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9781442223028

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Despite resulting in the deaths of between one and two million people, the great famine of 1945 that decimated the population of northern Vietnam has received little scholarly attention. Geoffrey Gunn's meticulously researched and historically grounded study fills this surprising gap. Gunn examines the role rice played, both in the colonial economy and in promoting earlier revolutionary activity before focusing on the war years from 1940 to 1945. His apportionment of blame between French authorities and Japanese occupation forces is balanced and judicious, and his study as a whole contributes significantly to our understanding of the reasons for famine and how it could have been prevented. -- Martin Stuart-Fox, University of Queensland

Famine and war are frequent bedfellows, with civilian deaths due to starvation and malnutrition sometimes outnumbering battlefield casualties. This scenario was clearly the case in colonial Indochina as WW II reached its climax. The great famine of 1944-45 is largely unknown or forgotten in the West, and this new book by Gunn appears to be the first title in English to discuss it at length. In examining the famine, Gunn discusses the role of natural disaster, rice requisitions by the occupying Japanese forces, and ineffective administration by Vichy French authorities. However, most of the book is a prelude to the famine itself, as Gunn examines Vietnamese agriculture, prewar resistance to French rule, and the rise of the Viet Minh and its efforts to gain a foothold in rural areas. This book is a welcome addition to scholarship on Vietnam ... Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers, faculty, graduate students. CHOICE In this study of the political, economic and military struggles between the French, the Japanese and the Indochina Communist Party (ICP) over the producing, marketing and consuming of rice in Vietnam, Geoffrey Gunn enhances and augments our understanding of the long-term and short-term causes of the Viet Minh victory in 1945...Rice Wars will reward readers if only for the expertise and compassion with which Gunn deals with the famine...Gunn addresses one of the more important and difficult questions about modern Vietnamese history when he interrelates the famine with the political, economic and military conditions that enabled the Viet Minh to guide and participate in a movement against the expropriation of most of the rice crop by the Japanese. Journal of Contemporary Asia Despite resulting in the deaths of between one and two million people, the great famine of 1945 that decimated the population of northern Vietnam has received little scholarly attention. Geoffrey Gunn's meticulously researched and historically grounded study fills this surprising gap. Gunn examines the role rice played, both in the colonial economy and in promoting earlier revolutionary activity before focusing on the war years from 1940 to 1945. His apportionment of blame between French authorities and Japanese occupation forces is balanced and judicious, and his study as a whole contributes significantly to our understanding of the reasons for famine and how it could have been prevented. -- Martin Stuart-Fox, University of Queensland Geoffrey Gunn's Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam is a superb multidimensional analysis of the great famine that struck northern Vietnam in 1945. Gunn has mined the French colonial archives for new sources of information and applied what he terms 'a correlated political economy approach' to identify the various factors at play that led to social revolution, the demise of French colonialism, and the triumph of communism in modern Vietnam. -- Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales Geoffrey Gunn analyzes the causes of the 1945 Vietnamese famine, the pre-famine French-managed agrarian system, and post-famine developments. He absolves France of some of the responsibility, puts the main blame on Japan, and discusses the agrarian policies of the Viet Minh. With its focus on the political economy of rice cultivation and food distribution the book forms a most valuable contribution to our understanding of the Vietnamese Revolution and the background for the Indochina Wars. -- Stein Tonnesson, author of Vietnam 1946: How the War Began

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Geoffrey C. Gunn is professor emeritus of economics at Nagasaki University and visiting professor at the University of Macau.

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