Talk:Royal Vietnamese army

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Scope of this article and name

@Laska666:, first of all thank you for creating this article, as information about the pre-1945 military of Vietnam on the English-language Wikipedia in a centralised is (or now was) scarce. But I'm failing to see a straightforward definition for "Royal Vietnamese Army" as for example the Nguyễn Lords' military wasn't the same as the main Revival Lê Dynasty's army (obviously de jure it was, but these two forces were in a near constant war with each other). The Later Lê Dynasty referred to itself as an "Empire" and so did the forces of Quang Trung so why are these "Royal" but the post-1802 (to 1945) one "Imperial"? Why didn't dynastic change also change the military for dynasties before the Nguyễn Empire?

This is especially confusing as the Wikidata link connects this page with the Later Lê Dynasty Army article over at the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia. I just don't see a good reason why such a wide topic would exclude the military of the Nguyễn Dynasty, especially since the Gia Long period didn't change the old military at all, the reforms were all made under his son during the 1830's.

Of course, if there is scholarly consensus for this definition then I am not against it, I'm just curious to the specific choices you made with this article. Thank you for creating it. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:07, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Retitling

@Lệ Xuân:, I suggest retitling this to "Military history of Vietnam (938–1789)" or "History of the military of Vietnam (938–1789)". This article misrepresents the Vietnamese militaries from this period as a singular military force. Please see the section above, at present I still have found a justification for this odd presentation and the title is severely misleading. --Donald Trung (talk) 12:09, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Agree. I think the name "Royal Vietnamese Army" gives us the impression that it was a continuous, single military force for almost a millennium. In fact, it wasn't. I think the main contributor of this article was trying to imitate articles like Roman army that cover a span of over 2000 years from 753 BC to 1453 AD. However, keep in mind that the article on the Roman army itself is some sort of a "parent article". Armies of different eras are divided into separate, more detailed child articles, e.g. Komnenian or Palaiologan army, simply because they are not the same. Personally, I prefer the title "Military history of Vietnam (938–1789)" just to harmonize it with other existing articles on enwp such as "Military history of Japan". Hankiz 13:25, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@Lệ Xuân:, multiple independent factors contributed to this, and it is a part of the efforts of user "Laska666" to present Đại Việt as continuous country throughout, I am not opposed to having such "an umbrella article", my issue is their motivations, namely removing any references to Chinese concepts and "Chinese-style historiography" (something for which I believe good arguments can be made but they're not making them) and to create their own historiography (see: Talk:Đại Việt for how I believe their organisation looks like based on their actions). My biggest issue actually is the arbitrary nature of the dates they select, like "Đại Việt" starting before Đại Việt but ending before the country was renamed and including Đại Ngu (it is all over at the linked talk page), in this case the dates are equally arbitrary and it somehow includes both the militaries of the Nguyễn Lords and those loyal to the Trịnh. With Musée Annam the problem is that (or at least appears to be) "a stupid person attempting to do smart things" but I would probably describe Laska666 as "a smart person trying to do stupid things". It is clear that they're trying to push their own form of historiography but my largest issue remains the inconsistency, I just don't know why this date ends at 1789 and not 1945 (the end of the monarchy, or Japan actually creating a modernised Việtnamese military), this simply only works if (1) one views "Đại Việt" as a single continuous entity, (2) the militaries of the Tây Sơn Wars should be discounted because it was "a civil war" so no national military existed, and (3) this "Đại Việt" is somehow distinct from the Nguyễn Dynasty but including the Nguyễn Lords. At the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia it is "Army of the Lê Dynasty", "Army of the Inner Lands under the Nguyễn Lords", "Army if the Tây Sơn Dynasty", "Army of the XXX Dynasty", it wasn't Laska666 that decided to translate these different but because another user did so (or perhaps they weren't interested in fully writing about these militaries) it laid the groundwork for them to do... Well, this. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:00, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

"The Royal Vietnamese army was the primary military body of the Vietnamese states of Jinghai and Đại Việt and the armed forces of the Vietnamese monarchy from 938 to 1789. It was disbanded and succeeded by the Imperial Vietnamese army of the Nguyễn dynasty in early 19th century."

The intro says it all, this again just calls all names "Vietnam" had in this period (excluding Jinghai) as "Đại Việt" but says that it was disbanded by the Nguyễn Dynasty, how was it any different than other succeeding dynasties doing this or the Ming Dynasty? Also, in his/her version of events the French disbanded the Nguyễn's military in 1885 (a completely arbitrary date as I've explained a dozen times before), but include an image of Nguyễn Dynasty soldiers during the 1910's because... Logic????? It is the same here, these dates only work if you accept the new historiography, so if this were to be a Roman-style article it should probably be from 938 until 1945 and not the overthrow of the Revival Lê Dynasty, also their intros/leads never match their Infoboxes, even "their" re-written Đại Việt still uses a different starting and end date than "their" infobox. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:08, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't understand the following sentences, which also sounds really weird: "The Royal Vietnamese army […] was disbanded and succeeded by the Imperial Vietnamese army of the Nguyễn dynasty in early 19th century." My question is: Why is the period before 1789 referred to as Royal and after that as Imperial ? Hankiz 19:39, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@Lệ Xuân:, the answer to that question is also found at "Talk:Đại Việt#"Own historiography"" because of edits like these. More interestingly, they actually did claim that the Nguyễn period was called the "Kingdom of Vietnam", so user "Laska666" isn't even consistent in their own "Pure Land" historiography, they just really hate the Sinitic nature of Vietnamese culture and history and likely see the title "Emperor" as an extension of it, ironically doing exactly what a Chinese ultranationalist would do... --Donald Trung (talk) 20:05, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Their "personalised" historiography looks like this:

• Kingdom of Đại Việt (968–1407; 1428–1802).
• Fourth Chinese domination period (1407-1428).
• Kingdom of Vietnam (1802-1885), ignore that most end dates of the "Nhà Nguyễn thời độc lập" (茹阮𥱯獨立) are 1883, 1884, or 1886.
• French Indochina (Starting in 1885 despite being created in 1887).
• They haven't re-written the articles about "Post-1945 Vietnam" yet.

In this version Vietnam is a "Kingdom" under the Nguyễn Dynasty, but the moment the French arrive the Nguyễn completely stops to exists, this actually reminds me of a more general "gap" of Vietnamese historiography. Like this page says: "As I’ve said before, not-knowing Chinese limits what one can do and see when researching about Vietnamese history, and these dissertations make that blazingly clear. For instance, whereas Western scholars have basically only hinted at intellectual connections between China and Vietnam in the first half of the twentieth century (as if the French arrive and China suddenly disappears from the worldview of educated Vietnamese), there are several dissertations that have now been produced in China that document the various intellectual connections that persisted.". It is as if Nguyễn Dynasty mandarins didn't even exist at all after 1885 in the minds of a ridiculous amount of historians as people tend to exclusively look at "the revolutionaries" during this period, hence why they choose to completely skip any Nguyễn Dynasty content after 1885 and start "French Indochina" two (2) years before it's even created. They seem to hate the term "Empire" for Vietnam but for whatever reason allow the Nguyễn Emperors to actually carry the title "Emperor", they also really seem to hate the title "Dynasty", they often write "Nguyen Vietnam (1802–85)" in articles specifically to re-affirm their historiography. These are just a number of trends I've noticed. This article tends to have a number of these "mannerisms", to call them that. --Donald Trung (talk) 20:43, 10 September 2021 (UTC)