Listen to Vietnamese history, one layer at a time.

Our people must know our own history,so as to know clearly the roots of our country, Vietnam.
— Ho Chi Minh, Lich su nuoc ta, 1942

Start from episode 1 How we choose and check sources

38 episodes · 6 eras

Era I · 1 episode

Prehistory

The long stretch before writing reached what is now Vietnam, known only through what archaeology has dug up.

Episode 1The First People on Vietnamese Soil8 min

Era II · 11 episode

Hong Bang and Van Lang

The legendary opening of Vietnamese history, from the Hong Bang clan to the Van Lang of the Hung kings — known through stories and excavated objects, not through contemporary records.

Era III · 4 episode

Au Lac

The first stretch of Vietnamese history whose place names and people can be matched against contemporary Chinese records — from the Qin campaign into the south to the fall of Au Lac to Trieu Da.

Era IV · 4 episode

The kingdom a Qin official founded in Lingnan after the Qin collapsed; it lasted five reigns before the Han destroyed it. Where the Vietnamese histories should place it is a question their historians argued over for seven hundred years.

Era V · 6 episode

First Chinese domination

From the Han destruction of Nam Viet in 111 BC and the division of its land into commanderies, to the end of the Trung sisters' rising in 43. The main sources are the Han histories; the Vietnamese histories wrote of it many centuries later.

Era VI · 12 episode

Second and third Chinese domination

The age of Giao Chau, later the Protectorate of Annam, under the northern dynasties from the Eastern Han to the Tang, broken by the state of Van Xuan, which the Vietnamese histories record from Ly Bi’s proclaiming himself emperor in 544 to 602; the episodes written so far run from what Ma Yuan did in Giao Chi to the siege of the protectorate’s seat in 791.

Listen to Vietnamese history, one layer at a time.

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