Before the Revolution

During the French colonial period (1900-1945), Vietnamese peasants wrote vigorously about the effects of French policies on their living conditions. The vast majority of their writings were censored or contradicted by the published works of French and Vietnamese officials, and none is currenty in print.

Ngo Vinh Long presents a realistic portrait of the Vietnamese determination and resiliency that brought down both the French and the American regimes. He describes the effects of French land policy on the peasants and the resulting problems in tenant farming and sharecropping, as well as peasant reaction to taxes, tax collections, usury, government agarian credit programs, commerce, and industry. He also translates previously unavailable texts that detail the emotions of the Vietnamese people with regard to the French occupation. For the Morningside Edition, Dr. Long has written a new preface in which he describes new scholarship and changes during the last fifteen years.