In late 1424, news of the new emperor’s proclamation and of Huang Fu’s recall prompted Le Loi to set out on a new trajectory. His earlier five-year career as a rebel leader in the Thanh Hoa uplands had ended with him back at where he had begun. During that time he had simply endeavored to […]

In contrast, Trinh Tung’s uncle, Nguyen Hoang, spent his last years enjoying the adventure of building a new realm. Descriptions of his return to the south in 1600 after an absence of eight years abound with celebrations and expressions of joy. During the remaining thirteen years of his life, he traveled, he built temples, he […]

Hoa Lu During the forty years that Dinh Bo Linh and Le Hoan ruled from Hoa Lu (965– 1005), possibilities for rustic leaders from the southern provinces to govern the more populous Red River plain with its temples, schools, and heritage of imperial culture were fully explored and ultimately reached their limit. However, before this […]

After Mac Kinh Dien’s death in 1580, the Mac military position steadily weakened. Trinh Tung’s decisive defeat of the 1581 Mac invasion of Thanh Hoa was a turning point after which he gradually shifted from defense to offense. The last Mac effort to invade Thanh Hoa was repulsed in 1583. In that year, Trinh Tung […]

A large proportion of the modern Vietnamese vocabulary derives from Chinese, but linguists categorize the Vietnamese language as a member of the Mon-Khmer  family of languages. Although available comparative data for studying Vietnam- ese with other Mon-Khmer languages are limited, there is an abundance of  materials documenting the historical relationship between Chinese and Vietnam- ese. […]

This book does not include Vietnamese diacritical marks, which are an integral part of the Vietnamese alphabet. Some diacritics indicate tones and some indicate particular vowel or consonant sounds. Jesuit missionaries invented the Vietnamese alphabet in the seventeenth century, largely in reference to Portu- guese phonology. Consequently, readers who do not know Vietnamese but are  […]

The thirteen chapters of this book are organized on the basis of length and convenience and do not represent any scheme of periodization with which to conceptualize Vietnamese history. In terms of large themes, I am inclined to organize this material into four periods: first, the centuries during which what is now northern Vietnam was […]