The Guns and Forts of Vung Tau: making it useful.
By Paul Rowe
Article three
As promised article three will look at ‘providing an answer to a problem’.
History is a lot more interesting than just recording facts. The study of history helps provides answers to problems. At the very least, research and fieldwork fills in ‘gaps’ in current history. At the other end of the spectrum historical research might help find out why former civilizations disappeared.
Ern, if you are doing the research that intellectual property (new knowledge) is yours. I was going to suggest to you one project (problem) you might want to tackle. Since you have the lay out of many of the old French forts of Vung Tau, it should be simple enough enough to calculate the field of fire across Ganh Ray Bay. So the problem would be stated as, ‘what was the effective field of fire across Ganh Ray Bay provided by the old French forts on Vung Tau island?’
It was funny that I was going to suggest this particular project. You pre-empted my suggestion by recently providing such a map. It was someone else’s map, but obviously you saw a gap which needed to be filled.
Even more recently you spotted another problem. The strangely placed man-made cave/tunnel just above Tran Phu Street. You got to the bottom of that problem very nicely, but the difference this time was that this answer is yours. Fieldwork and its consequent discoveries are what makes history personally exciting.
Keep up the good work.
The next article to make The Guns and Forts of Vung Tau useful, will be the last article in this brief series. Ern, I have things to do and places to go!
By Paul Rowe
Article three
As promised article three will look at ‘providing an answer to a problem’.
History is a lot more interesting than just recording facts. The study of history helps provides answers to problems. At the very least, research and fieldwork fills in ‘gaps’ in current history. At the other end of the spectrum historical research might help find out why former civilizations disappeared.
Ern, if you are doing the research that intellectual property (new knowledge) is yours. I was going to suggest to you one project (problem) you might want to tackle. Since you have the lay out of many of the old French forts of Vung Tau, it should be simple enough enough to calculate the field of fire across Ganh Ray Bay. So the problem would be stated as, ‘what was the effective field of fire across Ganh Ray Bay provided by the old French forts on Vung Tau island?’
It was funny that I was going to suggest this particular project. You pre-empted my suggestion by recently providing such a map. It was someone else’s map, but obviously you saw a gap which needed to be filled.
Even more recently you spotted another problem. The strangely placed man-made cave/tunnel just above Tran Phu Street. You got to the bottom of that problem very nicely, but the difference this time was that this answer is yours. Fieldwork and its consequent discoveries are what makes history personally exciting.
Keep up the good work.
The next article to make The Guns and Forts of Vung Tau useful, will be the last article in this brief series. Ern, I have things to do and places to go!