[Video] Take a Look at Giant 17th-Century Drawings of Vietnam

History books tend to make for dry reading. Of course, they're full of important facts and details to be remembered for generations to come, but if you're looking for an interesting read, historical records usually don't do much to entice the average person. 

Historical drawings, however, are a whole different story. In one installment of the YouTube vlog Objectivity, host Brady Haran visits the Royal Society London to take a look at some 17th-century pictures of Vietnam sketched by an Anglo-Vietnamese explorer called Samuel Baron.

Baron, who was born in Hanoi, is responsible for a series of generous drawings which document both the capital's landscape and trading points in 1684-1685 as well as everyone from the King of Tonkin down to Hanoian street performers, who were apparently into football as far back as the 1680s.

Check out the intricate sketches below: