The Centre for Southeast Asia Research is excited to present a talk on "Seeing Vietnamese History from the Se a" with Li Tana (Australian National University).
About the talk:
De spite its 3\,000-kilometre coastline\, few people see Vietnam as a maritime country. In A Maritime Vietnam\, Li Tana presents a power ful new argument about Vietnamese history: that key political changes resul ted from the impact\, economic and otherwise\, of the sea. This is a finely layered account covering the two millennia before colonisation that radica lly restructures how we understand the role of the maritime and trans-regio nal in Vietnam's early history. Drawing on exhaustive research of Chinese\, Vietnamese and Japanese sources\, Li reveals that it is only when viewed a gainst the background of the sea that Vietnam's past can be properly unders tood. In contrast to traditional perceptions of an inward-looking society d ominated by Chinese cultural influence\, Vietnam was shaped by dynamic litt oral economic and cultural contact.
About the speaker:
Li Tana is a senior fellow at the College of Asia and Pacific Studies\, the Australian National University. She is intereste d in the maritime and environmental histories of Vietnam and southern China \, from the 2nd BCE to the late 19th centuries. Her works include The Nguye n Cochinchina (SEAP\, Cornell 1998)\; Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chin ese in the Lower Mekong Region\, 1750-1880 (co-ed with Cooke\, 2004)\, Gulf of Tongking Through History (Co-ed. with Cooke and Anderson\, 2011)\, and Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past (Co-ed with Geoff Wa de\, ISEAS\, 2012).
CATEGORIES:Featured Events LOCATION:Dodson Room\, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre GEO:49.267851;-123.253087 URL;VALUE=URI:https://sppga.ubc.ca/events/event/maritime-vietnam/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://sppga.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/Vietnam-from-the-Sea_updated.jpeg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 DTSTART:20250309T100000 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR