[5][6] Kelley is known for challenging many established beliefs in the field of Vietnamese history which he claims go unchallenged because of the nationalist narrative that affects the historiography of Vietnam.

[7] In his first book Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship published in 2005 Kelley examines much of the early scholarship concerning the Sino-Vietnamese relationship and noted that this early historical scholarship presented Vietnam as a "little China" (小中華, Tiểu Trung Hoa), while subsequent research made after World War II focused more on critiquing this theory.

[12] Together with Tạ Chí Đại Trường he criticised the authenticity of the Hùng kings claiming that they were later invented and that their supposed historicity had no basis in reality.

[13][7] 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 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 tense.

[13] Tạ Chí Đại Trường praised Kelley for challenging the myth and agrees with his general arguments, but noted that he still had some criticism towards a small number of points in his work on the subject.

[17] During this time he had been back and forth in Vietnam, attending a number of seminars and publishing many articles largely to prove that the history and traditions of "anti-foreign aggression of the Vietnamese people" (Truyền thống chống ngoại xâm của dân tộc Việt Nam) are only recent pieces of fiction, and were cultural values that the Vietnamese people were proud to have only after establishing contact with the West.

[20] This work was later translated into Vietnamese by Võ Xuân Quế of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Ho Chi Minh City) [vi] (Trường Đại học Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn) in Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam, a part of the Vietnam National University.

[21] Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship published in 2005 was based on research conducted at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies in Hanoi, it focuses on the tributary ties between China and Vietnam from the late 16th to the early 19th centuries.

[24] Historians Gabriel F. Y. Tsang of the Sun Yat-sen University, Department of Chinese Language and Literature in Guangzhou, Guangdong and Hoang Yen Nguyen of the Vietnam National University, University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City, noted that the systematic works of Kelley and Peng Qian (彭茜) demonstrate the sophisticated impact of Chinese Confucianism on the Vietnamese envoys and that their works describe the normal communication that existed between the courts of Imperial China and Imperial Vietnam that was based on the cultural congruity that existed between the two countries.

[25] But they noted that Kelley's works and research into the study of envoy poetry insufficiently investigated into the transformation and violation of Confucian manners and thoughts at specific historical moments by the official representatives of the courts.

However, it is not a mere difference of “perspective,” as there have been thousands of books and articles written outside of Vietnam that provide evidence for the constructed/imagined nature of nations/identity, but there is not a large body of scholarship which supports the Vietnamese view of what a nation and identity is."

[12] He went further by considering the thesis on national identity, anti-foreign policy literature, is just "projecting present ideas and feelings into the past" (phóng chiếu các ý niệm và cảm xúc hiện tại vào quá khứ).

Kiernan claimed that Kelley is also ready to criticise those "few academics" who work on pre-modern Vietnamese history "who can read the sources in classical Chinese.

[6] French historian Gerard Sasges stated in 2018 that "Despite Professor Kiernan's claims to the contrary, Kelley's wide-ranging and trenchant critique still stands."

[12] During this same period of both modernisation and Westernisation a lot of, not only social but also, scientific vocabulary started to enter the Vietnamese language, such as máy bay (Aeroplane), tàu hỏa (Train), ô-tô (Automobile), xe máy - mô-tô (Motocyclette), áo vét (Veston), dầu tây (Petroleum),... đến tự do (Freedom), bình đẳng (Equality), bác ái (Charity), dân quyền (Civil rights), độc lập (Independence), yêu nước (Patriotism), dân tộc (Ethnicity, ethnic group), Etc.

[12] Nguyễn Hòa argued that these kinds of concepts (phenomena related to freedom, equality, charity, civil rights, independence, patriotism, ethnicity, Etc.)

[12] Another criticism of Kelley by Nguyễn Hòa revolves around the argument by solely focusing on the written texts that one cannot feel "the spirit of the times" by removing the words from their greater historical context giving him an inability to grasp the "hidden" and "non-written" nature of some past problems and events that were not stored by documents, but propagated in folklore and have been imprinted on the unconscious community, saying that using Kelley's methodology "it will be difficult to find convincing solutions" and that it's "easy to get caught up in the trend of subjective speculation".

[12] Hòa claims that after a thousand years of Chinese colonisation not many (if any) written records of Vietnamese survived and that folklore has become a place to store information about many events, historical, and cultural phenomena over the centuries.

[12] While Hòa does admit that using folklore isn't an optimal tool for historical research it makes it possible to remember the past of the country and the nation which are preserved and transmitted through "the collective memory of the Vietnamese people".

[12] For his denial of Vietnam's ancient past and supposedly demonstrated centuries of patriotism and longing for independence Nguyễn Hòa claimed that Kelley was holding on to what he defined as "spiritual colonialism" (chủ nghĩa thực dân tinh thần).

[12] "Or, as Nguyễn Thị Minh wrote in her essay about post-colonial translation theory: "exaggeration of a weakened, childish, lazy, and ignorant "other" is all about showing a superiority of Western culture" (phebinhvanhoc.com.vn, 21 July 2012)."

(Original Vietnamese) "Hay, như Nguyễn Thị Minh Thương viết trong tiểu luận Lý luận dịch thuật hậu thực dân là: “cường điệu hóa về một “kẻ khác” suy yếu, ấu trĩ, lười biếng, mê muội, tất cả chỉ để hiển thị rõ hơn một văn hóa phương Tây ưu việt bội phần” (phebinhvanhoc.com.vn, ngày 21.7.2012)."

[28] Nguyễn Hòa states that the folklore of Vietnam surrounding its ancient origins can be compared with those of the modern-day Israel, where it is equally impossible to take the time of its establishment in 1948 without ignoring the history of thousands of years before Christ of the Jews;[28] a people which have an equally legendary origin based on the story of Moses and that his staff was seen as a symbol of the Jewish people for countless of generations before the creation of their modern state.

[28] In June 2014 historian Lê Việt Anh wrote a piece in Nhân Dân, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam, criticising Kelly (whom he referred to as "L.C Ken-li") for his views on Vietnamese history and called him a "Temple burner" (kẻ/người "đốt đền").

(Với tôi có vẻ như có một thực tế là người Pháp là những người đầu tiên chứng minh "sự thể hiện hòa bình và liên tục quyền lực nhà nước" đối với Paracels) based on the facts that the Nguyễn dynasty was the first Vietnamese state to claim the area and that the French were the first to actually establish a permanent presence there during the 1930s.

[18] Lê Việt Anh also claimed that Kelley's work which criticised the historical basis of the Hồng Bàng dynasty with nearly 90 annotations misunderstands the origins of the Vietnamese nation.

[18] According to Lê Việt Anh understanding the histories of Vietnam, Japan, and Korea through the Sinocentric texts from the elites of the time doesn't reflect the independent nature of the peoples of these countries, as French cultural researchers found a rich folklore discussing the Vietnamese past and other cultural assets in the face of the Vietnamese Imperial court being dominated by the French.

[18] Which is why the "Hoa tâm" method of studying Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean history isn't a perfect model especially in light of their independence comparable to the "cultural coercion" of the colonial states.

[18] With Việt Anh stating that these challenges have forced many researchers to change their old notions, as these old notions are seen as "offensive" (xúc phạm) and "simplistic" (đơn giản hóa) and that even well-trained American scholars, influenced by the Vietnamese concept of "little China", have more or less changed their views over the years to "reduce their bias", something which Kelley considers a cognitive error.

[18] In the end of his article Lê Việt Anh warned other authors not to adopt Kelley's methods and perspectives and that he perceives the trends that Kelley is setting as undesirable noting that historical research should be careful when considering, evaluating, and concluding on a particular issue that, otherwise, it will not only "disturb social knowledge", but may also "lead to insults and misrepresentations of the core and good values that are the pride of the whole nation".