Prof. Phan Huy Le: "Welcoming EFEO's contributions to Vietnam"

I started my career in researching and teaching Vietnamese history in 1956 at the History Department of Hanoi University of Science (now the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi) after graduating from the History and Geography Department of the University of Education. Returning to Hanoi from the resistance zone in 1954, my classmates and I were excited to read books at the University Library, which was the Indochina University Library at 19 Le Thanh Tong and the French Far East Library (EFEO) at 26 Ly Thuong Kiet. During the resistance war, universities did not have libraries, only a few books that teachers passed around to read. Therefore, reading books in a spacious library full of books related to our major made us extremely happy and excited. I still keep as a souvenir the EFEO Library reading card signed by Director Maurice Durand. That was my first contact with EFEO.

Prof. Phan Huy Le (Chairman of Vietnam Historical Science Association)

In researching ancient Vietnamese history, the main source of materials that I have accessed are Han Nom books concentrated at the Han Nom Department, which since 1979 has been transformed into the Han Nom Research Institute under the Vietnam Social Sciences Committee (now the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences). This is the Han Nom Collection transferred to Vietnam by EFEO in 1957. According to statistics from the Han Nom Research Institute, this Collection has a symbol starting with the letter A and includes: 8,368 books and 20,979 stone stele inscriptions. In this regard, I and the Vietnamese historian community are very grateful to EFEO for their efforts in collecting and preserving an important part of Vietnam's Han Nom heritage. After 1945, due to war, weather and unconscious destruction by humans, the Han Nom heritage stored in the Hue royal library, in private homes and in village communities was seriously lost and scattered. Even the Long Cuong Library of Cao Xuan Duc in Thinh My (Dien Chau, Nghe An) with the great effort of Thanh Hoa University Preparatory School in 1952 was only able to save a few hundred books out of thousands of Han Nom books. In the rural areas of the Red River Delta, in the past, every village had a Chief of the Registry to preserve books on land registers, population registers, and tax books, but after the war, almost all of them were lost, and if anything, only a few were kept in the families of descendants of the old dignitaries. I think that without the collection work of EFEO, the Han Nom heritage of Vietnam would have been severely damaged and some documents would have been permanently erased. Many of my research works and those of Vietnamese historians are based on this Han Nom document, including historical books, various types of books and documents such as land registers, geographical records, genealogies, legends, steles, etc. Of course, today, based on the EFEO's Book Foundation, the Han Nom Research Institute and other scientific agencies have collected and added a new volume to this treasure.

Along with preserving Han Nom heritage, EFEO also made great contributions to preserving tangible cultural heritage by documenting many historical and cultural relics across the country, ranking and restoring a number of valuable relics in Hanoi and several provinces and cities for the first time, and building the first museums in Vietnam. These are the Louis Finot Museum in Hanoi (now the Vietnam National Museum of History), the Cham Museum in Da Nang (now the Cham Sculpture Museum), and the Blanchard de la Brosse Museum in Saigon (now the History Museum in Ho Chi Minh City). In these museums, in addition to the exhibits, there are also precious relics of Vietnamese culture and many cultures of Indochina and the Far East.

During its operation in Vietnam from 1900 to 1959, EFEO, through its scientific research activities and journals and publications of many famous Orientalists such as Léonard Arousseau (1888-1929), George Coedes (1886-1969), Henri Maspéro (1883-1945), Paul Pelliot (1878-1945), etc., contributed to creating and promoting the modernization of Vietnamese social sciences. The previous research and compilation of Vietnamese history left a very large legacy on the traditional perspectives and genres of East Asian civilization. EFEO played an important role in creating a transition from that traditional academic background to modern science based on a new system of perspectives and methodologies. Along with history, new sciences emerged such as archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, museology, textual studies, etc. Historical research is conducted on a scientific foundation closely related to those sciences, with a specialized, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary approach. In addition to French scholars, there were also a number of Vietnamese scholars in EFEO who opened up this modern research path, such as Nguyen Van Huyen (1908-1975), Nguyen Van Khoan (1890-1975), Tran Ham Tan (1887-1957), Nguyen Van To (1889-1947), Tran Van Giap (1896-1973)... And a number of historians outside EFEO also applied modern methodology in historical research, the pioneers of which were Hoang Xuan Han (1908-1996), Dao Duy Anh (1904-1988)... That was a huge step forward and preparation for the birth and development of the social literature of independent Vietnam after 1945.

My generation and I entered History based on these changes and achievements on the path to building modern Vietnamese History. Vietnam is a multi-ethnic country, consisting of 54 ethnic groups belonging to 4 language systems, of which the Vietnamese people account for nearly 87% of the population. Among the ethnic minorities, there are 3 ethnic groups with their own writing systems: Thai, Cham, Khmet (Tay, Dao people use Chinese characters to record their ethnic languages ​​like Nom script of the Vietnamese people), and 2 ethnic groups once had a state. On the territory of Vietnam today, since ancient times, besides the kingdom of Van Lang-Au Lac, there also existed the kingdom of Phu Nam in the South and the kingdom of Champa in the Central region. Previously, the history of Vietnam was studied and compiled by the Vietnamese people, from which the history of the Central and Southern regions only began when the Vietnamese people came to explore this land, mainly from the 16th and 17th centuries. This means that the history of the Central and Southern regions before the Vietnamese people came to explore them has been eliminated from Vietnamese history, and at the same time, the Sa Huynh and Oc Eo cultural heritage has been eliminated from Vietnamese culture. A new perception has been established that considers Vietnamese history as the history of all classes of residents, ethnic groups, and kingdoms that once existed in the territory of present-day Vietnam. In that new perception, when entering the history of Phu Nam and Champa with their rich cultural heritage, we receive the first discoveries of EFEO scholars from the study of stele inscriptions, related written historical sources in Chinese historical books to the results of archaeological investigations and excavations on the Oc Eo culture, Sa Huynh culture, and temple and tower relics scattered across the Central strip of land. Once again, we encounter the research achievements of EFEO as the basis for Vietnamese archaeologists and ancient historians to develop with many new results.

After a period of interruption, from 1959 to 1992, from 1993 EFEO returned to Vietnam with the establishment of the EFEO Center in Hanoi. The cooperative relationship between the two sides was established on the new foundation of two independent countries. I am very pleased with the results of the Center's activities, the successes of the Center's research projects in cooperation with research institutes and universities in Vietnam. I especially appreciate the works that publish the fund's documentation system such asCorpus des inscriptions anciennes du Vietnam24 episodes,Geography of Emperor Dong Khanh,3 episodes,Technique of the Annamite people/Technique du people Annamiteby Henri Auger in 3 volumes.

For more than half a century, through two periods of operation in Vietnam and with its headquarters in Hanoi, EFEO, with its authors and specific scientific works, has made great contributions to the study of Vietnamese history and culture from many different perspectives. During that time, EFEO has also made important contributions to the preservation of Vietnamese cultural heritage and the promotion of the modernization of Vietnamese history and social sciences in general. As a historian who has had many opportunities to meet with EFEO in Hanoi and Paris, I welcome EFEO's contributions to Vietnam, and congratulate Professor Yves Goudineau, Director of EFEO, and Professor Léon Vendermersch, Director of EFEO from 1989 to 1993, who made great contributions to the re-establishment of the EFEO Center in Vietnam.

* Title given by the Editorial Board of ussh.edu.vn.