William J. Duiker - Historical Dictionary of Vietnam (Asian Historical Dictionaries, No 1)

Cover

Page i

2nd Edition

William Duiker

Asian/Oceanian Historical Dictionaries,
No. 27

Page ii

SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Published in the United States of America
by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
4720 Boston Way
Lanham, Maryland 20706

Copyright 1998 by William J. Duiker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Duiker, William J., 1932

Historical dictionary of Vietnam.
(Asian historical dicitonaries ; no. 1)
Bibliography: p.
1. VietnamHistoryDictionaries. I. Title.

II. Series.
DS556.25.D85 1989 959.7'003'21 8829721
ISBN 0810821648

ISBN 0-8108-3351-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

Page iii

Page iv

Page v

To the memory of
my mother

Page vi

This page intentionally left blank.

Page vii

Page viii

Page ix

Vietnam was the first volume to appear in this series of Asian Historical Dictionaries, in 1989. It is now the first volume to appear in a second edition. The need for an update is particularly evident in this case, for the changes have been extensive and sometimes even revolutionary. The old guard has been fading away and is being replaced by new leaders, many of whom played a lesser role in the war and have a very different outlook. The most notable is the preference for an increasing degree of capitalism in a still heavily socialist economy. Movements in the social, cultural, and political sectors are more tentative but still quite important. Above all, Vietnam is opening up to the outside world, and its relations with other countries are in flux. Once clearly on the sidelines, it is moving into the mainstream as the next Asian tiger.