State archives were established from an early date by the kings of Đại Việt, so that by the time of the Nguyễn (1802-1945) there existed a substantial repository for official documents under the administrative control of a full-blown state office for libraries and archives. This repository housed both manuscripts and printed materials in chữ Hán (classical Chinese, the official language of the court until the early years of the twentieth century) and later the ideographic chữ nôm and romanised quốc ngữ scripts, including land records and official court documents known collectively as châu bản.

Regrettably some three-quarters of all Nguyễn dynasty court records were destroyed during the First Indochina War of 1946-1954. Those which survived may now be viewed in National Archives Centre 1, National Archives Centre 2, the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies Library and the library of the École Française d’extrême-orient (EFEO) in Paris.

The current system of state archives dates from 1945, when the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam issued a Decree establishing a National Service of Archives, Official Documents and Libraries (Sở Lưu trữ Công văn và Thư viện Toàn quốc) under the Ministry of Education. In the following year President Hồ Chí Minh signed Circular 1C-VP, which emphasised the special values of archival materials in the task of national construction and prohibited any destruction of records without the consent of competent authority.

Prior to 1962 the northern archives operated as a branch of the National Library, but Decree 102/CP of that year set up a separate National Archives Department (Cục Lưu trữ Nhà nước) within the Prime Minister’s Office. In that same year the Department was relocated to a new building in the western suburbs of Hà Nội and the older colonial records office in the grounds of the National Library became an annex known as National Archives Centre 1. Following Reunification in 1975 the public records office in Sài Gòn (now Hồ Chí Minh City) became National Archives Centre 2. Today all of the older holdings of the Vietnamese National Archives are stored in these two repositories. A state-of-the-art new repository – National Archives Centre 3 – was opened in April 2002 to house the records of national, regional and inter-regional agencies and institutions of the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (1945-1976) and the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam (1976-present).