Red Hills: Migrants and the State in the Highlands of Vietnam

Abstract

During the twentieth century, several million rural inhabitants of Vietnam's northern delta made the decision to move home, seeking new space for themselves in the country's highlands. Their decisions and the settlements they created had wide-ranging effects on their home communities and on the people and environment of their destinations. Many migrations were made in response to policy decisions made in Hanoi, first by the French colonial authorities and later by Vietnam's independent socialist states. This ground-breaking study of the settlements of Vietnam's highland regions offers a historical analysis of and provides profound insights into the political economy of migration both in Vietnam and elsewhere. It shows how colonial but especially socialist policies changed the face of the Vietnamese highlands, as settlers from the plains turned the hills 'red'. Placing people's experiences in the context of government policy and national history, this book explores their anticipations, difficulties, achievements and disappointments, high-lighting the geopolitical importance of the highlands. The study can be read as a contribution to migration studies in South-east Asia, but also as a grassroots history of 20th-century Vietnam. Written in a lively reading style and illustrated by numerous maps and photographs, this study promises to become a classic in Vietnamese historical studies.

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