cover

Author: Bill Hayton

Format: Paperback

Bill Hayton’s A Brief History of Vietnam: Colonialism, War and Renewal: The Story of a Nation Transformed is basically what it says on the tin - a very straightforward, factual, history of Vietnam from prehistory to the 2020s. Overall, the book focuses slightly more heavily on the medieval eras of Vietnamese history and the formation of Dai Viet / Vietnam as a state into itself; following the arrival of the French, the narrative speeds up and leaves colonial control / the American war / post war Vietnam to the last three chapters. I found this focus to be pretty welcome, as someone who’s much more familiar with the modern history of Vietnam just by pure exposure through the lens of American history.

The text itself is relatively bland; Hayton does not spend much time on any one event or ruler, and instead mostly name drops key figures as he describes a linear historical narrative. Some end-of-chapter inserts on key cultural figures and stories help flesh out the book to be more than an encyclopedic timeline, but the book overall has less colour in its storytelling than you might expect from other books of a similar nature. In this vein, I would’ve liked more high-level thematic discussion or analyses; there are obvious repeated motifs (e.g. interacting with imperial power in China, a north/side divide), but the very rote relaying of facts means that any further themes have to be drawn out by the reader. Hayton obviously provides what could only be described as an outsider’s perspective to Vietnamese history, but because he sticks pretty closely to just facts, this does not seem to meaningfully affect the quality of the history, at least insofar as can be expected. That said, his frequent parenthetical pronunciation guides for various Vietnamese names seem super sus, but honestly I also know nowhere near enough to judge whether they’re remotely accurate or not.

I guess it’s like very clue dense, probably, fine read if you just want a broad overview of Vietnamese history — for anything more in depth, Hayton provides a bibliography / suggested further reading that seems reasonable.