Vietnam: A New History

by Christopher Goscha

Overview

"The best one-volume history of modern Vietnam in English" (Wall Street Journal)

In Vietnam, Christopher Goscha tells the full history of Vietnam, from antiquity to the present day. Generations of emperors, rebels, priests, and colonizers left complicated legacies in this remarkable country. Periods of Chinese, French, and Japanese rule reshaped and modernized Vietnam, but so too did the colonial enterprises of the Vietnamese themselves as they extended their influence southward from the Red River Delta. Over the centuries, numerous kingdoms, dynasties, and states have ruled over -- and fought for -- what is now Vietnam. The bloody Cold War-era conflict between Ho Chi Minh's communist-backed Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the American-backed Republic of Vietnam was only the most recent instance when war divided and transformed Vietnam.

A major achievement, Vietnam offers the grand narrative of the country's complex past and the creation of the modern state of Vietnam. It is the definitive single-volume history for anyone seeking to understand Vietnam today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541603653
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	266,480
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Christopher Goscha is professor of history at the Université du Québec à Montréal. The author and editor of numerous books on Southeast Asia and international relations in English and French, he lives in Montreal, Canada. 

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Many Different Vietnams
1. Northern Configurations
2. A Divided House and A French Imperial Meridian Line?
3. Altered States
4. Rethinking Vietnams
5. The Failure of Colonial Republicanism
6. Colonial Society and Economy
7. Contesting Empire and Nation-states
8. States of War
9. Internationalized States of War
10. A Tale of Two Republics
11. Towards One Vietnam
12. Cultural Change in the Long Twentieth Century
13. The Tragedy and The Rise of Modern Vietnam
14. Vietnam from Beyond the Red River
Conclusion: Authoritarianism, Republicanism, and Political Change

Editorial Reviews

01/30/2017
Goscha (Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954), associate professor of history at the Université du Quebec à Montréal, prioritizes the Vietnamese perspective in this sterling history of the Southeast Asian nation. This is a substantial and accessible volume that starts in ancient times and runs to the 21st century. Combining trustworthy secondary sources with documents, letters, and other recently discovered or released primary sources, Goscha succeeds in emphasizing “Vietnam’s own role in shaping its history” and highlighting “the country’s extraordinary diversity and complexity.” He positions Vietnam as a multiplicity rather than a political entity unified over time, and addresses the effects of imperialism and colonialism. Goscha devotes just two chapters (of 14) to the Second Indochina War (known to his fellow Americans as the Vietnam War), and his relatively short but illuminating narrative of the war foregrounds Vietnamese history, society, culture, and politics. Refreshingly, he barely mentions American presidents, politicians, generals, and war-policy makers. The latter parts of the book, addressing modern Vietnam, are replete with references and comparisons to what came before in Vietnamese history, primarily events related to the roles of the Chinese and French conquerors of Indochina. After reading this book, even dyed-in-the-wool American exceptionalists will surely think of Vietnam as a country, not a war. Maps & illus. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Mr. Goscha is one of the most talented and prolific of a new group of American and French historians who have examined the modern history of Vietnam not in regard to the country's relationship to the U.S. or the Cold War but on its own terms... [he] has put together what will probably be for some time the best one-volume history of modern Vietnam in English... for readers seeking a concise, insightful and readable guide to the complexity and variety of Vietnam's modern history, this book is an excellent choice."—Wall Street Journal

"Groundbreaking... Goscha has provided quite simply the finest, most readable single-volume history of Vietnam in English."—Guardian

"[A] thorough and thoughtful new history."—The Economist

"A splendid achievement. Christopher Goscha is one of our leading historians of modern Vietnam, and he shows it in this nuanced, fair-minded, deeply humane book. Destined to be a standard work on the subject."—Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

"Powerful and compelling. Vietnam will be of growing importance in the twenty-first-century world, particularly as China and the US rethink their roles in Asia. Christopher Goscha's book is a brilliant account of that country's history. Paying careful attention to Vietnamese voices as well as those of colonizers, he constructs a narrative that sets Vietnam in context, and makes it for western readers so much more than a half-remembered event in the Cold War."—Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

"For those who have wanted a distinct and comprehensive overview of Vietnam's history, this is it. Christopher Goscha has an eye for how history connects through generations and how a country can rise from disasters in a new form, without losing sight of its past."—Odd Arne Westad, author of Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750

"[An] excellent book.... Goscha is rigorously objective; but he does not shy away from analysis amid his historical fact finding."—The VVA Veteran

"A welcome new scholarly take on the story of a fascinating country." —Washington Independent Review of Books

"A vigorous, eye-opening account of a country of great importance to the world, past and future."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

09/01/2016
When Americans think of Vietnam, they might think mostly of the Vietnam War. Goscha (history, Univ. of Quebec at Montreal; Going Indochinese) certainly covers the conflict in great detail; however, this work is much broader in scope, beginning in 3000 BCE and concluding in the early 21st century. The author paints a vivid picture of a complex country that has been both victim (by China and France) and soldiers of colonialism (the Cham and others). It conveys the historical separations and competing forces (religions, ethnicities, ideologies, etc.) that continue to shape the region. Readers will see a cyclical pattern to the history of Vietnam. For example, the division between north and south in the mid-20th century is only the most recent example of rival politics vying for dominance. Gosha adroitly illustrates the experiences and contributions of both Viet and non-Viet ethnicities. Readers will come away with a better appreciation for the complexity of Vietnam's history and the diversity of its peoples. VERDICT Essential for readers with an interest in Southeast Asian history. See also Robert Miller and Dennis Wainstock's Indochina and Vietnam for a more exclusive focus on the war years.—Joshua Wallace, Tarleton State Univ. Lib. Stephenville, TX

Library Journal

2016-07-04
America was not the first world power to meet defeat in far-distant Vietnam. The reasons for that loss emerge from this welcome overview of that nation’s history.Sometimes, as with Richard Grant’s book on the Mississippi Delta, Dispatches from Pluto (2015), it helps to have American events explained by a non-American. Here the explainer is Goscha (The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam, 2016, etc.), a historian at the Université du Québec, the thing being explained a decadelong war in a country whose history reaches back millennia. The author’s survey gathers force when he enters the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the establishment of French Indochina, which set up the events that would culminate in war. The French government in Indochina enjoyed a great deal of local autonomy, for good or ill. Among those ills, the author notes in a fascinating aside, was forcing a Romanized alphabet on the country in the place of the classical Chinese ideograms, which “distanced Vietnamese from the East Asian civilizations in which they had moved for centuries.” They may have been unmoored, but nationalists still arose to claim independence, led by the “educated young” who had been schooled on the French model. Enter the Americans, who aimed to suppress this movement after the French failed to do so. Goscha poses a number of counterfactual questions: what might have happened if the cease-fire of 1954 held? What would have ensued if the Americans had not made the French war their own—and, as he points out, had not shouldered 80 percent of the cost of the French war to begin with? The devastation visited on the country in the “hugely assymetrical” American war remains shocking to contemplate; one Viet Cong leader characterizes it as an “experience of undiluted psychological terror.” Goscha closes by noting recent trends that might fulfill the planks of the republican movement of a century ago—and threaten the communist government accordingly. A vigorous, eye-opening account of a country of great importance to the world, past and future.

Kirkus Reviews