Vietnam

" This fascinating study provides a comprehensive overview of warfare throughout Vietnamese history, from the early efforts of the Vietnamese to establish their own state and free themselves from Chinese domination, down through the Indo-China and Vietnam Wars, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, to the present. Vietnam provides an overview of the causes, course, and effects of the numerous wars in Vietnamese history, many of them not generally known to Westerners, such as the Black Flag/Tonkin Wars and the Franco-Thai War. Concentrating on the period after the Second World War, it treats matters from the Vietnamese perspective as much as from the French and American, and seeks to clarify the missed opportunities and false perceptions that led to warfare.