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How to be Neighbors with China

The Changing Attitude of Vietnamese Scholars toward China in the Second Half of the 19th Century

How to be Neighbors with China

This is the first of five webinars in the 'Korea-Vietnam before the 20th Century Series' scheduled for Fall 2022. The series brings together scholars interested in Korean-Vietnamese in dialogue in order to develop a framework for meaningful future collaboration.


Wednesday, September 28, 2022
6:00 PM (Pacific Time)

China and Vietnam have had a long and close relationship over the years. Especially when it came to the 19th century, facing the invasion of Western countries, this relationship underwent tremendous changes and became more complicated than ever. In such circumstances, Vietnam’s attitude toward China – the Heavenly Kingdom had had a big difference from the previous period. However, this is not clearly presented in the literature because of the lack of relevant documents. To fill this gap, this paper makes use of Vietnamese envoys’ travel writings to China from 1868 (the first tributary trip of Vietnam to China after 16 years of interruption) to 1883 (the last tributary trip of Vietnam to China) for analyzing, to investigate the changing attitude of Vietnamese official-scholars and government toward China in the late 19th century; and to address the China’s influence on Vietnam in particular, and on East Asia area in general at the time, as well as to illustrate the changing thoughts of Vietnam in the pre-modern time. Finally, the result can suggest some lessons learned from those experiences for recent international relations between China, Vietnam and the other Asian or Western countries.  

For more information about the series and other speakers, please check out fall webinar schedule

To join the talk, please click here.   

Our next conversation is on Wednesday, October 5th with Rostilav Berezkin and NGUYEN To Lan

 

Dr. HOANG Yen Nguyen is a lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU-HCM in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She teaches Chinese languages and literature classes such as Chinese literature, Introduction to literary Chinese, Chinese Grammar, and  translation. She has been working on the perception of Western learning and culture in Vietnam and China, especially during the 18th and 19th century through travel writings of Vietnamese and Korean envoys to China. She is interested in the areas of comparative literature/culture in East Asia, Vietnamese literature, written in Chinese (especially Vietnamese envoys' travel writings to China 越南燕行作品) and Vietnamese Chinese.  

Dr. Sean (Song Yeol) Han is a historian of modern Korea and China. His book project, Bond beyond Nation: Sinographic Network and Korean Nationhood, 1860-1932, examines the cultural history of China's interactions with Korea in the age of modern imperialism. His recent publication, "Informal Diplomacy in Chosŏn Korea and New Engagement with the West and Westernised Japan, 1873-1876" (Modern Asian Studies, 2022), focusses on China, Japan, and Korea's response to the changing world order in the late nineteenth century. Dr. Han earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University and B.A. from Seoul National University (with honors). He is the associate director of the Chosen History Society - a public learned society promoting the study, research, and teaching of Korea's past. Dr. Han is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Asian History at St. Lawrence University. 

 

This series is sponsored by Academy of Korean Studies (Project: AKS-2020-C-15), James P. Geiss & Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation, UCLA’s Center for Korean Studies, Center of Southeast Asian Studies, and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. 

 



Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies

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