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Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present
For many Westerners, the name Vietnam evokes images of a bloody televised American war that generated a firestorm of protest and brought conflict into their living rooms. In his sweeping account, Ben Kiernan broadens this vision by narrating the rich history of the peoples who have inhabited the land now known as Viet Nam over the past three thousand years.
Despite the tragedies of the American-Vietnamese conflict, Viet Nam has always been much more than a war. Its long history had been characterized by the frequent rise and fall of different political formations, from ancient chiefdoms to imperial provinces, from independent kingdoms to divided regions, civil wars, French colonies, and modern republics. In addition to dramatic political transformations, the region has been shaped by its environment, changing climate, and the critical importance of water, with rivers, deltas, and a long coastline facilitating agricultural patterns, trade, and communications.
Kiernan weaves together the many narrative strands of Viet Nam's multi-ethnic populations, including the Chams, Khmers, and Vietnamese, and its multi-religious heritage, from local spirit cults to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Catholicism. He emphasizes the peoples' interactions over the millennia with foreigners, particularly their neighbors in China and Southeast Asia, in engagements ranging from military conflict to linguistic and cultural influences. He sets the tumultuous modern period--marked by French and Japanese occupation, anticolonial nationalism, the American-Vietnamese war, and communist victory--against the continuities evident in the deeper history of the people's relationships with the lands where they have lived. In contemporary times, he explores this one-party state's transformation into a global trading nation, the country's tense diplomatic relationship with China and developing partnership with the United States in maintaining Southeast Asia's regional security,
and its uncertain prospects for democracy.
Written by a leading scholar of Southeast Asia, Viet Nam presents an authoritative history of an ancient land.
Despite the tragedies of the American-Vietnamese conflict, Viet Nam has always been much more than a war. Its long history had been characterized by the frequent rise and fall of different political formations, from ancient chiefdoms to imperial provinces, from independent kingdoms to divided regions, civil wars, French colonies, and modern republics. In addition to dramatic political transformations, the region has been shaped by its environment, changing climate, and the critical importance of water, with rivers, deltas, and a long coastline facilitating agricultural patterns, trade, and communications.
Kiernan weaves together the many narrative strands of Viet Nam's multi-ethnic populations, including the Chams, Khmers, and Vietnamese, and its multi-religious heritage, from local spirit cults to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Catholicism. He emphasizes the peoples' interactions over the millennia with foreigners, particularly their neighbors in China and Southeast Asia, in engagements ranging from military conflict to linguistic and cultural influences. He sets the tumultuous modern period--marked by French and Japanese occupation, anticolonial nationalism, the American-Vietnamese war, and communist victory--against the continuities evident in the deeper history of the people's relationships with the lands where they have lived. In contemporary times, he explores this one-party state's transformation into a global trading nation, the country's tense diplomatic relationship with China and developing partnership with the United States in maintaining Southeast Asia's regional security,
and its uncertain prospects for democracy.
Written by a leading scholar of Southeast Asia, Viet Nam presents an authoritative history of an ancient land.
656 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2017
194 people are currently reading
489 people want to read
About the author
Ben Kiernan
23 books29 followersDr. Benedict F. Kiernan is an American academic and historian. He obtained his PhD from Monash University, Australia in 1983 under the supervision of David P. Chandler. He joined the Yale History Department in 1990, and founded the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies in 1994, and the comparative Genocide Studies Program in 1998. He is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. His previous books include How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979, published by Yale University Press.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 13, 2021
I have to say that I would not recommend this as anyone’s first book on Vietnam. I’m currently preparing for my first time teaching World History and I’m the sort of person who is uncomfortable about halfassing things by just regurgitating what comes out of the textbook. Textbooks are an insular market that primarily rely on earlier textbooks rather than any sort of independent research. As such they tend to be massively and sometimes horrifyingly out of date. So I’ve been reading up on my Asian history so that I can avoid errors and talk knowledgeably about the topic. Over the last month I’ve read books on India, China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, all areas about which I know little. And this is by far the least accessible of these introductory texts.
This book’s basic thesis is that Vietnam (or rather Việt Nam) is not a monoculture and that Vietnamese society is formed by the mixture of the different ethnic groups who make up the territory. That’s logical enough and didn’t set off alarm bells when I read the product description. But in practice what this means is that you get thrown into a whole mass of names that have little to connect them with any details. There are apparently three broad regions in Vietnam each with a different population and society. So we just follow all the different cultures simultaneously and hope to keep up. This is a terrible idea. Switching to an area I’m more familiar with, this would be like describing the Mediterranean region of the Mid Republic by switching back and forth between Hispania, Gaul, Carthage, Rome, and the Hellenistic kingdoms all at the same time. You can’t do it. What you do is tell one at a time or else very explicitly switch when you change societies. And you need to make very sure that you explain what each place is at the beginning. I’m sure he mentioned most of these places… once. And then just assumed that was enough. But it isn’t. Without a clear structure to lay out the geography in your mind it’s going to be impossible for readers to get on the same page. And it doesn’t help that every page is filled with up to a dozen unfamiliar names, most of which won’t ever be mentioned again.
An even more unforgivable failing is the near total lack of maps. Good maps are the only thing that might have allowed this fragmented approach to work, but instead we have to wait until page 222 before our first map of all Vietnam. Even here there’s a tendency to reuse historical maps created by others for specific purposes – like the French colonial map of Indochina. I can find this map online just as I can find a map of modern Vietnam. But what about the ancient and medieval period? All the dozens of place names that get thrown out there to confound you? Want to know where all those peoples are? Or the cities and civilization centers? Too bad! That’s your problem. This really is such an obvious issue that I cannot comprehend why it was left out. The book is filled with nice pictures throughout (many taken by the author) so I don’t understand this incredibly obvious lapse.
The book is also very focused on narrative to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. Narrative needs to be pretty central to any introductory text but this is handled poorly here. I’ve never had so much information thrown at me that failed to stick. The narrative follows each development in great detail (every single twist must be covered) without offering much in the way of context or the bigger picture. It is also full of horrifyingly difficult names and words. There’s little the author can do about that part, but he makes it worse than it needs to be by throwing every name he comes across at you without any real indication of which ones matter. To clarify this: I study ancient history so I’m comfortable with absurd tonguetwister words like Suppiluliuma, Amphictyonic, Pentakosiomedimnoi, Gwenhwyfach, Nebuchadnezzar, etc. It can be done better.
All this makes reading the book a bit like this:
This will go on for many pages until you finally get a comment like “by this point Region-Mentioned-But-Not-On-Map 1 had been thoroughly absorbed into French control.”
Some sections were better than others. Generally, the later you get the better it is. The chapter “Revolution From Colonialism To Independence, 1920–54” was interesting because it actually dealt with social transformations near exclusively rather than focusing around lists of political events. The narrative still isn’t clear but you can get the sense of it. The section on the American-Vietnam War is similarly interesting, even if it keeps listing acronyms and names of people you’ll never hear of again and provides little detail on the actual battles. The chapter following Vietnam since the war is interesting, although it seems vague in a lot of strange areas. After an entire book on it you get why Vietnam fears and mistrusts China and that just goes to show how stupid the whole war was. Vietnam was never going to be China’s Communist puppet, and if handled right they could have been a key American ally in the region. That’s what they became in the end anyway, but at a cost of 3 million casualties on one side and a national humiliation on the other.
This book would probably be good for someone with at least some background in Vietnamese history. It may even be revolutionary for all I know. But if you don’t have the framework in place to process all these different groups then you’re just going to have an overwhelming mass of information. Once you get past the Middle Ages the book starts dealing with better known themes and this section is much better, even if it is far too detail-oriented on names and narrative and not strong enough on culture and social history. I have to wonder whether this book is even intended for that broader audience. It feels like a challenge to existing orthodoxies, which would make it a specialist work masquerading as an introduction. I haven’t read it but Vietnam: A New History looks like it may be more promising.
This book’s basic thesis is that Vietnam (or rather Việt Nam) is not a monoculture and that Vietnamese society is formed by the mixture of the different ethnic groups who make up the territory. That’s logical enough and didn’t set off alarm bells when I read the product description. But in practice what this means is that you get thrown into a whole mass of names that have little to connect them with any details. There are apparently three broad regions in Vietnam each with a different population and society. So we just follow all the different cultures simultaneously and hope to keep up. This is a terrible idea. Switching to an area I’m more familiar with, this would be like describing the Mediterranean region of the Mid Republic by switching back and forth between Hispania, Gaul, Carthage, Rome, and the Hellenistic kingdoms all at the same time. You can’t do it. What you do is tell one at a time or else very explicitly switch when you change societies. And you need to make very sure that you explain what each place is at the beginning. I’m sure he mentioned most of these places… once. And then just assumed that was enough. But it isn’t. Without a clear structure to lay out the geography in your mind it’s going to be impossible for readers to get on the same page. And it doesn’t help that every page is filled with up to a dozen unfamiliar names, most of which won’t ever be mentioned again.
An even more unforgivable failing is the near total lack of maps. Good maps are the only thing that might have allowed this fragmented approach to work, but instead we have to wait until page 222 before our first map of all Vietnam. Even here there’s a tendency to reuse historical maps created by others for specific purposes – like the French colonial map of Indochina. I can find this map online just as I can find a map of modern Vietnam. But what about the ancient and medieval period? All the dozens of place names that get thrown out there to confound you? Want to know where all those peoples are? Or the cities and civilization centers? Too bad! That’s your problem. This really is such an obvious issue that I cannot comprehend why it was left out. The book is filled with nice pictures throughout (many taken by the author) so I don’t understand this incredibly obvious lapse.
The book is also very focused on narrative to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. Narrative needs to be pretty central to any introductory text but this is handled poorly here. I’ve never had so much information thrown at me that failed to stick. The narrative follows each development in great detail (every single twist must be covered) without offering much in the way of context or the bigger picture. It is also full of horrifyingly difficult names and words. There’s little the author can do about that part, but he makes it worse than it needs to be by throwing every name he comes across at you without any real indication of which ones matter. To clarify this: I study ancient history so I’m comfortable with absurd tonguetwister words like Suppiluliuma, Amphictyonic, Pentakosiomedimnoi, Gwenhwyfach, Nebuchadnezzar, etc. It can be done better.
All this makes reading the book a bit like this:
Difficult-Just-Mentioned-Name 1 gave his support to Difficult-Once-Mentioned-Name 1 to regain the suzerainty over Region-Not-On-Map 1 and Region-Not-On-Map 2. Just-Mentioned-French-Name 1, the Just-Mentioned-New-Position 1, then oversaw the invasion of Region-Mentioned-But-Not-On-Map 1 where Difficult-Just-Mentioned-Name 1 and Difficult-Just-Mentioned-Name 2 were killed. Just-Mentioned-French-Name 2 then took over but faced difficulties from Location-Not-On-Map 1 and Location-Not-On-Map 2 that could not be overcome. A Chinese army of 20,000 men marched into Region-Not-On-Map 3 where they forced a French withdrawal back to Well-Known-Location-With-Unusual-Spelling 1. Just-Mentioned-French-Name 2 was killed in Region-Finally-On-Map 1 and the entire situation returned to the status quo. Consul Vaguely-German-Name 1 fled to the south, complaining that he was “no more consulted than I was at the time of the taking of Well-Known-Location-With-Unusual-Spelling 2.”
This will go on for many pages until you finally get a comment like “by this point Region-Mentioned-But-Not-On-Map 1 had been thoroughly absorbed into French control.”
Some sections were better than others. Generally, the later you get the better it is. The chapter “Revolution From Colonialism To Independence, 1920–54” was interesting because it actually dealt with social transformations near exclusively rather than focusing around lists of political events. The narrative still isn’t clear but you can get the sense of it. The section on the American-Vietnam War is similarly interesting, even if it keeps listing acronyms and names of people you’ll never hear of again and provides little detail on the actual battles. The chapter following Vietnam since the war is interesting, although it seems vague in a lot of strange areas. After an entire book on it you get why Vietnam fears and mistrusts China and that just goes to show how stupid the whole war was. Vietnam was never going to be China’s Communist puppet, and if handled right they could have been a key American ally in the region. That’s what they became in the end anyway, but at a cost of 3 million casualties on one side and a national humiliation on the other.
This book would probably be good for someone with at least some background in Vietnamese history. It may even be revolutionary for all I know. But if you don’t have the framework in place to process all these different groups then you’re just going to have an overwhelming mass of information. Once you get past the Middle Ages the book starts dealing with better known themes and this section is much better, even if it is far too detail-oriented on names and narrative and not strong enough on culture and social history. I have to wonder whether this book is even intended for that broader audience. It feels like a challenge to existing orthodoxies, which would make it a specialist work masquerading as an introduction. I haven’t read it but Vietnam: A New History looks like it may be more promising.
February 11, 2018
Vietnam is far far more than a war. As a region that's been settled for thousands of years, and a trade nexus for the South China Sea, it has a long and complex history. No single volume could possibly cover the whole history of Vietnam, but Kiernan makes an able effort, trying to draw some cohesive themes out of a mass of history.
Geography is destiny, and again and again water appears as a major theme. Rice based settled cultures flourished in the Red River delta in the north, the Mekong delta in the south, and the innumerable smaller rivers up and down the coast. Archaeological evidence records a culture that made great bronze drums and had complex chiefdoms. Vietnam enters the historical record roughly 2300 years ago as a province of China. The Vietnamese were ruled as internal vassals for roughly 1100 years, with intermittent rebellions, before finally breaking away under Ngô Quyen in 934. The next thousand years were a mess of feudal history, marked by the rise and fall of dynasties, civil wars, and a few great kings. The major trends of this era were the conquest of the southern Champa kingdom by firearms equipped Vietnamese armies, increasing trade across the region and with Europeans, and military victories over the Chinese, combined with an import of Confucian culture, and a system of scholarly exams based on knowledge of the Chinese classics.
1887 marked the third turn in Vietnamese history, with the authoritative victory of the French over the Vietnamese, and the colonization of the last independent Vietnamese kingdoms. French rule was marked by exploitation, but also the introduction of the romanized Quoc Ngu alphabet, and the rise of a local vernacular culture rather than one based on Chinese classics. Journalists and revolutionaries agitated against the French, and syncreatic millenialist sects arose (the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao). The course of the first and second Indochina Wars are covered briefly, as well as Vietnam post-1975, with the slow redevelopment of the country postwar, and economic liberalization without political liberalization.
Someone who knows more about the pre-1954 history of Vietnam might find something to criticize, and if you have strong opinions about the present government, you'll likely be disappointed. My biggest problem with this book is that it is very dry. I like this kind of stuff, and it still took me 10 days. Glad to have read it, even if I still can't remember the order of the dynasties.
Geography is destiny, and again and again water appears as a major theme. Rice based settled cultures flourished in the Red River delta in the north, the Mekong delta in the south, and the innumerable smaller rivers up and down the coast. Archaeological evidence records a culture that made great bronze drums and had complex chiefdoms. Vietnam enters the historical record roughly 2300 years ago as a province of China. The Vietnamese were ruled as internal vassals for roughly 1100 years, with intermittent rebellions, before finally breaking away under Ngô Quyen in 934. The next thousand years were a mess of feudal history, marked by the rise and fall of dynasties, civil wars, and a few great kings. The major trends of this era were the conquest of the southern Champa kingdom by firearms equipped Vietnamese armies, increasing trade across the region and with Europeans, and military victories over the Chinese, combined with an import of Confucian culture, and a system of scholarly exams based on knowledge of the Chinese classics.
1887 marked the third turn in Vietnamese history, with the authoritative victory of the French over the Vietnamese, and the colonization of the last independent Vietnamese kingdoms. French rule was marked by exploitation, but also the introduction of the romanized Quoc Ngu alphabet, and the rise of a local vernacular culture rather than one based on Chinese classics. Journalists and revolutionaries agitated against the French, and syncreatic millenialist sects arose (the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao). The course of the first and second Indochina Wars are covered briefly, as well as Vietnam post-1975, with the slow redevelopment of the country postwar, and economic liberalization without political liberalization.
Someone who knows more about the pre-1954 history of Vietnam might find something to criticize, and if you have strong opinions about the present government, you'll likely be disappointed. My biggest problem with this book is that it is very dry. I like this kind of stuff, and it still took me 10 days. Glad to have read it, even if I still can't remember the order of the dynasties.
July 27, 2018
There are very few books on the history of Vietnam. As far I can tell there are 3. This one. One by Goscha and one by Taylor. I've read all of them. This is the best of the three. It still isn't exactly amazing but it covers everything from prehistoric stuff to 2016.
It does a perfectly good job of covering the history of Vietnam but I give it 3-stars because I felt like it didn't explain the "why" of things very well at times. For instance "why" did the Viet seem to constantly crush the Cham and Khmer? "Why" were the various kings & their courts so incompetent over the course of hundreds of years. (Other courts elsewhere in the world dealt with political infighting, powerful non-royal families, and so on.)
Like virtually all history books it would be helped with more graphical aids. More maps, more charts, more lists, and so on.
It does a perfectly good job of covering the history of Vietnam but I give it 3-stars because I felt like it didn't explain the "why" of things very well at times. For instance "why" did the Viet seem to constantly crush the Cham and Khmer? "Why" were the various kings & their courts so incompetent over the course of hundreds of years. (Other courts elsewhere in the world dealt with political infighting, powerful non-royal families, and so on.)
Like virtually all history books it would be helped with more graphical aids. More maps, more charts, more lists, and so on.
March 23, 2021
My connection to reading this book is via A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler. I loved that book but realized I knew little about Viet Nam. I have had a copy of Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald on my shelf since I was in college. I no longer remember what made me purchase it at the time and why I kept it all these years since it was not for any class I had, being a Russian Language and Literature major. So I took Fire in the Lake off the shelf and thought I would finally get around to reading it but quickly realized I had very little background in Vietnamese history, let alone the Viet Nam war. So I set it down again and looked for what ended up being this book.
I specifically did not want to read a book about the Viet Nam war as there seem to be hundreds of them and little else about Viet Nam. This book by Ben Kiernan gave me an extensive and in-depth background in Vietnamese history.
Also, there are surface similarities to Korean history which is something I have had a lot of interest in since living there for 8 years in the late 80s and 90s...the long and ancient relationship with China (sometimes good, sometimes bad), Buddhist, Confucian and, later, Christian religious influence, wars and invasions and periods of colonial takeover and finally, a civil war that, with the participation of the United States, divided the nation. The result in Viet Nam, of course, was that the communists won but the Korean peninsula remains divided. Korea and Viet Nam are culturally and linguistically different, of course, but both have been heavily influenced by China.
I made several connections with books I have read in the past and this book piqued my interest in another book that I finished last week. First, water plays a significant role in Vietnamese culture and there was mythology talked about in this book that reminded me of stories I read in The Penguin Book of Mermaids.
Second, William Dampier, a British Buccaneer and explorer stayed in Viet Nam for a period of several months in the 1680s. Dampier is one of the first explorers discussed in the book, Naturalists at Sea by Glyn Williams. It is only a tantalizing bit of information as Williams did not discuss Dampier in depth so when I saw mention of Dampier in Viet Nam: A History...I sought out A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier by Diana Preston and read it concurrently. It was also excellent.
Back to Viet Nam: A History...I was reminded that China, or the cultural and ethnic antecedents of modern day China, has been a very organized, bureaucratic state since Grec0-Roman times. The history taught in classrooms is so eurocentric that I think many of us lose sight of this. Chinese documents are the source of much of the early history of the region that ultimately became Viet Nam. They contained everything from census data to lists of various animal and plant commodities and commentary about cultural differences between the early peoples living in this southern Asian region.
Something else I liked about Kiernan's history is his focus and geography, linguistics and climate change. In fact, right up until the end of the book he talks about the mainly human-caused climate problems that have affected Viet Nam throughout it's history. The Red and Mekong Rivers have played an important part in Vietnamese history, culture and economy and these waters are increasingly threatened.
I have to admit, there were portions of the book that became a slog to read. This is very much a book that you would read if you were doing a university research project. It is dense with information and the parts that were a slog were pages of recitation of people, the things they did and when they did them. It is not a jaunty historical biography like Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life, the other book I am reading right now.
All the same, I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish and that is to know more about Viet Nam and I learned much. Overall this was a very good book and despite the slog of the 19th century and start to the French colonial period (why they colonized Viet Nam is unfathomable to me and don't get me started about the US involvement), I feel it is an excellent history.
I specifically did not want to read a book about the Viet Nam war as there seem to be hundreds of them and little else about Viet Nam. This book by Ben Kiernan gave me an extensive and in-depth background in Vietnamese history.
Also, there are surface similarities to Korean history which is something I have had a lot of interest in since living there for 8 years in the late 80s and 90s...the long and ancient relationship with China (sometimes good, sometimes bad), Buddhist, Confucian and, later, Christian religious influence, wars and invasions and periods of colonial takeover and finally, a civil war that, with the participation of the United States, divided the nation. The result in Viet Nam, of course, was that the communists won but the Korean peninsula remains divided. Korea and Viet Nam are culturally and linguistically different, of course, but both have been heavily influenced by China.
I made several connections with books I have read in the past and this book piqued my interest in another book that I finished last week. First, water plays a significant role in Vietnamese culture and there was mythology talked about in this book that reminded me of stories I read in The Penguin Book of Mermaids.
Second, William Dampier, a British Buccaneer and explorer stayed in Viet Nam for a period of several months in the 1680s. Dampier is one of the first explorers discussed in the book, Naturalists at Sea by Glyn Williams. It is only a tantalizing bit of information as Williams did not discuss Dampier in depth so when I saw mention of Dampier in Viet Nam: A History...I sought out A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier by Diana Preston and read it concurrently. It was also excellent.
Back to Viet Nam: A History...I was reminded that China, or the cultural and ethnic antecedents of modern day China, has been a very organized, bureaucratic state since Grec0-Roman times. The history taught in classrooms is so eurocentric that I think many of us lose sight of this. Chinese documents are the source of much of the early history of the region that ultimately became Viet Nam. They contained everything from census data to lists of various animal and plant commodities and commentary about cultural differences between the early peoples living in this southern Asian region.
Something else I liked about Kiernan's history is his focus and geography, linguistics and climate change. In fact, right up until the end of the book he talks about the mainly human-caused climate problems that have affected Viet Nam throughout it's history. The Red and Mekong Rivers have played an important part in Vietnamese history, culture and economy and these waters are increasingly threatened.
I have to admit, there were portions of the book that became a slog to read. This is very much a book that you would read if you were doing a university research project. It is dense with information and the parts that were a slog were pages of recitation of people, the things they did and when they did them. It is not a jaunty historical biography like Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life, the other book I am reading right now.
All the same, I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish and that is to know more about Viet Nam and I learned much. Overall this was a very good book and despite the slog of the 19th century and start to the French colonial period (why they colonized Viet Nam is unfathomable to me and don't get me started about the US involvement), I feel it is an excellent history.
April 13, 2025
Dense, complex, fascinating. 3,000 years of Vietnamese history is just under 500 pages. Definitely not an easy or light read, but for those interested in Vietnam an amazing overview. Lots and lots of names, places, organizations, and more. A great way to get a macro historical view all in one place, given each chapter could have been its own book. Academic but still accessible.
September 26, 2019
I wanted to read a history of the country of Vietnam before we headed there for a trip. The vast majority of the books that I could find in popular print related only to the Vietnamese-American War, but I wanted something more comprehensive. This book it did not disappoint those expectations. The author does a brilliant job providing an overview of the complete history of Vietnam from prehistory to contemporary times. This book could have easily become plodding, unwieldy, and unbearable to read; however, that was not the case here at all. The author helpfully outlined all the major periods in Vietnamese history without getting too far in the weeds or losing the complexity of the forces at play in shaping these events. I especially enjoyed the sections on prehistory and bronze age peoples in Vietnam. I would highly recommend this book.
June 18, 2023
I always like to read a history whenever I travel somewhere new, and this was a solid introduction to the country. However a bit of a “forest for the trees” style of writing, where all the very specific details packed into this text took away from the broader learning.
May 26, 2023
This is a remarkable book and one that I thoroughly enjoyed and devoured pretty quickly. I lived in Vietnam for three years in the late 90s so am something of an amateur Vietnam and Southeast Asian historian. This was right up my alley. It filled in so many gaps in my knowledge. I had no idea of the richness and depth of Vietnam's history and culture which goes back for over 2000 years. Kiernan's research is simply amazing. I cannot imagine the effort and toil that went into this. The sources alone in the notes are far reaching and would take a lifetime to explore. He tackles so much here and really puts it all in perspective. As you read, you see the modern tragedy that unfolded. You know where it is headed including the involvement of the US in the 20th century. What is so disheartening is to see all of the off-ramps that could have been taken, most importantly, in 1945 at the end of WWII. Then, the abandonment of free elections in 1954-1956. So many things could have changed the trajectory. The good news is the country continue to develop and open up. Much work ahead but at least on a better path now. While I loved this book, I would say do not tackle it unless you truly love the subject and want to go really, really deep. It is a masterpiece, but I think not for the reader who wants a brief history of Vietnam.
May 16, 2024
4 stars. If you’re looking for a whistle-stop tour of the entire history of Vietnam that touches on pretty much everything you could possibly care about - and which goes a moderate depth into a few of you them - then this if for you.
Naturally, the majority of this book is based on secondary sources, which for me was fine as the author clearly has a firm grasp of the scholarly literature. By and large, Kiernan is a thoughtful guide to this history and a very readable writer. I quite enjoyed some of the earlier sections as he covers them well and I’d always wanted to learn more about Vietnam’s pre and early history.
I took away a star for two reasons. 1. At times, a little time spent explaining the context and motivations of some of the foreign powers would have really gone a long way. A few pages really digging into why the French colonized Vietnam and how (aside from a list of battles) would have been great. 2. I found at times it fell into the trap of becoming a basic procession of facts, a series of descriptions often lacking analysis. Understandable for a history which covers so much, but ultimately there were a few sections which dragged and which didn’t really add to my understanding.
All in all, a really good resource of you’re looking for a one stop shop for the entirety of Vietnamese history.
Naturally, the majority of this book is based on secondary sources, which for me was fine as the author clearly has a firm grasp of the scholarly literature. By and large, Kiernan is a thoughtful guide to this history and a very readable writer. I quite enjoyed some of the earlier sections as he covers them well and I’d always wanted to learn more about Vietnam’s pre and early history.
I took away a star for two reasons. 1. At times, a little time spent explaining the context and motivations of some of the foreign powers would have really gone a long way. A few pages really digging into why the French colonized Vietnam and how (aside from a list of battles) would have been great. 2. I found at times it fell into the trap of becoming a basic procession of facts, a series of descriptions often lacking analysis. Understandable for a history which covers so much, but ultimately there were a few sections which dragged and which didn’t really add to my understanding.
All in all, a really good resource of you’re looking for a one stop shop for the entirety of Vietnamese history.
December 2, 2021
Are all the glowing reviews from Vietnamese nationalists or just people starved for any history about Vietnam not about the American war? This book is shoddy at best with little attention to detail. Nonsensical spellings of Chinese terms and names using different transliteration systems every other sentence. Even Vietnamese names are misspelled sometimes. The sources used are weird as well and sometimes range from 19th century French memoirs to modern nationalist Vietnamese historians. Which is not BAD when used properly but these sources can be found cited on chapters about 9th c. Vietnam. One huge weakness of this book is that the author clearly has no inkling about Chinese history or historiography, which serves the purpose of taking the stance of modern Vietnamese historians very well, but not much else. Why does this matter for a book about Vietnamese history? Well the first third of book deals with Vietnam while it was under the rule of Chinese dynasties and another third has to do with Vietnamese relationships with its neighbors, one of which being of course, China. PLEASE PLEASE do not use this book as a source. It is something for future historians to study as a part of historiography.
January 12, 2019
Admittedly, I didn’t end up enjoying this as much as I thought I would. While certainly it was interesting to read about its ancient beginnings, I felt that the author spent too long going through its ancient history and not enough time going through the tumultuous history of its twentieth century struggles.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 3, 2019
For a casual reader like me it was not easy ti find a book that takes into consideration ancient as well as the modern, better known history of Vietnam.
Yes, the style is a bit dry, especially concerning the period up to the 19th century, but when ancient first hand documents are scarce this is something to be expected.
Overall highly recommended.
Yes, the style is a bit dry, especially concerning the period up to the 19th century, but when ancient first hand documents are scarce this is something to be expected.
Overall highly recommended.
February 27, 2020
This is probably the best comprehensive overview of Vietnamese history that I’ve read. Kiernan does an excellent job discussing the latest historiography, as well as, incorporating research from other academic disciplines.
Want to read
June 26, 2025"love love love this one as it focuses on less popular topics of viet history like gender, culture, the effects of climate, religion, and non kinh people, and overall just provides a new perspective on what feels like a static, frozen "canon" of history."
May 31, 2018
Encyclopedic. Best used as a reference book. Not meant to be a beach read! Took me several months to read.
December 3, 2018
Tons of content, but it could benefit from better organization and more maps and tables of names, places, events, etc. to help keep everything straight.
August 22, 2019
It’s obvious that the author put in a lot of research. Well written and informative.
December 13, 2019
I read this book in preparation for a trip to the region. It was recommended by the alumni travel department of the University of Pennsylvania with whom we were traveling. It was more detailed than I needed. The 3-stars I gave it therefore reflects only my personal situation. It would be excellent for someone with a need for a more comprehensive tome.
I did come away with a lot. This book is well-researched and annotated. I only wish that the leaders who put our country through our futile war would have understood the country we were fighting better. We did not need to make the Vietnamese our enemies. Perhaps we could have avoided killing almost two million of them, 50,000 of our own soldiers, and caused so much dissent at home, had we understood their history and culture better.
I did come away with a lot. This book is well-researched and annotated. I only wish that the leaders who put our country through our futile war would have understood the country we were fighting better. We did not need to make the Vietnamese our enemies. Perhaps we could have avoided killing almost two million of them, 50,000 of our own soldiers, and caused so much dissent at home, had we understood their history and culture better.
October 16, 2021
Fantàstic! No saps res d'un pais sense llegirne la història i aquest llibre et resumeix una història milenaria de forma brillant, super entretinguda i amb fonts bibliogràfiques gairebé infinites per seguir aprenent.
January 12, 2024
An excellent account about a very difficult subject.
October 3, 2021
One of the most innovative new studies of Vietnam recently. It includes climate change perspectives as well as DNA studies of the Vietnamese population.
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August 4, 2017Huntington Uni
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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