Talk:Kingdom of Vietnam

{{WikiProject Vietnam|class=|importance=}}

What is the scope of this article, when did "The Kingdom of Vietnam" start and when did it end? How did it function? Is it the same thing as the Empire of Annam? --Donald Trung (talk) 17:05, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

This doesn't really read like this is supposed to be a concise article, rather it seems to be the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period of Vietnamese history and then pretend that the state somehow stopped existing in 1884, this is bad historiography and seems to push a POV that doesn't conform with mainstream Vietnamese historiography. --Donald Trung (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Laska666: This article sounds like a hoax. During the Nguyen Dynasty, the country was briefly called "Việt Nam" for 35 years (1804-1839), then "Đại Nam" for the next 135 years. The name "Việt Nam" did not reemerge until 1945. Searching for "Đại Việt Nam quốc" did not return anything reliable using this term, just some alternate history forum. Seems like an attempt at revisionist history. DHN (talk) 07:13, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@DHN:, "hoax" is a strong word here but it is POV pushing historiography, this article should be merged with the Nguyễn Dynasty article or renamed to something like "Independent Nguyễn dynasty", this user misinterprets reliable sources by anarchronistically inserting the term "Kingdom of Vietnam" and often they just omit any Nguyễn history following the French conquest. This article only covers the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period of Vietnamese history. I am convinced that the user pushes their POV in some contexts for example "Royal Vietnamese army" just randomly stops at 1802 despite the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia having separate articles for Vietnamese militaries per dynasty. I think that this user makes a lot of Great articles but they seem to deliberately omit information about the Nguyễn following them becoming two French protectorate countries and this article is the epitome of this "cut-off" date. Please also see this comment and this comment.

My impression is that the user wants to make Vietnamese history "more Southeast Asian" and "less Chinese/"East Asian". I understand that this user dislikes using the term "Dynasty" for Vietnamese States, but even Chinese "dynasties" weren't called "Ming Dynasty" but "Great Ming" so they fail at actually differentiating between the dynasty and state using the mainstream historiography so they use the term "Kingdom of Vietnam". --Donald Trung (talk) 07:33, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Please add your opinion to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kingdom of Vietnam. DHN (talk) 07:59, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@DHN:, I can't, I used emoji's in my signature and was therefore banned from almost all namespaces on the Enwiki. I suggest merging it with the Nguyễn Dynasty article (you may copy my response), this name was used between 1804 and 1839 but is a bad (hoax) name for 1802-1803 and 1840-1945. A lot of the content is reliably sourced but uses POV naming schemes. I actually am happy with Laska666 finally adding a lot of early Nguyễn Dynasty articles, just not their bad historiography naming scheme.

More often than not (s)he uses the term "Nguyễn Vietnam" (written as "Nguyen Vietnam") which is a legitimate name like "Ming China" and "Qing China", but the issue is that this user pushes a number of POV's including the 1883/1884 end date and the idea that "Vietnamese dynasties aren't Chinese dynasties" in its historiography, thus making Vietnamese dynasties more like "House of Habsburg" and "House of Windsor" in European articles. --Donald Trung (talk) 08:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@BilledMammal:, well, the period you're referring to is the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period, the POV being pushed is the extinction of the Nguyễn state in 1884. The "Nguyễn dynasty" article isn't about the ruling family like how Lê dynasty and Trần dynasty aren't exclusively about the ruling family. In Vietnamese historiography (like in Chinese historiography) the name of the ruling family is applied to the period, this works somewhat similar to the European Habsburg Monarchy article but not completely. There actually already was an article about this period but it covers the whole period from 1802 until 1945.

The Vietnamese-language Wikipedia doesn't make this distinction for example (despite having separate articles for the agriculture, military, and every provincial official title of the same period) because of the fact that this wasn't a distinct state and the line becomes blurry where the "Nguyễn Dynasty ends" and the French colonial administration begins and the Nguyễn government remained nominally in power until 1945. I am not opposed to an article about the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period. But it doesn't need to re-write history. --Donald Trung (talk) 08:31, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Interesting; thank you for letting me know. I do need to read more into South-East Asian history when I find time. BilledMammal (talk) 08:35, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Vietnamese history should be view more as "a hybrid of East Asian and South-East Asian history", it is "a Chinese cultural country" but its history is intertwined with that of other Indochinese countries (like Thailand, Champs, Lan Xang, Cambodia, Tran Ninh, Etc.), a common problem is with some historians trying to neatly organise Vietnam as "exclusively South-East Asian" while other historians paint it as "exclusively Chinese" but both of these are extreme points of view and this article tries to paint it more like the former. --Donald Trung (talk) 09:22, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I find it very cringe labellijg any country in South East Asia as one whole group together like how East Asia, Europe, Central Asia, etc... is grouped together into one each category as if they are all similar to each other. And you know who coined this term up? Some random old white guy. South East Asia is very diverse, perhaps the only countries that can actually relate to each other in that category are Indonesians, Malaysians, Philippinos and Singaporeons of non-Chinese descent aka Malays, Javanese who are the true inhabitants of maritime South East Asia. Khmers and Thais have more history related to each other culturally. The genetics of each; maritime South East Asia, Khmers, Thais, Vietnamse are actually all different and hence their history cannot be all categorized into "South East Asia".Norewritingofhistory (talk) 04:07, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

That applies to the entire world, there is no "East African" either as the Masai are extremely different from the people of Zanzibar. The thing is that there are "models of historiography" and different historians apply them different, with South-East Asia some historians claiming that before European contact South-East Asia was a Mandala of loosely connected peoples and then European colonisation and contact introduced modern nation states, while other Eurocentric historians completely ignore the period the period of Javanese imperialism and colonisation. With Vietnam different historians have different opinions and generally speaking Vietnamese history is divided into dynasties like Chinese history, but the author of this page is attempting to re-write history by making "Đại Việt" into a continuously existing state and then "Nguyễn Vietnam" as a separate state, if you look at "Royal Vietnamese army" they reduce all different militaries in Vietnamese history before 1802 as this supposed military unit, but this term and this supposed military literally doesn't exist anywhere outside of Wikipedia. They are actively attempting to re-write history to fit their nationalist (anti-"Chinese") perspective. --Donald Trung (talk) 16:04, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

While this article was likely created to be about the pre-French period of the Nguyễn Dynasty the lead actually goes further into the State of Vietnam period, most of the content is fine but it uses ahistorical names. In some cases it tries to push what I would like to call "the Vua angle", "Vua" is the Chinese word for "sovereign" that Vietnamese and Korean people at times use in lieu of the official title of a monarch and most "common people" during Vietnamese history called the monarch a "Vua" despite the monarch using either "King" (Vuong) or "Emperor" (Hoang-De), personally I prefer official titles but this user writes a bit as if the informal name was the official name and the official name was some sort of "Chinese-style" diplomatic name.

This user seems aware of all the correct historiography but pushes an alternative interpretation, I cannot comment on their motives but assume that it is to "de-sinicise" Vietnamese history.

The flag isn't exactly ahistorical but the Vietnamese didn't have a concept of a national flag (國旗, Quốc kỳ) until the 1860's. --Donald Trung (talk) 09:22, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

"On 9 June 1885, Vietnam ceased to exist after 83 years as an independent state." This is actually the main reason why people see this article as "a hoax", the French protectorate treaty never dissolved the Nguyễn state, in fact if one goes over to the articles and even the worst treaty never specified the extinction of the State this article refers to as the "Kingdom of Vietnam", a good comparison would be Kingdom of Cochin which existed until 1949, but became a British protectorate in 1814, before that it existed in the Portuguese colonial empire and the Chinese tributary system and many maps of the Mughal Empire include it as well. The issue is that many modern historians have what I would like to call "the problem of dividing Vietnam into neat periods" where the French period starts either with the capture of Saigon or the Protectorate Treaty but the Nguyễn Empire actually continues to exist until 1945, some historians recognise the overlapping authorities while others prefer the cut off date, this user prefers the French period as a completely separate historical period interpretation. There is no issue with separating a state into periods, for example Trienio Liberal and the Ominous Decade can both be "sub-histories" of the History of Spain (1810–1873). But the notion of a "Kingdom of Vietnam" pretends that there was this separate kingdom created in 1802 that ceased to exist in 1885 that means that one has to ignore a mountain range of history books that cover the continued history of the Nguyễn until 1945. This is all to say that I am not opposed to the existence of this article but it should be appropriately named like "Sovereign Nguyễn dynasty period" or something similar, "Nguyễn Vietnam" is actually used by some historians (can't recall ever having across the "Kingdom of Vietnam") but again some historians continue using it for the French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin while others stop using it at the French protectorate treaty. History is gray and this article attempts to make it Black and White not through argumentation but by omission of information. For example Nội các explicitly states "The Grand Secretariat or the Cabinet (Vietnamese: Nội các) of the Nguyen dynasty were the highest branch of the Kingdom of Vietnam's government (1802–85).", but the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia states "Năm Bảo Đại 3 (1934), cơ quan Nội các được bãi bỏ và thay thế bằng cơ quan Ngự tiền văn phòng cho đến cuối thời vua Bảo Đại, vị vua cuối cùng của triều đại Nguyễn." ("In the year Bảo Đại 3 (1934), the Cabinet (Nội các) was abolished and replaced by the office of Ngự tiền until the end of the reign of Sovereign Bảo Đại (1945), the last Sovereign of the Nguyễn Dynasty.") this should give you a good idea how history can be re-written by using reliable sources but then omitting important information to push a narrative. --Donald Trung (talk) 09:44, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Some more comments, this article likely exists because of Laska666' mentality that "The Chinese concept of a dynasty or state shall not to be adopted upon other civilisations without careful check.", but the Vietnamese concept of a dynasty is directly analogous and such confusion only exists in English because in Vietnamese we use two different terms, namely "nhà" (茹) which refers to the imperial family and at times their domain and "Triều đại" (朝代) / "Triều" (朝) which is the dynastic state, Nhà Nguyễn and Triều Nguyễn are similar but different concepts and fully overlap, hence are treated interchangeably in Vietnamese and is also why in English these terms all get translated as "dynasty". Furthermore, Chinese dynasties also had official names for their states, the Manchu Qing Dynasty referred to itself quite often using the term "Trung Quốc" (中國，"The Central State" or perhaps better "The Central Realm") and the Tang Dynasty called itself at times, though not commonly, "Chi Na" (支那, a romantic name for China from Sanskrit). The problem here is that in Vietnamese multiple words exist for what in English only has one word, for example if used in the right context ấn triện (印篆), ấn chương (印章), ấn tín (印信), Bảo (寶), Tỷ (璽), Ấn (印), Chương (章), Ấn chương (印章), Kim bảo tỷ (金寶璽), Quan phòng (關防), Đồ ký (圖記), Kiềm ký (鈐記), Tín ký (信記), Ấn Ký (印記), Trưởng ký (長記), and Ký (記) can all be translated into English with a single word "Seal". In Vietnamese all these words have different functions depending on the type of seal, but in English these are all simply "seals", hence the term "Dynasty" being somewhat confusing, this is because a Triều nominally rules over Thiên hạ ("All under heaven"), but a Quốc only rules over its territory, in pre-20th century Vietnamese thinking a close approximation with modern thinking is that a Triều is a sovereign state, but only one sovereign state exists and it rules over the entire universe, but only when talking to Vietnamese subjects when China is involved it becomes "Emperor at home, king abroad". Translating such concepts to "a modern-thinking mind" is difficult onto itself "dynasty" isn't incorrect in the context of the Nguyễn to refer to its government because it refers to "Triều Nguyễn". This is why I strongly oppose deleting this article and simply merge it with the Nguyễn Dynasty article or explicitly make it into a sovereign Nguyễn period article (because it contains a lot of factual and well-sourced information but uses a bad translation), but the current naming convention is literally just combining the fact that historians use the term "Vietnam" and call it sometimes a "Kingdom" or an "Empire", but when writing these books people use modern names to make things easier for the readers, books about the Mongol invasions of Đại Việt also often call it "Vietnam" and sometimes a "Kingdom" or an "Empire". This article just seems to apply it specifically to the pre-French period of the Nguyễn. --Donald Trung (talk) 18:56, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Another example of "creating a narrative by omission" is this:

• https://vi.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tr%E1%BA%A5n_T%C3%A2y_Th%C3%A0nh&oldid=65108030
  • Vietnamese-language Wikipedia's article about Trấn Tây Thành.

• https://www.search.com.vn/wiki/?lang=en&title=T%C3%A2y_Th%C3%A0nh_Province&oldid=1036774235
  • Laska666' version of the Trấn Tây Thành article.

• https://www.search.com.vn/wiki/?lang=en&title=T%C3%A2y_Th%C3%A0nh_Province&oldid=1037004733
  • The current Trấn Tây Thành article.

Let me start by saying that I am really grateful for Laska666 to have written this article, while I plan on expanding it in the distant future I am glad that someone finally made it as it took years before the Early Nguyễn period isn't that well covered here on the English Wikipedia. That aside, y'all can clearly see that Laska666' version omits all references to Chinese characters and "Chinese-looking symbols" and it didn't translate anything that contains Chinese characters. This user seems to try to project modern Vietnam into the past, they avoid using Traditional Chinese characters wherever possible and this isn't an issue by itself as other users can later add them, it just strikes me as an oddity. Furthermore, compare these two:

• https://www.search.com.vn/wiki/?lang=en&title=Military_of_Nguyen_Vietnam&oldid=1036962808

• https://vi.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Qu%C3%A2n_%C4%91%E1%BB%99i_nh%C3%A0_Nguy%E1%BB%85n&oldid=65283188

Now, specifically look at the text "The Imperial army (Vietnamese: Quân thứ) were the military forces of the unified Vietnamese monarchy from 1802 to June 1885 when it was dismantled and converted into colonial units under French command.", while the Vietnamese-language infobox maintains the 1884 end date, it actually contains information for its 1885 size, but the issue here at hand is the narrative that the Nguyễn state ceased to exist and therefore its military became "colonial units" in 1885, but this is simply not true. The military of the Nguyễn Dynasty was deliberately reduced like had happened with the German military after they lost World War I and the Weimar Republic was allowed to have a small number of soldiers, the Nguyễn Dynasty maintained a number of soldiers, in Tonkin they were allowed to have 3000~6000 troops per province, the Tirailleurs indochinois (Lính tập) were the Colonial troops of France and they weren't a part of the Nguyễn Dynasty apparatus at all, historian Trần Trọng Kim even noted in the 1940's that Nguyễn Dynasty soldiers were essentially unchanged "medieval soldiers" (to use a European analogy here) that were obsessed with Kung-fu and lacked any modern equipment, the Lính tập on the other hand were fully modern soldiers with French training and French equipment. The omission here is that the English-language Wikipedia's "Military of Nguyen Vietnam" article ends abruptly at 1884 while the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia's versions goes until 1945, it organises the "Independent period" and "French domination period" into "Phase 1" and "Phase 2", the Nguyen Military (SIC) article exclusively talks about "Phase 1" and then pretends that "Phase 2" doesn't exist. This is how you can write a narrative while using reliable sources and using mostly factual information, you just omit the parts you dislike. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:22, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Comment: https://www.search.com.vn/wiki/?lang=en&title=Kingdom_of_Vietnam&direction=next&oldid=1025101245 This article was initially redirected to the Nguyễn Dynasty article, as this name was used during the Gia Long period a merger would be better than outright deletion. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:45, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Comment: The so-called "Nguyen dynasty" infobox should have to look like.

Laska666 (talk) 17:37, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Cha này học dọi cách nói chuyện của người khác, so called qq.

Âm mưu phân biệt vùng miền, muốn tách Việt Nam thời nguyễn thành một mốc lịch sử khác. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.243.43.102 (talk • contribs)

@Laska666:, there is literally nothing stopping you from creating a new "House of Nguyễn Phúc" article about the imperial family of the Nguyễn Dynasty, original research coining neologisms for Wikipedia articles on the other hand shouldn't be done to this extent. Why does the Nguyễn state have to be extinct following the French conquest when so many historians still see it ad functioning until 1945? You write about the Noi cac as if it ended in the 1880's while it existed until the 1930's, that is literally omitting half a century. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:04, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Imperial family of the Nguyễn dynasty
Country	Nam Hà / Đàng Trong Nguyễn dynasty French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin Empire of Vietnam
Founded	14th century
Final ruler	Bảo Đại
Titles	Lord of Quảng Nam Emperor of Đại Việt Emperor of Vietnam Emperor of Đại Nam Chief of State of Vietnam
Traditions	Buddhism, Confucianism and Catholicism
Deposition	1945 (Abdication of Bảo Đại)
Cadet branches	Tôn Thất

A better version of the infobox. - -Donald Trung (talk) 18:30, 7 August 2021 (UTC)