Promotional Information

A study of the life and career of Viet Nam's second president, now available in paperback.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations

A Note on Spelling and Translations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One Constructions

1. The Black Sea Mutiny in the Late Colonial Moment

2. The Black Sea Mutiny in the Revolutionary Moment

3. The Black Sea Mutiny in the Post-Recognition Moment

Part Two Contestations

4. Striking Images: Ba Son in the Post-Partition Moment

5. The Secret Labor Union in the Post-Unification Moment

Part Three Commemorations

6. Telling Life: Ton Duc Thang's Official Biography in the Poshumous Moment

7. Museum-Shrine: The Revolution's Guardian Spirit in the Post-Socialist Moment

Conclusion

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Christoph Giebel is associate professor of international studies and history at the University of Washington.

Reviews

"Giebel brilliantly shows the creation of nationalist myths, the invention of traditions, and the ways in which stories are formed and take on lives of their own. Using archival research in Hanoi, Saigon, Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Brest, and Toulon, as well as interviews with leading Vietnamese historians, party members, and the surviving family of Ton Duc Thang, Giebel writes an accessible story that takes the reader into the intricate processes of history-making in the constant struggle between history and memory." Laurie J. Sears, author of Shadows of Empire: Colonial Discourse and Javanese Tales "Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism is pathbreaking in several ways. It is the only scholarly treatment in any language of the life and career of President Ton Duc Thang. It represents the first sustained foray into Vietnamese labor history. Finally, it is a thorough and virtually incontrovertible debunking of Ton's official history--a debunking that unfolds with the rigorous logical reasoning and narrative suspense of a good detective story."--Peter Zinoman, author of The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940