The indigenous people of Southern Vietnam, known as the Khmer Krom, occupy territory over which Vietnam and Cambodia have competing claims. Regarded with ambivalence and suspicion by nationalists in both countries, these in-between people have their own claims on the place where they live and a unique perspective on history and sovereignty in their heavily contested homelands. To cope with wars, environmental re-engineering and nation-building, the Khmer Krom have selectively engaged with the outside world in addition to drawing upon local resources and self-help networks. This groundbreaking book reveals the sophisticated ecological repertoire deployed by the Khmer Krom to deal with a complex river delta, and charts their diverse adaptations to a changing environment. In addition, it provides an ethnographically grounded exposition of Khmer mythic thought that shows how the Khmer Krom position themselves within a landscape imbued with life-sustaining potential, magical sovereign power and cosmological significance. Offering a new environmental history of the Mekong River delta this book is the first to explore Southern Vietnam through the eyes of its indigenous Khmer residents.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam is a comprehensive resource exploring social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of Vietnam, one of contemporary Asia’s most dynamic but least understood countries. Following an introduction that highlights major changes that have unfolded in Vietnam over the past three decades, the volume is organized into four thematic parts: Politics and Society Economy and Society Social Life and Institutions Cultures in Motion Part I addresses key aspects of Vietnam’s politics, from the role of the Communist Party of Vietnam in shaping the country’s institutional evolution, to continuity and change in patterns of socio-political organization, political expression, state repression, diplomatic relations, and human rights. Part II assesses the transformation of Vietnam’s economy, addressing patterns of economic growth, investment and trade, the role of the state in the economy, and other economic aspects of social life. Parts III and IV examine developments across a variety of social and cultural fields through chapters on themes including welfare, inequality, social policy, urbanization, the environment and society, gender, ethnicity, the family, cuisine, art, mass media, and the politics of remembrance. Featuring 38 essays by leading Vietnam scholars from around the world, this book provides a cutting-edge analysis of Vietnam’s transformation and changing engagement with the world. It is an invaluable interdisciplinary reference work that will be of interest to students and academics of Southeast Asian studies, as well as policymakers, analysts, and anyone wishing to learn more about contemporary Vietnam.

Based on a reconstruction of ancient Chamic, with care taken to identify inherited Austronesian words as well as loan words and their sources, this text points out what the linguistic evidence tells us about the history of the region, and sketches the major consequences of historical contact on linguistic change in the history of Chamic.

A Plea for Help

This book brings something new in both dimension and detail to our understanding of Southeast Asia from the first to the fourteenth centuries. It puts Southeast Asia in the context of the international trade that stretched from Rome to China and draws upon a wide range of recent scholarship in history and the social sciences to redefine the role that this trade played in the evolution of the classical states of Southeast Asia. By examining the sources of Southeast Asia's classical era with the tools of modern economic history, the author shows that well-developed socioeconomic and political networks existed in Southeast Asia before significant foreign economic penetration took place. With the growth of interest in Southeast Asian commodities and the refocusing of the major East-West commercial routes through the region during the early centuries of the Christian era, internal conditions within Southeast Asia adjusted to accommodate increased external contacts. Hall takes the view that Southeast Asia's response to international trade was a reflection of preexisting patterns of trade and statecraft. In the forty years since Coede's monumental work The Indianized States of Southeast Asia was published, a great deal of archaeological and epigraphical work has been done and new interpretations advanced. By integrating new theoretical constructs, recent archaeological finds and interpretations, and his own informed reading and research, Kenneth R. Hall puts his historical narrative on a large canvas and treats areas not previously brought together for discussion along comparative lines. Like Coedes' work, his book will be important as a basic text for the teaching of early Southeast Asian history.

Traces the story of India's expansion that is woven into the culture of Southeast Asia.