Vietnam considers international integration as an inevitable trend of its higher education. Yet, there has been lacked a review investigating internationalization development of Vietnamese higher education. Therefore, this study explores the historical development of this phenomenon by considering its political and educational ideologies. This study analyzed three datasets: 362 educational regulations from the French colonial period, 520 issues of the Journal of Historical Studies, Vietnam (1956‒2019), and 26 regulations from 1998 to 2022. KHCoder was utilized for text analysis and visualization. The findings categorized the internationalization of Vietnamese higher education into five stages. The first two stages (1858–1985) were specific to North Vietnam, focusing on strengthening political ideology and sending students to socialist countries. The third stage (1986–1999) aimed to prepare national academics for connections with developed countries, involving increased international conference participation and research collaboration. The fourth stage (2000–2012) emphasized collaboration within Asia and reforming higher education governance. Finally, the fifth stage (2013–2024) focused on academic and economic competitiveness. Overall, the study reveals that the internationalization of higher education in Vietnam has been shaped by political, historical, and cultural factors, resulting in distinct strategies for each period.