Red Hills: Migrants and the State in the Highlands of Vietnam

Several million rural inhabitants of Vietnam's northern deltas made the decision to move home during the twentieth century, seeking to make new lives for themselves in the country's highlands. Their decisions and the settlements they created had wide-ranging effects on their home communities and on the people and environment of their destinations. Many migrations were made in response to policy decisions made in Hanoi. This book offers a historical analysis of the political economy of migration, stimulated by the French colonial and independent socialist states. It shows how socialist policies especially changed the face of the highlands, as settlers from the plains turned the hills "red."

"Red Hills is a considerable achievement, innovative in its methodology and original in its theoretical insights. It will, I feel, command an audience from a variety of disciplines which will stretch beyond the field of Vietnam studies." --- Keith Taylor, Cornell University