Introduction
Chapter 1: The Agrarian Setting
Chapter 2: Anticolonial Resistance
Chapter 3: The Rice Rebellions, 1930–31
Chapter 4: The Popular Front Years, 1936–39
Chapter 5: Vichy and the Japanese Occupation, 1940–45
Chapter 6: Allied Power Plays over Indochina
Chapter 7: The “August Revolution” of 1945 and Its Defense
Chapter 8: The Great Vietnam Famine, 1944–45
Epilogue
Glossary
References
Geoffrey C. Gunn is professor emeritus of economics at Nagasaki University and visiting professor at the University of Macau.
Famine and war are frequent bedfellows, with civilian deaths due to
starvation and malnutrition sometimes outnumbering battlefield
casualties. This scenario was clearly the case in colonial
Indochina as WW II reached its climax. The great famine of 1944-45
is largely unknown or forgotten in the West, and this new book by
Gunn appears to be the first title in English to discuss it at
length. In examining the famine, Gunn discusses the role of natural
disaster, rice requisitions by the occupying Japanese forces, and
ineffective administration by Vichy French authorities. However,
most of the book is a prelude to the famine itself, as Gunn
examines Vietnamese agriculture, prewar resistance to French rule,
and the rise of the Viet Minh and its efforts to gain a foothold in
rural areas. This book is a welcome addition to scholarship on
Vietnam . . . Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers, faculty,
graduate students.
*CHOICE*
The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1944–1945 claimed two million lives,
Ho Chi Minh declared as the Viet Minh seized power in Hanoi during
September 1945. . . . Seeking to unravel the causes of the disaster
and the emergence of the Viet Minh as an organised force, Gunn
brings to bear 30 years of experience in Indochina. . . . Gunn is
reluctant to pin blame for the Great Famine on any single group;
more research is needed, he notes; there was a combination of
circumstance and action and it is that combination he has
elucidated with care and clarity.
*Asian Affairs*
Of particular interest to many readers . . . will be Vietnam’s
great famine which provides the book’s subtitle. . . .So little has
been written on it [the famine]. That makes the present book’s
piecing together of bits of evidence a welcome addition to the
literature. . . .The book will take a place as a valuable addition
to work on the history of Vietnam and of famines.
*Economic History Review*
In this study of the political, economic and military struggles
between the French, the Japanese and the Indochina Communist Party
(ICP) over the producing, marketing and consuming of rice in
Vietnam, Geoffrey Gunn enhances and augments our understanding of
the long-term and short-term causes of the Viet Minh victory in
1945. . . .Rice Wars will reward readers if only for the expertise
and compassion with which Gunn deals with the famine. . . .Gunn
addresses one of the more important and difficult questions about
modern Vietnamese history when he interrelates the famine with the
political, economic and military conditions that enabled the Viet
Minh to guide and participate in a movement against the
expropriation of most of the rice crop by the Japanese.
*Journal of Contemporary Asia*
Rice Wars is a welcome addition to the scholarship on modern
Vietnamese history as well as the history of war and famine. The
book sets out to understand the causes of the famine and to argue
that this humanitarian disaster contributed to the Viet Minh’s rise
to power in August 1945…. Rice Wars provides a good overview of the
agrarian situation of French colonial Vietnam, and more
importantly, it affords a comprehensive examination of the Great
Vietnamese Famine and its context.
*Pacific Affairs*
Despite resulting in the deaths of between one and two million
people, the great famine of 1945 that decimated the population of
northern Vietnam has received little scholarly attention. Geoffrey
Gunn’s meticulously researched and historically grounded study
fills this surprising gap. Gunn examines the role rice played, both
in the colonial economy and in promoting earlier revolutionary
activity before focusing on the war years from 1940 to 1945. His
apportionment of blame between French authorities and Japanese
occupation forces is balanced and judicious, and his study as a
whole contributes significantly to our understanding of the reasons
for famine and how it could have been prevented.
*Martin Stuart-Fox*
Geoffrey Gunn’s Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam is a superb
multidimensional analysis of the great famine that struck northern
Vietnam in 1945. Gunn has mined the French colonial archives for
new sources of information and applied what he terms ‘a correlated
political economy approach’ to identify the various factors at play
that led to social revolution, the demise of French colonialism,
and the triumph of communism in modern Vietnam.
*Carlyle A. Thayer*
Geoffrey Gunn analyzes the causes of the 1945 Vietnamese famine,
the pre-famine French-managed agrarian system, and post-famine
developments. He absolves France of some of the responsibility,
puts the main blame on Japan, and discusses the agrarian policies
of the Viet Minh. With its focus on the political economy of rice
cultivation and food distribution the book forms a most valuable
contribution to our understanding of the Vietnamese Revolution and
the background for the Indochina Wars.
*Stein Tønnesson*
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