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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kingdom of Vietnam

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to Nguyen dynasty. I find precious argument here that's evidenced in a way that a non-expert can understand, which isn't helpful. That said, nobody has provided an evidenced argument against a merger, and there's some evidence that this is a POV-fork, and so I'm closing this as a "merge". Please note that this isn't consensus to simply redirect this title and effectively delete the page without first reaching consensus on what is worth merging. Vanamonde (Talk) 01:15, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kingdom of Vietnam

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This article sounds at best a revisionist history version of Nguyen dynasty, and at worst, a hoax. During the Nguyen Dynasty, the country was briefly called "Việt Nam" for 35 years (1804-1839), then "Đại Nam" for the next 135 years. The name "Việt Nam" did not reemerge until 1945. Searching for "Đại Việt Nam quốc" did not return anything reliable using this term, just some alternate history forum. DHN (talk) 07:19, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 07:49, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Vietnam-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 07:49, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • As far as I interpret "You are indefinitely banned from all namespaces except for Article, Talk, User, and User talk pages. The only exceptions are discussions where you are a subject of the discussion. In 6 months you may participate in deletion discussions, and AFC, provided you have been keeping in line with all restrictions." (from 2018) this is a "deletion discussion" so I am allowed to edit this page, so I would say Merge to the Nguyễn Dynasty article, I will copy my reasoning and relevant discussions below. --Donald Trung (talk) 20:31, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@DHN:, "hoax" is a strong word here but it is POV pushing historiography, this article should be merged with the Nguyễn Dynasty article or renamed to something like "Independent Nguyễn dynasty", this user misinterprets reliable sources by anarchronistically inserting the term "Kingdom of Vietnam" and often they just omit any Nguyễn history following the French conquest. This article only covers the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period of Vietnamese history. I am convinced that the user pushes their POV in some contexts for example "Royal Vietnamese army" just randomly stops at 1802 despite the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia having separate articles for Vietnamese militaries per dynasty. I think that this user makes a lot of Great articles but they seem to deliberately omit information about the Nguyễn following them becoming two French protectorate countries and this article is the epitome of this "cut-off" date. Please also see this comment and this comment.

Copied from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Kingdom_of_Vietnam&oldid=1037316722

Note that the above references to other articles are relevant here, this article is the epitome of this user's narrative, the Nội các article ending at 1884 only works with the "Kingdom of Vietnam" ending in 1884, the military of the Nguyễn Dynasty only works with this article ending in 1884, this way you can simply reinterpret sources by omitting anything after this point. These related articles that use "Nguyen Vietnam" (SIC) should also be renamed to "Nguyễn dynasty" because of both WP:COMMONNAME and the fact that most historians both Việtnamese and foreign use the term "Nguyễn Dynasty", but this article contains a lot of good factual information that is currently missing from the Nguyễn Dynasty article, so a merger is better than deleting it because of a hoax name / title. --Donald Trung (talk) 20:45, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: The user is very much aware of the fact that they are omitting information while writing articles, in this version of "Military of Nguyen Vietnam" (SIC) it contains this image with the caption "linh ve and officers in 1919", this means that the user is very much aware of the continued existence of various Nguyễn Dynasty topics during the French domination period, but chooses to deliberately omit it from the actual written content of the articles. This seems to be deliberately done to present a consistent narrative of "1885 Nguyễn extinction" and this article really seems to be the epitome of this issue, this is why to some editors (like the above) it can come off as a hoax, while I don't like calling it a "hoax", it would be like someone saying that after Yahoo! was acquired by Verizon Media in 2019 that it stopped existing, so calling it a "hoax" isn't wrong. That being said, the content only suffers from two (2) primary problems, one is the usage of the seemingly invented term "Kingdom of Vietnam" and the other is the "Lying by omission" (claiming that the Nguyễn stopped existing variously, and inconsistently, in 1884, 1885, or 1886), so the content should not be deleted because most of it is well-sourced, but the false narrative should simply be corrected. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:24, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Regarding my contribution and what you called a hoax, I don’t know and I have no opinion, but the Dai Nam state which you said, existed until 1945, was indeed the Annam puppet state possessed by the France Republic, as Dong Khanh was installed as the puppet ruler. So did principal historian Victor Lieberman (author of Strange Parallels Volume 1 Integration of the Mainland Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830), no Dai Nam could be seen in his books, but he wrote two distinct kingdoms, Dai Viet and Vietnam very clearly (p. 29 and p. 32). Did he make a hoax? French Annam, Cochinchina polity, and Nguyen Vietnam were three distinct regimes although they were ruled by the same family. Combining all of them into “Nguyen dynasty” is too complicated and obscure, misleading. Also, for relevance, the Chakri dynasty and the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand) are absolutely two separate things. The Nguyen dynasty (i.e Nguyen Phuc dynasty) was indeed not ended in 1885, but their regime died off (vietnamese empire) in that year, along with the establishment of French Annam (which replaced the vietnamese empire) and enthronement of Nguyen ruler appointed by the France Republic.

What is de-sinicise of Vietnam's history, since the beginning it has already stayed deep in Southeast Asia? Also, there seems to be no Chinese character in all my cited books written by good historians. Laska666 (talk) 17:11, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment My arguments above that this user seems to have a strong anti-Chinese bias seems to be confirmed with this addition of the infobox, not only does it explicitly refer to Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập period, it omits any "Chinese" (Hán) information, the name of the country is mentioned in French, not only is this a name that the French never used (they usually referred to it as "Empire de l'Annam" or something similar) French as a language doesn't make any sense for the Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập period as it was introduced during the French domination period. It is kind of odd how they omit Chinese characters at every given chance as if Latin letters are "more Vietnamese", this would be like a Filipino saying that Latin script is "more Pinoy" than Baybayin (which was used until the early 20th century when the Americans made Latin the standard) or an Indonesian script saying that Latin script is somehow "more Indonesian" than Arabic and Javanese scripts (both continued to be used under the Netherlands until the new Republican Indonesian government replaced them with Latin).
The successor state is listed as "French Indochina" which kind of works for "Vietnamese historiography" (if you squint really hard) but the Nguyễn Empire first lost Nam Kỳ and only two decades later became two (2) French protectorate countries, these two countries are a continuation of the Nguyễn Empire and not its end, this is why the Nguyễn Dynasty is typically divided into two "large" periods (although I would argue that the Gia Long and Minh Mạng periods are also radically different) namely the Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập period and the French domination, unlike the Southern Ming the Nguyễn didn't lose its government or its territory, the difference is that their status as a sovereign state changed to that of two protectorate countries. This is why Laska666 omits information at Noi cac and the Nguyễn military by explicitly claiming that their existence ended at the start of the French domination when they continued existing until the mid-20th century. If we look at sources like the National Museum of Vietnamese History the closest we can find about the Nguyễn Empire's supposed "state extinction" before 1945 would be at "Nhà Nguyễn và những tháng 7 biến động" which has the following passage "Trong một thông tri ngày 24/8/1898, Khâm sứ Trung kỳ đã viết “Từ nay, trên vương quốc An Nam không còn tồn tại hai chính quyền nữa mà chỉ tồn tại một chính quyền thôi” (tức chính quyền Pháp)." ("In a notice dated August 24, 1898, the Ambassador of the Middle States wrote: "From now on, in the kingdom of Annam there are no longer two governments, but only one" (ie the French government)."), this is over a decade into the French domination period and it is clear that until that point the two countries of Annam and Tonkin were still being ruled by the Nguyễn Dynasty and the French together. But as I said before, the Nguyễn Dynasty state existed until 1945, at "Vài nét về giáo dục địa phương nhà Nguyễn" it is explicitly mentioned that the Nguyễn Empire existed for 143 years and the Chinese-style education system for 117 ("Tồn tại trong lịch sử dân tộc suốt năm 143 năm (1802 - 1945), nền giáo dục nhà Nguyễn cũng được duy trì trong suốt một thời gian dài 117 năm (1802 - 1919). Trong 117 năm, nhà Nguyễn đã tổ chức được 47 kỳ thi Hương, lấy đỗ 5.397 Cử nhân; 39 kỳ thi Đại khoa, lấy đỗ được 558 vị Tiến sĩ, Phó bảng."). The significant re-writes by Laska666 only work if you completely ignore both Vietnamese historiography and Vietnamese historians. An example of how their influence completely changed the face of an article just look at "Đại Việt" before them and during their last edit. I don't disagree with the additions, I disagree with them trying to redefine Vietnamese historiography by deliberately misinterpreting the sources they use. --Donald Trung (talk) 17:16, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what "Vietnamese historiography" means and clearly I'm not a Vietnamese. But, the so-called "Nguyen dynasty state" of "Vietnamese historiography" is funny ridiculous and misleading. If so, there must be a clear acknowledgement distinguishes about what a "ruling family" and a "monarchy" is. All thing informational I wrote down are taken from almost verified non-Vietnamese sources written by good historians and together that's creating good global historiography and perspectives. "Vài nét về giáo dục địa phương nhà Nguyễn" it is explicitly mentioned that the ((Nguyễn Empire)) [misleading translation] existed for 143 years and the Chinese-style education system for 117 ("Tồn tại trong lịch sử dân tộc suốt năm 143 năm (1802 - 1945), nền giáo dục nhà Nguyễn cũng được duy trì trong suốt một thời gian dài 117 năm (1802 - 1919). Trong 117 năm, nhà Nguyễn đã tổ chức được 47 kỳ thi Hương, lấy đỗ 5.397 Cử nhân; 39 kỳ thi Đại khoa, lấy đỗ được 558 vị Tiến sĩ, Phó bảng."): No lapping non-English non-RS. Laska666 (talk) 17:42, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: According to Philip's Atlas of World History, Concise Edition:

p. 64 and 65: Dai Viet.[1]
p. 196: Nguyen Vietnam.[2]

References

  1. ^ O'Brien 2007, p. 64, 65.
  2. ^ O'Brien 2007, p. 196.

Where are "Ly dynasty state", "Le dynasty state" or "Nguyen dynasty state"? "Kingdom of Vietnam" may be a unfit title that could be changed to Nguyen Vietnam or Vietnamese empire certainly, but not "Nguyen dynasty state" because it did not exist. Laska666 (talk) 17:54, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • O'Brien, Patrick Karl (2007), Philip's Atlas of World History, Philip's, ISBN 978-0-54008-867-6
Something I noticed is that you explicitly add the dates whenever you mention "Nguyen Vietnam", at Nội các "The Grand Secretariat or the Cabinet (Vietnamese: Nội các, 內閣) of the Nguyen dynasty were the highest branch of the Kingdom of Vietnam's government (1802–85).", but if we look at for example Kelley he uses the term "Early Nguyễn Dynasty (1802—47)" for this period and refers to mandarins in French Tonkin as "Nguyễn Dynasty officials", this paper from Cambridge that cites the same authors you do uses the terms "Nguyễn dynasty", "Nguyễn state", and "Nguyễn realm". --Donald Trung (talk) 21:45, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: Laska666 called the Museum of National History in Hanoi, which employs some of the most prestigious historians in Vietnam, as being "non-English" (English linguistic supremacist) and "non-RS" (not a reliable source). I can understand wanting to use English sources for English names but this dismissal based on language seems kind of odd, so Vietnamese writings about Vietnamese history are less valuable unless they do so in a foreign language? Oké... --Donald Trung (talk) 10:41, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment let me put the comments ""Kingdom of Vietnam" may be a unfit title that could be changed to Nguyen Vietnam or Vietnamese empire certainly, but not "Nguyen dynasty state" because it did not exist." and "The Chinese concept of a dynasty or state shall not to be adopted upon other civilisations without careful check." in context here, this user specifically says that they don't like the fact that Vietnamese history is organised into "dynasties" like Chinese dynasties so they wish to invent new terms. Let's take a look at "their" article "Royal Vietnamese army" and note that no such concept existed for a supposed army that existed until 1802, I am not opposed to such an article existing but why does it end at 1802 and not 1945? Because the 1802 end date conforms to "the Laska666 historiography" which sees all of pre-Nguyễn Đại Việt as a coherent single state (their influence completely changed the face of an article just look at "Đại Việt" before them and during their last edit.). The Vietnamese-language Wikipedia's article is "Quân đội nhà Trần" ("Military of the Trần Dynasty"), like all other Vietnamese dynastic militaries are, there is no reliably sourced reason for the "Military of Nguyen Vietnam" to not be a part of the "Royal Vietnamese army" and the 1802 cut-off date makes little sense if the state is "Đại Việt" as the Gia Long Emperor used that name until 1804. Also note how their edits to the Trần military re-worded it to remove references to the Chinese concept of "dynasty". Note that the Vietnam Military History Museum has a battle flag with the Traditional Chinese characters "Trần" (陳) on it which, if it is a preserved historical flag, means that contemporary Vietnamese also used the Chinese concept of dynasty.
But here is an important question, why should the English-language Wikipedia invent a historiography not used by any mainstream historians based exclusively on Anglophone historians' view on Vietnamese history, in another discussion I had today fellow volunteer contributor Morrisonjohn022 pointed out how problematic it can be to depend on foreign historians with the "note that the authors you cited are Western scholars that tend to subscribe to a Western point of view on Chinese history that may not necessarily be entirely accurate", Vietnamese historians always use dynasties to refer to states, sure some arguments can be made that the Nguyễn Dynasty ended during the mid-1880's:

There are also counter examples (where the end date was later) with the dates being 1802-1953, but this is even rarer. But the main view remains that the end date was 1945, as for any of the above links there exists dozens of works use the "1802-1945" dates for the Nguyễn Dynasty and the most common name in English for the period described in English is not the "Kingdom of Vietnam" or "Empire of Vietnam" it's the "Early Nguyễn Dynasty". This is also why the article immediately appeared like a hoax to a Vietnamese-language Wikipedia administrator that came across it. So the question with this article remains, should the English-language Wikipedia invent new terms because one editor doesn't like the current mainstream way that Vietnamese history is written both in English and in Vietnamese? I sure hope nobody thinks that the answer should be "Yes". --Donald Trung (talk) 10:19, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Copying comments by Lệ Xuân.

"@Donald Trung Sorry for not being able to answer you yesterday. Since I don't have the time to check out the two articles you linked above yet, I will share my opinion about Laska666 based on my personal experiences. The first time I encounter this user was when I was asked to copy-edit Chiến tranh Việt–Chiêm (1367–1396) that was translated from the English version they have written. At first I was surprised to see someone write a new excellent Vietnam-related article, a topic that has apparently lost the attention it deserves. I think anyone who sees this article for the first time but doesn't actually read it will think the same way as I do. However, if you read carefully, you will notice some notable problems. In some passages, for example, he interpreted the information differently than the original in the source. I'm not sure if it was intentional or unintentional, but for someone who could write a long article like this in English, I doubt they got the source wrong. Another thing to note is that some terms probably seem to be their self-invention. For example, the term Continuation War (imitating the second phase of the Finno-Soviet War) and probably the term Nguyen Vietnam or the Kingdom of Vietnam to describe the independent era of the Nguyen Dynasty you mentioned above. Unless these terms appear in reliable sources, they can be regarded as original research and should be avoided on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's main job is to convey reliable information, not a place where people express their biased opinion. (I'm not sure I'm right, but I remember someone telling me he is ethnic Cham and made quite amount of posts about Cham history in some history groups on Facebook. This could explain the "pro-Cham" tendency in his idiolect.) LX | Talk 15:24, 6 August 2021 (UTC)"[reply]

"I just notice that they used a bunch of sources from the early 19th century as references for the terms "Kingdom of Vietnam", which strikes me as ridiculous. It is quite strange to see someone like him, who is trying to imitate "western-style" historiography, use primary sources to back up his statements."

"@Donald Trung Before adding the infobox, he even used an old German map from 1844. Beside the odd French name (odd because French is a "barbarian language" that has not gained ground in the "centre of Huaxia civiziation" (with which the Nguyen like to describe themselves)), which is as ridiculous as someone adds the Arabic name to the article on Rome, I am also skeptical of the name "Nước Việt Nam", which seems to be another self-invention of this guy. The name sounds too vulgar to me (at least for this period), simply because Classical Chinese was still the official written language of the court up until 1945. I doubt that there are any documents from this time contain this name. LX | Talk 17:58, 6 August 2021 (UTC)"[reply]

An article written by the person concerned was translated into the Vietnamese language and then extensively edited to make it fit the NPOV, but it failed to get" good article" status because of their authorship and the POV issues that brings, please see: https://vi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E1%BB%A8ng_c%E1%BB%AD_vi%C3%AAn_b%C3%A0i_vi%E1%BA%BFt_t%E1%BB%91t/Chi%E1%BA%BFn_tranh_Vi%E1%BB%87t%E2%80%93Chi%C3%AAm_(1367%E2%80%931396)

This means that Laska666 is a person fully capable of writing high quality articles in English, but chooses to misinterpret sources to push their POV. I copied the above because the user is on vacation in Estonia and she likely won't be back before this AfD closes. This article just exposed a systematic problem with this user's historiography. As you're active on Viwiki @DHN:, did you see more translated articles that were originally authored by Laska666 that needed extensive re-writing? Assuming that you read history articles. As issues from those can be listed here for when this article gets merged into the Nguyễn Dynasty one that it doesn't "import its issues". --Donald Trung (talk) 07:00, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose deletion. Re-titling looks like a better idea to me than a merge. This is definitely a distinct period in Vietnamese history. Srnec (talk) 02:29, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Srnec:, the problem with this article isn't that it's about the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period, it is the fact that this article revises that period and in the way it is currently written is a hoax. For example the infobox states that the state "ended" in 1885, which is a reference to the 1885 Treaty of Tientsin which ended the Sino-French War which is the author's own invented historiography as in the examples I like above the end dates for this period are consistently 1883 or 1884 based on the establishment of the French protectorates, in one instance someone uses 1886 but never 1885 which was invented o fit their French conquest of Vietnam historical revisionist article which even states "Kingdom of Vietnam (1858–83)", notice also how this article (and articles linked to by this user) uses the 20th (twentieth) century flag of the Nguyễn Dynasty to claim as its flag, which is also an odd hoax to include. The title in the infobox is "Đại Việt Nam Đế Quốc (Vietnamese). - Empire du Viêt Nam (French)" this name was never used in Vietnamese, first of all it is not even Vietnamese, it's Classical Chinese, in Vietnamese we would write "Đế Quốc Đại Việt Nam" and as the nominator states the name "Việt Nam" was only used for thirty odd years. French is listed as a language (in the pre-colonial period) but Classical Chinese is not (the actual official language). The term "Nước Việt Nam (Hán-Nôm: 渃越南)" wouldn't have been used at the time, the lead actually goes into the mid-20th century (contradicting the rest of the article). The way this article is written is clearly to replace the Nguyễn Dynasty article to fit the author's revisionist view of history, it is not actually the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period it just uses it as a vehicle to push a newly invented narrative. For example almost everywhere this article is linked it includes the start and end date of the "Kingdom of Vietnam" like at "Template:Nguyen Vietnam" and "Nội các ("the highest branch of the Kingdom of Vietnam's government (1802–85)", an institution that existed well into the 1930's). If merged it would be easier to fix the issues with otherwise amazing content, but if it is allowed to stand on its owns it unnecessarily promotes hoaxes. I think that "nuke and start again" goes way to far, but with merging it allows us to fix the issues inherent throughout the article and if a real "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) period article gets written it won't include all the hoaxes and re-interpretations present in this article. There is a reason why the nominator saw this article as a hoax, it is not because it covers a specific period in Vietnamese history but because it almost completely revises it. --Donald Trung (talk) 07:24, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge. This article is a PoV fork of Nguyễn Dynasty. The content on the historical Vietnamese states on Wikipedia is chronologically organized as follows: (1) Đại Việt (968–1407; 1428–1804) -> (2) Nguyễn Dynasty (1802–1883/1884) -> (3) French Cochinchina (1862...), Annam (French protectorate) (1883...), Tonkin (French protectorate) (1883...). The problem has arisen due to the second article's subject on a first glance appearing not as a historical state, but as a dynasty, which is slightly unconventional. The editor who created the here nominated article, did so construing the "dynasty article" as just being about the members of dynasty, when it is not, the subject of (2) is really and primarily the historic state, and the article named by the dynasty. Like Srnec said: This is definitely a distinct period in Vietnamese history -- yes, and this covered in (2). That is the longstanding article on said period, specifically.
    This means that keeping is eliminated as an option. Whatever the outcome of this discussion is, it can't be 'keep' because this is at best a duplicate article, which was correctly identified by Mccapra when he redirected the article as content is duplicated in target article /Nguyễn Dynasty/. At worst this article is a WP:POVFORK. Based on the arguments and the evidence provided by the nominator and Donald Trung, I conclude that the article is indeed a PoV fork, and as any PoV fork, it can be safely deleted (or redirected). However since the article contains some good parts, which would fit in the Nguyễn Dynasty article, it should be merged. — Alalch Emis (talk) 18:26, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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