History and Biography in Twentieth-Century Vietnam: The Seven Ages of Đào Duy Anh

• In Event: 99. Periods and Patterns in the Vietnamese Past

Abstract

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players … And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages,” wrote William Shakespeare in his pastoral comedy, As You Like It. On the stage of twentieth-century Vietnamese history, Đào Duy Anh made his entry in 1905 to a humble family in the province of Thanh Hóa; he attended the Imperial Academy in the royal capital of Huế and then taught in a small coastal town; he soon returned to Huế where he wrote for a newspaper, published tracts, and led a political party. To equip his countrymen in their struggle against colonial rule, Đào Duy Anh published works of history and literary criticism; and in his maturity he founded and led a number of university departments in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; the professor published several works of scholarship in his retirement; but he spent the last several years of his life sick and in seclusion before he made his final exit in 1988. Infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, patron, senescent scholar, and convalescent, the seven ages of Đào Duy Anh span the major changes in twentieth-century Vietnamese history. This paper uses his biography to challenge the conventional periodization of modern Vietnamese history and to offer a series of reflections on the relationship between history and biography in modern Southeast Asia.

Author

• Haydon L. Cherry, Northwestern University