“The British East India Company in Dang Ngoai 1672-1697” – Valuable document in the study of Vietnamese history in the Middle Ages.

According to author Hoang Anh Tuan, the archives of the English East India Company related to Ke Cho in particular, the Dang Ngoai kingdom and more broadly the Dai Viet nation in general in the 17th century were introduced and initially exploited by Western scholars quite early.
From then until the last decade of the 20th century, the British East India Company's archives were basically not further exploited. In the 1990s, the late Dr. Anthony Farrington of the British Library invested time in assembling the British East India Company's archives from 1672 to 1683, and published an introduction to the British East India Company's archives related to Pho Hien and Dang Ngoai in the late 17th century. Regarding the British East India Company's occupation of Con Dao from 1702 to 1705, author Danny Wong Tze-ken exploited archival materials to publish an in-depth study in 2011.
New information along with certain advantages in terms of research cooperation in the context of national innovation and integration are favorable grounds for domestic researchers to conduct research on documents and organize text exploitation in the first decades of the 21st century.
Starting with direct contact with the handwritten documents at the British National Library (London) in 2004, author Hoang Anh Tuan successively published a number of monographs introducing a part of this document. And by 2010, within the framework of the book series "Thang Long - a thousand years of culture" organized by Hanoi Publishing House, a part of the diary of the British trading post in Thang Long - Ke Cho and Dang Ngoai was extracted and introduced by the author. By 2019, a number of other documents (official dispatches of the Company, reports of the trading post, minutes of the Trading Post Council meetings...) were extracted to provide readers with new information. However, due to the difficulty in accessing the documents in a comprehensive manner and the dispersion of the document sources in different archives, some original text files have not been fully exploited.
Realizing the value of this massive body of documents, despite many difficulties, with a passionate spirit of research, combined with the support of many organizations and scientists at home and abroad, the author continued to complete the extraction of the main content of the entire massive body of documents, classified, arranged by chronology and published a complete work to introduce to a wide range of researchers and readers.
Sharing about the difficulties in the implementation process, author Hoang Anh Tuan said: “All the archival documents of the British East India Company were recorded in Old English, the way of recording place names and personal names was very relative (Tonckin, Tongkin, Tongking, Tonquin, Tonqueen...; Dome, Domee, Domay...; Heen, Hein, Heine, Hean...; lings, pelings, pelangs...; hockings, hockien...; ungsja, ungja, unggia...; nhamoon, nhamones...; Dukba, Duck Ba...), having to transcribe and translate the old handwritten English through scans (in which many pages had faded ink or the text was torn or moldy, so the information was missing),... Therefore, in the process of collecting, classifying and annotating the documents, we did it with the utmost care, but it was inevitable that there would be some unsatisfactory places.”

In the first part of the reprinted book, author Hoang Anh Tuan briefly introduced the structure of the document block, how to classify and arrange documents, how to annotate place names and proper names appearing in the documents. This is important information, so that readers can have an overview of the source of documents, as well as necessary instructions for researchers to continue to learn and exploit the very rich information reflected in the source of documents.
The British East India Company's documents on Ke Cho - Dang Ngoai have a relatively simple structure but are dense in information. The entire existing document block is a business diary of the British trading post (in Pho Hien and Ke Cho), recording daily events, interspersed with official dispatches exchanged with the Company, trade reports from the trading post director (sent to Bantam, Madras or London), resolutions of the trading post council... According to the classification and arrangement of the British Library, the British East India Company's documents on Ke Cho - Dang Ngoai are divided into the following 10 volumes:

Based on the structure of the document block, the information extraction is basically based on the current structure of the document block being kept at the British National Library in London. The order of the documents is arranged chronologically. The content of the book is basically an excerpt of the main content of the merchant diary, inserted into the diary and some related documents such as the merchant council resolution, letters exchanged between the director and the merchant staff, the merchant petition sent to Lord Trinh and the mandarins of Dang Ngoai, etc.
 

The seminar to launch the book "The British East India Company in Dang Ngoai (1672-1697)" by author Hoang Anh Tuan received the attention of many scientists, researchers, lecturers, students and book lovers.
 

Speaking at the seminar to launch the book by Prof. Dr. Hoang Anh Tuan, Dr. Tran Ngoc Dung (currently working at the Institute of International Relations, Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics), one of the experts in researching the archives of the British and Dutch East India Companies, expressed his admiration and respect for the results of the tireless scientific work of Prof. Dr. Hoang Anh Tuan when he spent 20 years diligently collecting and translating the archives of the British East India Company in Dang Ngoai from 1672 to 1697. In this publication, the author, together with Hanoi Publishing House, reviewed and edited the information, continued to supplement the research results, bringing to readers a relatively comprehensive and updated research work on Dang Ngoai in the second half of the 17th century. This is a carefully and meticulously produced document that has great reference value for researchers on Vietnamese history in the 17th century in many fields: politics, diplomatic relations, economic life, culture, society, international trade exchanges, etc.

Regarding the value of the documents introduced by author Hoang Anh Tuan in the book The British East India Company in Dang Ngoai 1672-1697, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thua Hy shared: “The documents of the East India Company have helped us understand more about the socio-economic situation, foreign trade, and the royal class and mandarins in Thang Long - Ke Cho during this period through their behavior and transactions with foreigners. The documents also reveal some stories of the secret palace and the internal affairs of the Thang Long government, supplementing the official history of Vietnam”.
Also at the book launch ceremony, author Hoang Anh Tuan expressed his deep gratitude to all domestic and foreign scientists, friends and colleagues who provided professional support for the drafting and editing of the manuscript; thanked Hanoi Publishing House for accompanying the book to be published and reach readers. Author Hoang Anh Tuan also hopes that researchers, especially young researchers, will consider the book as a suggestion and opening to continue to research more deeply on the rich and multifaceted values ​​of this source of documents as well as many valuable documents currently stored at the Center for Vietnamese Cultural Documentation, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. These overseas sources of documents are truly national assets, not only having their own scientific value reflecting a lot of information about politics, economics, and society of the past historical period, but also having great value in the cause of developing and defending the country in modern times.