Vietnam Peasant Land Peasant Revolution

During the French colonial period (1900-1945), Vietnamese peasants wrote vigorously about the effects of French policies on their living conditions. The vast majority of their writings were censored or contradicted by the published works of French and Vietnamese officials, and none is currenty in print. Ngo Vinh Long presents a realistic portrait of the Vietnamese determination and resiliency that brought down both the French and the American regimes. He describes the effects of French land policy on the peasants and the resulting problems in tenant farming and sharecropping, as well as peasant reaction to taxes, tax collections, usury, government agarian credit programs, commerce, and industry. He also translates previously unavailable texts that detail the emotions of the Vietnamese people with regard to the French occupation. For the Morningside Edition, Dr. Long has written a new preface in which he describes new scholarship and changes during the last fifteen years.

Although the United States has been involved in Vietnam for over twenty years, there has been no book in English that provides both a historical perspective on the Vietnamese peasants, who are more than 80 percent of the population, and a firsthand account of their living conditions under colonial rule during the first half of this century. The subject of this study is the impact of French colonial administrative policies on Vietnamese peasant society between the 1880s and 1945&-a period that is crucial for an understanding of the nature of the peasants' determined struggle not only against the French colonizers but also against their American successors. In his Foreword to the book, Professor Alexander Woodside (East Asian Research Center, Harvard) remarks that &"for English-speaking readers, this book is likely to serve as a forceful, unpleasantly chilling introduction to some very representative Vietnamese views about what Vietnamese relations with the industrial West have meant to Vietnamese society over the past century.&" The book is divided into two nicely complementary parts. In the first, Mr. Long presents a brief but detailed history of the effects that the French policy of land expropriation and free land concession had upon the peasant; the resulting problems of tenant farming and sharecropping; and the roles of taxes, tax collection, usury, government agrarian credit programs, and industry and commerce in determining the peasants' living standards. This history provides an objective background for the second part of the book, which introduces moving personal Vietnamese accounts in translation of life in the twenties and thirties. &"The Peasants,&" by Phi Van; &"When the Light's Put Out,&" by Ngo Tat To; &"Dead End,&" by Nguyen Cong Hoan; &"Mud and Stagnant Water,&" by Hoang Dao; and &"Who Committed This Crime?&" by Tran Van Mai are only samples from the rich legacy of Vietnamese writings on social change that were produced during this period and that because of stringent censorship took the form of the short story and the novel. &"Some of the best documentation of the conditions of peasant life appeared in fictional disguise,&" writes Mr. Long&-and the prolific outpourings of these tormented and often short-lived writers became a most sophisticated means of indirect opposition to French rule.

This first book to consider land reform in both countries show that reform, as the Communists have conducted it, can be justified in China and North Vietnam for both economic reasons and ideological imperatives. Moise argues that the violence associated with land reform was as much a function of the social inequities that preceded reform as it was of the reform policy itself and explains the difficulties the Communist leaders encountered in developing a successful program. Originally published in 1983. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The author uses released Rand interviews with 'Viet Cong' defectors and prisoners of war and past work involving the province of M? Tho to create a more up-to-date social framework for the Vietnam War at the village level.

Popkin develops a model of rational peasant behavior and shows how village procedures result from the self-interested interactions of peasants. This political economy view of peasant behavior stands in contrast to the model of a distinctive peasant moral economy in which the village community is primarily responsible for ensuring the welfare of its members.

English translation of the french-language documentary, entitled les paysans du north-vietnam et la guerre, on rural workers attitude towards warfare in North Viet Nam and the sociological aspects and economic implications thereof - covers the traditional rural area social structure, problems of education, health services (incl. For child care), the role of rural women, rural cooperatives, local level public administration, etc. Statistical tables.