SPECIAL ISSUE: REVISITING AND RECONSTRUCTING THE NGH TNH SOVIETS, 19302011 .

Introduction Tobias Rettig

Author details: Tobias Rettig is the Guest Editor of this special issue. He is Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, 90 Stamford Road, Singapore 178903, Republic of Singapore. E-mail: tobiasrettig@smu. edu.sg.

The seven papers presented here constitute the first collective effort in a Western language to revisit the Ngh Tnh Soviets of 193031. The Ngh Tnh movement, its name a compound of two neighbouring provinces in the north-central part of the French protectorate of Annam, not only occupies a special place in the history of the early Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) but also became a site for animated debate on the causes of agrarian unrest that produced two of the most influential books in South East Asian studies: James Scotts Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976); and Samuel Popkins The Rational Peasant (1979).1 This special issue has its origins in a one-day panel at the Fourth Conference of the European Association of South East Asian Studies (EuroSEAS), which was held at the University of Paris I PanthonSorbonne in September 2004. Entitled 75 Years On: Reinvestigating Vietnams Revolutionary High Tide of 1930/1, the panel brought together 16 scholars, some very senior and some still PhD students, from six countries and four continents, including five scholars from the Socialist
1

This is according to a survey conducted among a group of eminent International Advisory Members; see Hui Yew-Foong (2009), The most influential books of Southeast Asian Studies, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol 24, No 1 (April), pp viixx.

South East Asia Research, 19, 4, pp 677684 doi: 10.5367/sear.2011.0085