The making of Việt Nam

Since early 1990, Nguyễn Khuyến, editor-in-chief of Vietnam Weekly, an English newspaper of Việt Nam News Agency, asked me to write a series of articles for the column The Making of Vietnam, that introduce the history of Việt Nam to foreigners. As a result, I wrote an article every week until mid 1991. My articles covered a long period of Vietnamese history, but not the Nguyễn Dynasty. However, I had to bid farewell to this column because I was too busy at that time.

In 2000, Vietnam News asked me to reprint the series of articles in The Making of Vietnam for their Sunday issues. I had an opportunity to review all the articles and end the series with articles about the Tây Sơn Dynasty (1778 - 1802) until the mid 2001. I regret not having time and good health to write about the Nguyễn Dynasty so that the series would represent a complete panorama of Vietnamese history.

After reprinting the above-said series, many foreigners suggested to me to gather all the articles into a book. As a result, I decided to publish the book The Making of Vietnam to meet the demand of readers.