The Cham of Vietnam: History, Society and Art

$38.00 SGD

Edited by Bruce Lockhart and Tran Ky Phuong

The Cham people once inhabited and ruled over a large stretch of what is now the central Vietnamese coast. The Indianized civilization of this Austronesian-speaking group flourished between roughly the third and fifteenth centuries, and they competed with the Vietnamese and Khmers for influence in mainland Southeast Asia, but the Cham territories eventually became part of modern Vietnam. Written by specialists in history, archaeology, anthropology, art history, and linguistics, the essays in The Cham of Vietnam contribute to a revisionist overview of Cham history by re-assessing the ways the Cham have been studied by different generations of scholars of what "Champa" has represented over the centuries of its history. Several chapters focus on archaeological work in central Vietnam and position recent discoveries within the broader framework of Cham history, but there are also discussions of Cham economy, society and culture.

Through this study of a people that did not become a nation-state, the book provides penetrating insights into the history of Vietnam and on the broader dynamic of Southeast Asian history.


"In all, this volume presents a wealth of new perspectives in the study of the Cham culture of Vietnam, while at the same time providing pointers to possible fruitful areas of further research." - Ann Proctor


Bruce Lockhart is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore.

Tran Ky Phuong was curator of the Museum of Champa Sculpture in Danang, Vietnam, from 1978 until 1998, and is now an independent researcher on Cham art and cultural area studies in Central Vietnam.


Publication Year: 2011
350 pages, 229mm x 153mm
ISBN: 978-9971-69-459-3, Paperback

NUS Press