The Odyssey of Benedict Arnold - Nguyen Ánh
Sometimes you run across a piece of information that isn't backed up strongly by other sources. It still may be true, and I made note of it awhile back when thinking about what to write for future chapters, but when it came down to research, I found a lot less!
Years ago, I visited Vietnam via Japan and I ran across a book about that country's long history aptly titled, "Vietnam: A Long History". It was a hardcover edition and large, not ideal to grab while on the move through multiple countries and time-zones, but I was interested and ended up finding a copy when I returned home. That copy turned out to be a strangely printed paperback edition from Hanoi, 1987. I found out that it was missing recent revisions added in later editions but I'm still happy that it is now sitting on my bookshelf.
Where this links up with Benedict Arnold is that there is a portion in this book that mentioned a traitor, an emperor no less! Nguyen Ánh (or Gia Long). The author made the case that this ruler's efforts to secure his dynasty and dealings with foreigners, France specifically, left the door open to Vietnam being colonized further down the line, long after he had passed. This bit helped add him to the roster of traitors I'd been working through and I was really looking forward to drawing a chapter on Vietnam, but because I didn't find as much information as I had hoped to, I decided to shift the narrative back to Arnold and mix what I did know, hoping to add the unintended consequences of treachery (featured here with Andre's execution).
My memory of the book that I read was that it was written by an old communist, intent on framing thousands of years of a country's history through that lens. It was a good read, dry at times, but interesting, and a piece of history in its own right. I'm unsure what the prevailing though on Nguyen Ánh is at this moment, but I hope to revisit it somehow in the story because Vietnam has a rich history that I only hinted at in this chapter.
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Khac Vien, Nguyen. Vietnam: A Long History. Foreign Languages Publishing House: Hanoi, 1987.
*The pond scene is specifically sourced from my own photos from a visit to the ancient capital, Hoa Lu in 2014.
