"Vietnam's role in one of the Cold War's longest-running conflicts has meant that its past has been endlessly abused. Popular accounts have cherry-picked from the Vietnamese past to tell politicized, American-centered stories--either reducing the story of Vietnam and the Vietnamese to a noble tradition of anticolonial resistance embodied by the communist leader Ho Chi Minh, or alternatively seeking to rehabilitate American allies by making similarly essentialist claims about "the Vietnamese" and their history. Now, over forty years after the end of the American war in Vietnam, the events which created the modern state of Vietnam can be seen in truly historical perspective. Christopher Goscha tells the story of this fascinating and complex country on its own terms, emphasizing the contingency that characterizes Vietnam's history and the diversity of its people, polities, geography, and experiences as both colonized and colonizers"-- Contains primary source material.