Vietnam Over the Long Twentieth Century Becoming Modern, Going Global

This open access book provides fascinating insights into the incredible changes that Vietnam underwent in the long twentieth century as it transformed from an early modern kingdom to a European colony, to a divided land with opposing ideologies, and to a unified country in a globalized world. At each stage in this long century of changes, there were Vietnamese who sought to mold their society into some vision of “modernity.” The book looks at multiple, rather than one form of modernity, and links those forms with the different political moments that Vietnam experienced, in tandem with the outside interlocutors that were maintained during those periods. As such, this book provides a holistic view of the many forms of modernity and their global links that can be found in Vietnam over the course of the long twentieth century. These multiple modernities are documented in this book, and the authors do so by bringing together the strengths of “traditional” language-based area studies scholarship with the insights that an awareness of trans-national and global perspectives provides. Relevant to historians and researchers in the broader arena of Southeast Asian studies with a particular interest in Vietnam—its journey from past to present—this book is a must-read engagement with a country that has undergone and continues to experience, rapid transformation.

Introduction: Documenting Vietnam over the Long Twentieth Century – Becoming Modern, Going Global.- Pursuing Van Minh: A Study of Civilizational Discourse in the Historical Narratives in Colonial Vietnam (1900-1915).- Hu?nh Th? B?o Hòa (1896-1982): A Woman Who Wrote to Change Vietnamese Society.- An Educational Regime of Truth for Social Reform in Late Colonial Vietnam: The Journalistic Art of the Possible in Ph? n? tân van’s “Travel Stories” and “Letters for You”.- Between the Sacred and the Secular: Publishing, Books, and Everyday Life in Colonial Cochinchina.- Multiple-Agents Involved in the Localization of Our Lady of La Vang: From a Mythic Figure to the Mother of Vietnam.- Another Kind of Vietnamization: Language Policies in Higher Education in the Two Vietnams.- Not So Honest Relations: Top Level Polish-Vietnamese Contacts 1965-1970.- New Voices in A New World – Media Portrayal of the Experiences of German Reunification in 1990 by Vietnamese Contract Workers in East Germany.- JICA’s Legal Technical Assistance Projects in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos since the 1990s.

Liam C. Kelley is an historian of Vietnam and Southeast Asia. His research and publications have focused on premodern Vietnamese history and the transition to modernity in the early twentieth century. For roughly the past decade, he has also co-organized the Engaging With Vietnam (EWV) conference series and in recent years has served as the editor for various publication projects emerging from EWV conferences, including the volume Vietnam at the Vanguard: New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community (Springer, 2021).

Gerard Sasges is an historian of technology, development, and the environment, with a focus on Vietnam from 1900 to the present. His research uses non-Western histories of technology to reshape our understanding of development under capitalist and socialist regimes and its relationship to the environment and to lived experience. He has recently published a monograph entitled Imperial Intoxication: Alcohol and the Making of Colonial Indochina (University of Hawaii Press, 2017).