Di San Van Hoa Duoi Nuoc Chung O Viet Nam: Cac Co Hoi Hop Tac

Seafaring has been a truly “international’ activity for a very long time and this has involved ships travelling across long distances between what, today, are different countries. Vietnam has probably been involved in more than 2,000 years of international seafaring activity. As a result, somewhere along the Vietnamese coast are the remains of vessels that came from the Arab world, China, Japan, the USA, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Great Britain in addition to locally, or regionally, built vessels. Shared, or mutual, heritage is about recognizing that other nations can, and do, have interests in the heritage located within a particular country’s jurisdiction. Because seafaring has involved vessels from so many different countries, dealing with shared underwater cultural heritage often takes on more importance than for other forms of heritage on land. This paper considers shared underwater cultural heritage in Vietnam through case studies related to four 17th century Dutch shipwrecks, belonging to the Dutch East India Company (VOC), that are believed to have been wrecked within Vietnam’s jurisdiction. Vietnam has an opportunity to recognize other countries’ interests in underwater cultural heritage and could benefit from international collaboration in investigating such sites of shared underwater cultural heritage.