Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger
A History of Vietnam
Peter D. Sharrock, Vu Hong LienIn this comprehensive account, Vu Hong Lien and Peter D. Sharrock chronicle the vast sweep of Vietnam’s tumultuous past, from the Bronze Age to the present day.
With the exception of its war with the United States, Vietnam’s history remains significantly under-studied. In this comprehensive book, Vu Hong Lien and Peter D. Sharrock chronicle the vast sweep of the region’s tumultuous past, from the Bronze Age to the present day.
Historians writing about Vietnam have defined the country as either a ragged Chinese subordinate aspiring to a full ‘Chinese’ way of life, or as a rebel Chinese province defined entirely by its shaky relationship to its looming neighbour. Yet archaeological evidence now shows culturally distinct and technologically sophisticated human occupation in the region from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Unshackled from the confined histories of outsiders, imperial invaders and occupiers, the history of Vietnam is revealed as central to the cultural, political and ethnic development of Southeast Asia over the past millennia. With a scope unrivalled by previous accounts, Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger is a definitive history of the Vietnamese people, culture and nation.
In this comprehensive account, Vu Hong Lien and Peter D. Sharrock chronicle the vast sweep of Vietnam’s tumultuous past, from the Bronze Age to the present day.
With the exception of its war with the United States, Vietnam’s history remains significantly under-studied. In this comprehensive book, Vu Hong Lien and Peter D. Sharrock chronicle the vast sweep of the region’s tumultuous past, from the Bronze Age to the present day.
Historians writing about Vietnam have defined the country as either a ragged Chinese subordinate aspiring to a full ‘Chinese’ way of life, or as a rebel Chinese province defined entirely by its shaky relationship to its looming neighbour. Yet archaeological evidence now shows culturally distinct and technologically sophisticated human occupation in the region from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Unshackled from the confined histories of outsiders, imperial invaders and occupiers, the history of Vietnam is revealed as central to the cultural, political and ethnic development of Southeast Asia over the past millennia. With a scope unrivalled by previous accounts, Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger is a definitive history of the Vietnamese people, culture and nation.
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This is a richly detailed book . . . Judicious in its views and remarkably comprehensive in its coverage, this is an extremely fine introduction to the history of Vietnam.
'Ian Brown, Professor of Economic History of Southeast Asia, SOAS, London
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This ambitious book represents the first attempt to document the history of Vietnam in English from the earliest times to the end of the American-Vietnamese War in the mid-1970s . . . a relatively small country on a world scale [Vietnam] has a long, complex and rather well documented history.
'Ian Glover, Emeritus Reader in Southeast Asian Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London
Introduction
1. Prehistory
2. Han Province (111 BCE-40 CE)
3. Tutelage and Dissension (40-939)
4. Independence
5. The Ly Dynasty (1009-1225)
6. The Tran Dynasty (1226-1413)
7. Ming Invasion and the Rise of Lê Loi (1407-27)
8. Lê Dynasty: The First 100 Years (1428-1527)
9. Mac Usurpation (1527-92)
10. Trinh Nguyen Civil War (1627-1788)
11. The Decline of the Lê-Trinh and the Rise of the Tây Son
12. Nguyen Dynasty (1802-1945) Creates ‘Viet Nam’
13. French Colony (1887-1945)
14. French War (1947-54)
15. Vietnam-American War (1954-75)
Epilogue: Rising Tiger
Appendix: Dates and Dynasties
References
Historical Sources
Select Bibliography, Archives and Websites
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Vu Hong Lien is a Vietnamese-British historian, and a guest lecturer at SOAS based in London, uk. She is author of Royal Hue, Heritage of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam (2015) and co-author of Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger, a History of Vietnam (Reaktion Books, 2014).