Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger: A History of Vietnam. This item is unavailable.Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger: A History of Vietnam

With the exception of its war with the United States, Vietnam’s history remains significantly under-studied. In this comprehensive book, Vu Hong Lien and Peter D. Sharrock chronicle the vast sweep of the region’s tumultuous past, from the Bronze Age to the present day. Historians writing about Vietnam have defined the country as either a ragged Chinese subordinate aspiring to a full ‘Chinese’ way of life, or as a rebel Chinese province defined entirely by its shaky relationship to its looming neighbour. Yet archaeological evidence now shows culturally distinct and technologically sophisticated human occupation in the region from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. Unshackled from the confined histories of outsiders, imperial invaders and occupiers, the history of Vietnam is revealed as central to the cultural, political and ethnic development of Southeast Asia over the past millennia. With a scope unrivalled by previous accounts, Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger is a definitive history of the Vietnamese people, culture and nation.

Peter D. Sharrock is Senior Teaching Fellow in the History of Art and Archeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Vu Hong Lien is a Vietnamese-British historian, and a guest lecturer at SOAS based in London, uk. She is author of Royal Hue, Heritage of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam (2015) and co-author of Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger, a History of Vietnam (Reaktion Books, 2014).