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The politics of history and memory in Vietnam

Researchers from the University of Passau are engaged in a joint three-year research project with Vietnam National University Hanoi to determine the extent to which the country's political reforms have had an impact on the Vietnamese historical narrative. The project is led by Dr. Martin Großheim and is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Since the beginning of the reform period in Vietnam in the 1980s the Vietnamese leadership has relaxed its hold on the public sphere and the private life of citizens which has resulted in the transformation of Vietnamese society. This process has been reinforced by Vietnam's open door policy. This project analyses to what degree these changes have also led to a diversification of narratives about Vietnamese history. It will show whether Vietnamese journals of history, history textbooks, websites, museums and historical sites in Vietnam have become the locus of national and transnational historiographic debates and whether the official Party historiography has started to reframe the representation of Vietnams past.

History is ubiquitous in Vietnam, as can be seen from the picture of a public poster in Hanoi (2007): Sẵn sàng bảo vệ tố quốc! = Ready to defend the fatherland.

Principal Investigator(s) at the University	Dr. Martin Großheim (Lehrstuhl für Südostasienstudien)
Project period	01.08.2014 - 31.07.2017
Source of funding	DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft > DFG - Sachbeihilfe
Projektnummer	GR 193-1
Themenfelder	Neuere und Neueste Geschichte (einschl. Europäische Geschichte der Neuzeit und Außereuropäische Geschichte)