Vietnam is far far more than a war. As a region that's been settled for thousands of years, and a trade nexus for the South China Sea, it has a long and complex history. No single volume could possibly cover the whole history of Vietnam, but Kiernan makes an able effort, trying to draw some cohesive themes out of a mass of history.

Geography is destiny, and again and again water appears as a major theme. Rice based settled cultures flourished in the Red River delta in the north, the Mekong delta in the south, and the innumerable smaller rivers up and down the coast. Archaeological evidence records a culture that made great bronze drums and had complex chiefdoms. Vietnam enters the historical record roughly 2300 years ago as a province of China. The Vietnamese were ruled as internal vassals for roughly 1100 years, with intermittent rebellions, before finally breaking away under Ngô Quyen in 934. The next thousand years were a mess of feudal history, marked by the rise and fall of dynasties, civil wars, and a few great kings. The major trends of this era were the conquest of the southern Champa kingdom by firearms equipped Vietnamese armies, increasing trade across the region and with Europeans, and military victories over the Chinese, combined with an import of Confucian culture, and a system of scholarly exams based on knowledge of the Chinese classics.

1887 marked the third turn in Vietnamese history, with the authoritative victory of the French over the Vietnamese, and the colonization of the last independent Vietnamese kingdoms. French rule was marked by exploitation, but also the introduction of the romanized Quoc Ngu alphabet, and the rise of a local vernacular culture rather than one based on Chinese classics. Journalists and revolutionaries agitated against the French, and syncreatic millenialist sects arose (the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao). The course of the first and second Indochina Wars are covered briefly, as well as Vietnam post-1975, with the slow redevelopment of the country postwar, and economic liberalization without political liberalization.

Someone who knows more about the pre-1954 history of Vietnam might find something to criticize, and if you have strong opinions about the present government, you'll likely be disappointed. My biggest problem with this book is that it is very dry. I like this kind of stuff, and it still took me 10 days. Glad to have read it, even if I still can't remember the order of the dynasties.