Description
Book SynopsisBy exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape-channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation-have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region.
Trade Review"Biggs has authored an exciting work that clearly breaks new ground. I have little doubt that the book will be well received by multiple audiences."
-- Shawn McHale * Asian Studies Review *
"Impressively written and well-researched."
-- Michitake Aso * Journal of Asian Studies *
"Quagmire is also an example of the challenges faced when trying to translate ambitions in historical narrative. How to tell a story of such complexity and nuance? . . . I expect [the answer] will come pretty close to the way Biggs has written his story."
-- Maurits Ertsen * Technology and Culture *
"Blending disciplinary perspectives from history, anthropology, and geography, Biggs approaches the Mekong Delta as a landscape—as things on the land, as people, institutions, discourses, artifacts, metaphors, and eco-logics—with a particularly unstable morphology."
-- Michael Kantor * H-HISTGEOG *
"Quagmire offers a neat and fresh storyline, explaining that nation-builders failed to understand the serpentine watercourses and landscapes of the Mekong Delta. . . . Biggs shines a light on the everyday struggles of famers and migrants. . ."
-- Geoffrey Cain * Asian Affairs *
"I learned that it is not a linear development how people use the environment or how the environment affects people; rather it is a dynamic equilibrium between humans and environment, and it is that interaction which shapes nation-building."
-- Ang Cheng Guan * Journal of American-East Asian Relations *
"This book is a major achievement that fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century Vietnamese history. Its deftly written chapters, simultaneously expansive in their concerns yet full of nuance and telling narrative detail, will become the new starting point for further research on the history of southern Vietnam."
-- Mark Philip Bradley * American Historical Review *
"This work is an original and innovative approach to the contemporary history of Viet Nam. . . . I can recommend this book for graduate students, teachers of colonial and postcolonial Viet Nam, as well as anyone interested in the nexus of environment, modernization, and development."
-- Pierre Brocheux * Environmental History *
"[A] much-needed perspective on human efforts over time to shape this amphibious land/waterscape. . . . Biggs is clearly a major talent, who has written a path-breaking book that enables us to see, experience, and interpret the delta anew."
-- Peter A. Coclanis * Journal of Contemporary Asia *
"Biggs's command of the sources, both Vietnamese and Western, is impressive, and his book will interest historians of the Vietnam War as background information. Otherwise, it is an important contribution to Vietnam history and geography. Summing up: Highly recommended."
* Choice *
Table of ContentsForeword: Nation-Making in the Mekong Mire by William Cronon
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Water's Edge
2. Water Grid
3. Hydroagricultural Crisis
4. Balkanization
5. Modernization
6. American War
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
