Vietnam from the 1890s to the 1990s: Continuity and Change in the Longer Perspective

Abstract

The paper seeks to define and explore some of the problems in the evolution of Vietnam as a country during the past one hundred years, focusing on institutional and economic continuity and change rather than on political conflict and war; and emphasizing the internal perspective rather than that of international relations. Its four sections deal, first with some general aspects of change and continuity in the period 1890–1990; with the importance of the village, of the Confucian élite, and of clan networks in ‘traditional’ Vietnam; with economic development and monetary issues before, during, and after the colonial period — including the contrast between North and South in the two decades of partition after 1954; and finally with economic and social opportunities and failures in the period since the early 1970s — particularly the consequences of choosing a Soviet economic alignment in preference to links with Japan and capitalist Asia, and the effects of the loss of a succession of élites, owing to revolution and war, which has left many of the most qualified Vietnamese living as ideological or economic exiles in Australia, Europe, and North America.