Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

322 Pages·2011·3.29 MB·English

by  David Andrew Biggs

weyerhaeuser environmental books
William Cronon, Editor
Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books explore human relationships with natural
environments in all their variety and complexity. They seek to cast new light on
the ways that natural systems affect human communities, the ways that people
affect the environments of which they are a part, and the ways that different
cultural conceptions of nature profoundly shape our sense of the world around
us. A complete list of the books in the series appears at the end of this book.
DaviD Biggs
foreworD By william cronon
quagmire
nation-BuilDing anD nature in tHe mekong Delta
University of Washington Press seattle and london
Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta is published
with the assistance of a grant from the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books
Endowment, established by the Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation,
members of the Weyerhaeuser family, and Janet and Jack Creighton.
© 2010 by the University of Washington Press
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmit-
ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
University of Washington Press
PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Designed and composed by Pamela Canell. Typeset in Minion, a font created
by Robert Slimbach in 1991, and Scala, a font created by Martin Majoor in 1990.
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc., in Chelsea, Michigan, on 50#
Natures Natural paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Biggs, David A.
Quagmire : nation-building and nature in the Mekong Delta / David Biggs.
p. cm. — (Weyerhaeuser environmental books)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-295-99067-5 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Mekong River Delta (Vietnam and Cambodia)—Environmental conditions.
2. Water resources development—Mekong River Delta (Vietnam and Cambodia)
3. Nation-building—Vietnam.  I. Title.
ge160.v5b54 2010 959.7’8—dc22 2010019727
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and 90 percent recycled from at
least 50 percent post-consumer waste. It meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1984.
For Hồng Anh, Xuân Anh, and Kiên

contents
Foreword: Nation-Making in the Mekong Mire by William Cronon ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 3
1 Water’s Edge 23
2 Water Grid 53
3 Hydroagricultural Crisis 91
4 Balkanization 127
5 Modernization 153
6 American War 197
Epilogue 227
Notes 237
Bibliography 271
Index 289

foreworD nation-making in the mekong mire
by William Cronon
i
n 1962, a relatively unknown reporter named David Halberstam arrived
in South Vietnam. For the next two years, he wrote a series of articles for
the New York Times depicting the failings and corruptions of a regime
that the United States was seeking to defend, using aid and advisors, from
what Washington perceived as a growing Communist threat. President
John F. Kennedy was angry enough about Halberstam’s coverage to urge
the Times to send its young reporter home. The paper’s publisher refused,
and when Halberstam finally left Southeast Asia two years later, his work
was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Although he is today best known for what
many regard as the finest book ever written about the American debacle
in Vietnam—The Best and the Brightest, published in 1972—Halberstam
also published a remarkably prescient volume seven years earlier that more
or less predicted the military and political disaster that had yet to unfold.
That book is not much remembered today, but its title, The Making of a ix