Kelley, Liam C. 1966–

views updated

Kelley, Liam C. 1966–

PERSONAL:

Born December 28, 1966. Education: Dartmouth College, B.A., 1989; University of Hawaii at Manoa, M.A., 1996, Ph.D., 2001.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of History, 2530 Dole St., Sakamaki B408, Honolulu, HI 96822-2283. E-mail—liam@hawaii.edu.

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, associate professor in the department of history.

WRITINGS:

Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship, Association for Asian Studies/University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and Crossroads.

SIDELIGHTS:

Liam C. Kelley is a historian whose primary interest is Southeast Asia, especially the history of the Chinese. He has also studied the vast quantity of extant Vietnamese writings in classical Chinese to examine Vietnamese history, literature, and religion. In his first book, Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship, Kelley looks at the complex relationship between Vietnam and China from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries via the writings of Vietnamese poet/diplomats who were sent by the Vietnamese to China, primarily to plead against invasions. In his look at the politico-cultural relationship between the two countries, the author goes against the long-held view that the Vietnamese historically sought to maintain a totally separate cultural identity and only interacted with China to avoid invasion. According to the author, the Vietnamese actually sought to unify their cultural practices with those in China while, at the same time, recognizing their country's subordinate political role. He makes his case through an examination of what is called "envoy poetry."

"Kelley uses the poems, and their authors, to boldly and bluntly reexamine the ever vexatious question—for scholars who work on pre-twentieth-century Vietnam—of the depth, breadth, and qualitative and quantitative impact of Chinese/Sinitic culture on Vietnamese culture," wrote C. Michelle Thompson in the China Review International. In his book, the author examines much of the early scholarship concerning the relationship between Vietnam and China and noted that it presented Vietnam as a "little China," and subsequent research after World War II focused on critiquing this theory. As a result, according to Kelley, this led to the unwavering belief in the "not Chinese" theory of Vietnam history. Writing that many past historians have misinterpreted many Vietnamese historical documents and writings as a literature of resistance to domination, the author instead presents his case that much of these writings concerned internal problems and hostilities within Vietnam. The author notes that the Vietnamese actually welcomed Chinese troops in some instances to take sides in Vietnam's own internal struggles. To support his theory, the author points to specific texts and authors who embraced the Chinese.

"Liam Kelley has opened a new topic with his study of poetry written in classical Chinese by Vietnamese envoys to the Ming and Qing courts during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries," wrote K.W. Taylor in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. Taylor added: "His book is a good corrective to the nationalist historiography that elides the profound and creative sense of connection that many educated Vietnamese at that time felt to the civilized world we now call East Asia, centered at the imperial court in China."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 2006, Patricia M. Pelley, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship, p. 1490.

China Review International, fall, 2006, C. Michele Thompson, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars, p. 427.

Historian, fall, 2006, Nguyen Thi Dieu, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars, p. 611.

International History Review, March, 2006, Nola Cooke, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars, p. 160.

Journal of Asian Studies, February, 2006, Li Tana, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars, p. 152.

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, February, 2006, K.W. Taylor, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars, p. 173; June 1, 2006, K.W. Taylor, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars, p. 364.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 2005, review of Beyond the Bronze Pillars, p. 53.