Keith W. Taylor | Cornell University (original) (raw)
Books, chapters, and articles by Keith W. Taylor
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020
This article considers the literary curiosity from the Mạ c-Lê dynastic wars in the sixteenth ce... more This article considers the literary curiosity from the Mạ c-Lê dynastic wars in the sixteenth century of a poem written by a Mạ c-dynasty partisan being interpreted by later generations as having been written to praise the Lê dynasty. It uses textual and contextual analysis to argue that the poem was written to praise the Mạ c dynasty but was later revised by scholars of the Lê dynasty.
Journal of Asian Studies , 2018
The Vietnamese story about the arrival of Buddhism and the building of the first Buddhist temples... more The Vietnamese story about the arrival of Buddhism and the building of the first Buddhist temples in what is now northern Vietnam contains no distinctively Buddhist content, but rather is a tale of thaumaturgy, the worship of trees and of rocks, and rainmaking. This essay analyzes the textual history of the story, which is dated in the early third century CE. It examines the names of the two major protagonists of the story and, although the names were later absorbed into the Sinitic literary tradition, this study proposes a Tamil Hindu origin for them. One is reminded of the trade route that connected India and China along the coasts of Southeast Asia at that time; the evidence of Brahmans from India in early Southeast Asia, including northern Vietnam; and evidence of Hindu elements in Vietnamese texts.
Journal of Asian Studies , 2022
Taylor, K. (2022). Maritime Trade and Borderlands in Northern Indochina - Imperial Borderlands: M... more Taylor, K. (2022). Maritime Trade and Borderlands in Northern Indochina - Imperial Borderlands: Maps and Territory-Building in the Northern Indochinese Peninsula (1885–1914) By Marie de Rugy. Translated by Saskia Brown. Leiden: Brill, 2021. xvii, 324 pp. ISBN: 9789004456211 (cloth). - A History of Maritime Trade in Northern Vietnam, 12th to 18th Centuries: Archaeological Investigations in Vandon and Phohien By Yuriko Kikuchi. Translated by Walter Edwards. Singapore: Springer, 2021. xv, 290 pp. ISBN: 9789811646324 (cloth). The Journal of Asian Studies, 81(3), 617-619. doi:10.1017/S0021911822000924
Nxb OmegaPlus, 2020
Việt Nam thế kỷ XVII: Những góc nhìn từ bên ngoài là tác phẩm được hai nhà Việt Nam học là Olga D... more Việt Nam thế kỷ XVII: Những góc nhìn từ bên ngoài là tác phẩm được hai nhà Việt Nam học là Olga Dror và K. W. Taylor đã dày công tìm hiểu và có những chú giải kỹ lưỡng, cùng phần giới thiệu hàm súc cho hai tác phẩm quan trọng trong công tác nghiên cứu về Việt Nam thế kỷ XVII. Đó là Ký sự xứ Đàng Trong của Cha Christoforo Borri và Mô tả vương quốc Đàng Ngoài của thương nhân Samuel Baron, với nhiều thông tin và mô tả giúp người đọc hiện đại dựng nên được bức tranh vừa toàn cảnh lại vừa có tính đối sánh về hai Đàng thời bấy giờ.
H-Asia, 2020
Commissioned by Bradley C. Davis (Eastern Connecticut State University) The military officers who... more Commissioned by Bradley C. Davis (Eastern Connecticut State University) The military officers who murdered South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963 and the Americans who urged them on subsequently propagated a view of this man that has become a cliché in virtually every book written about the Vietnam War: he was a tyrant with obscure and self-absorbed ideas whose autocratic and repressive policies provoked an insurgency against his own government-he was the architect of his own demise. This idea served the purposes of nearly everyone: the rulers of North Vietnam, the Americans, and the South Vietnamese who justified their rule by having overthrown him.
Rethinking the Sinosphere: Poetics, Aesthetics, and Identity Formation by Nanxiu Qian, Richard J. Smith, and Bowei Zhang, 2020
Ken Seigneurie, ed., A Companion to World Literature (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2020), vol. 4, pp. 2217-2227., 2020
SOJOURN: Journal o f Social Issues in Southeast Asia , 2017
Nguyễn Công Trứ, poet and songwriter, was an official at the Vietnamese court in the early ninete... more Nguyễn Công Trứ, poet and songwriter, was an official at the Vietnamese court in the early nineteenth century who gained acclaim for settling landless peasants on abandoned land. This essay recounts and analyses his family background and the early part of his public carrier. It contrasts his initiatives in the countryside with criticism of them by officials at the royal court and examines his first major demotion in 1831. This study encompasses the contrasting career of Hoàng Quýnh, the official whose accusation caused Nguyễn Công Trứ’s demotion. From this we gain some understanding of how King Minh Mạng maintained control of the royal court through a system of promotions and demotions amidst regional tensions and personality conflicts.
This essay reviews the history of Sino-Vietnamese relations to show that they have been overwhelm... more This essay reviews the history of Sino-Vietnamese relations to show that they have been overwhelmingly peaceful and based on shared assumptions about culture, ideology, and government.The essay addresses Vietnamese domestic and strategic constraints arising from this relationship and provides a context for understanding the reasons why it is in the Vietnamese national interest to accommodate Chinese strategic ambitions in Southeast Asia, not least because Vietnam has no credible anti-Chinese ally.
![Research paper thumbnail of 2015 - "Bài giới thiệu" [Introduction], Tuong Vu, trans., Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam (1967-1975) [Tiếng Nói Từ Miền Nam] (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2015); the translation published on https://vietbao.com/p126a241059/tieng-noi-tu-mien-nam](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/38989814/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất tron... more Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất trong hai thập kỷ khi quốc gia này là đồng minh của Hoa Kỳ. Thực ra, nền chính trị của VNCH trải qua nhiều thăng trầm của cuộc chiến tranh: đầu tiên là một chế độ độc tài, sau đó là một giai đoạn hỗn loạn, rồi đến một thời kỳ thử nghiệm dân chủ đại nghị khá ổn định. Trong phần lớn các bài viết, dù là nghiên cứu học thuật hay báo chí, VNCH hiện lên như một chế độ độc tài, tham nhũng, và hỗn loạn. Hình ảnh này mang tính chất phiến diện, cường điệu, và dựa trên những biến cố trong hai thời kỳ đầu của VNCH. Đã có rất ít nỗ lực đánh giá những thành tựu của VNCH trong tám năm cuối.
This paper argues that use of the term Muong to designate an ethnic minority in Vietnam began in ... more This paper argues that use of the term Muong to designate an ethnic minority in Vietnam began in the early twentieth century as a product of French colonial efforts to apply modern social scienti c description to form knowledge of upland peoples adjacent to and linguistically related to Vietnamese speakers in the lowlands. Subsequently, Vietnamese speakers adopted this usage to designate a national minority. A local text from the turn of the century is used to suggest an alternative way of viewing these peoples based on pre-French experience
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020
This article considers the literary curiosity from the Mạ c-Lê dynastic wars in the sixteenth ce... more This article considers the literary curiosity from the Mạ c-Lê dynastic wars in the sixteenth century of a poem written by a Mạ c-dynasty partisan being interpreted by later generations as having been written to praise the Lê dynasty. It uses textual and contextual analysis to argue that the poem was written to praise the Mạ c dynasty but was later revised by scholars of the Lê dynasty.
Journal of Asian Studies , 2018
The Vietnamese story about the arrival of Buddhism and the building of the first Buddhist temples... more The Vietnamese story about the arrival of Buddhism and the building of the first Buddhist temples in what is now northern Vietnam contains no distinctively Buddhist content, but rather is a tale of thaumaturgy, the worship of trees and of rocks, and rainmaking. This essay analyzes the textual history of the story, which is dated in the early third century CE. It examines the names of the two major protagonists of the story and, although the names were later absorbed into the Sinitic literary tradition, this study proposes a Tamil Hindu origin for them. One is reminded of the trade route that connected India and China along the coasts of Southeast Asia at that time; the evidence of Brahmans from India in early Southeast Asia, including northern Vietnam; and evidence of Hindu elements in Vietnamese texts.
Journal of Asian Studies , 2022
Taylor, K. (2022). Maritime Trade and Borderlands in Northern Indochina - Imperial Borderlands: M... more Taylor, K. (2022). Maritime Trade and Borderlands in Northern Indochina - Imperial Borderlands: Maps and Territory-Building in the Northern Indochinese Peninsula (1885–1914) By Marie de Rugy. Translated by Saskia Brown. Leiden: Brill, 2021. xvii, 324 pp. ISBN: 9789004456211 (cloth). - A History of Maritime Trade in Northern Vietnam, 12th to 18th Centuries: Archaeological Investigations in Vandon and Phohien By Yuriko Kikuchi. Translated by Walter Edwards. Singapore: Springer, 2021. xv, 290 pp. ISBN: 9789811646324 (cloth). The Journal of Asian Studies, 81(3), 617-619. doi:10.1017/S0021911822000924
Nxb OmegaPlus, 2020
Việt Nam thế kỷ XVII: Những góc nhìn từ bên ngoài là tác phẩm được hai nhà Việt Nam học là Olga D... more Việt Nam thế kỷ XVII: Những góc nhìn từ bên ngoài là tác phẩm được hai nhà Việt Nam học là Olga Dror và K. W. Taylor đã dày công tìm hiểu và có những chú giải kỹ lưỡng, cùng phần giới thiệu hàm súc cho hai tác phẩm quan trọng trong công tác nghiên cứu về Việt Nam thế kỷ XVII. Đó là Ký sự xứ Đàng Trong của Cha Christoforo Borri và Mô tả vương quốc Đàng Ngoài của thương nhân Samuel Baron, với nhiều thông tin và mô tả giúp người đọc hiện đại dựng nên được bức tranh vừa toàn cảnh lại vừa có tính đối sánh về hai Đàng thời bấy giờ.
H-Asia, 2020
Commissioned by Bradley C. Davis (Eastern Connecticut State University) The military officers who... more Commissioned by Bradley C. Davis (Eastern Connecticut State University) The military officers who murdered South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963 and the Americans who urged them on subsequently propagated a view of this man that has become a cliché in virtually every book written about the Vietnam War: he was a tyrant with obscure and self-absorbed ideas whose autocratic and repressive policies provoked an insurgency against his own government-he was the architect of his own demise. This idea served the purposes of nearly everyone: the rulers of North Vietnam, the Americans, and the South Vietnamese who justified their rule by having overthrown him.
Rethinking the Sinosphere: Poetics, Aesthetics, and Identity Formation by Nanxiu Qian, Richard J. Smith, and Bowei Zhang, 2020
Ken Seigneurie, ed., A Companion to World Literature (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2020), vol. 4, pp. 2217-2227., 2020
SOJOURN: Journal o f Social Issues in Southeast Asia , 2017
Nguyễn Công Trứ, poet and songwriter, was an official at the Vietnamese court in the early ninete... more Nguyễn Công Trứ, poet and songwriter, was an official at the Vietnamese court in the early nineteenth century who gained acclaim for settling landless peasants on abandoned land. This essay recounts and analyses his family background and the early part of his public carrier. It contrasts his initiatives in the countryside with criticism of them by officials at the royal court and examines his first major demotion in 1831. This study encompasses the contrasting career of Hoàng Quýnh, the official whose accusation caused Nguyễn Công Trứ’s demotion. From this we gain some understanding of how King Minh Mạng maintained control of the royal court through a system of promotions and demotions amidst regional tensions and personality conflicts.
This essay reviews the history of Sino-Vietnamese relations to show that they have been overwhelm... more This essay reviews the history of Sino-Vietnamese relations to show that they have been overwhelmingly peaceful and based on shared assumptions about culture, ideology, and government.The essay addresses Vietnamese domestic and strategic constraints arising from this relationship and provides a context for understanding the reasons why it is in the Vietnamese national interest to accommodate Chinese strategic ambitions in Southeast Asia, not least because Vietnam has no credible anti-Chinese ally.
Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất tron... more Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất trong hai thập kỷ khi quốc gia này là đồng minh của Hoa Kỳ. Thực ra, nền chính trị của VNCH trải qua nhiều thăng trầm của cuộc chiến tranh: đầu tiên là một chế độ độc tài, sau đó là một giai đoạn hỗn loạn, rồi đến một thời kỳ thử nghiệm dân chủ đại nghị khá ổn định. Trong phần lớn các bài viết, dù là nghiên cứu học thuật hay báo chí, VNCH hiện lên như một chế độ độc tài, tham nhũng, và hỗn loạn. Hình ảnh này mang tính chất phiến diện, cường điệu, và dựa trên những biến cố trong hai thời kỳ đầu của VNCH. Đã có rất ít nỗ lực đánh giá những thành tựu của VNCH trong tám năm cuối.
This paper argues that use of the term Muong to designate an ethnic minority in Vietnam began in ... more This paper argues that use of the term Muong to designate an ethnic minority in Vietnam began in the early twentieth century as a product of French colonial efforts to apply modern social scienti c description to form knowledge of upland peoples adjacent to and linguistically related to Vietnamese speakers in the lowlands. Subsequently, Vietnamese speakers adopted this usage to designate a national minority. A local text from the turn of the century is used to suggest an alternative way of viewing these peoples based on pre-French experience