Vietnamese Historiography 1945-1975: Divisions and Common Ground in Historical Scholarship

The declaration of independence by Viet Minh revolutionaries under Ho Chi Minh in September 1945 established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with its capital in Hanoi. This government claimed sovereignty over all of Vietnam, a claim immediately contested by anti-communist and French colonial remnants in the south. The formation of the Republic of Cochinchina in June 1946 further fractured southern political authority, setting the stage for prolonged conflict. The subsequent outbreak of the First Indochina War in December 1946 pitted the Viet Minh against French forces and their Vietnamese allies for nearly nine years. This period of instability culminated in the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 and the prior creation of the French-associated State of Vietnam under Bao Dai in March 1949.

The Geneva Conference of 1954, convened in the war's aftermath, assembled nine states to settle Indochinese affairs. While the participants explicitly rejected the permanent division of Vietnam, the resulting accords created temporary northern and southern "zones of regroupment." National elections scheduled for 1956 were intended to achieve reunification. However, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), founded in 1955 by Ngo Dinh Diem with U.S. support, refused to participate, ensuring the elections never occurred. This established a twenty-year political and military standoff between the DRV in Hanoi and the RVN in Saigon. The conflict concluded in April 1975 with the surrender of southern forces, leading to the formal reunification of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in July 1976.

Throughout this period, a profound historiographical debate mirrored the political division. Historians in the DRV insisted on a single, unified Vietnamese nation-state under Hanoi's legitimate authority. Conversely, scholars in the RVN, inspired by global parallels like divided Germany and Korea, argued for the existence of two distinct Vietnamese states with separate historical trajectories. They often interpreted historical events to underscore the south's unique political genealogy, despite occasionally quoting Ho Chi Minh's rhetoric of national unity for critical purposes. This fundamental disagreement over Vietnam's essential unity shaped all historical writing produced between 1945 and 1975.

Beneath this stark political dichotomy, however, lay significant common ground in methodology, source use, and national project. Historians in both zones shared deep concerns that transcended the Cold War divide. They collectively engaged in the monumental task of redefining the Vietnamese national past in a post-colonial context. This involved translating a shared classical canon, reconceptualizing national origins, and utilizing history as an instrument for contemporary political legitimacy. Examining these shared endeavors restores nuance to our understanding of this volatile period in Vietnamese intellectual history.

The rich tradition of Vietnamese historical writing, dating to the thirteenth century, provided the essential raw materials for post-1945 scholars. Dynastic historians during the Tran, Le, and Nguyen dynasties produced monumental works like the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư (The Complete Historical Record of Đại Việt) and the Đại Nam thực lục (The Veritable Records of Đại Nam). These texts formed a magnificent corpus inherited by twentieth-century historians. Far from rejecting this "feudal" past, scholars in both Hanoi and Saigon undertook a prodigious translation project. They rendered these classical Chinese texts into quốc ngữ, the romanized Vietnamese script, making them accessible to a modern public and symbolically reclaiming the past.

The same dynastic sources were used to support divergent political visions. The concept of Nam Tiến (Southern Advance), the centuries-long migration and settlement of ethnic Vietnamese into Cham and Khmer territories, serves as a prime example. Northern historians typically framed Nam Tiến as a state-driven project orchestrated by Le dynasty monarchs from Hanoi, extending central authority. Southern historians, analyzing the same chronicles, emphasized the agency of Nguyen lords and later Nguyen emperors, portraying their actions as the foundation for a separate southern political tradition culminating in the RVN. Thus, one historical process yielded two conflicting interpretations of state formation and legitimacy.

Both northern and southern historians explicitly rejected notions of detached, "bourgeois" objectivity. They embraced the inherently political nature of their craft. Historians in the DRV often employed militarized language, framing history as a "weapon" to elucidate revolutionary laws. Their southern counterparts, while minus the revolutionary lexicon, equally dismissed intellectual non-alignment. All scholars felt compelled to instrumentally use the past to justify the present political order—whether a temporarily divided single state or two permanently separate nations. This state-centered vision was a direct inheritance from dynastic historiography and a response to the exigencies of nation-building.

The disciplinary boundaries familiar today were largely irrelevant in both Vietnamese states. Scholars from diverse backgrounds—history, archaeology, ethnography, literature—were expected to contribute to constructing a new national narrative. Historical writing was viewed as a critical pillar of nation-building, whether for a communist or anti-communist state. While the DRV's mechanisms for directing historical research are better documented, the RVN similarly expected scholarship to serve state interests. Historians across the divide saw state involvement in historiography as natural and necessary, not as a corruption of academic freedom.

Research topics in this era were remarkably wide-ranging. Scholars investigated landholding patterns from the Ly dynasty to the colonial period, agricultural practices in the Red River and Mekong deltas, and the development of artisan guilds. They produced deep literary analyses of figures like Nguyễn Trãi and Hồ Xuân Hương. A major focus was on resistance to foreign domination, with studies on anti-Chinese, anti-French, and anti-Japanese rebellions. Certain themes, like anti-Americanism or the August Revolution, were exclusive to northern scholarship. This immense productivity underscores history's privileged role in both societies.

A revolutionary shift occurred in the understanding of national chronology, beginning in the DRV. Colonial-era scholars often cited 2,000 years of Vietnamese history, dating from the Chinese occupation. However, archaeological work on prehistoric sites, combined with folklore studies, led northern historians in the late 1950s to assert a new, 4,000-year continuum of national history. Central to this was the Đông Sơn bronze drum, an artifact adorned with intricate solar patterns and cultural scenes. Vietnamese scholars interpreted these drums as material proof of the legendary Văn Lang kingdom, moving it from myth to history. Southern historians, rather than disputing this, soon adopted the same elongated timeline, demonstrating a shared desire for deep national antiquity.

This reinterpretation served a crucial decolonizing function. By anchoring national origins in a prehistoric era predating Chinese influence, historians in both zones could narrate a history of Vietnam distinct from both China and France. The recovery of stone, pottery, and bronze artifacts provided physical evidence for an autonomous cultural genesis. This allowed post-1945 historians to frame the millennium of Chinese domination as an interlude rather than a starting point, fundamentally reconfiguring the narrative arc of the Vietnamese past in a dramatic and politically potent way.

Another significant convergence was the formalization of Vietnam as a multi-ethnic state. The now-ubiquitous concept of 54 ethnic groups is a modern construct, originating in a Vietnamese Communist Party decree roughly thirty years ago. Pre-colonial scholars noted cultural differences but lacked a systematic ethnic taxonomy. French colonial ethnographers, however, produced comprehensive—and often prejudiced—categorizations, framing the ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh) as predatory. Post-1945 Vietnamese ethnographers, north and south, rejected this colonial framework. They recast inter-ethnic relations using a familial metaphor: the Kinh as the older brother (anh) and minority groups as younger siblings (em), bound by reciprocal, hierarchical care.

Historiography also expanded geographically beyond mainland confines. Moving beyond a traditional focus on rice-growing river basins, scholars increasingly examined Vietnam's role in maritime trade within the South China Sea. Historians, particularly in the south, emphasized cosmopolitan port cities like Hội An. This "Southeast Asianization" of Vietnamese history served to de-center China's overwhelming influence within an East Asian framework. Southern scholars used this maritime focus to highlight the south's distinct, open, and commercial character versus a more traditional, Sinitic north. After 1975, the socialist state appropriated this paradigm to describe national history as a whole, a clear legacy of southern scholarship.

In conclusion, while the political divide from 1945 to 1975 produced sharply opposed historical narratives, the underlying historiographical projects shared profound commonalities. Scholars across the parallel states jointly engaged a classical canon, embraced history's political instrumentality, expanded national chronology into prehistory, reconceptualized ethnic relations, and broadened Vietnam's geographic context. The explicit southern narrative was suppressed after 1975, yet its methodological and conceptual innovations subtly permeated unified Vietnam's national story. Understanding this complex interplay of division and common ground is essential for a full appreciation of modern Vietnamese historical thought.