Customer Reviews

The Birth of Vietnam

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This is, by far, the most authoritative work in English about the history of Vietnam from prehistory to 974 AD.

The Vietnamese (Lac people as they were called at the time) were part of the Dong Son civilization, which was characterized by its bronze drums depicting aquatic scenery. Over the years, they brought to the Asian culture the "pho", the "ao dai", various musical instruments, poetry, and so on.

But what defined the Vietnamese is their indomitable aspiration for freedom. They just wanted to be left alone, therefore, were not always seen as "actors", but "reactors" to events around them. Despite being dominated for along time by the Chinese and the French, they yearned to live in a free country.

Sandwiched between giant China in the north and the kingdoms of Champa and Khmer in the south, they knew a long time ago they were not Chinese and, therefore, refused to remain enslaved by them. The Trung sisters (see book of same name) revolted against the Chinese and reigned as the first and only Queens of Vietnam until 42 AD. Defeated by Ma Yuan, they fell back under Chinese influence until 939 AD until Ngo Quyen was brilliant enough to recover the country's independence.

The period covered by Taylor represented the difficult times the Lac people went through to mature into an organized society strong enough to free themselves from the Chinese. Besides the Trung Queens, many others had tried unsuccessfully over the years to free from the Chinese yoke. The birth of Vietnam was thus not a smooth and normal one: it was the result of a series of abortive rebellions until its final success in 939 AD.

I don't think one needs to engage in chest-thumping nationalism to praise Taylor's work. The book is a beautiful example of solid scholarship. Taylor uses both Chinese and Vietnamese primary sources and compares them to give a more realistic picture behind the nationalist myths that Vietnamese schoolchildren (both North and South) have been taught for decades. Taylor also draws upon a large body of secondary sources in Chinese, Vietnamese, French, English, and Japanese. I doubt that there is ANY scholarship on this period of Vietnamese history in either Vietnamese or English that is of a higher quality than this. A work of lucid writing founded on excellent research.

To me, a Vietnamese, born and grew up in Vietnam but being educated from both countries, this book is amazing. I read it so many times and still see new aspect everytime I read it again. If you want to understand about Vietnamese history and culture, particularly their relationship to China - no matter you are a Vietnamese living abroad or a foreigner - I highly recommend you to take time reading this precious book. Thanks a zillion to Keith for his enormous effort and relentless interest in Vietnamese history.

Exhaustive compilation of the record of how the Viet reacted to 1000 years of Sino rule. Good for an academic source, but the book does not make original strides. Author wants to make sense of his history as a veteran. I read it in anticipation of a trip there and it did give me an ancient sense of the culture i was about to engage in. Lots of emphasis on the dark side of history: beheadings, mass executions etc. The book is Ha` noi^. centric and deals with the 1000 years prior 936ad.

In this book you will find the unknown origins of the Viet race and their way of life prior to recorded history and their first contact with their historical enemy, the Chinese.It is a fascinating insight of a rich and often overlook culture which is now beginning to emerge as an important contributor to world culture and history

The Birth of Vietnam by Keith Weller Taylor is a must read for those who are into Vietnamese history because it covers in depth the rise and fall of dynasties such as, the Hong Bang, Au Lac, Trieu Da, Trung, Ba Trieu, Ngo, and Dinh, though the Trung and Ba Trieu were more like brief insurgencies rather than dynasties, and also the Chinese dynasties in Vietnam such as, the Qin, Han, Tang, Liang, Sung, Yuan (Khubilai Khan Mongols), and Ming. It also covers empires such as Funan, Chenla, and Lin I later called Champa, and the flowering of Buddhism in Vietnam. And since so much research went into the book, it makes a must read for Vietnamese history enthusiasts.

this book will let the world knows who were the true one that came up with such inventions instead of the Chinese as previously thought.

Regarding the claim that Vietnamese 'do not have much history' it is utterly crap. Of course they have had a recorded history of more than 2000 years, even longer than that of Japan, even though for a significant part of their history they were a part of imperial China. But the history of East Asia is such that all the 4 member countries are intertwined together inseparably.

For another disinterested, balanced view of the development of the East Asian civilization, you can read the book Genesis of East Asia by Holcombe. There is no such thing as a pure race. Many southern Chinese share the same ancestry as the Vietnamese, especially the Cantonese, many whom also descended from the Dong son culture. In pre-imperial China, southern China was home to mainly Austro-asiatic peoples (as well as Tai and Austronesian) of which the Mon-Khmer people are also part of this linguistic family. The ancient Warring States of Wu & Yue in eastern China were possibly Austro-asiatic states which adopted the Zhou culture. Even the state of Chu was of a mixed population of Zhou and non-Zhou peoples. From the Qin & Han dynasties onwards, Sinitic peoples started to colonize south China including at that time the Red River delta area and began a process of sinicization there where they introduced aspects of their language and culture. It was a two way processThe Sinitic settlers not only introduced their immigrant culture, but they also absorbed much from the local cultures such as the Dong Son culture. There are many factors influencing as to why the other 'Viets' (or 'Yue', of Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong) became Chinese while the Viets of Vietnam retained aspects of their original language and culture, not least of all, the size of the colonies, the distance from the rest of the population. The result is that the mixed populations in the 3 Chinese provinces identified with being 'Chinese' while the mixed populations in Vietnam identified with being 'Vietnamese' irrespective of their actual ancestry. This shared roots cannot be denied. A similar situation may be made with Korea, where the mixed populations identified with being 'Koreans' rather than 'Chinese. In the ancient world, there is no such thing as Chinese, or Vietnamese or Korean or Japanese etc.. People were much more adaptable and switch their speech and culture to whatever is most convenient. Only later do ethnic and national identities come into play. Even the same may be said of the European peoples.

First of all, I 'd like to say Thank you to Canadian Maple Leaf for your excellent commenting job on that Communist. I praise you for having by far such a good knowledge of Viet Nam history. You're the few Westerners who truly know what you're talking about when it comes to South-East Asia.
Ironically, the person who knows the most about Viet Nam is not Vietnamese and the person who lives in Vietnam doesn't know anything about the country he lives in.
The Communists in Viet Nam either have put our intellectuals, scientists, religious and political leaders (others than Communists) in jail or Re-education camps or chased them off from the country.
The Communists, much like Hitler did for Germany, have vowed to clean Viet Nam from all its cultural values and history by burning books and tearing down monuments and re-write Viet Nam history according to them.
So you can only expect so much when it comes to logical arguments or even good knowledge of history or political subjects when talking to one of them.
This is just to give you all a perspective of what is happening.

Well... enough of the political side. Back to the book.

It is an awesome book people! Read it if you'd like to learn more about Viet Nam History. A great job by the author in putting together so much details and researches. Many Foreigners as much as Vietnamese will learn a lot from this book.
Viet Nam has 4,000 years of history; much of it has been lost during the last 50 years, mainly because of the war and cleansing by the Communists.
This book compiled a great deal of information for people like me who'd like to start piecing together the "whole picture". Because I would have not been allowed to do so in Viet Nam.

Thanks.

Your ignorance surprises me. You lack knowledge in almost all fields of Vietnamese history! People in VIETNAM resent Communist rule, Vietnam was at a much better economic (some might say at a boom) before the war started. China only supplied the knife which rammed into the hearts of the Vietnamese people. There's a reason why Vietnam today is moving farther and farther away from Communism and more and more towards Capitalism.

The native language of the Yueh tribe was not Cantonese. Your conclusion is once again a product of ingnorance. You are probably Chinese, and Cantonese. The Cantonese langauge can be translated to Yue, and the Cantonese can be identified as a group of people who has Yueh blood, but the Cantonese language was not the language of the Yueh. It's only a coincident that the Chinese language use the same word for the ancient people and the Cantonese langauge. The langauge and people have no connection, or very little connection at all. The southern Fukienese are actually more Yueh than the Cantonese are. The Yueh had their own ancient language, which was so different from what Cantonese is that it wouldn't be considered Cantonese. The Yueh spoke a language which was most likely the ancestor language of Vietnamese and, to an extent, Cantonese. But like Latin and it's descendents, French can't be called the language of the Romans, nor can Italian be. You're general lack in Vietnamese history, and general lack in logic, analytical and thinking skills astonishes me.

Vietnamese and Chinese are brothers, but the Yueh kingdom of Vietnam, of which the Vietnamese people are direct descendents from (recorded by Chinese and Vietnamese records if you ever have the urge to actually learn something), lived adjacent to the ancient Chinese kingdoms. Vietnamese nationalism is a show of loyalty to that original blood, not to what the Chinese gave us. If Vietnam was actually part of that original Chinese kingdom and broke off, then yes, we would be a derivative, but we didn't. We were separate, got conquered, then separated once again. We were a different entity, even during times of being conquered.

And if you learn some Viet history, the Chinese has ALWAYS been our MOST HATED FOE. Since 2500 years ago when you first fought our people.