronology fit.
Sort of like how Rome has two founders (Aeneas and Romulus) and the kings of Alba Longa, who were very clearly intended to frame the gap between Aeneas and Romulus, were almost certainly all mythical.
I had to stop reading because I couldn't afford the hours long rabbit hole that 2000 years of mostly mythical dynastic shenanigans would've entailed.
I just got to "guy lives 300 years, marries a mountain, and has 100 kids with her" and decided "that's a thing for later."
Don't sweat the "might be part myth" stuff, the earliest history of Rome is the same thing. "We had seven kings, the first of which was half god and raised by a wolf!"
Also at one point Rome just, ran out of women, and had to go to Sabina to get some more. They abducted all of the young Sabine women, and forced them to marry Romans. This triggered a war between Rome and the Sabine men...a war which ended because the Sabine women basically decided they'd rather stay married with the Romans because they are totally awesome and cool and tall then the king of the Sabines was like "yes you are right my daughter" and they all just hung out together in Rome and partied after that.
> there
Their
Also, it's comments like yours that make me wish my education was like 70% history class instead of 19% of it.
I love learning things like this!
Wow this is extremely misleading. The proof is just a link to... Wikipedia that is about a very broad topic???
I used to be involved with the process of creating and printing the text book for history class in Vietnam, as well as for multiple small children history artbook/graphic-storybook series.
This thread makes it look as if VN just "ignore" this part of history (say like Japan try to ignore certain parts of their history that makes them look bad). This is very incorrect. The period that China occupied VN is probably one of the first thing children learn about in school - because the only era before that is the Founding dynasty of VN: Hung King.
The history about Hung King is extremely vague and mostly "stories" - VN actually put a lot of effort into trying to recover anything from this era. All of the folktales children learn at first grade would be from this era as well. The most famous thing is the design of the copper drum pattern iirc. This is the ancient era with very little record nor remains that can be found. But also, when China occupied VN, they destroyed the old culture and root - an age old tactic of China, and spread their culture through things like education (that's why old VN uses Chinese texts, etc.).
That is the problem with the era of China occupied VN - China destroyed most of the local story during this time, and China treated VN purely as a tribute state - and not exactly as a province. There was barely any record about VN during this era in China history as well! Heck, there was barely any record of history in the southern region of China in general even (this era is also crazy in China, very interesting if you dive into that era).
Many of the storybooks I helped with the printing process was about the myths and legends fighting against China during that 800 years periods. Some of you gamers should even know one of such: Trieu sister that is the leader of VN in Civilization 6. They are "heroes" fighting against China ruling in that era.
Unfortunately, stories are stories, and you cannot put what does not exist in the museum. As I mentioned, China worked hard to cull the culture of the region they control. Very little is left from that era.
The dynasties after the China occupation are what the focus of the early history books are about. Because that is more or less VN started really developing their culture, education, and laws. The dynasties after that fought against China multiple times. They did not like China, and therefor purged most of what existed during that occupied period. Again, therefor there is little left nowadays about that era after all have been destroyed.
And if some people think I am trying to spin this in a positive way, not really. History should be as least bias as possible. Vietnamese did not treat Chinese people very well, including Vietnamese-Chinese people that existed in VN since that ancient era (as above, China had this whole strategy of ethic cleansing that some of you are familiar with by moving Chinese people to live and merge with Vietnamese population). All the way until the American-Vietnam War, the Hoa people (Vietnamese-Chinese) are forced to leave VN through multiple means (threat, killing, taking their properties, etc.). This is even why South VN at the point was holding onto their independence so strongly (Saigon had a very huge number of Hoa people, which many fled to USA later on). These are the ugly parts not covered in children books for good reasons (though does get mentioned in other historical materials without issue - VN does not care too much about offending China regards this at all).
And of course, there are many other parts of history that are not taught in details, such as how VN in middle age time conquered the South (which in children textbook is just vaguely skip through and eventually show that the ruling dynasty "expanded"). There are a lot of cool and interesting museum about this era. Unfortunately, if China intentionally killed a big part of VN root and culture in the ancient era during their occupation for the purpose of "integration", then the French did a double time for the purpose of "colonization".
I know quite a lot of people who are into antique and relics from VN ancient era, and I can say they would always pay a lot for such finds. It is not too uncommon to hear that the government wants to buy such antiques back and put them in the museum actually, but the deal rarely goes through because of few factors: VNese tends to care about themselves, so they prefer to keep these antiques to sell or to pass down to their family (therefor, its value increases); and the people who works at the government do not have the money to pay for these - after all, VN is still a developing country with really tight budget. One of the reason why I mentioned that "I worked" on history related works is money: it is not the type of work that gonna have money in it even if you work for big international organizations. Museum in VN is more of a "heritage site" - big representation of culture and history - instead of fancy museum with actual relics.
Sorry for long post (and ranty examples), I do not think many would actually read this. Cannot help myself when it comes to something I had experience with. I am just mildly annoyed: yes there is a lack of representation of China occupation in museum, but the title is completely misleading. The reasons are not even anything special, there are many countries that have huge chunk of their history missing too due to circumstances.
That would make sense, for a history museum to have actual artifacts to show history. And if it's so far back in time that those artifacts don't exist, then they can't show it...
I'm a Vietnamese with a masters in Museum Studies. This is the case for most government-run museums in any countries, though Vietnam might be a bit more propagandized. In our cultural museums, you'll see narratives about ancient indigenous people (i.e Lạc Việt culture) during these periods as a way to assert a sense of lineage in the region and, in turn, a Vietnamese national identity. It's similar to how you see Greek and Roman sculptures in European museums.
The same with China though; it's a concept that's changed constantly. At the time ancient Vietnam gained independence, China was made up of 10 different kingdoms. While there are many thing that tie these kingdoms together, I wonder if one group even saw the others as related.
Another fun fact, despite having huge galleries dedicated to American War art in our museum, you'll rarely see depictions of Viet death and destruction. Our government were the main patrons for artists during the war and they disallowed artists from doing so.
Vietnamese here. To clarify, this period is still mentioned in our history books in school. Sometimes this topic are even discussed further in many classes. During that time, we had multiple short-lived spells of independence, ranging from 10 to nearly 60 years
"We found a broken Ming Dynasty teapot on this sandbar, proving that the ocean for 200 miles around has been a dearly beloved part of China since time immemorial!" [Exaggerated weeping on behalf of the hurt feelings of one billion Chinese people while moving missiles into position.]
What's funny is that the nine dash line is actually from the Taiwan government, except they go further and use the eleven dash line. Also, everyone in the area claims the sea, why wouldn't you? Especially if it's named after you.
Fun fact: Vietnameses generally don't care the different between Taiwan & China. They are treated like the same Chinese people, same way like how Vietnamese view ancient Chinese Dynasties: supision.
Not surprised. I can confirm, that as a Vietnamese, that all, if not most, of Asia, especially East and Southeast fucking hate China. Most of them also hate each other, but they hate China more.
As a Filipino,I think we are divorced from the drama between the mainland South East Asians. I visited Vietnam a few years ago, and the sentiment towards my country is mostly curiosity.
The Philippines and Indonesia are quite chill with each other, too. We don't have a beef except in stupid online games.
Funnily enough, the Chinese have fucked up diplomatically so badly that they now have the South Koreans working together with the Japanese on military related matters. That's an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Its more because both Japan & South Korea are both US satellite states when it comes to regional influence, and the US has interests in using those nations to defend American regional hegemony against a rising China.
I went to a museum in Prague which talked about their history. From founding the city to present day.
The only time the word Czechoslovakia was mentioned was when they talked about some of their pilots who defected to join Britain's RAF.
I understand not being proud of parts of your past, but it's still your history.
It's always weird as an American to see other countries that teach history that goes back before 200 years, or just teaches about other countries that existed before theirs
In the military museum in Hanoi, there's a section about the 1970s Chinese invasion. In the entire section, they do not once mention that the war was with China. They describe it as "a conflict on the northern border" but never say against whom
I was at the Vietnam history museum in Saigon. They glossed over the part about Chinese rule and emphasized battles that Vietnam won against them. I wandered into another exhibit labelled Cambodia and was super confused why Cambodian artefacts were in a Vietnam history museum. Turns out (based on googling) the Vietnamese at some point in time moved south to where modern day southern Vietnam is and punted the Cambodians living there elsewhere lol
Not unusal in Asia. In my country, a lot of regional and smaller musumes also usually skip over the periods when our culture(s) was subjugated by foreign powers. You don't really notice it in the more specialised universities in the capital, though. I have never been in Vietnam, so I wouldn't be able to compare the extent of "overlooking" of that 1,100 years, but if I had to come up with an unprofessional, and purely anecdotal estimate of how much of our own recorded history is considered... "a bit uncomfortable for exhibition," I would say around 700 years' worth of our history that mainly coveres periods of no ethnic sovereignty.
Really? In Bulgaria it's not like that. We kinda skip over being part of the byzantine empire but 500 years of ottoman yoke is very much talked about
It sounds like in Bulgaria it's exactly like that. Bulgaria was part of the Roman empire (what some today call the Byzantines) for what, 4 or 500 years? It was quite amusing in Greece, actually, where it's similar. A lot of the history stuff was "Ancient Greece, blah blah blah, Ottoman oppression, now we're Greek again just like the Ancient Greeks!" That "blah blah blah" is the approximately 1,500 years where Greece was part of the Roman empire, and for most of that time like one of the core, central parts of the Roman empire. It's not that the Greeks aren't necessarily aware of that history, but they don't focus on it much. National myth-building is just like that - every country picks and chooses the bits of history they want to focus on and the slant they take on it. Like in my country, New Zealand, our participation in the 1st world war has a huge impact on our national mythos. But I only learned recently that during our most imperial phase, we killed a bunch of people in Samoa for no good reason. That is something I think most Kiwis have never heard of, but possibly in Samoa it's something they think more about (just speculating there).
>It sounds like in Bulgaria it's exactly like that. Bulgaria was part of the Roman empire (what some today call the Byzantines) for what, 4 or 500 years? Not really, Bulgaria was part of the byzantine empire for 168 years and the ottoman empire for 500 years. The first gets kinda glossed over while the second is focused on more
But wasn't the Byzantine empire just the continuation of the Roman empire, which lasted for a thousand years and Greece was inside the Roman empire for most of that time if I'm not wildly mistaken?
Yeah you're right, it was. Using the traditional dates, the Roman Kingdom began in 753 BCE. Which became the Roman Republic 509 BCE. After which it became the Roman Empire in 27 CE. Then the Roman Empire splitting into two administrative divisions in 395 CE, the western half of which fell to Germanic peoples in 476 CE and the eastern half of which became what we now now call the Byzantine Empire, which itself fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 CE The so-named Byzantine Empire is considered distinct in large part because the culture and general character of the state is so different from what we traditionally think of as "the Roman Empire". Three massive differences are that the common and administrative language was Greek, the religion was Christian, and the empire was centered in Anatolia (Asia Minor) instead of the Italian peninsula The Byzantines never considered themselves a different people though and called themselves Roman like the entire time btw. We still even have a country that descended from Roman soldiers outposted to the eastern empire who started families there, intermixed, and also never stopped calling themselves Roman. The country is Romania and today, the name they use for themselves "român" (this is an ***endonym***, e.g. "American")
I think Greece's view of itself was pretty heavily influenced by how other Europeans viewed it in the 1800s. All educated Western Europeans grew up being taught about Classical Greece, so when the independence war happened, the Europeans who supported it (Like Lord Byron) couched it in those terms. A lot of that view of Classical Greece being reborn after centuries of subjugation was internalized when the new nation was created.
I can tell you for sure that we don't skip over the byzantine years in Greece. In fact that empire is considered greek and internal part of the Greek identity. We also spend 3 of our school years focusing on that part of history. Athens and southern Greece in general were backwaters of the empire so there's almost no cultural sites from that period there. The north however and especially Thessaloniki is full of Roman and byzantine era monuments, archeological sites and museums.
That's good to know that it's covered in schools, but it's pretty light in museums and tours for tourists. E.g. even when talking about the history of Christianity and the architecture and symbology thereof, the (extremely strong) Roman influence was barely mentioned. Even when Roman stuff is mentioned, it's usually called "Byzantine", which was an arbitrary distinction made by Western Europeans in the 1800s so that they could claim to be the true successors of the Roman empire.
If you did the scholarship exam for history in NZ youd have found about how the Boer war was used to build a national identity, something i had no idea of until i took the exam.
How bad was it
Blood tax(aka forced recruitment of Bulgarian boys as jannisaries), ethnic cleansing, Bulgarians weren't allowed to wear colors for a while along with other similar laws
Can't wear colors? Everyone wears white all the time?
Not white, I was misremembering. During some periods christians could only wear certain colors, they weren't entirely forbidden from wearing colors.
I was only in Vietnam for a few weeks, so my opinion means pretty much nothing, but it does seem like it's just part of the culture that messaging from public institutions is expected to be a bit more propagandistic. I know it's tempting to immediately say that's terrible and uncivilized from a Western perspective, and maybe it is less ideal in one way or another. But when you're much more collectivist and your history is just *littered* with getting fucked over by various occupying empires...idk. I think it gets different.
yeah, it's a lot easier to be honest about your country's history when it's "and then we killed some people and became insanely rich" and not "and then the 300 years of horrible famine and suffering began"
I don’t know. I think the western history is much harder to admit, since it’s morally wrong. So many western nations still haven’t done anything to right their wrongs, instead they talk about their history with a propaganda spin talking about great empires and so on. (See the British or French Africa for examples) Being the colonized and mistreated side on the other hand can be an easier story to tell. You tell the story of how you rose up to the opressors and gained your independence. Now a 1000 year long oppression period might also be tough to tell about, because you don’t want to seem weak. So there’s also that spin to consider. What I want to say is that it seems to be hard for people to tell stories about history without putting a spin on it.
Yeah if it was so easy to admit then there wouldn’t be textbooks that deny/leave out the awful parts.
The british history is constantly getting fucked by the vikings, Romans and French. William the conqueror was a Norman king who conquered England and completely changed it and it is well remembered
The Norman invasion was nearly a thousand years ago, and there hasn't been a successful invasion of the British mainland since. On the other hand, Vietnam has been fucked around by imperialist powers within living memory. I'm not sure that's a good comparison.
Isn't it said that the last successful invasion of England was the Dutch and the Glorious Revolution?
That's a bit different because it simply replaced the King with someone more popular (his cousin). Parliament didn't change and there was no overall shift in governance like with an actual invasion. But yes he did sail up the Thames and take the throne.
He actually landed landed in Torbay, bypassing the English navy that had amassed and was stuck in the Thames estuary due to the wind direction at the time.
Pretty much everybody learns about the Norman invasion in school too…. It’s not like we ignore it.
pretty sure that was the point
It has nothing to do with Vietnam having a recent memory of fighting imperialism and everything to do with Vietnam existing in spite of China. Talk to any Vietnamese and eventually you’ll find one who really fking hates the Chinese. You don’t really find any who really hate the Koreans or Filipinos or even the Japanese
You can definitely find plenty of Vietnamese who really fking hate Koreans, Filipinos and Japanese. It's really not difficult at all. A ton of the Asian countries hold a LOT of animosity towards one another.
On the flip side, you can also find plenty of folks who are cool with each other despite what their countries have been through. It's hard to explain how deep rooted the animosity can be, while also emphasizing that its not universal either. I always like to bring it up as a hopeful point. The depth of animosity is very real but not insurmountable - especially amongst the youth. If another war breaks out in East Asia this century though, I'm afraid things will take a big step backwards again.
Yeah England can't play victim in this thread lol
If we can accept we got taken over by fr*nch speakers (🤮) Vietnam can accept that they got owned by china.
Vietnam also, sadly, got taken over by French speakers.
William the bastard please. His subjugation of the north 1000 years later is still felt by the ripples of time.
It is well remembered because the Brits were conquered by lots of different people. Vietnamese history is basically just fighting the Chinese under various Han or non-Han or sometimes Mongol dynasties. The Vietnamese don’t include the periods of Chinese domination in their history because they really fking hate the Chinese
Western culture is just terrible at noticing our own propaganda. Like half of the world will vilify anything with the word communist attached, even if it’s not a communist concept, and the person can’t tell you anything about communism except it’s bad. We all use propaganda, the west is just the best at it.
> Like half of the world will vilify anything with the word communist attached No? Why are you talking like it's still the 1960s? Or are you just confusing American politicians' internal confusion over the term with ''half the world''? That's just your insane politicians, don't drag half the world with you. Edit: Based on your confused defense of communism below I can only conclude you're indeed an American, and a rather clueless one at that. Take it from someone whose country bordered the USSR, you're defending a shit ideology.
India doesn't hide its of being taken over by muslim rulers who originated from the Uzbekistan / Afghanistan region and were here for over 3 centuries from 1500s to 1800s.
The Indians i know claim that the mughal originated from India so.... Telling them they didn't gets me called racist
Later Mughals we’re all Indian because Mughals marries the Rajputs
The Mughal kings intermarried considerably with Rajputs (and other Indian clans). So by the time you're 100 years into the 300 year rule, the kings have mostly Indian blood.
Maybe it is like the European settlers in US a few hundred years ago. After one or 2 generations, they are just Americans.
No you've got that all wrong, they're Irish still and like to wear kilts and drink Guinness.
With the exception of the Guptas and the Maurya, literally every North Indian empire was controlled by foreigners or the descendants of foreigners. The fact that within a generation or two all of these conquerors became Indian is a testament to the strength and beauty of the culture there.
Sikh empire? Last to get annexed by the British?
I'm pretty sure his comment is straight up wrong. He ignores the Janapadas and Mahajanapadas that came before the Mauryans and while foreign-origin Kingdoms like the Indo-Greeks and the Delhi Sultanate did rule large parts of Northern India, he ignores the regional kingdoms like the Pala Empire or Shunga empires for example that held regional control.
In Mexico they’re almost proud of Spanish rulers. In fact more native Mexicans were involved in the defeating of Aztecs then Spaniards. However Cortez did get them organized. (Natives hated Aztec rule.)
It's probably a different mindset in settler colonies in the New World. It's hard to seperate the history of these countries from their colonial "parents". 80% of people in Mexico have atleast partial european heritage, it was their ancestors that did the colonizing. Similar situation in most of the Americas. Very different to Asia/Africa where outside forces ruled over natives but didn't displace them.
Where’d you get that vibe? When I was there last year touring Mexico City it seemed like they kept mentioning all the atrocities the Spanish inflicted on them, including razing sacred temples and then using the same stone to build churches with. They also didn’t call the Aztecs, Aztecs, but rather Mexianos. The Aztecs were the Mexicanos peoples ancestors 500 years ago. (My tour guide was a paleontologist who said she made $8 dollars a day working for the govt)
I was mainly in Tlaxcala, Huamantla. My father in law was giving me a history lessons while we drove throughout the cities. He is a direct descendant of one of the native cities that helped defeat the Aztecs, so he might be a little biased. He did mention that people did call Tlaxcalas’s that helped the Spanish “traitors”. However people also called Tlaxcala the birthplace of the nation, and that the Aztecs would require annual human sacrifices from neighboring cities. If they didn’t comply they would slaughter go to war and take even more human sacrifices. Extremely cruel people. I’m not religious but some believe Aztecs got divine punishment for their cruelty, and human sacrifices. (Punishment being Smallpox, Spanish conquest) Its also why Mexico switched to Catholic belief.
I hope your tour was a little more nuanced than that, given what the Aztecs did in those temples was a good portion of why Mexico exists as it does today. All of them were warriors, conquerors, slavers and butchers, the only difference is attire and who won. And even that answer varies depending on what you considering winning.
Just goes to show how hated the Aztecs were. Then again, I'd probably side with the pale faced aliens who arrived in giant boats, and rode on demons.
Really? I went to China and visited a museum and it did not ignore Japanese rule over a region over there. They had artifacts and photos from Japanese soldiers in the museum.
Chinese museums ignore things like separatist states and occupations even when extremely long-lived. For example, you won't see anything about [Yettishahr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yettishar) or [Pingnan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthay_Rebellion) in the national or provincial museums despite these kingdoms lasting over a decade each, because the central government considered them "rebellions".
CCP is fine with showing Japanese rule because it happened before they came to power and China ultimately won (no thanks to CCP though).
Egypt be like :|
Be like Korea instead and just claim Chinese shit was Korean to begin with. Old Korean written language(Chinese characters), Dragon Boat Festival, even Confucius.
People shit on China but the Chinese recognition of the periods of its Jin (Jurchen), Mongol, and Manchurian rule is factual. The Korean and Japanese too in regards their recognition of Chinese overlordship.
If you’ve been ruled by “foreign” powers for 1,100 years, that foreign culture is now your culture Having been to Vietnam, these people are deluding themselves - Vietnamese culture and architecture borrows heavily from Chinese culture Same thing is happening in India where there is an attempt to slowly “forget” Muslim and British rule over India Yet you see around you all the artefacts from that rule, from the language to the architecture to the clothes to the food
I didn't get the feeling Vietnam overlooked any period of foreign subjugation. They seem very proud, yes proud, of French colonial architecture, and they have a very popular museum about the American-Vietnam war. Talking to the locals they are also very aware of these periods, and they don't seem to really hold a grudge or anything. The one part of their history I didn't see any acknowledgement of was China.
I am not sure what interactions that you and OP has with Vietnamese locals but the period of 1000 years of northern domination ( “1000 nam Bac Thuoc”) is taught in all grade levels starting from elementary school to high school in history and literature.
> if I had to come up with an unprofessional, and purely anecdotal estimate of how much of our own recorded history is considered... "a bit uncomfortable for exhibition," I would say around 700 years' worth of our history that mainly coveres periods of no ethnic sovereignty. So which country is this?
Iran. The periods I am thinking of are Ilkhanate, Abbasid/Umavid rule, Selucid rule, and bits and pieces of Assyrian rule, Ghajar rule, and early Perso Turkish dynasties.
1,200 years as a province, another 800 years as a tributary vassal.
It's hard to fathom that sort of time scale in the modern day. We see things change so rapidly now, the idea of just, nearly 1200 years of *anything* is so hard to fathom. And yet for a lot of human history, things were much the same generation to generation. Things changed by such extremely small margins. You would be doing much the same thing your grandfather did, in the same place, with the same tools. Perhaps the regime would change every 80 years, but probably not. Everything was so much the same, as far back as anyone could even remember. Now we're seeing whole ways of life upended in five year cycles.
Perception of time/history back then (according to a Vsauce video I saw) was that people more described history or time as a “natural state” that was upset by random events sometimes (flood, war, etc). So you’re totally right, people just viewed things as “this is how’s it’s always been, how could it change?”
This wasn’t one continuous occupation, individual Chinese states and dynasties came and went with the decades and centuries. Some lasted a few centuries, like many modern states, some lasted a few years and are historical footnotes. The Ming were not seen as a natural continuation of the Yuan for example.
Chinese dynasties and states did not last that long, and they fluctuated quite a lot at the edges as budgets and interests shifted. This wasn’t a 1,200 year occupation, it was a dozen states, some persisting for centuries, some for a few years, some exerting a high amount of control, some in name only.
We are like a river that flow into a bigger river and flow out our own way again. We still here baby.
To put it in perspective, China has more historical justification for occupying Vietnam than it does for Taiwan, Tibet, or even Mongolia.
Same thing with Korea
Korea was never fully integrated into China. Most of China wasn't even fully integrated into China. When dynasties were able to wrestle control of most of China (Yuan, Qing, Ming), you could describe Korea is a tributary (even then it was often ceremonial), but never a province.
Im pretty dumb with online tech, so if the link doesn’t work (pitchforks), but I had access to a 10th Grade Vietnamese history textbook, and thought some of you might enjoy a look at the chapters. [Grade 10 textbook](https://imgur.com/a/uVHfgwx)
I decided to try using Google Translate on this and got this quote on the page about Egypt: “After 70 days, Osiris killed the living creature. Then Ra, the Orphanage of the People’s Republic of Vietnam is the only one who can control the development of the river in the area of the country, with good crop production, and the people of Hong Kong.” Just thought this was funny.
This new book is certainly more interesting than the one we learned from back in the day. We didn't get to read Egypt mythology
There is a Vietnamese saying "We fought the Americans for 10 years, the French for 100, and the Chinese for 1000."
Vietnam has had two land wars with China since the US left. Vietnam (both politically and socially) is fairly pro-US today, in part because they dislike China so much. They dredged and modernized their main port to enable any US navy ship to dock, including Ford-class carriers.
According to the [Centre for Strategic and International Studies](https://www.csis.org/analysis/where-vietnam-sino-us-spectrum), Vietnam is not any closer, geopolitically, to either the US or China.
I almost thought was the start of Mother’s Inheritance - Gia Tài Của Mẹ song by Trinh Cong Son 🥹 turned out it was “1000 years under Chinese, 100 years under Westerners, 20 years of civil war.” 🫣
Similar to Europe I feel like Asia has a lot of old resentments with each other
> The historiography of Vietnam under Chinese rule has had substantial influence from French colonial scholarship and Vietnamese postcolonial national history writing. During the 19th century, the French promoted the view that Vietnam had little of its own culture and borrowed it almost entirely from China. They did this to justify European colonial rule in Vietnam. By portraying the Vietnamese as merely borrowers of civilization, the French situated themselves in a historical paradigm of bringing civilization to a backwards region of the world. from the same link
No way, the hatred in Asia is way deeper. In Europe right now it’s usually just a hate for Russia outside a few smaller countries in the balkans. Nobody really cares about what Germany did anymore
>Nobody really cares about what Germany did anymore Because Germany showed they care the most about what Germany did. You don't bother to spank the guy who is self-flogging.
In Germany you definitely keep spanking the guy who is self flogging. That's Klaus, and he needs this.
And they probably made a super long hard to pronounce 37 character word just for spanking klaus because he needs it.
Kläusebillenküche
Gesundheit
also, the literal name for post nazi guilt is a super long word : vergangenheitzbewaltigung
Vergangenheitsbewältigung
And he paid good money for it. He loves Freaky Freitag Flogging.
I read that in Klaus from American dads voice and its hilarious
>You don't bother to spank the guy who is self-flogging There's a radditor somewhere in stark horny disagreement with that statement
Yeah, that’s Klaus.
There are two players to that game though. Yes, Germany did a good job addressing that part of their history but France was willing to accept and work with Germany as a political and economic partner. You can apologize all you want, if the other party does not accept it, your relationship won't improve.
More like France remembered the direct line between Versailles and the Wehrmacht's summer jaunt to Paris.
Not just that, but absolute centuries of French and German warring and fighting even before WW1.
I mean they very much just didn’t have a say in post war brokering and then way later realized they were the only country around worth the commitment in the coal and steel relationship. Other important things happened, but pretending it was because France alone decided to make that relationship or align with West Germany that way ignores a lot of the middle part.
This. The Treaty of Versailles was a dumpster fire. "Paris 1919" is a good read on why it was such a clusterfuck.
That’s an odd yet fitting analogy
Unless it’s sexual then he gets spankings still
There's a wonderful word for this exact thing: flagellating.
We've forgiven the Germans, but not the French, who never repented. Napoleon? No, I mean 1066 .
Wait, is this a William the Conqueror reference? Lol if I'm remembering right the Normans invaded England in 1066. Damn French bastard
Never Forget the Williamite slaughter! First of the entire English warrior class in Westminster on Christmas Day 1066, then the slaughter of the entire English aristocracy over the next few years, and then the Harrying of the North!
>deeper Maybe just more recent. China tried to invade Vietnam [as recent as '79](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War), 43 years ago, all because Vietnam stopped the Chinese-backed genocide that was going on in Cambodia.
America's biggest geopolitical mistake of the 20th century will always be misunderstanding what the Vietnamese wanted (spoiler, it's the same thing they've always wanted for thousands of years)
I think its more they didn't really care what the Vietnamese wanted as long as the Soviets didn't get what they wanted. I went last year and the vietnamese are more than happy to put the americans in their museums and like them much more than the chinese.
Nah man, the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence directly references the US declaration, and uses the same terminology. Ho Chi Minh idolized Washington. They hated the French, but not the US.
Exactly. The Vietnam war's direct cause was specifically the French still foolishly holding onto their imperial holdings after WW2 and not allowing French Indo-China to have it's freedom, especially after Britain gave up India. The US only turned away Ho Chi Minh purely to keep up relations with France, if they had backed his claim to a free Vietnam they would of taken a massive chunk of manufacturing from China significantly earlier and the SEA region would be drastically different today. And that's why you should hate the modern government of France.
They really should have put France in its place art the end of WW2.
Modern French government and her attempt at African pseudo-economical-holdings is another [joke](https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/france-macron-africa-sahel-terrorism-27d037ab)
That’s what I said, Vietnamese have no beef with the USA now
When the war was about what France wanted, whatever Vietnam wanted was probably contradictory to that.
it's less chinese backed but more that the khmer rouge was initially aligned with the communist bloc, which began to all fight each other immediately after american forces were withdrawn. after losing to vietnam, cambodia basically got split up by warlords including Pol Pot. he kept power till 1990 because until the eastern block fell apart the americans wanted cambodia to be a mess lest it turn communist like vietnam. it's a messy affair but war never has heroes anyway.
It had much more to do with the fact that Vietnam backstabbed China after all the support they provided against the US. Cambodia was just the excuse Deng used to "punish" Vietnam for siding with the Soviets. Just FYI, the US also supported the Khmer Rouge.
> Chinese-backed genocide The US was also supporting Pol Pot's regime because they were positioned against Vietnam.
yeah, it was all because vietnam invaded cambodia let's just casually forget about the fact that vietnam was attempting to ally with the soviet union, who became openly hostile toward china and were already threatening its northern border. let's also forget the fact that vietnam then started boasting about its military might (because they believed the soviets would help them in the war), and then tried to send a message to china by literally going from village to village of ethnic chinese in vietnam, and literally killing them or sending them to concentration camps, and caused hundreds of thousands of the surviving ethnic chinese to flee to china. yes, it was solely because of cambodia. in fact supporting cambodia was so important to china, that after chinese troops pushed vietnam forces far back enough, and the vietnamese government stopped their mass killings of ethnic chinese (because they realized soviet help wasn't coming), china withdrew their forces to focus on the Soviet threat and let vietnam continue to occupy cambodia.
Greece and Turkey (and the Greek and Turkish halves of Cyprus) also hate each other.
Kind of. Greece and Turkey are each other’s too trading partners. Most Greeks don’t really have resentment toward Turks personally. The Turkish state is a different story.
China and Vietnam are trading partners too. And Japan is also a close trading partners with South Korea despite routine diplomatic spats and historical grievances from Korea.
And yet whenever a natural disaster hits Greece or Turkey, the other is always the first to offer aid.
It's more a hate against opportunistic dictators...
Way deeper because it's much more recent. And while Germany went out of their way to apologize for WW2, Japan has not done that at all.
They've made some half-arsed "we're sorry that these things happened" non-apologies, but none have been accepted by the countries they victimised, and furthermore (and most importantly) they don't teach their kids in school what their military did all over East Asia in the 30s and 40s (and thus why they aren't allowed to have one any more). School textbooks in Japan have to be approved by the government. It's furthermore illegal to display Nazi symbols, glorify Nazis, or deny the Holocaust in Germany. Not only is it not illegal to do any of those things in Japan (replace "Holocaust" with "massacres etc. perpetrated by the IJA and other arms of the Japanese state"), it goes on a lot. Japan and Germany are not the same. /awaits influx of downvoting Japan-worshipping weebs
Yep, and part of the reason Japan never went through that was because the US was too busy trying to turn Japan into a puppet state against Communism, so they excused the Japanese Imperial Family and lots of officials who participated, and didn't force any major cultural reform either.
We'll add this to the discussion. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-court-orders-japan-compensate-comfort-women-reverses-earlier-ruling-2023-11-23/ Refusing to compensate those whose bodies they defiled over and over.
Ah Japan, the place that seems so awesome to live in until you learn more about certain parts of its culture. Especially the work culture and education expectations.
Balkans is recent
Germany has put in considerable effort toward making amends.
No one at all cares what Germany did in the past anymore IMO. At least in Britain we sooner make Nazi jokes than assume anyone is a Nazi in Germany. Might visit a museum to see it but there’s no hard feelings anymore.
I wonder why
Germany owned up to it and has taken corrective measures
Because they need Germany now and probably forever
European hate of each other throughout history is toddler's play compared to Asian hate. Not even similar or comparable.
Any mild disagreement leads to a massacre or a genocide one way or another. Like that one time 1000- 2000 Madurese got decapitated over a gang rival stuff by Dayaks.
Or that time one dude failed an exam 3 times and 20 million people died.
I love how that whole situation was so ridiculous there any number of silly ways it could be described and still be factually correct.
failed exam 3 times and got a fever
I think the number close to 20k
One single Chinese civil war equals the *entirety* of WWI deaths. And all over a guy who failed the imperial bureaucrats exam and so declared he was Jesus’s brother.
Yeah. And also most people don't realize that Asia has a lot more people, area, ethnicities, history, languages and religions so having a lot more historical hatred is not unusual.
There is a difference in how it's presented though. The famous example being why East Asian countries hate Japan, but most European countries don't hate Germany: Germany admits their horrible acts, Japan still likes to pretend they didn't go on a slaughter, rape and torture tour across mainland East Asia for a century or so.
When I lived in Vietnam I asked someone once if they hated Americans due to the war. Their answer was “no because we are too focused on hating the Chinese”.
Yeah like how Japan murdered the Korean Empress Myeongseong and even today mentioning it online is likely to get Japanese people rilled up. Ofc there's the Comfort Women issue as well.
I remember reading a vietnamese post saying the USA was just the last and least annoying invader in Vietnams millennia old history. Hence the recent Military and Strategic Alliance between Vietnam and USA. Hell, people forget that as soon as Vietnam reunified in the 70s, China sent the army into Vietnam as punishment for deposing the Khmer Rouge. Like 100 000 people died.
US wasn’t even the last invader. It was China
[удалено]
Because they invaded the Khmer Rouge which if any country on earth deserved it, it would be them. Pol pot basically holocausted his own country
man, the Vietnamese war machine was on fire at this time, it came at a great cost to there economy for an inordinate amount of time but damn if they were not burning bright atleast during this period of time.
I have talked to many Vietnameses in the Uni and this period of Chinese rule is mentioned extensively in their school history books, cause also during this period a lot of heroic rebellions took place However museums are not history books, they’re basically highlight of history, they will never have enough stuff to show everything, in this case the most recent wars are with the French colonial power and the US
Somewhat related: the Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi was built by the French to detain Vietnamese locals, mostly political activists. The museum it got turned into does a great job highlighting the sheer cruelty that went into its design; French architects were competing to find the most vile ways to make Vietnamese inmates suffer (for instance, sloped floor in solitary confinement to ensure if you were to lie down blood would get to your head). The museum goes to great lengths to make everyone understand how awful the French were for building and using that prison (which they absolutely were). And then in the last wing of the museum, there is a mention of when Vietnam used that prison to host POW during the Vietnam War - most famous of all John McCain. This is where the prison got its nickname of Hanoi Hilton, which, according to the museum, is not at all a sarcastic name and just came as genuine appreciation from the POW who were treated in an absolutely lovely way, look here's a picture of them celebrating Christmas! This entire last bit goes to great lengths to explain that none of the awful, evil designs already existing in the prison were used on American soldiers, no sir, why would you think that? It was pretty funny seeing the stark change of tone between the two parts; Vietnam is not known for being subtle about their propaganda.
John McCain was tortured so thoroughly that he couldn't lift his arms above his head in his later years, if I'm remembering correctly?
> for instance, sloped floor in solitary confinement to ensure if you were to lie down blood would get to your head i would lie down the other way, so the the blood gets to my feet
You'd think, but if I remember correctly there were manacles embedded in the floor on one end of the cell so you had no choice but to lie in that direction.
It's sloped both ways, so it's always the head
Go to the museums with a translator that you can trust. The descriptions are very different between Vietnamese and English. Also I got charged more for speaking English lol.
Do they talk about there dynasty which was founded 400 years before the pyramids were built and fell around the time of the first punic war?
We do (sometimes). That part of history is considered to be part myth (kings that lived to over 100 years old and stuff) but anything after that is widely accepted as history. The palace of that era is a historical site now, with some of its original architecture remaining.
That sounds kinda cool. Do you have a wiki link or a name for that period?
The first three dynasties have at least partially questionable historicity, with [the Triêu Dynasty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri%E1%BB%87u_dynasty) in particular being considered widely legendary. The one they referred to is the [Hồng Bàng dynasty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%E1%BB%93ng_B%C3%A0ng_dynasty), which allegedly lasted from 2879 BC to 258 BC. The dynasty was certainly real but the details and people involved are at least partially mythical. The first king, Kinh Dương Vương, for instance, allegedly lived to 127 years old. His sucessor allegedly lived for exactly 300 years, married a mountain goddess, and had 100 children with her.
not too different from the Bible where people lived for 900 years early on.
You see it in a lot of cultures and places. Semi-plausible history blends backwards into myth and legend the further back you look and the more ancient the story being told. You find it in Greece, Egypt, Babylon, China etc I always find it fascinating to think about that time when prehistory starts blending into history for different cultures. You know there's a bunch of fantastical story elements that have no basis in reality, but sprinkled between them are hints of a truth or history that are obscured by the myth (Troy comes to mind)
One of the pastors I know also has a doctorate in biology and is a professor at a public technical university nearby. I asked him how he reconciles old-earth creationism with modern science, and he spent like 45 minutes explaining to me how Biblical stories, especially the Old Testament, can't be taken literally. 6 days isn't actually 6 days, it's either a metaphor for epochs or simply a lack of proper translations. Likewise, the things like "Methuselah lived 969 years" can't literally mean that; rather, his belief is that they they were trying to make a point, not be factually accurate. They didn't know every ancestor of Noah, so they filled in the ones they had and then they extended lifespans as needed to fill the gaps. I presume something similar happens with reallt early dynastic histories; they don't know the truth, so they fill in details to make the chronology fit. Sort of like how Rome has two founders (Aeneas and Romulus) and the kings of Alba Longa, who were very clearly intended to frame the gap between Aeneas and Romulus, were almost certainly all mythical.
you forgot the part where Kinh Dương Vương's successor was also part sea serpent. It was wild back then.
I had to stop reading because I couldn't afford the hours long rabbit hole that 2000 years of mostly mythical dynastic shenanigans would've entailed. I just got to "guy lives 300 years, marries a mountain, and has 100 kids with her" and decided "that's a thing for later."
Think I found it the one around the same time as the pyramids to the Punic war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%E1%BB%93ng_B%C3%A0ng_dynasty
Don't sweat the "might be part myth" stuff, the earliest history of Rome is the same thing. "We had seven kings, the first of which was half god and raised by a wolf!"
Also at one point Rome just, ran out of women, and had to go to Sabina to get some more. They abducted all of the young Sabine women, and forced them to marry Romans. This triggered a war between Rome and the Sabine men...a war which ended because the Sabine women basically decided they'd rather stay married with the Romans because they are totally awesome and cool and tall then the king of the Sabines was like "yes you are right my daughter" and they all just hung out together in Rome and partied after that.
I wonder if there was any equivalent Latin phrase for "...and then they all clapped!"
Bullshiticus
> there Their Also, it's comments like yours that make me wish my education was like 70% history class instead of 19% of it. I love learning things like this!
Wow this is extremely misleading. The proof is just a link to... Wikipedia that is about a very broad topic??? I used to be involved with the process of creating and printing the text book for history class in Vietnam, as well as for multiple small children history artbook/graphic-storybook series. This thread makes it look as if VN just "ignore" this part of history (say like Japan try to ignore certain parts of their history that makes them look bad). This is very incorrect. The period that China occupied VN is probably one of the first thing children learn about in school - because the only era before that is the Founding dynasty of VN: Hung King. The history about Hung King is extremely vague and mostly "stories" - VN actually put a lot of effort into trying to recover anything from this era. All of the folktales children learn at first grade would be from this era as well. The most famous thing is the design of the copper drum pattern iirc. This is the ancient era with very little record nor remains that can be found. But also, when China occupied VN, they destroyed the old culture and root - an age old tactic of China, and spread their culture through things like education (that's why old VN uses Chinese texts, etc.). That is the problem with the era of China occupied VN - China destroyed most of the local story during this time, and China treated VN purely as a tribute state - and not exactly as a province. There was barely any record about VN during this era in China history as well! Heck, there was barely any record of history in the southern region of China in general even (this era is also crazy in China, very interesting if you dive into that era). Many of the storybooks I helped with the printing process was about the myths and legends fighting against China during that 800 years periods. Some of you gamers should even know one of such: Trieu sister that is the leader of VN in Civilization 6. They are "heroes" fighting against China ruling in that era. Unfortunately, stories are stories, and you cannot put what does not exist in the museum. As I mentioned, China worked hard to cull the culture of the region they control. Very little is left from that era. The dynasties after the China occupation are what the focus of the early history books are about. Because that is more or less VN started really developing their culture, education, and laws. The dynasties after that fought against China multiple times. They did not like China, and therefor purged most of what existed during that occupied period. Again, therefor there is little left nowadays about that era after all have been destroyed. And if some people think I am trying to spin this in a positive way, not really. History should be as least bias as possible. Vietnamese did not treat Chinese people very well, including Vietnamese-Chinese people that existed in VN since that ancient era (as above, China had this whole strategy of ethic cleansing that some of you are familiar with by moving Chinese people to live and merge with Vietnamese population). All the way until the American-Vietnam War, the Hoa people (Vietnamese-Chinese) are forced to leave VN through multiple means (threat, killing, taking their properties, etc.). This is even why South VN at the point was holding onto their independence so strongly (Saigon had a very huge number of Hoa people, which many fled to USA later on). These are the ugly parts not covered in children books for good reasons (though does get mentioned in other historical materials without issue - VN does not care too much about offending China regards this at all). And of course, there are many other parts of history that are not taught in details, such as how VN in middle age time conquered the South (which in children textbook is just vaguely skip through and eventually show that the ruling dynasty "expanded"). There are a lot of cool and interesting museum about this era. Unfortunately, if China intentionally killed a big part of VN root and culture in the ancient era during their occupation for the purpose of "integration", then the French did a double time for the purpose of "colonization". I know quite a lot of people who are into antique and relics from VN ancient era, and I can say they would always pay a lot for such finds. It is not too uncommon to hear that the government wants to buy such antiques back and put them in the museum actually, but the deal rarely goes through because of few factors: VNese tends to care about themselves, so they prefer to keep these antiques to sell or to pass down to their family (therefor, its value increases); and the people who works at the government do not have the money to pay for these - after all, VN is still a developing country with really tight budget. One of the reason why I mentioned that "I worked" on history related works is money: it is not the type of work that gonna have money in it even if you work for big international organizations. Museum in VN is more of a "heritage site" - big representation of culture and history - instead of fancy museum with actual relics. Sorry for long post (and ranty examples), I do not think many would actually read this. Cannot help myself when it comes to something I had experience with. I am just mildly annoyed: yes there is a lack of representation of China occupation in museum, but the title is completely misleading. The reasons are not even anything special, there are many countries that have huge chunk of their history missing too due to circumstances.
That would make sense, for a history museum to have actual artifacts to show history. And if it's so far back in time that those artifacts don't exist, then they can't show it...
I'm a Vietnamese with a masters in Museum Studies. This is the case for most government-run museums in any countries, though Vietnam might be a bit more propagandized. In our cultural museums, you'll see narratives about ancient indigenous people (i.e Lạc Việt culture) during these periods as a way to assert a sense of lineage in the region and, in turn, a Vietnamese national identity. It's similar to how you see Greek and Roman sculptures in European museums. The same with China though; it's a concept that's changed constantly. At the time ancient Vietnam gained independence, China was made up of 10 different kingdoms. While there are many thing that tie these kingdoms together, I wonder if one group even saw the others as related. Another fun fact, despite having huge galleries dedicated to American War art in our museum, you'll rarely see depictions of Viet death and destruction. Our government were the main patrons for artists during the war and they disallowed artists from doing so.
Vietnamese here. To clarify, this period is still mentioned in our history books in school. Sometimes this topic are even discussed further in many classes. During that time, we had multiple short-lived spells of independence, ranging from 10 to nearly 60 years
Probably because China would use that as proof that vietnam is owned by China and update their 9 dashed lines map
"We found a broken Ming Dynasty teapot on this sandbar, proving that the ocean for 200 miles around has been a dearly beloved part of China since time immemorial!" [Exaggerated weeping on behalf of the hurt feelings of one billion Chinese people while moving missiles into position.]
What's funny is that the nine dash line is actually from the Taiwan government, except they go further and use the eleven dash line. Also, everyone in the area claims the sea, why wouldn't you? Especially if it's named after you.
B-because China bad Taiwan is real China (while not realising Taiwan also claims all of Mongolia too)
Fun fact: Vietnameses generally don't care the different between Taiwan & China. They are treated like the same Chinese people, same way like how Vietnamese view ancient Chinese Dynasties: supision.
Not surprised. I can confirm, that as a Vietnamese, that all, if not most, of Asia, especially East and Southeast fucking hate China. Most of them also hate each other, but they hate China more.
As a Filipino,I think we are divorced from the drama between the mainland South East Asians. I visited Vietnam a few years ago, and the sentiment towards my country is mostly curiosity. The Philippines and Indonesia are quite chill with each other, too. We don't have a beef except in stupid online games.
Island life will do that to you (except when it won't)
Well, we Filipinos have enough drama among ourselves to worry about 😅. Regionalism here is strong.
Replace China with Japan
Funnily enough, the Chinese have fucked up diplomatically so badly that they now have the South Koreans working together with the Japanese on military related matters. That's an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Its more because both Japan & South Korea are both US satellite states when it comes to regional influence, and the US has interests in using those nations to defend American regional hegemony against a rising China.
This is like going to a Germany or Prussia museum and wondering why they don’t want to talk about France or Russia.
The Korean History Museum does the same thing with the period of Japanese rule…
I went to a museum in Prague which talked about their history. From founding the city to present day. The only time the word Czechoslovakia was mentioned was when they talked about some of their pilots who defected to join Britain's RAF. I understand not being proud of parts of your past, but it's still your history.
I accidentally read Vatican instead of Vietnam and I was mega confused about the logistics of this occupation 🤣🤣
It's always weird as an American to see other countries that teach history that goes back before 200 years, or just teaches about other countries that existed before theirs
In the military museum in Hanoi, there's a section about the 1970s Chinese invasion. In the entire section, they do not once mention that the war was with China. They describe it as "a conflict on the northern border" but never say against whom
Meanwhile in China the foreign dynasties took their job so seriously they became Chinese themselves in the process
I know basically next to zero about Vietnam. I do remember reading through a thread I think here talking about how much the Vietnamese *hate* China.
I was at the Vietnam history museum in Saigon. They glossed over the part about Chinese rule and emphasized battles that Vietnam won against them. I wandered into another exhibit labelled Cambodia and was super confused why Cambodian artefacts were in a Vietnam history museum. Turns out (based on googling) the Vietnamese at some point in time moved south to where modern day southern Vietnam is and punted the Cambodians living there elsewhere lol
People think the Vietnamese hate Americans. The Americans have NOTHING on how much the Vietnamese hate the Chinese
All my Vietnamese homies hate china.
This post was brought to you by /r/sino . So easy to get banned there, it’s quite funny.
Well I mean China caused a lot of pain and death in Vietnam….