Tạ Chí Đại Trường, also Trần Trường Thanh (21 June 1938 – 24 March 2016), was a Vietnamese historian. Tạ Chí Đại Trường graduated from the University of Saigon with an MA in history in 1964 then taught history in Vietnam and published ''Lịch Sử Nội Chiến Việt Nam 1771-1802'' (Saigon 1973), before being enrolled in the

South Vietnamese Army The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN; ; french: Armée de la république du Viêt Nam) composed the ground forces of the South Vietnamese military from its inception in 1955 to the Fall of Saigon in April 1975. It is estimated to have suffe ...

. He remained in Vietnam after the

fall of Saigon The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, t ...

in 1975, and was sent to a re-education camp. He emigrated to the United States in 1994. Together with Liam C. Kelley he criticised the authenticity of the Hùng kings claiming that they were later invented and that their supposed

historicity Historicity is the historical actuality of persons and events, meaning the quality of being part of history instead of being a historical myth, legend, or fiction. The historicity of a claim about the past is its factual status. Historicity denot ...

had no basis in reality. Tạ Chí Đại Trường claimed that the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was unwilling to challenge the current narrative of the Hùng kings because of the adulation that the country had received in light of the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

by foreigners that admired the Communists' struggle that caused it to promote the previously vague myth of the Hùng kings to become a national legend taught unquestionably to the Vietnamese people as it's a powerful origin myth, making any critical discussion about the

Hồng Bàng dynasty The Hồng Bàng period (Vietnamese: ''thời kỳ Hồng Bàng''), also called the Hồng Bàng dynasty,Pelley, p. 151 was a legendary, semi-mythical period in Vietnamese historiography, spanning from the beginning of the rule of Kinh Dươn ...

tense.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Truong, Ta Chi Dai 20th-century Vietnamese historians 1938 births 2016 deaths 21st-century Vietnamese historians