The documents reportthe Nguyen Dynasty’s activities to exploit natural resources on the twoarchipelagos as well as their surveys and landmark planting there.
The copy of imperial records called “Royal Annals of Dai Nam” was collected and published by Japan’s Keio University.
Theannals were originally compiled by the court’s historiography officebetween 1821 and 1939. However; only first part of the chronology fromKing Gia Long to King Dong Khanh, were engraved into wooden prints,while the rest were hand-written in six copies for preservation.
The records were lost during the war time.
Since1961, Keio University researched, collected, photocopied the annals andpublished documents into 20 volumes with 8,181 pages.
Phanhighlighted that thanks to concerted efforts made by the Japaneseuniversity, Royal Annals were restored and serve as valuable evidence ofVietnam’s sovereignty of Truong Sa and Hoang Sa archipelagos.
Throughout the annals, Japanese researchers and the internationalpublic are able to gain a deeper understanding about Vietnamese historyfrom 16th century to the of the 20th century, he added.-VNA